6 ms·
People “learning” from chatgpt are the conspiracy theorists of the future and the types that will think software possesses intelligence.
by gumballindie 3y ago
People “learning” from chatgpt are the conspiracy theorists of the future and the types that will think software possesses intelligence.
- pizza 3y agoNot sure why you put learning in quotes. It occasionally returns text reflecting true things that people asking question about don't know. Is that conspiracy theory?
- akira2501 3y agoI think there's a distinct difference between "learning" as is done in schools and "learning" as is meant by merely memorizing facts. I'm sure GPT can help you with the latter, I'm not sure it can help you with the former; particularly, because you have to know _what_ to ask before it returns anything.
- parhamn 3y agoI think i agree with the core of what youre saying but this certainly isn't true. Ask ChatGPT for a syllabus foe an introductory calculus course and ask for a study plan. Then ask for a study plan for each section. Than start asking it to explain things. People will build UIs to automate this process where all you have to enter is what you want to learn, in this case “introductory calculus”
- faeriechangling 3y agoDoes school NOT consist largely of memorising facts? Do schools not consist of this more and more due to increasing reliance on metrics based on standardised testing, where the best way to juke the stats is to teach the test which means teaching kids to memorise facts? Ones which explicitly limit access to the internet or LLMs during test explicitly to make the only route to passing rote memorization of a great deal of facts? Does GPT and LLMs, which can easily crush any test based on fact memorisation, not present an opportunity to offload the task of mere fact memorisation to the machine and allow one to learn how to do things which would have previously been unviable without first memorising a great deal of facts? I don't consider knowing WHAT to ask to be all that much of an obstacle either, you just ask it about something you don't know very much about, but that you want to do. If anything I see LLMs as presenting an existential threat towards models of measuring merit through memorisation, as it's exposing said memorisation of being testing for testings sake, disconnected from real world utility or the ability to meaningfully measure merit.
- akira2501 3y ago> Does school NOT consist largely of memorising facts? Is there a single standard for "school?" I was using it as a device to separate out the difference between the two styles. I do recognize that the majority of American schools are simply memorization factories but to focus on that is to miss the argument entirely.. > If anything I see LLMs as presenting an existential threat towards models of measuring merit through memorisation As you've essentially just repeated that same argument with this point. The types of "learning" LLMs are good at are not the types of "learning" people would _expect from a good school_. I do believe that this will occur, but it simultaneously undercuts your previous arguments in favor of GPTs utility, as they only make sense in a world where education is _purely_ about memorization. And sorry to reorder this, but... > which can easily crush any test based on fact memorisation, What is your source for this assertion?
- reedciccio 3y agoYou can't trust what the LLM say. Occasionally true answers is the same as a broken clock: it's correctly displaying the exact time twice per day. Can't be trusted.
- ericlewis 3y agoAnd I had plenty of teachers that made me say: "Wait a second..." only to find out once I independently verified that they were full of crap. Can't be trusted.
- gumballindie 3y agoSo the plan is to replace low quality teachers with a low quality bot instead of improving education? Why does openai / chatgpt marketing sound so puerile?
- Kuinox 3y agoIf a teacher making a mistake is "low quality", no humans can be a teacher.
- gumballindie 3y agoI should have worded it better - one mistake is not low quality indeed. What i had in my mind at the time is that if we do have some low quality teachers it means we should improve the system not adopt a known to be wrong tool. Back in the day when the internet was becoming popular there were loads of similar stories (likely openai’s marketing team is familiar with these) about people using the internet to learn. Recent times are proof that that was a mistake for many.
- Kuinox 3y ago> Recent times are proof that that was a mistake for many. You are creating your own conspiracy about how internet created conspirationist. Social Medias are the fault, not learning stuff on internet.
- gumballindie 3y agoGoogle and facebook are also occasionally returning true content. And thats the issue. If it was either right all the time or wrong all the time it would be less of a problem - although learning is a bit more complex than just mindlessly reading text. The risk is that people will assume that this software is right all the time and that means they will uncritically follow it.
- Me1000 3y agoMaybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but this seems like a strange take. I've used ChatGPT to "learn", it's like having a smart study buddy that never gets annoyed that you keep pestering it with very specific esoteric questions. For example, I'll watch a youtube video or read a blog post that talks about a topic I'm not an expert in. That type of content often uses jargon or acronyms that I'm unfamiliar with. Asking ChatGPT with some context usually explains the jargon to me, but also can help explain why it's used in this specific context, which is way more helpful than just reading a definition.
- gumballindie 3y ago> For example, I'll watch a youtube video or read a blog post that talks about a topic I'm not an expert it. Could the fact that you are not expert at things be the reason you think you are learning from the chatbot? If i ask it anything i am an expert in i can quickly tell it’s a waste of time, but if i ask it in fields i am not, i get tricked into thinking it’s right. Meaning that while it does appear to be right it does so due to my own ignorance about the topic.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- alexeldeib 3y agoI agree with you about non expert subjects and hallucination/believability. But I disagree about time wasting. I use it to generate boilerplate code in languages I’m less familiar with, but can fill in the gaps. It’s stellar for that use case, scaffolding entire CRUD apps with DB connectors and specific libraries.
- marcosdumay 3y agoThose LLMs have an incredible ability to echo knowledge from their learning set that people can't find otherwise. So, if you keep asking really superficial questions, you will probably get most answers either correct or wrong by some obvious inversion or single change that can be verified easily. don't get me wrong, a chatbox is absolutely the worst interface for that kind of interaction. Search would be much better. But the big search companies seem to use all of their resources to make search worse, while investing heavily on good chatboxes, so we got here.
- Kuinox 3y agoWhat you are saying shows you didn't actually tried to use ChatGPT. Maybe you interacted a bit with it, but you probably never tried to actually work with it.
- gumballindie 3y agoThis assumption is a good indication that relying on chatgpt for learning is perhaps not the best way forward.
- UncleMeat 3y agoPeople weren’t learning from Chegg either.
- surgical_fire 3y agoI suppose using chatGPT to explore programming libraries and frameworks I'm not familiar with will turn me into a conspiracy theorist of the future.