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Comment by m0llusk | Hacker News Reader

Which raises the issue of what education is for. Is it to know things and solve specific problems in a controlled environment, or is it to work with available tools and resources across a range dynamically changing contexts? Does being at a locked down computer in a dedicated space match likely work settings?

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The expectation is that you at least have some basic knowledge coming out of education. If your entire expertise involves typing your question into ChatGPT and copy/pasting the output, do you need anyone to teach you that? When you encounter a brand new problem that ChatGPT has no concept of, you will need to figure it out using your own internalized knowledge and intuition.

People said the same shit about calculators in math class. Yes, you may have a calculator that can do calculus available 99% of your working life, but if you never learn even the basics of anything then you are fundamentally just a monkey with a typewriter.

You can be sensitive to both, and good institutions have a duty to check instructors who go strongly in a single direction. I think the point is only to exclude the crutch in contexts where it affects learning. Being prepared for work is only one element of education. Its weight varies by course, institution, and many other factors.

Further, there are likely situations where the participants avail of AI to different extents based on how they feel about the situation (cf. different degrees of doping in athletics), and students will sometimes be limited by their means in use of AI tools.

At a minimum, an education should leave you with an ability regardless of the tools at your disposal. There may come a time when whatever tool you have grown accustomed to will not be available. (If a war breaks out, for example, don’t count on any of your electronic devices to work.) By all means learn to use tools effectively, but that’s not enough.

This assumes that education's sole goal is to prepare students for work.

What would be the impact on democratic systems if voters always turn to an LLM for answers because schools didn't require them to think on their own?

This is simply raising one specific case of something education is expected to train for. There is already ample evidence that critical thinking skills are essential for political function and social stability.

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