Re:Princeton CS Prof: ChatGPT Is a Bullshit Generator (2022)
by lukev on Wednesday February 01, 2023 @06:15PM
(#34619517)
Oh, I agree. Optimistically, the existence of LLMs will be a forcing function for education to focus on what actually matters. (IMO, this is the ability to critically assess and generate arguments, something GPT isn't particularly good at (yet)).
But your example is actually rather striking. In most highschool and college classes for algebra and calculus, we're asking students to solve/prove problems that computers have been easily able to solve/prove, and have been for decades.
But the educational consensus is that being able to do algebra or differentiate/integrate by hand is valuable (up to a certain complexity.) Which is why calculators are not allowed (at certain levels) and why "show your work" is an important part of grading at every level.
Perhaps this whole discussion is a nothingburger once we figure out what the language arts equivalent to "show your work" is for text generation.
If electronic earpieces become commonly used by students to cheat on in-class exams, and that's important enough to the teacher, I guess they better figure out a way to screen for those devices.
If eventually nearly everyone has some sort of brain link that can whisper grammatical phrases directly into their brain and cannot feasibly be detected in the classroom, well, then either your entire curriculum is on the honor system, or maybe you'll need to update your thoughts about what tasks are important for your students to be able to perform without "external" help.