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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

#91

Post by rvz »

thundergolfer wrote: post #47

This thread is already full of people throwing in their cheap takes by reading the headline or not even that. Listen to his answers. He's not making controversial claims, excepting the one that LLMs teach us nothing about language. He says: - ChatGPT makes it easier to cheat. This is obviously true. - ChatGPT is a method of avoiding learning. In the context of the interview he's referring to its use not as an informa…

> It's not obvious what value ChatGPT has. Kind of controversial, but I think it's not actually obvious that ChatGPT is currently most used for funny Tweets, SEO optimization, and marketing tools. So I think he's not really saying much to get angry about here.

Or in other words, it is great at being a confident sophist and its use-case(s) are limited to almost nothing of serious use requiring explainability or trustworthiness; especially for legal, medical and financial applications or even search engines. If you cannot trust the output of an AI and it keeps hallucinating its answers, then what is the point?

If OpenAI was being 'responsible' or following 'responsible AI' guidelines, maybe they should be writing the detectors first before releasing ChatGPT, GPT-3 into the wild?

This AI hype cycle is no different to what happened with GPT-3 and it fizzled out just like how Clubhouse did. The only way is open source AI models.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#92

Post by lordnacho »

thundergolfer wrote: post #88
lordnacho wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I didn't say you should never concern yourself with the details. But at some point in your life you will have gone through the details so often you won't be getting them wrong, but you'll still be spending a lot of time on them. With a tool like cgpt you can save yourself a lot of time. Of course it's up to you where you take the trade. If your thing is a medical device that will kill someone if it isn't checked…

Right, it seems like you're advocating ChatGPT as an information retreival tool, which seems perfectly acceptable. Looking up exact dates and names is tedious. By "filling in the details" I thought you were referring more generally to the essay writing process, where the structure of an essay is its skeleton and the "details" are the just as essential pieces of argumentation and evidence. If you write a sociology, hi…

Is that bait? Adam Smith IIRC. Hume did Treatise on Human Nature.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#93

Post by wpietri »

lordnacho wrote: post #84
wpietri wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> after your primary school years, you get a calculator to work out the arithmetic Do we? I do a lot of mental arithmetic as a software developer. When I was an exchange student my host-dad was an engineer and he was incredibly good at it. As he was thinking through a problem he'd do all sorts of ballpark math to get a feel for things. Eventually, yes, the numbers would all get crunched properly. But even then he'd a…

> A person who uses a calculator for everything starting from a young age just doesn't develop that skill. But is that a reasonable fear? It's actually quite hard to use a tool without understanding it, so you won't get a lot of people reliant on calculators who don't understand calculation. I've certainly never met someone for whom it was a problem. About using tools you don't understand, this is easy to try. Get so…

> It's actually quite hard to use a tool without understanding it

The whole point of many tools is to not understand what's going on. I had a friend in college who could happily drive a car, but had been discouraged from understanding how it worked, because opening the hood of a car was not ladylike. So whenever anything happened, she would be filled with anxiety and take it to a mechanic, even for perfectly mundane things like putting in more coolant.

Similarly, people who have a math aversion can lean on calculators to stay innumerate. I see this happen frequently when I pay for something in cash using change. E.g., the bill will be $9.77. I'll see that and think, "Oh, I want the quarter", so I'll put down a $10 and 2 pennies. Some people are fine with it, but a notable fraction of cashiers (whose whole job is handling money!) will look at me like I have two heads. But they'll dutifully punch it in and act like I'm a wizard when it comes out to be a single coin.

> Get some film editing software or 3D rendering software

The correct analogy here is to the word processor, not ChatGPT. If somebody who doesn't know how to write opens up Word and expects an essay to come out, they'd be similarly stymied. Or we could look at essay-writing services. A quick search turns up places that are for "learners seeking assistance". But I think we all know that nobody is really using those services for inspiration or a rough draft so that they can hone their essay-writing skills with the assistance of a professional.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#94

Post by wpietri »

sitkack wrote: post #90
wpietri wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the Astronauts should be able to produce working systems that pass functional tests. Nah. This is just a new version of an old mistake, one people have been repeating for decades. People keep trying to come up with ways for people to "code" without understanding what's going on. Code generation wizards. Visual programming tools. Model driven architecture. And a bunch more. The hard part about making software isn…

My 8 year old asks you to look at from a different angle and evaluate what it can actually do right now. I would add, just because someone made a prognostication decades ago does not invalidate the same prognostication now. Have you tried it?

Those aren't decades-old "prognostications". They are things that happened.

Could it be different this time? Maybe! But if you want to say that it will, then you have to make the argument. Or maybe you can get ChatGPT to do it for you?

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#95

Post by spacemadness »

lampshades wrote: post #23
fooker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is easy to say once you already understand how to write essays.

If someone wants to learn how to write an essay they can more easily look it up on the most vast interconnected knowledge base that has ever existed. I don’t understand the continued need for knowledge/educational gatekeepers.

This reminds me of the terminally online person who told me they never need to travel as everything about the place is online already. Or libraries exist so we should stop going to school altogether. You seem ready to die on that same hill.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#96

Post by ddren »

thundergolfer wrote: post #47

This thread is already full of people throwing in their cheap takes by reading the headline or not even that. Listen to his answers. He's not making controversial claims, excepting the one that LLMs teach us nothing about language. He says: - ChatGPT makes it easier to cheat. This is obviously true. - ChatGPT is a method of avoiding learning. In the context of the interview he's referring to its use not as an informa…

ChatGPT makes it easier to cheat, but cheating in that way was always an option, as long as you had enough money to pay someone else to do it for you. So in that sense, all that ChatGPT does is expose the flaws in the system by making this form of cheating available to everybody. I have to wonder why only now this is considered a serious problem that undermines education, but it was mostly ignored when the option was only available to the rich kids.

I think this can only solved by having a clear separation between learning and obtaining the credentials that certify that you possess the knowledge that it is expected of you to do some job. Universities should be centers of learning and students should be writing their essays because they recognize the value that doing so provides to them, not just because they need a certificate issued by the university to apply to the jobs that they desire. The certificate part should come from elsewhere, probably through means that make cheating much harder, such as exams and individual interviews. This would also open the door to other avenues of learning that may be more suited for some people, ie. self-taught people may have more success learning from a book or an online resource than from sitting through several hours of lectures every day.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#97

Post by dwaltrip »

thundergolfer wrote: post #47

This thread is already full of people throwing in their cheap takes by reading the headline or not even that. Listen to his answers. He's not making controversial claims, excepting the one that LLMs teach us nothing about language. He says: - ChatGPT makes it easier to cheat. This is obviously true. - ChatGPT is a method of avoiding learning. In the context of the interview he's referring to its use not as an informa…

> It's not obvious what value ChatGPT has.

This is a blatantly incorrect take. Anyone who can’t see that ChatGPT has real value has blinders on.

It has severe limitations and many quirks, but millions of people are getting value from it.

I use it regularly while developing software. If you learn how to leverage its strengths and are aware of the pitfalls, it isn’t too hard to get value out of.

It is also a good investment to learn how to use these tools, as they will become much more capable and useful over time.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#98

Post by sitkack »

wpietri wrote: post #94
sitkack wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My 8 year old asks you to look at from a different angle and evaluate what it can actually do right now. I would add, just because someone made a prognostication decades ago does not invalidate the same prognostication now. Have you tried it?

Those aren't decades-old "prognostications". They are things that happened. Could it be different this time? Maybe! But if you want to say that it will , then you have to make the argument. Or maybe you can get ChatGPT to do it for you?

Have you tried coding with ChatGPT? It works now. You can use it now to architect a system AND produce working code.

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#99

Post by tarboreus »

flangola7 wrote: post #76
niemandhier wrote: post #41

I predict the rise of what I call "mental obesity". Once the need to perform physical work vanished, those who did not consciously decide to train had a much higher chance of becoming obese. I expect that the mental capacities of some people will become less by the same effect. What we will see is a separation between those who are taught why they write and decide to comply and those who just take the easy way out.

[flagged]

Sure, and do you see people memorizing Oddyssey-length works and reciting them anymore? Just because you live in the world of the lost does not mean there was no loss.

For (much) more on this, look at Orality and Literacy by Walter Ong

Re: Noam Chomsky on ChatGPT: High-Tech Plagiarism, Way of Avoiding Learning

#100

Post by LeanderK »

BulgarianIdiot wrote: post #55
LeanderK wrote: post #29

I don't think the view that just because we can automate the creation of a simple essay makes writing essays for students obsolete. It's not what Chomsky said but I've heard the argument a lot in the context. We are not requiring it because everyone is writing essays all the time but because it's an important, basic skill. We can automate many math exercises, but it's still important to let students do it on their ow…

So you don’t need it in life because you don’t do it, but it’s an important basic skill. Explain this belief.

because it's not about the essay but the skills you need to write an essay. Many topics in school are not strictly needed, but important, either for your intellectual maturity or because they are used in other contexts.
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