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Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

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Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#181

Post by vineyardmike »

tenpies wrote: post #170
worrycue wrote: post #67

Am I the only one somewhat alarmed that we are choosing to rely on AIs that are vulnerable to hallucinations so much? Personally I rather have a more limited but reliable tool than a more powerful but unreliable one.

Are the tolerances in education really that tight? How many terrible teachers are allowed to continue to teach after decades of disastrous results? How many ideologues with no interest in teaching, but every interest in indoctrinating young minds, are tolerated because the alternative is "no teacher" and the class wouldn't run? How many teachers who would fail state exams, teach, despite relying on answer sheets to b…

> How many terrible teachers are allowed to continue to teach after decades of disastrous results?

Counterpoint: Why "hire" a known-bad teacher? Is a teacher that is known to give fake information better or worse than none at all?

I don't know the answer to this, but I hope that Khan Academy thought about this and decided that the good of GPT is better than it's bad. Or, they can't know so thats why they're doing a limited study before rolling this out.

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#182

Post by ian0 »

Its not there yet. Im testing out a teaching assistant and it doesn't catch wrong answers (eg question was whats 2 + 4, answer given was 4). I think its good for explaining concepts but not yet structuring the lesson or basic reasoning (this is 1st grade)

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#183

Post by celestialcheese »

worrycue wrote: post #67

Am I the only one somewhat alarmed that we are choosing to rely on AIs that are vulnerable to hallucinations so much? Personally I rather have a more limited but reliable tool than a more powerful but unreliable one.

Without providing context or examples, GPT-4 is already better at answering questions than the average teacher, with the unlimited patience that only a computer can provide.

With context, which Khan academy has in abundance due to their lesson plans and transcripts, accuracy will be higher than even the best teachers and tutors.

Once you give context and known-true facts to best-in-class LLMs like GPT-4, the output is shockingly good.

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#184

Post by celestialcheese »

vineyardmike wrote: post #181
tenpies wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are the tolerances in education really that tight? How many terrible teachers are allowed to continue to teach after decades of disastrous results? How many ideologues with no interest in teaching, but every interest in indoctrinating young minds, are tolerated because the alternative is "no teacher" and the class wouldn't run? How many teachers who would fail state exams, teach, despite relying on answer sheets to b…

> How many terrible teachers are allowed to continue to teach after decades of disastrous results? Counterpoint: Why "hire" a known-bad teacher? Is a teacher that is known to give fake information better or worse than none at all? I don't know the answer to this, but I hope that Khan Academy thought about this and decided that the good of GPT is better than it's bad. Or, they can't know so thats why they're doing a l…

Right now, we hire and retain bad teachers because many public schools act more as childcare than learning centers.

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#185

Post by haskellandchill »

navigate8310 wrote: post #40
jhp123 wrote: post #32

I've tutored people at times. A good tutor needs to understand the subject very well, so they can not only understand the right answer but also figure out why the student is coming to the wrong answer. I personally think that assigning GPT as a "tutor" is devaluing the real skill involved in tutoring and I doubt it will work out.

I would like to divert your attention to this recent post: https://openai.com/research/gpt-4 specifically on the topic of "Steerability: Socratic tutor" (Sample 1 of 3)

I was trying to get it to teach me Ordinary Differential Equations and it just kept getting everything wrong. It has no concept of checking its work etc, that example makes it appear like it can but I guess it's just getting lucky for linear equations.

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#186

Post by [deleted] »

cypress66 wrote: post #81
worrycue wrote: post #67

Am I the only one somewhat alarmed that we are choosing to rely on AIs that are vulnerable to hallucinations so much? Personally I rather have a more limited but reliable tool than a more powerful but unreliable one.

Chatgpt is already more accurate than a lot of my high school teachers.

[deleted]

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#187

Post by msm_ »

Sol- wrote: post #96
CuriouslyC wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Learning is absolutely going to be required, we are just going to need to spend more time learning patterns and motifs rather than lots of facts. Learning facts and trivia was already devalued by everyone having a hyper-encyclopedia in their pockets, this will just extend that. Knowledge of patterns and motifs in domains of information will let you work together with the machines in a way that an untrained person wil…

I admire your optimism if you think that a human in the loop will add any value. Other than for humoring/entertaining the human, of course, which is what I meant with learning-as-a-hobby. Also, I'm not educator or very knowledgeable about the theory of learning, but I can imagine that "learning facts and trivia" is to some extent a necessity for exercising our brains when we are young. Of course, learning patterns an…

My job is fighting IT crime. Right now this means reverse-engineering malware, tracking criminal groups in various graph databases, and writing Python scripts. Maybe in 20 years I will reverse-engineer AI models (using AI tools), discuss criminal groups with ChatGPT, and prompt-engineer utilities. But I don't see my (broadly understood) job becoming obsolete as long as people are capable of crime and software exists.

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#189

Post by netfortius »

shawnjan8 wrote: post #43
jrussino wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know if/how someone can get involved with this at the research phase? I have a daughter who will be entering 1st grade next year and I'd be interested in having her try this out if there was a way of signing up.

The sign-up page to join our waitlist is here: https://www.khanacademy.org/khan-labs But we aren't planning to allow folks to enroll / allow Khanmigo for folks with children under 13 at this time as part of our research phase.

I feel young again!! Logged into my account and an attempt to join the waitlist returns this:

"If you want to test Khanmigo, your parent or guardian needs to sign up. At this time, only people ages 18 and older are eligible to sign up. Please ask your parent or guardian sign up and add you to their account."

Re: Khan Academy integrates GPT-4 as every student’s customized tutor

#190

Post by falcor84 »

> "It's important that you learn how to do this yourself!"

I find this response by the AI tutor to be unbearably ironic - if there's an AI that could do it better than me, and well enough to teach me, then it seems quite unimportant that I learn to do it myself. While of course I see a benefit to some people learning mathematics from scratch, for advanced research and continuity purposes, at this point I think that saying that it's important for "everyone" to learn math (at least beyond the very basics) is almost equivalent to saying that it's important that everyone learn how to grow grain, weave fabric and mix cement.

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