4 ms·

I generally find LLMs to be useful, but I think these kinds of proclamations are a bit overblown. Many students do not want the kind of introspective, solo lear

I generally find LLMs to be useful, but I think these kinds of proclamations are a bit overblown. Many students do not want the kind of introspective, solo learning experience that a chatbot on a laptop provides. They want a social experience or a physically active experience, not one that requires them to sit quietly in a chair for 8 hours a day. And honestly, a classroom of students staring at screens talking to AI bots sounds like a dystopia to me. All of the best educational experiences I've had in high school and college came from a passionate teacher that conveyed excitement to the students. Or (especially in college-level philosophy courses) they were small discussion groups that went on for hours. Neither of these things is going to be replicated by talking to a chatbot and most of these applications are just further extensions of a (in my opinion) broken industrial educational model. That aside, I do think LLMs could be useful as a supplementary tutor, especially when your teacher isn't up to par.

jncfhnb 3y ago
> And honestly, a classroom of students staring at screens talking to AI bots sounds like a dystopia to me. Would it be less dystopian if it were replaced with a hologram of a historical figure / scientist speaking as though an actual primary source on the matter but with the same LLM behind it?
- sebastiennight 3y ago
  Same-same. The problem with the ChatGPT-tutor future is not "having to read". Also, I believe that having tens of thousands of teachers with their unions and quirks has its issues, but is a much more resilient system at the nation level than a centralized tutor system. (The centralized tutor is too easy to game, bias, get seeded with native ads, etc.)
  - jncfhnb 3y ago
    As someone who learned by listening to teachers and otherwise skipping all the readings I find that not compelling
    - sebastiennight 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm the exact opposite of you there. I would just never listen to whatever happened in class. My strategy was to be best friends with the top-of-the-class student, and spend the classes copying her notes from the previous class. Listening was so boring and slow and sleep-inducing. But my point is that if the plan is: > We will sit your kids to chat with a black-box AI bot for the duration of their school term, and the bot will teach them about life Then the problem is not "why don't we give them Airpods to listen to the black-box AI chatbot, instead of reading what the black-box AI chatbot is typing"
- keiferski 3y ago
  Not really, because I don't think kids are going to find a piece of software to be a compelling teacher. Having a physical presence is important for physical beings like humans. My guess is, they'd just ignore or make fun of a hologram. The "appeal" of a historical figure doing the teaching is also not really compelling to anyone that isn't already interested in history.
  - xnx 3y ago
    Your teachers must have been much better than mine. A well produced YouTube video is better than any in-person school lecture I've received. Combine that with 1-on-1 next-generation LLM fine-tuned to be a helpful tutor and it will make the best possible education today, readily accessible to a lot more kids.
- jprete 3y ago
  I get the idea, but the dystopian part is the students being continually isolated in their educational time with their only contact being an impersonal computer program (or something that fakes being personal, but is not actually free to be personal). The computer dressing up in human form doesn't really change it.
niceice 3y ago
> not one that requires them to sit quietly in a chair for 8 hours a day Sounds like the public school I went to... Sit in your assigned chair, don't talk, little physical activity. Prison for kids. I'll take the AI tutor that can be tailored to each kid and in any environment.
zozbot234 3y ago
And yet, individual tutoring provides a two-sigma improvement in outcomes compared to a mass lecture. Besides, language generation can be just as helpful in group settings. It just becomes "let's see what the robot says and talk about it" instead of everyone talking to the robot on their own.
- keiferski 3y ago
  Huge assumption that talking to a chatbot = individual tutoring. People keep making this analogy and I don't buy it at all. Having a physical human being in front of you is a lot different than talking to your computer.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rgbrgb 3y ago
    I absolutely buy this but also think we should figure out what works about the human tutor and try to get it into a free piece of software so that the 99% of kids without individual tutors can get a similar benefit.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      I'm not sure it's something that can be replicated by software. Human beings like human beings. Physicality isn't just an add-on, it's fundamental to who we are. A person sitting next to you explaining something is much, much different than someone or some thing teaching you via a device. An AI tutor that passes the Turing Test and communicates via speech is roughly comparable to an anonymous human teacher teaching via Zoom. There's no physicality and no continuity to the relationship. To use an example: my high school history teacher was an old ex-Marine with a buzz cut and big square glasses. I enjoyed his class because he was a cool guy who seemed to have seen the world, and I was interested in what he had to say about wars and historical events. With an AI, no matter how realistic it is, there is zero of this context. Sure, it can pretend to be a grizzled ex-marine. But who cares what it thinks? A teenager is going to find it lame and boring, not equivalent to an interesting individual tutor.
syntheweave 3y ago
Well, then just have the class communicate with the chatbot in study groups, taking turns to type, if "social" is what you're after. The way class time is currently used reflects the need to keep that grade level engaged with appropriate activities, and only as you get to the older ages does it converge on that kind of solo self-study. But it has to, eventually. You don't do research without figuring out how to do it. The flaws in leaning on LLMs are just another form of "precision vs accuracy" - GPT is always precise and not always accurate, just in the verbal domain instead of the numeric one. But we do have many tools like that in the numeric domain. The limitations can be learned. If the LLM gives a solid three-star "fast food" education, that is actually considerably better than letting it all fall on the shoulders of the babysitters that currently serve in many classrooms.

jncfhnb 3y ago

> And honestly, a classroom of students staring at screens talking to AI bots sounds like a dystopia to me. Would it be less dystopian if it were replaced with a hologram of a historical figure / scientist speaking as though an actual primary source on the matter but with the same LLM behind it?

sebastiennight 3y ago
Same-same. The problem with the ChatGPT-tutor future is not "having to read". Also, I believe that having tens of thousands of teachers with their unions and quirks has its issues, but is a much more resilient system at the nation level than a centralized tutor system. (The centralized tutor is too easy to game, bias, get seeded with native ads, etc.)
- jncfhnb 3y ago
  As someone who learned by listening to teachers and otherwise skipping all the readings I find that not compelling
  - sebastiennight 3y ago
    Yeah, I'm the exact opposite of you there. I would just never listen to whatever happened in class. My strategy was to be best friends with the top-of-the-class student, and spend the classes copying her notes from the previous class. Listening was so boring and slow and sleep-inducing. But my point is that if the plan is: > We will sit your kids to chat with a black-box AI bot for the duration of their school term, and the bot will teach them about life Then the problem is not "why don't we give them Airpods to listen to the black-box AI chatbot, instead of reading what the black-box AI chatbot is typing"
keiferski 3y ago
Not really, because I don't think kids are going to find a piece of software to be a compelling teacher. Having a physical presence is important for physical beings like humans. My guess is, they'd just ignore or make fun of a hologram. The "appeal" of a historical figure doing the teaching is also not really compelling to anyone that isn't already interested in history.
- xnx 3y ago
  Your teachers must have been much better than mine. A well produced YouTube video is better than any in-person school lecture I've received. Combine that with 1-on-1 next-generation LLM fine-tuned to be a helpful tutor and it will make the best possible education today, readily accessible to a lot more kids.
jprete 3y ago
I get the idea, but the dystopian part is the students being continually isolated in their educational time with their only contact being an impersonal computer program (or something that fakes being personal, but is not actually free to be personal). The computer dressing up in human form doesn't really change it.

niceice 3y ago

> not one that requires them to sit quietly in a chair for 8 hours a day Sounds like the public school I went to... Sit in your assigned chair, don't talk, little physical activity. Prison for kids. I'll take the AI tutor that can be tailored to each kid and in any environment.

zozbot234 3y ago

And yet, individual tutoring provides a two-sigma improvement in outcomes compared to a mass lecture. Besides, language generation can be just as helpful in group settings. It just becomes "let's see what the robot says and talk about it" instead of everyone talking to the robot on their own.

keiferski 3y ago
Huge assumption that talking to a chatbot = individual tutoring. People keep making this analogy and I don't buy it at all. Having a physical human being in front of you is a lot different than talking to your computer.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rgbrgb 3y ago
  I absolutely buy this but also think we should figure out what works about the human tutor and try to get it into a free piece of software so that the 99% of kids without individual tutors can get a similar benefit.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    I'm not sure it's something that can be replicated by software. Human beings like human beings. Physicality isn't just an add-on, it's fundamental to who we are. A person sitting next to you explaining something is much, much different than someone or some thing teaching you via a device. An AI tutor that passes the Turing Test and communicates via speech is roughly comparable to an anonymous human teacher teaching via Zoom. There's no physicality and no continuity to the relationship. To use an example: my high school history teacher was an old ex-Marine with a buzz cut and big square glasses. I enjoyed his class because he was a cool guy who seemed to have seen the world, and I was interested in what he had to say about wars and historical events. With an AI, no matter how realistic it is, there is zero of this context. Sure, it can pretend to be a grizzled ex-marine. But who cares what it thinks? A teenager is going to find it lame and boring, not equivalent to an interesting individual tutor.

syntheweave 3y ago

Well, then just have the class communicate with the chatbot in study groups, taking turns to type, if "social" is what you're after. The way class time is currently used reflects the need to keep that grade level engaged with appropriate activities, and only as you get to the older ages does it converge on that kind of solo self-study. But it has to, eventually. You don't do research without figuring out how to do it. The flaws in leaning on LLMs are just another form of "precision vs accuracy" - GPT is always precise and not always accurate, just in the verbal domain instead of the numeric one. But we do have many tools like that in the numeric domain. The limitations can be learned. If the LLM gives a solid three-star "fast food" education, that is actually considerably better than letting it all fall on the shoulders of the babysitters that currently serve in many classrooms.