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Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

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Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#31

Post by reflexco »

OJFord wrote: post #29
anon___ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Socrates was worried that writing, the then new invention, will cause forgetfulness. > The people who invent something new, create a new tool or technology, are not necessarily the people who are going to understand what the social impact of those inventions will be. >> And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If m…

Do we know it didn't?

It almost certainly did, but for what we lost in working memory, we gained a broadness of outlooks that would have been unfathomable at the time. We are connecting ideas from further afar in a sense.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#32

Post by Kaotique »

itake wrote: post #7
jschveibinz wrote: post #3

Now that’s a good teacher.

I’m curious how well this will actually help the students retain the truth. I could see the students doubting their memory because they don’t remember if they read the information from the ChatGPT essay (which might even be correct) or their text book.

Text books also don't have a 100% correctness.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#34

Post by Sai_ »

I have an idea to improve recruiting of senior technical ICs and managers by having them "guide" an AI towards completing a project.

Should reveal how well an IC understands and critiques the original submission by the AI, gives guidance towards identifying and rectifying wrong assumptions, and in general, helps a bright but flawed team-mate towards success.

My sense is that this Professor's idea is somewhat analogous to that - they are using GPT's flaws and shortcomings to surface a student's own knowledge levels.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#35

Post by Arkhaine_kupo »

yyyk wrote: post #13

One of my worries regarding AI is that we will decide to deskill ourselves instead of using the extra productivity to improve ourselves. In this case, students may end up with a smaller ability to write their own thoughts but in return get fill-in-the-blanks exercises.

Isn't that one of the arguments regarding our own evolution? I remember the whole argument around how since the invention of agriculture humans are less dextereous and have to be less alert cause we are mostly safe.

Without that loss of hand eye coordination that followed the lack of daily hunting there is also no roman empire, no silk road, no pyramids, no three sisters in indegenous agriculture, no man on the moon, no internet and no chatgpt.

Whether we would be sacrificing a skill, or gaining enough productivity for the next leap forward I guess we will have to see.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#36

Post by rikroots »

shaunsingh0207 wrote: post #16
jimkleiber wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, makes me think we might shift from being writers and editors to mostly being editors. I remember years back a friend of mine (I think an English major in undergrad) said he was more of an editor than a writer because he often struggled to come up with new or original ideas. So I wonder what it means if/when we let the AIs come up with the ideas and we just correct them. I have no idea what the implications might…

The opposite is also possible (and what I'm hoping for): Humans come up with the ideas, write out some boiler plate code etc. and let AI fill in the blanks.

As a writer, I'm much happier in the revision/editing stage than in the first draft stage. I have a half-finished novel that's been half-finished for the best part of 8 years now. I'm now thinking that maybe if I feed the draft into with suggestions for how I want the next section/chapter to develop, it could generate some draft copy for me. Possibly several different versions. After which I'm in my Happy Editing Place, shaping existing copy to something I like. Repeat and rinse!

The end result would be 100% my work as the ML algorithm/brains/whatever would be generating new copy based on my existing copy and my vision and direction for the novel. And I get the final say on the results. Win-Win!

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#38

Post by weird-eye-issue »

angarg12 wrote: post #18

I'm an active interviewer for a FAANG company. I've run some of my interview questions through ChatGPT with mixed results. I'd say that on it's current form it could easily help a Junior candidate to pass the interview, not so much for a mid or senior (yet). In an internal slack channel I proposed to generate (incorrect) solutions for coding problems with ChatGPT and have candidate do code reviews as an alternative i…

Curating it would give a level playing field to candidates and allow you to decide what you are actually testing for, but maybe I'm also missing the point

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#39

Post by barking_biscuit »

Sai_ wrote: post #34

I have an idea to improve recruiting of senior technical ICs and managers by having them "guide" an AI towards completing a project. Should reveal how well an IC understands and critiques the original submission by the AI, gives guidance towards identifying and rectifying wrong assumptions, and in general, helps a bright but flawed team-mate towards success. My sense is that this Professor's idea is somewhat analogou…

I was actually thinking about this today too, but more from the angle of "could I get chatGPT to build me a piece of software where I don't do any of the coding but just give it instructions, pointers and corrections."

I definitely want to give this a try and see what level of complexity of software can I get it to build.

Re: Professor writes history essays with ChatGPT and has students correct them

#40

Post by shjake »

Kaotique wrote: post #32
itake wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m curious how well this will actually help the students retain the truth. I could see the students doubting their memory because they don’t remember if they read the information from the ChatGPT essay (which might even be correct) or their text book.

Text books also don't have a 100% correctness.

Unintentional mistakes in text books are usually very different though.

ChatGPT tends to just hallucinate facts which would make zero to the people (95%+) who are writing text books.

Alternatively it can just parrot random (pop history myths and stuff) it found on the internet. But it does so in a confident and pseudo-academic fashion making it even hard to discern facts from fiction.

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