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Mentioned ChatGPT to my teenager a few months ago. Huge percentage of the teenagers at her school are using it to do their assignments. Later I her to read a

Mentioned ChatGPT to my teenager a few months ago. Huge percentage of the teenagers at her school are using it to do their assignments. Later I her to read a few chapters of her book for summer reading. When I quizzed her it, she got it right. Found out later she used ChatGPT to give her a summary of the first chapters. She did not enjoy having first weeks of summer without a phone. School is having to change all assignments to be written in class on paper. No phones allowed.

theknocker 3y ago
[dead]
konha 3y ago
That sounds incredibly backwards to me. How about accepting new realities and changing homework assignments instead?
- treeman79 3y ago
  It’s also acceptable for a kid to lean to read a book. She’s behind on reading and comprehension. Getting the summary isn’t helping to solve that.
- JimtheCoder 3y ago
  "How about accepting new realities and changing homework assignments instead?" Suggestions for how to change homework assignments? It seems like a difficult problem, so reverting to hand writing things with no phones is probably the best option for now...in my opinion.
  - musicale 3y ago
    1. As you note, consider eliminating it, or replacing it with in-class or lab work if it's absolutely necessary. 2. Consider making it non-graded (optionally providing feedback if desired that will not be counted in course grading.) 3. Require oral/in-person explanation of homework to paid peer assistants recruited from the previous cohort. 4. For writing, change to a writing workshop model where ChatGPT is a permitted tool that is incorporated into the workshop and students can learn how it can be helpful and how it can run astray. Help students to find and write in their own distinctive voice, even if they are assisted by ChatGPT.
  - konha 3y ago
    Have students work with ChatGPT and let them spot / mark where the AI is hallucinating or wrong? Might translate well to general competence wrt working with any kind of source online.
    - JimtheCoder 3y ago
      So they Google it?
      - konha 3y ago
        So? Don‘t know what kind of homework you‘re thinking about. But using Google to do research doesn’t exactly sound like a problem to me.
        JimtheCoder 3y ago
        It is more so the fact that someone takes something from ChatGPT, and then just feeds potentially contentious assertions into Google to see if they are true or not. What does someone learn from doing this? What happens when they actually have to use their brain to do something hard? At this point, why bother?
        camdat 3y ago
        If someone plugs math into a calculator, are they really learning something when it spits out an answer? Of course! How to apply the calculator to problems, and how to discern if a problem is calculator-solveable. We've decided as a society it's better for students to use calculators as a tool in mathematics, why is chatGPT different in literature?
        nerdbert 3y ago
        You can't type your homework into a calculator and get the answer out (at least not after basic arithmetic). You have to understand the problem and how to use the tool. If one's understanding of how to use the tool is limited to "access the tool and dump in the question, then blindly paste the response into my homework document", I'd say you are not learning much. It's obvious that every contemporary teenager can learn that in a few minutes. That's not giving us the capabilities to move forward as a society.
- ryan93 3y ago
  [flagged]
- DryLabRebel 3y ago
  The world is changing, and children should change with it. Learn and understand technology, and the benefits of where modern machine learning is taking us. But you cannot unironically think we can substitute fundamental skills like essay writing and critical thinking for a degree in 'prompt engineering'?
  - flangola7 3y ago
    Essay writing has already become an old world archaic skill in my mind, like a seamstress or blacksmith. People still produce clothing and metal tools, but with 1000x fewer labor hours for the same amount of output and the process looks completely different. Even most of my personal messages get LLMed if they need to be very long or have to explain something complicated. Critical thinking is still a skill, but even there GPT-4 is great at giving suggestions and ideas when you're not sure what to do. I got into a long recurring argument with extended family members at an event last month. I pulled out my laptop and dropped in everyone's complaints into GPT and asked the best way to move forward. An argument that normally would have gone on for hours was over in 20 minutes, and we actually felt a sense of mutual understanding for once. The world is changing very rapidly right now.
  - wussboy 3y ago
    You forgot “and drawbacks” after “And the benefits”.
  - Wowfunhappy 3y ago
    > But you cannot unironically think we can substitute fundamental skills like essay writing and critical thinking for a degree in 'prompt engineering'? Personally, I don't think that. However, I also think it's logical and good for a child to consider the task at hand and select the most efficient tool available. I am not this girl's parent, and I'm not sure how I would have handled the situation if I was. However, I worry that simply taking away her phone may have been counterproductive. I would have erred toward some sort of open conversation about the purpose of the assignment and what she is hoping to learn.
    - treeman79 3y ago
SoftTalker 3y ago
> School is having to change all assignments to be written in class on paper. No phones allowed. They never should have moved away from this if they are worried about cheating. But if students are using ChatGPT to summarize/prep for stuff at home, fine. No different from the Cliff Notes I used when I was that age.
tomcam 3y ago
> She did not enjoy having first weeks of summer without a phone. Good for you. I know that kind of situation is not fun for a parent either.
- RC_ITR 3y ago
  Alternatively this is an analogue to a parent in 1985 taking their computer away from their kid. AI tools exist, we should be encouraging our kids to learn how to exist in a world with them, not some nostalgic extinct world without.
  - bigfishrunning 3y ago
    Computers in 1985 were a tool that took real skill to use. In order to solve any problem with a computer, you had to use your brain. Most of the things a kid does on a computer in 2023 are actively geared toward not using your brain in any way. This is more analogous to a parent in 1985 taking away both the phone and the TV from their kid.
    - RC_ITR 3y ago
      >Computers in 1985 were a tool that took real skill to use. Eye of the beholder, I guess. I certainly see people struggle to use LLM's so I disagree with the implication that it's a zero-skill activity.
  - tomcam 3y ago
    I choose to believe that at a minimum, she didn’t read the book, and no AI summary will get you the same experience. Also, lying is bad.
    - RC_ITR 3y ago
      >no AI summary will get you the same experience Yes, but other than being conditioned to believe the experience of reading is superior, why are we striving for that experience? Doing the square root of 147 by hand is a more educational experience than using a calculator, but I can understand the concept of a square root without having to factorize 147 (the same cannot be said of my pre-calculator ancestors). It also saves me from having to remember the decimal representation of sqrt3.
aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Found out later she used ChatGPT to give her a summary of the first chapters. She did not enjoy having first weeks of summer without a phone. Honestly, the pupils of my generation had other sources for finding summaries of the books to read for school (e.g. on the web, or in form of other books that contain a summary of the book to read (the respective pages were copied and these copies were passed among classmates). Thus: just the methods change over generations, how pupils behave is much more constant.

theknocker 3y ago

[dead]

konha 3y ago

That sounds incredibly backwards to me. How about accepting new realities and changing homework assignments instead?

treeman79 3y ago
It’s also acceptable for a kid to lean to read a book. She’s behind on reading and comprehension. Getting the summary isn’t helping to solve that.
JimtheCoder 3y ago
"How about accepting new realities and changing homework assignments instead?" Suggestions for how to change homework assignments? It seems like a difficult problem, so reverting to hand writing things with no phones is probably the best option for now...in my opinion.
- musicale 3y ago
  1. As you note, consider eliminating it, or replacing it with in-class or lab work if it's absolutely necessary. 2. Consider making it non-graded (optionally providing feedback if desired that will not be counted in course grading.) 3. Require oral/in-person explanation of homework to paid peer assistants recruited from the previous cohort. 4. For writing, change to a writing workshop model where ChatGPT is a permitted tool that is incorporated into the workshop and students can learn how it can be helpful and how it can run astray. Help students to find and write in their own distinctive voice, even if they are assisted by ChatGPT.
- konha 3y ago
  Have students work with ChatGPT and let them spot / mark where the AI is hallucinating or wrong? Might translate well to general competence wrt working with any kind of source online.
  - JimtheCoder 3y ago
    So they Google it?
    - konha 3y ago
      So? Don‘t know what kind of homework you‘re thinking about. But using Google to do research doesn’t exactly sound like a problem to me.
      - JimtheCoder 3y ago
        It is more so the fact that someone takes something from ChatGPT, and then just feeds potentially contentious assertions into Google to see if they are true or not. What does someone learn from doing this? What happens when they actually have to use their brain to do something hard? At this point, why bother?
        camdat 3y ago
        If someone plugs math into a calculator, are they really learning something when it spits out an answer? Of course! How to apply the calculator to problems, and how to discern if a problem is calculator-solveable. We've decided as a society it's better for students to use calculators as a tool in mathematics, why is chatGPT different in literature?
        nerdbert 3y ago
        You can't type your homework into a calculator and get the answer out (at least not after basic arithmetic). You have to understand the problem and how to use the tool. If one's understanding of how to use the tool is limited to "access the tool and dump in the question, then blindly paste the response into my homework document", I'd say you are not learning much. It's obvious that every contemporary teenager can learn that in a few minutes. That's not giving us the capabilities to move forward as a society.
ryan93 3y ago
[flagged]
DryLabRebel 3y ago
The world is changing, and children should change with it. Learn and understand technology, and the benefits of where modern machine learning is taking us. But you cannot unironically think we can substitute fundamental skills like essay writing and critical thinking for a degree in 'prompt engineering'?
- flangola7 3y ago
  Essay writing has already become an old world archaic skill in my mind, like a seamstress or blacksmith. People still produce clothing and metal tools, but with 1000x fewer labor hours for the same amount of output and the process looks completely different. Even most of my personal messages get LLMed if they need to be very long or have to explain something complicated. Critical thinking is still a skill, but even there GPT-4 is great at giving suggestions and ideas when you're not sure what to do. I got into a long recurring argument with extended family members at an event last month. I pulled out my laptop and dropped in everyone's complaints into GPT and asked the best way to move forward. An argument that normally would have gone on for hours was over in 20 minutes, and we actually felt a sense of mutual understanding for once. The world is changing very rapidly right now.
- wussboy 3y ago
  You forgot “and drawbacks” after “And the benefits”.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  > But you cannot unironically think we can substitute fundamental skills like essay writing and critical thinking for a degree in 'prompt engineering'? Personally, I don't think that. However, I also think it's logical and good for a child to consider the task at hand and select the most efficient tool available. I am not this girl's parent, and I'm not sure how I would have handled the situation if I was. However, I worry that simply taking away her phone may have been counterproductive. I would have erred toward some sort of open conversation about the purpose of the assignment and what she is hoping to learn.
  - treeman79 3y ago

SoftTalker 3y ago

> School is having to change all assignments to be written in class on paper. No phones allowed. They never should have moved away from this if they are worried about cheating. But if students are using ChatGPT to summarize/prep for stuff at home, fine. No different from the Cliff Notes I used when I was that age.

tomcam 3y ago

> She did not enjoy having first weeks of summer without a phone. Good for you. I know that kind of situation is not fun for a parent either.

RC_ITR 3y ago
Alternatively this is an analogue to a parent in 1985 taking their computer away from their kid. AI tools exist, we should be encouraging our kids to learn how to exist in a world with them, not some nostalgic extinct world without.
- bigfishrunning 3y ago
  Computers in 1985 were a tool that took real skill to use. In order to solve any problem with a computer, you had to use your brain. Most of the things a kid does on a computer in 2023 are actively geared toward not using your brain in any way. This is more analogous to a parent in 1985 taking away both the phone and the TV from their kid.
  - RC_ITR 3y ago
    >Computers in 1985 were a tool that took real skill to use. Eye of the beholder, I guess. I certainly see people struggle to use LLM's so I disagree with the implication that it's a zero-skill activity.
- tomcam 3y ago
  I choose to believe that at a minimum, she didn’t read the book, and no AI summary will get you the same experience. Also, lying is bad.
  - RC_ITR 3y ago
    >no AI summary will get you the same experience Yes, but other than being conditioned to believe the experience of reading is superior, why are we striving for that experience? Doing the square root of 147 by hand is a more educational experience than using a calculator, but I can understand the concept of a square root without having to factorize 147 (the same cannot be said of my pre-calculator ancestors). It also saves me from having to remember the decimal representation of sqrt3.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> Found out later she used ChatGPT to give her a summary of the first chapters. She did not enjoy having first weeks of summer without a phone. Honestly, the pupils of my generation had other sources for finding summaries of the books to read for school (e.g. on the web, or in form of other books that contain a summary of the book to read (the respective pages were copied and these copies were passed among classmates). Thus: just the methods change over generations, how pupils behave is much more constant.