4 ms·

Controversial opinion - perhaps getting free tutoring from LLMs is a good thing? Some thoughts: 0. Rich kids (not me) got expensive tutoring. Now that is avai

Controversial opinion - perhaps getting free tutoring from LLMs is a good thing? Some thoughts: 0. Rich kids (not me) got expensive tutoring. Now that is available to everyone. How is this not great? Was it cheating when rich people paid for it also? 1. At my undergrad (Cornell) about 20% of TAs couldnt speak english (or did not want to.) Some of the group office hours would tangent off into other languages. This was terrible to those who only understood the standard language of the school (English.) ChatGPT is available to everyone. 3. You dont even need to pay exorbitant tuition to get the same level of support as everyone in the world, this is a great democratizer. Isnt this what people have always wanted?

getnormality 1y ago
I think these points resonate most with a worldview where college is just a status competition, where it doesn't matter if you actually learn anything. By analogy, we could replace the human players of a sport with identical robots and it would level the playing field, but it would also completely defeat the purpose of sport. It is an activity done by humans for the benefit and enjoyment of humans. Rich students have long cheated themselves out of an education by using expensive tutors to do their homework. Now that's available to everyone, yes, and that somewhat levels the playing field, yes, but it's not a good thing if you care about education. It's more like, narcotics used to be only for rich people, but now we have powerful cheap ones that everyone can get easily.
- TuringNYC 1y ago
  >> Rich students have long cheated themselves out of an education by using expensive tutors to do their homework. Students in a crunch or those who are short-sighted use it to do homework. There have always been ways to cheat. Students who want to learn use it for guidance, insight, examples, detail. There have not always been ways to do this unless you were wealthy. So much of education is just mediocre. You are lucky (or rich) if you get access to great education.
  - getnormality 1y ago
    I think the difference between us here is, I don't think current LLMs are well-suited to actually help people learn. In my assessment, they lack the bedrock understanding of the material to resolve student confusion, and their understanding of student needs is very poor. It's probably not impossible to learn from them, but I think they strongly encourage shortcuts that only give the impression of learning. I do hope this changes. LLMs are of course an amazing technology, but sometimes being amazing isn't enough to actually solve human problems.
UncleMeat 1y ago
I am certain that there are some students using LLMs to learn more effectively. This does not appear to be the norm. Instead, my spouse gets a large portion of the class turning in essays that are very obviously just the prompt sent to ChatGPT and then the entire response copy-pasted. I'm sure that there are some rich kids whose parents paid somebody to do all their homework for them. But that's not something we should be seeking to do more. "Tell me about your thought process being the argument in this essay" is met with blank stares, despite them insisting up and down that there is no way that they cheated.
creer 1y ago
> perhaps getting free tutoring from LLMs is a good thing? Yes it is, and I have seen it work. A friend has a hard time reading through long material. They have showed me a log of step by step questions they asked their LLM AI. That was impressive. In essence a long private teacher interview going on and on on the general topic they needed help with. With each answer manageable for them, and the long succession fitting their research style. Well done. There was still a risk of garbage coming from the LLM, but mitigated by the long sequence of step by step advancement (and space for further progress as the tech continues to improve.) Definitely for them a better teacher and fitting their style of attention.

getnormality 1y ago

I think these points resonate most with a worldview where college is just a status competition, where it doesn't matter if you actually learn anything. By analogy, we could replace the human players of a sport with identical robots and it would level the playing field, but it would also completely defeat the purpose of sport. It is an activity done by humans for the benefit and enjoyment of humans. Rich students have long cheated themselves out of an education by using expensive tutors to do their homework. Now that's available to everyone, yes, and that somewhat levels the playing field, yes, but it's not a good thing if you care about education. It's more like, narcotics used to be only for rich people, but now we have powerful cheap ones that everyone can get easily.

TuringNYC 1y ago
>> Rich students have long cheated themselves out of an education by using expensive tutors to do their homework. Students in a crunch or those who are short-sighted use it to do homework. There have always been ways to cheat. Students who want to learn use it for guidance, insight, examples, detail. There have not always been ways to do this unless you were wealthy. So much of education is just mediocre. You are lucky (or rich) if you get access to great education.
- getnormality 1y ago
  I think the difference between us here is, I don't think current LLMs are well-suited to actually help people learn. In my assessment, they lack the bedrock understanding of the material to resolve student confusion, and their understanding of student needs is very poor. It's probably not impossible to learn from them, but I think they strongly encourage shortcuts that only give the impression of learning. I do hope this changes. LLMs are of course an amazing technology, but sometimes being amazing isn't enough to actually solve human problems.

UncleMeat 1y ago

I am certain that there are some students using LLMs to learn more effectively. This does not appear to be the norm. Instead, my spouse gets a large portion of the class turning in essays that are very obviously just the prompt sent to ChatGPT and then the entire response copy-pasted. I'm sure that there are some rich kids whose parents paid somebody to do all their homework for them. But that's not something we should be seeking to do more. "Tell me about your thought process being the argument in this essay" is met with blank stares, despite them insisting up and down that there is no way that they cheated.

creer 1y ago

> perhaps getting free tutoring from LLMs is a good thing? Yes it is, and I have seen it work. A friend has a hard time reading through long material. They have showed me a log of step by step questions they asked their LLM AI. That was impressive. In essence a long private teacher interview going on and on on the general topic they needed help with. With each answer manageable for them, and the long succession fitting their research style. Well done. There was still a risk of garbage coming from the LLM, but mitigated by the long sequence of step by step advancement (and space for further progress as the tech continues to improve.) Definitely for them a better teacher and fitting their style of attention.