And yes, the first thing she did was see if it could literally answer it for her. It did. However, once that was done with she proceeded to massively expand the scope of the original homework... I've rarely seen anyone her age as enthused with learning, they're usually already tired of school.
Yes, I was standing by to fact-check it, but it didn't actually make any mistakes. Which is a little unfortunate, I guess... I'd been planning to stress the importance of cross-checking. Oh well. It generally seems to get everything right at the level of questioning children are usually capable of.
(Half an hour later she was asking it why water expands when it freezes. Fifteen minutes after that we were reading a wikipedia article on molecular physics... I dare say this was a productive evening.)
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I think ChatGPT is an incredible resource for learning, and trying to keep it out of schools is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It does better at teaching than the teachers often manage.
[1] Sourced the salary for teachers near me from Google's linked data. Sourced the Lowe's part time cashier range from an actual job listing in my area.
Edit: fixed footnote, sentence fragment.
Thankfully, in such a world, AI is available to the "teacher" side as well and can serve as a way to both check that the student is doing their job and also to answer their questions, like a personalized teacher of sorts.
I'd have a set of N questions that shouldn't take long to answer but demonstrate that the material has been read. Yes, ChatGPT can answer them.
The second part would be in class, after the homework had been handed in pull a name and number out of a hat and have that student answer that question again and answer a followup question on that material.
The oral part of it makes it so that having another do the homework for the student and not do the reading means that the student would show a lack of understanding of the question or its followup.
(note: my sophomore English teacher did this... and I messed up answering questions about the Miller's tale which I hadn't read)
I was playing a bit with ChatGPT and I wondered how much actual knowledge could be stored in that model. So I asked ChatGPT whether it knew the song by Franz Schubert called "Am Feierabend" and if so, if it could tell me the subject/meaning of the song. "Certainly I know this song", responded ChatGPT and then gave me -- with total confidence -- a completely wrong answer about the meaning of the song. In fact I was a bit baffled by the authority with which is spouted this nonsense answer. A truly intelligent system would be aware about the limits its knowledge, right?
So I think that with a minimum of creativity teachers can come up with questions that can easily stump ChatGPT.
ChatGPT created a pretty good essay for my daughter's home assignment. She had to write a fictive autobiography from the perspective of a 16th century noblewoman. Is that too generic? (Side note: ChatGPT did it in Hungarian.)
> A truly intelligent system would be aware about the limits its knowledge, right?
That's a question of definitions. If you ask me, ChatGPT is a truly intelligent system that is ridiculously unaware of its own limitations. It doesn't look like a contradiction per se, I've met very smart, highly functioning megalomaniacs.
No but as you stated it's fictive... I can also tell you a lot of fictive science facts, or fictive president names, or anything fictive for that matter
The goal is to use your _own_ imagination, of course chatgpt can align sentences in a semi cohesive manner, it's its whole purpose
It's not about awareness or limits of knowledge. From the point of view of a language model, it doesn't matter whether it was Todd or Walter White who killed Lydia, or whether it was Kinbote or Shade who invented a phrase. It only tries to generate a response to your input, such that it is a plausible continuation.
I don’t think it’s bad, per se, but ChatGPT has effectively made it pointless to do certain kinds of assignments now.
A lot of professors have been teaching the same way for many years. It’s a reckoning.
Even assuming all the students do it in good faith, there are factors other than knowing the material that can affect their performance on coursework. For example one person may have access to a well equipped, ergonomic, quiet space and plenty of undisturbed time in which to complete the assignment, while another may not.
The major benefit of exams is that everybody is taking them in, as far as possible, consistent and controlled conditions. It's not ideal, but I think it's better than the alternatives.
Imagine using it interactively as a study partner or tutor rather than a homework cheat?