3 ms·

How is this different than "what is the point learning something that is answerable by Google, an Encyclopedia or common genre specific book, a calculator, etc?

• awb 4y ago
  Because the content on those other sources is copyrighted and non-responsive. I guess GPT-3 is more akin to a calculator. And yeah, tons of kids ask “why should I learn [this math equation] when I can type it into a calculator?” The difference is the calculator is guaranteed to be correct if the inputs are done properly. It’s still worth learning the “why” of a non-solvable topic for intellectual curiosity and because there’s no bottom or border to these topics. But yeah, for stuff you aren’t interested in, I can see lots of kids wanting to use GPT-3 to just “get through it”.
• MikeTheGreat 4y ago
  First, it may not be. It's entirely possible that ChatGPT & it's successors will just become another tool that we use - the bestest auto-complete/intellisense in the world, if you will. That said, qualitatively it feels different because it can produce an answer specific to your question. Like, a lot of 'Googling for the answer' involves putting puzzle pieces together and combining that with what you already know to get an answer. In contrast, it feels like if you wanted a better program you can copy and paste your code into ChatGPT, ask it "How do I improve this?" and it spits out an improved version with a short explanation. No more poring over web pages with advice about code quality, no more trying to figure out how to apply that advice to your specific program, etc. So at this point it's not clear where things are headed, but it certainly seems reasonable that this may be qualitatively different.