College professors are going back to paper exams and handwritten essays to fight students using ChatGPT::The growing number of students using the AI program ChatGPT as a shortcut in their coursework has led some college professors to reconsider their lesson plans for the upcoming fall semester.

  • JTode@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    In what ways do you envision working with LLMs as an educator of children?

    I have used ChatGPT to explain to myself a number of fairly advanced technical and programming concepts; I work in Animation through my own self-study and some good luck, so I’m constantly trying to up my skills in the math that relates to it. When I come up against a math or C++ term or concept that I do not currently understand, I can generally get a pretty good conceptual understanding of it by working with ChatGPT.

    So at one point I wanted to understand what Linear Algebra specifically meant, and it didn’t stick but I do remember asking it to expand on things it said that weren’t clear, and it was able to competently do so. By asking many questions I was able - I think - to get clearer on a number of things which I doubt I ever would have learned, unless by luck I found someone who knows the math to teach me.

    It also flubbed a lot of basic arithmetic, and I had to mentally look for and correct that.

    This is useful to an autodidact like myself who has learned how to learn at a University level, to be sure.

    I cannot, however, think of a single beneficial way to use this to educate small children with no such years of mental discipline and ability to understand that their teacher is neither a genius nor a moron, but rather, a machine that pumps out florid expressions of data that resemble other expressions of similar data.

    Please, tell me one.

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Devise a physical problem that can be tested, have everyone in class pull a ChatGPT answer to it, have them read the answers out loud and vote on which one is right, then apply it to the physical version and see it fail. Show them how tweaking the answer just a bit solves the problem.

      years of mental discipline and ability to understand that their teacher is neither a genius nor a moron

      Ta-da! Just taught them that without all your years.

      I cannot, however, think of a single beneficial way to use this to educate small children

      Then you’re not a teacher. Please don’t ever teach small children.

      • JTode@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Well, I suppose the education system gets the teachers it pays for…

        • jarfil@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Maybe. I like coming up with ways to explain things, but I don’t like children, so unless they pay me to host a YouTube channel… tough luck.

          • JTode@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            And you think that teaching kids to use ChatGPT to figure out how to fix a broken fence gate, rather than, I dunno, teaching them Woodshop, is a good use of teachers’ time?

            • jarfil@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Which one do you think they’re more likely to have 24/7 in their pocket: an AI assistant on a smartphone, or a chisel?

              Even today, the number of people with a multi-tool or a screwdriver, are much fewer than those with a smartphone. Show them a flint and striker, and they look at you like some doomsday prepper nutjob.