4 ms·

Another way to look at it is to recognize that all teachers have limitations. Humans often convey misinformation too.

tombert 2y ago
Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. I maintain that one of the very best teachers I ever had was my 9th grade biology teacher, purely because she understood absolutely nothing about biology and appeared to just be making shit up. You could argue that in a vacuum this might be benign, but part of the issue is that she would use tests provided by the textbook, written by competent biologists. As a result of this, I had to learn to ignore most of what my teacher said, and sometimes argue back with her, and I feel like ironically I learned biology better than most people in that class; if nothing else I did get an A on all the "real" tests from the textbooks. I think that arguing is actually a really underrated tool in education. Looking for and correcting bullshit is something that extraordinarily enlightening, at least for me, and I think AIs even in their current state can be useful for that.
- nicce 2y ago
  > Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. The future generations do not have the same background as we do. For them it is very difficult to teach what is "misinformation", or have a thinking model like that, unless we make them read proper books and compare the content for the output of the AI. But if the AI is soon correct enough, they don't get it, and they don't feel it important, and they just take the output from AI as fact.
  - tombert 2y ago
    I agree with all that, and that's why I think we should still keep using traditional books for the foreseeable future. I think that AI can be a terrific supplement, particularly if the students are told to challenge it a bit. I think that just like human teachers, it'll be impossible to completely solve the misinformation problem, but I do think it'll get asymptotically close to being solved.
- cmcconomy 2y ago
  finding misinformation is a critical skill, but you need a basis to suss out bullshit. diving into the LLM plausibility deepend is not the best way for most people to distinguish the two.
  - tombert 2y ago
    I mentioned in a sibling thread that I am absolutely not suggesting we throw away textbooks or anything like that. I think we should still have and verified work that can referenced as a source of truth, and I think those should be the primary source of learning. What I think is valuable is trying to figure out stuff where ChatGPT contradicts the "established" stuff, and having students figure it out.
- xhkkffbf 2y ago
  A friend of mine who taught high school said he would tell his class each year that there would be one day when all he would spew would be made up baloney. But he wouldn't tell them which day that would be. It was up to them to discover it. A clever guy he was.
  - tombert 2y ago
    Yeah, I think priming people to look for bullshit is a good way to get them to pay attention. While I do obviously hope that ChatGPT is able to curve against the misinformation problem, I actually do think there's been a lot of value for me personally in trying to figure out where it's getting things subtly wrong. Since I'm taking everything it says with huge grain of salt, the I am kind of forced to dissect every sentence a bit more thoroughly than I might with a textbook where I know everything is gonna be correct.

Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. I maintain that one of the very best teachers I ever had was my 9th grade biology teacher, purely because she understood absolutely nothing about biology and appeared to just be making shit up. You could argue that in a vacuum this might be benign, but part of the issue is that she would use tests provided by the textbook, written by competent biologists. As a result of this, I had to learn to ignore most of what my teacher said, and sometimes argue back with her, and I feel like ironically I learned biology better than most people in that class; if nothing else I did get an A on all the "real" tests from the textbooks. I think that arguing is actually a really underrated tool in education. Looking for and correcting bullshit is something that extraordinarily enlightening, at least for me, and I think AIs even in their current state can be useful for that.

nicce 2y ago
> Yeah, and I actually think that there can be some value in students being challenged to find some misinformation. The future generations do not have the same background as we do. For them it is very difficult to teach what is "misinformation", or have a thinking model like that, unless we make them read proper books and compare the content for the output of the AI. But if the AI is soon correct enough, they don't get it, and they don't feel it important, and they just take the output from AI as fact.
- tombert 2y ago
  I agree with all that, and that's why I think we should still keep using traditional books for the foreseeable future. I think that AI can be a terrific supplement, particularly if the students are told to challenge it a bit. I think that just like human teachers, it'll be impossible to completely solve the misinformation problem, but I do think it'll get asymptotically close to being solved.
cmcconomy 2y ago
finding misinformation is a critical skill, but you need a basis to suss out bullshit. diving into the LLM plausibility deepend is not the best way for most people to distinguish the two.
- tombert 2y ago
  I mentioned in a sibling thread that I am absolutely not suggesting we throw away textbooks or anything like that. I think we should still have and verified work that can referenced as a source of truth, and I think those should be the primary source of learning. What I think is valuable is trying to figure out stuff where ChatGPT contradicts the "established" stuff, and having students figure it out.
xhkkffbf 2y ago
A friend of mine who taught high school said he would tell his class each year that there would be one day when all he would spew would be made up baloney. But he wouldn't tell them which day that would be. It was up to them to discover it. A clever guy he was.
- tombert 2y ago
  Yeah, I think priming people to look for bullshit is a good way to get them to pay attention. While I do obviously hope that ChatGPT is able to curve against the misinformation problem, I actually do think there's been a lot of value for me personally in trying to figure out where it's getting things subtly wrong. Since I'm taking everything it says with huge grain of salt, the I am kind of forced to dissect every sentence a bit more thoroughly than I might with a textbook where I know everything is gonna be correct.