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This argument has been beaten to death before AI: Ever since calculators were able to do math, students have been wondering why they need to learn how to do all

This argument has been beaten to death before AI: Ever since calculators were able to do math, students have been wondering why they need to learn how to do all of this math manually when they could get the same answer from a calculator. The reasons become more obvious only when you get deeper into a field where the math gets too complex to get a simple answer out of a calculator. If you never learned the basic concepts, you can’t progress to the more difficult topics because you don’t have a good understanding of the foundation. That’s why changing goals to only look at the output doesn’t work for educating kids. Now that they can have ChatGPT answer every question they might see on a middle school or even high school exam, you could conceivably get all the way through high school graduation never having learned a single thing other than how to copy and paste between the assignment and ChatGPT. Then what happens in the real world when that student needs to learn something new? It’s obvious: They’re going to try to put the problem into ChatGPT and then give you the result back. They don’t have any foundational tools to do anything else. They haven’t even learned how to learn because there was always an easy way out. Why would anyone hire a person who can only act as an interface to ChatGPT? They won’t. They’ll use ChatGPT themselves. My unpopular opinion is that some times hard work, memorization, doing work manually, and yes, even testing, are necessary to build up an education and thinking foundation. I don’t believe it can all be replaced by ideas about challenging students to get results and then ignoring how they arrive at the result. I’ve worked with kids enough to know that they are more resourceful about finding lazy ways to pass a test than you could ever imagine.

Gooblebrai 4mo ago
Great comment! I'm sharing this around my circles.
CamperBob2 4mo ago
Analogies with calculators have a big problem. The calculator has no intelligence of its own. A model does. (Yes, it does. You have to be either delusional or willfully ignorant to argue otherwise at this point. Take a calculator to the IMO and see how far you get.) So there are, or at least there will be, cases where it's actually a good idea to delegate your thinking to an AI model. Students who aren't taught to acknowledge that possibility and keep it in mind are being done a disservice, just as if they were taught to treat today's limited, early-generation LLMs as a first resort.
- mikgp 4mo ago
  I don’t understand the analogy you’re making, or maybe I think it’s wrong. This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. No one thinks you shouldn’t do 8 digit multiplication with a calculator, But you should understand what it’s doing under thr hood so if you say typo something you can catch when the answer is off by an order of magnitude. But the same argument applies to AI. If you don’t understand the basics of an argument or the nature of the subject you’re investigating, you can’t tell - not even an if it’s working correctly but if it’s responding to the question you asked. If it applied the right context for your particular situation. And I think it’s the exact same thing - whether AI is really thinking is irrelevant, students need to understand the nature of how to make arguments and validate information, before they can trust their own usage of AI.
  - CamperBob2 4mo ago
    This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. You could think of this story[1] as an example of why it's not useful to compare AI models with pocket calculators. Here, some professional mathematicians successfully farmed out part of their thought process to an AI model. It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are suggesting that students do so, only that they allowed for the possibility that the model might be able to see something they didn't see themselves, or make a connection that no one had considered before. 1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an-80-year-old-erdos-problem-and-mathematicians-are-amazed/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an...
    - Avshalom 4mo ago
      >>It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are suggesting that students do so It doesn't not mean that either.
FloorEgg 4mo ago
What is your opinion on using an LLM to provide immediate feedback/grading at scale such that students have to muster their own answers but can check them quickly, compressing the feedback loop and allowing for more iterations? Students still have to muster their own answers, but the LLM is used to minimize the confusion or uncertainty about the quality of the answer and the time to wait for that clarity. My understanding is decades of research long before AI has shown the benefit of timely constructive feedback on the learning process. Why aren't all educators tripping over themselves to use LLMs to maximize access to timely constructive feedback?
- Avshalom 4mo ago
  Because LLMS don't provide access to timely constructive feedback.
  - FloorEgg 4mo ago
    One interpretation of your comment is "LLM chat bots don't" or more specifically "ChatGPT doesn't", but I feel like this is a straw man and not intellectually honest answer to my question. The real crux is not grounded in chat bots default behavior but the technology's capability: "Can LLMs provide access to timely constructive feedback in specific educational contexts?". The answer to this question is definitely yes. If you think the answer is no, then my guess is you haven't made an honest effort to try, or you just want the answer to be no and aren't interested in the truth.
    - Avshalom 4mo ago
      >>"Can LLMs provide access to timely constructive feedback in specific educational contexts?" "Can they" is not the same as "do they" and "specific educational contexts" is not relevant to "all educators" Is it possible to get constructive feedback? sure, maybe. Is it possible to get a specific teacher's feedback? Not really. Is it possible to guarantee it will be productive feedback? No, especially if the student has to/gets to interact with it. Is it likely that the reason "all educators" aren't tripping over themselves to have their students submit some number of drafts to an llm is because that's not actually a good idea? sure, probably.

Gooblebrai 4mo ago

Great comment! I'm sharing this around my circles.

CamperBob2 4mo ago

Analogies with calculators have a big problem. The calculator has no intelligence of its own. A model does. (Yes, it does. You have to be either delusional or willfully ignorant to argue otherwise at this point. Take a calculator to the IMO and see how far you get.) So there are, or at least there will be, cases where it's actually a good idea to delegate your thinking to an AI model. Students who aren't taught to acknowledge that possibility and keep it in mind are being done a disservice, just as if they were taught to treat today's limited, early-generation LLMs as a first resort.

mikgp 4mo ago
I don’t understand the analogy you’re making, or maybe I think it’s wrong. This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. No one thinks you shouldn’t do 8 digit multiplication with a calculator, But you should understand what it’s doing under thr hood so if you say typo something you can catch when the answer is off by an order of magnitude. But the same argument applies to AI. If you don’t understand the basics of an argument or the nature of the subject you’re investigating, you can’t tell - not even an if it’s working correctly but if it’s responding to the question you asked. If it applied the right context for your particular situation. And I think it’s the exact same thing - whether AI is really thinking is irrelevant, students need to understand the nature of how to make arguments and validate information, before they can trust their own usage of AI.
- CamperBob2 4mo ago
  This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. You could think of this story[1] as an example of why it's not useful to compare AI models with pocket calculators. Here, some professional mathematicians successfully farmed out part of their thought process to an AI model. It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are suggesting that students do so, only that they allowed for the possibility that the model might be able to see something they didn't see themselves, or make a connection that no one had considered before. 1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an-80-year-old-erdos-problem-and-mathematicians-are-amazed/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an...
  - Avshalom 4mo ago
    >>It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are suggesting that students do so It doesn't not mean that either.

FloorEgg 4mo ago

What is your opinion on using an LLM to provide immediate feedback/grading at scale such that students have to muster their own answers but can check them quickly, compressing the feedback loop and allowing for more iterations? Students still have to muster their own answers, but the LLM is used to minimize the confusion or uncertainty about the quality of the answer and the time to wait for that clarity. My understanding is decades of research long before AI has shown the benefit of timely constructive feedback on the learning process. Why aren't all educators tripping over themselves to use LLMs to maximize access to timely constructive feedback?

Avshalom 4mo ago
Because LLMS don't provide access to timely constructive feedback.
- FloorEgg 4mo ago
  One interpretation of your comment is "LLM chat bots don't" or more specifically "ChatGPT doesn't", but I feel like this is a straw man and not intellectually honest answer to my question. The real crux is not grounded in chat bots default behavior but the technology's capability: "Can LLMs provide access to timely constructive feedback in specific educational contexts?". The answer to this question is definitely yes. If you think the answer is no, then my guess is you haven't made an honest effort to try, or you just want the answer to be no and aren't interested in the truth.
  - Avshalom 4mo ago
    >>"Can LLMs provide access to timely constructive feedback in specific educational contexts?" "Can they" is not the same as "do they" and "specific educational contexts" is not relevant to "all educators" Is it possible to get constructive feedback? sure, maybe. Is it possible to get a specific teacher's feedback? Not really. Is it possible to guarantee it will be productive feedback? No, especially if the student has to/gets to interact with it. Is it likely that the reason "all educators" aren't tripping over themselves to have their students submit some number of drafts to an llm is because that's not actually a good idea? sure, probably.