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>In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, this sounds a lot like the "when you're an adult, you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" line w

>In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, this sounds a lot like the "when you're an adult, you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" line we all heard in elementary school. and of course, we all know now how wrong that was. in life, chatGPT exists. and tools like it are only going to become more widespread. we are going to have the answers in front of us. knowing the things an LLM knows is not a useful skill anymore.

preciousoo 2y ago
This is about building [math] skill, not simply calculating a result
- notatoad 2y ago
  sure, but kids education is about building useful skills for life. passing a test is not a useful skill, if the test is useless. teaching kids problem solving and how to be productive is important. maybe that means knowing how to solve certain mathematical equations, maybe that means knowing how to use tools like ChatGPT. focusing on the math just for the sake of passing tests because that's what we've got good tests for isn't super helpful to anybody.
  - john_the_writer 2y ago
    Passing tests is not useless. It shows knowledge at the level of the test. I write tests for my code and when they fail I know I have to change something. If you're finishing a math test and not passing, then you don't have the skills to solve the problems in said test. Tests are only useless when you ace them.
    - socksy 2y ago
      Beyond that, there’s research[0] showing that testing humans actually increases their retention on that subject — we don’t just gives tests to kids to evaluate whether they successfully learned something. [0] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/spaced-repetition/2006-roediger.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/spaced-repetition/2006-roed...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
wisty 2y ago
Not true. Current research is that experts are better with a ChatGTP, and beginners worse. An expert knows what to ask, and a beginner juat flails around. Tools like calculators, ChatGTP, Google, and chainsaws are often force magnifiers for experts, and a danger for beginners. If you have an idea of what you are trying to do at a deep level then they are great, but beginners don't, they usually just use them as a shortcut to avoid needing any real understanding of the space, and just get "the answer". Although in some ways youre right. There will need to be changes in the skills we value, just churning out words, or calculating large sums and interating obscure trig functions will lose value.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  > Current research is that experts are better with a ChatGTP, and beginners worse. Current research being your opinion? Because literally every expert I personally know to be competent says that they're essentially garbage producers and don't use them beyond occasionally checking if they've improved. And no, they haven't. The only way to get decent code from them is to be so specific that you'd be able to produce the same code in a fraction of the time you need to add all the context necessary for the LLM to figure it out. It's like coding with a junior. Thay can produce great code too. It's just gonna take a lot of handholding if complexity skyrocks. The only place llms got a foot hold is with generating stock art that's mostly soulless marketing material. This "industry" is going to crash so hard in the next 3 years
  - john_the_writer 2y ago
    Agreed.. All the co-pilot devs where I work are the juniors. Most of us just type the code we want.
    - wisty 2y ago
      Experts are often slower at starting to learn new tricks, because they don't need them, but are better at using them once they do. But for junior devs, it's often the blind leading the blind. That said, I don't actually use ChatGTP much. I'm just pretty sure I should in some areas.
ashton314 2y ago
Mechanical aids—be they abacuses, slide rules, pocket calculators, supercomputers, or large language models—will never replace the need to reason.
Loranubi 2y ago
Except you still have to validate ChatGPTs answer... Even answer keys in text books are sometimes wrong, teachers are sometimes wrong. ChatGPT is often wrong. You still need to learn the skills.
whazor 2y ago
The same holds for calculators. My university banned graphical calculators from math courses. It is too easy to plug in a formula and see the graph. But for mathematical intuition, they want you know how formulas look like from your memory.
ddfs123 2y ago
>we all know now how wrong that was. How wrong was it ? I find myself having to do head math every time I playing video games.
- rossant 2y ago
  Which video games?
  - ddfs123 2y ago
    League of Legends. Just knowing that your combo can finish an opponent can switches your situation from very passive to very aggressive. Also some jungle / gank timing require clock math. I think most serious / pro players memorize the numbers already. But casual players like me still have do head math.
- godelski 2y ago
  I do mental math pretty much every day. Even just going through the grocery store. I also use things I learned from calculus and physics. Like when driving. No, not solving integrals all the time but it does teach you to focus on rates of change
autumnstwilight 2y ago
In order to develop the kinds of mental skills you need to tackle complex problems, you need to practice them on simpler problems first (particularly if you happen to be a child). If you decide at a young age it's worthless to attempt any problems that can be solved by a calculator or ChatGPT, you will probably never learn how to solve any problems that you can't use those tools for either. Also, knowing what kind of things exist and what questions to ask is half the battle. If you haven't stored anything in your head on the grounds that you can outsource knowing things and thinking about them to ChatGPT, you're not going to be able to prompt it efficiently either. It's much harder to sanity check numbers and formulas given to you by others (or ChatGPT) if you can't do any quick mental math. Having original ideas that don't yet exist in LLM datasets also requires storing a lot of concepts and making new connections between them. I suppose all this is moot if you expect AGI to be available to everyone in the near future, but if it turns out to be decades or more away unfortunately human mental effort will still be required in the meantime.
adrianN 2y ago
Unless you can do the task yourself, you have a very hard time figuring out whether the LLM hallucinates or not. Relying on ChatGPT for your education is the path towards believing fake news.
fasa99 2y ago
(1) chatGTP is not a calculator. A calculator resolutely computes the exact numerical answer (modulo finite bits and rational numbers etc). ChatGTP is more stochastic. sometimes it's right, maybe a lot of the time, but no promises! (2) said student is taking an exam to find answers without the benefit of ChatGTP. Thusly doing exercises in a ChatGTP will not benefit the exam in the same way someone who only uses the calculator will suck at mental math. similar to what some of us may have seen "no calculators allowed on math exam" but the big hangup is that "stochastically correct/incorrect" part. Can't count on it, still need skillz. Maybe when straberry/q* drops things will change in this regard

preciousoo 2y ago

This is about building [math] skill, not simply calculating a result

notatoad 2y ago
sure, but kids education is about building useful skills for life. passing a test is not a useful skill, if the test is useless. teaching kids problem solving and how to be productive is important. maybe that means knowing how to solve certain mathematical equations, maybe that means knowing how to use tools like ChatGPT. focusing on the math just for the sake of passing tests because that's what we've got good tests for isn't super helpful to anybody.
- john_the_writer 2y ago
  Passing tests is not useless. It shows knowledge at the level of the test. I write tests for my code and when they fail I know I have to change something. If you're finishing a math test and not passing, then you don't have the skills to solve the problems in said test. Tests are only useless when you ace them.
  - socksy 2y ago
    Beyond that, there’s research[0] showing that testing humans actually increases their retention on that subject — we don’t just gives tests to kids to evaluate whether they successfully learned something. [0] https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/spaced-repetition/2006-roediger.pdf https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/spaced-repetition/2006-roed...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

wisty 2y ago

Not true. Current research is that experts are better with a ChatGTP, and beginners worse. An expert knows what to ask, and a beginner juat flails around. Tools like calculators, ChatGTP, Google, and chainsaws are often force magnifiers for experts, and a danger for beginners. If you have an idea of what you are trying to do at a deep level then they are great, but beginners don't, they usually just use them as a shortcut to avoid needing any real understanding of the space, and just get "the answer". Although in some ways youre right. There will need to be changes in the skills we value, just churning out words, or calculating large sums and interating obscure trig functions will lose value.

ffsm8 2y ago
> Current research is that experts are better with a ChatGTP, and beginners worse. Current research being your opinion? Because literally every expert I personally know to be competent says that they're essentially garbage producers and don't use them beyond occasionally checking if they've improved. And no, they haven't. The only way to get decent code from them is to be so specific that you'd be able to produce the same code in a fraction of the time you need to add all the context necessary for the LLM to figure it out. It's like coding with a junior. Thay can produce great code too. It's just gonna take a lot of handholding if complexity skyrocks. The only place llms got a foot hold is with generating stock art that's mostly soulless marketing material. This "industry" is going to crash so hard in the next 3 years
- john_the_writer 2y ago
  Agreed.. All the co-pilot devs where I work are the juniors. Most of us just type the code we want.
  - wisty 2y ago
    Experts are often slower at starting to learn new tricks, because they don't need them, but are better at using them once they do. But for junior devs, it's often the blind leading the blind. That said, I don't actually use ChatGTP much. I'm just pretty sure I should in some areas.

ashton314 2y ago

Mechanical aids—be they abacuses, slide rules, pocket calculators, supercomputers, or large language models—will never replace the need to reason.

Loranubi 2y ago

Except you still have to validate ChatGPTs answer... Even answer keys in text books are sometimes wrong, teachers are sometimes wrong. ChatGPT is often wrong. You still need to learn the skills.

whazor 2y ago

The same holds for calculators. My university banned graphical calculators from math courses. It is too easy to plug in a formula and see the graph. But for mathematical intuition, they want you know how formulas look like from your memory.

ddfs123 2y ago

>we all know now how wrong that was. How wrong was it ? I find myself having to do head math every time I playing video games.

rossant 2y ago
Which video games?
- ddfs123 2y ago
  League of Legends. Just knowing that your combo can finish an opponent can switches your situation from very passive to very aggressive. Also some jungle / gank timing require clock math. I think most serious / pro players memorize the numbers already. But casual players like me still have do head math.
godelski 2y ago
I do mental math pretty much every day. Even just going through the grocery store. I also use things I learned from calculus and physics. Like when driving. No, not solving integrals all the time but it does teach you to focus on rates of change

autumnstwilight 2y ago

In order to develop the kinds of mental skills you need to tackle complex problems, you need to practice them on simpler problems first (particularly if you happen to be a child). If you decide at a young age it's worthless to attempt any problems that can be solved by a calculator or ChatGPT, you will probably never learn how to solve any problems that you can't use those tools for either. Also, knowing what kind of things exist and what questions to ask is half the battle. If you haven't stored anything in your head on the grounds that you can outsource knowing things and thinking about them to ChatGPT, you're not going to be able to prompt it efficiently either. It's much harder to sanity check numbers and formulas given to you by others (or ChatGPT) if you can't do any quick mental math. Having original ideas that don't yet exist in LLM datasets also requires storing a lot of concepts and making new connections between them. I suppose all this is moot if you expect AGI to be available to everyone in the near future, but if it turns out to be decades or more away unfortunately human mental effort will still be required in the meantime.

adrianN 2y ago

Unless you can do the task yourself, you have a very hard time figuring out whether the LLM hallucinates or not. Relying on ChatGPT for your education is the path towards believing fake news.

fasa99 2y ago

(1) chatGTP is not a calculator. A calculator resolutely computes the exact numerical answer (modulo finite bits and rational numbers etc). ChatGTP is more stochastic. sometimes it's right, maybe a lot of the time, but no promises! (2) said student is taking an exam to find answers without the benefit of ChatGTP. Thusly doing exercises in a ChatGTP will not benefit the exam in the same way someone who only uses the calculator will suck at mental math. similar to what some of us may have seen "no calculators allowed on math exam" but the big hangup is that "stochastically correct/incorrect" part. Can't count on it, still need skillz. Maybe when straberry/q* drops things will change in this regard