If a dumb robot can write your college essay for you, maybe we shouldn't be wasting time writing essays.
It's like having wood sawing as a woodworking exam, when power saws have just been invented.
Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
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Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#12Even the most well sourced papers include plenty of unattributed common knowledge. Where do we draw the line between that and plagiarism? ChatGPT is interesting because it pushes that line pretty far in the direction of reducing impediments to information sharing, but it doesn’t appear to be a difference in kind.
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#13If a dumb robot can write your college essay for you, maybe we shouldn't be wasting time writing essays.
This is easy to say once you already understand how to write essays.
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#14If a dumb robot can write your college essay for you, maybe we shouldn't be wasting time writing essays.
Meh... if a dumb robot can do for you, maybe we shouldn't have . I for one, think training students on how to write is very important. It trains them how to think critically, how to present solid arguments, how to persuade, etc. I certainly don't want my society to have fewer educated people.
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#15this is a somewhat clickbaitified headline
> That students instinctively employ high technology to avoid learning is "a sign that the educational system is failing." If it "has no appeal to students, doesn’t interest them, doesn’t challenge them, doesn’t make them want to learn, they’ll find ways out," just as he himself did when he borrowed a friend’s notes to pass a dull college chemistry class without attending it back in 1945.
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#16The next generation of GPT should be one that can cite all its sources. Then it is basically google search on steroids
It is exactly what www.perplexity.ai does (and yes, it has replaced google for some of my usecases).
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
generalizations dont apply to individuals, but its correct people , in general, like to jump on any opportunity not to learn but just to use something. that being said id expect most ppl lurking around NH not to feel that generalization applies to them... but they do use intellisense, ides, stack overflow, good etc. rather than taking the long road. up to a certain point that is ok, aslong as u are aware which corner…
It's not just ok it's great. an enormous amount of progress in civilization is due to down skilling. Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time.
> Technology allows someone with 4 hrs of training to accomplish what it took a master with 20 years in close to the same time.
Is this rhetorical hyperbole or do you have a real example of an endeavor where a four hour novice is now the equal of a 20 year master thanks to technology?
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#18If a dumb robot can write your college essay for you, maybe we shouldn't be wasting time writing essays.
You’re right. We should cancel all math classes immediately. We’re way past due since we should have done it with calculators.
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#19Well I'm teaching myself a lot from ChatGPT so I take issue with your view, Gnoam.
generalizations dont apply to individuals, but its correct people , in general, like to jump on any opportunity not to learn but just to use something. that being said id expect most ppl lurking around NH not to feel that generalization applies to them... but they do use intellisense, ides, stack overflow, good etc. rather than taking the long road. up to a certain point that is ok, aslong as u are aware which corner…
Stack Overflow maybe (but I expect most experienced developers to use it like they would use good documentation if it was available: to see how something is intended to be used, or to troubleshoot errors), but IDEs and intellisense don't really help you with "avoiding learning". They take out a lot of the typing and make things easier that are easy to think but require focus and accuracy to execute, e.g. renaming a class and updating all the places where it's used.
You're not really learning anything by doing that manually (besides trying to avoid all refactoring that include renaming things in the future), it's more like using a fixed-blade paper cutter to accurately cut stacks of paper vs using scissors on each sheet individually.
Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning
#20ChatGPT's ability to mass produce content just demonstrates the banality of most content. Ditto DALL-E et al.
It reminds me of Dadaism. With the algorithms are the critics, vs the artists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dada
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I also agree with other critical hot takes, like Ted Chiang's analogy "ChatGPT is jpeg style compression for text". A less accusatory framing than Chomsky's plagiarism thesis, more or less.
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I'm still chewing on the learning angle. Did adoption of calculators lead to less learning of arithmetic. Certainly. Was that a bad thing? I honestly don't know.