> She just copies and pastes stupidly with squid game going in the background.
11-year-old watching Squid Games?
Seems to indicate some lack of interested parenting.
My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
261–270 of 523 posts
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#262Counterpoint: maybe, if anyone is even cooked, it is just this one student and not an entire generation.
Go back generations and it was always something else ruining the youth: not playing outside enough, Internet, videogames, hip hop, playing outside too much, TV, rock & roll, books, etc.
In my own studies and brief time as a tutor, you get students like this who just see school as an obstacle to something else. Even then, some people aren't good in a structured setting, like school, but can still be a productive member of society.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#263There's some grim humor in the fact that the poster reflects on his sister's use of chatgpt, and just ends on that point. I have to wonder if he decided to talk to her or his parents about the situation. I didn't see anything in the post to suggest it, just a "this next generation is cooked." Who cooked them is the question? Children won't raise themselves generally.
My daughter is only 1 and a half years old now, but my concern is more that she'll be implicitly competing with classmates that are using tools like this, whether we allow her to use them or not.
> my concern is more that she'll be implicitly competing with classmates that are using tools like this
This isn’t a competing with kids issue, though. A kid handicapped by ChatGPT will fail in-class examinations.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#264Are in-class tests still a thing? If you use these tools to get the homework done, but there's little retention of knowledge or skill, how are you going to pass a test where the resource is not available to you? Homework is ostensibly about practicing certain skills (math) or learning/memorizing facts.
Do we still ask children to pass tests? I have been wondering about this. Can you still be held back? Can you still be given low grades if parents are aggressive?
Not really. You'll just be given a minimum passing grade, socially promoted, and ultimately pushed out of the education system having "graduated". Functionally illiterate, scientifically ignorant, and innumerate.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#265It's worth noting people probably reacted to this like they did with calculators, and perhaps, encyclopedias. I see this use a bit differently: as a teacher that scales (and is probably more accurate that a human, hallucinations and other concerns notwithstanding). I see my kids using it in a similar manner as described in this post, but I also see their curiosity piqued and them asking all kinds of theoretical and c…
I don't have kids. But I do have interns occasionally. Which are about the same age as my kids could have been if I had kids. Anyway, as their employer and mentor, I want them to use LLMs to deliver faster and better and I actively challenge them to do use that to the max and thus free up more time to do more important things. I mentored four over the summer and they did a nice job.
I think the reality for teachers and students is that both should be using LLMs to their advantage at this point and openly so. Not mindlessly and hopefully in some supervised way. But it's only cheating if the teacher doesn't up their game and raises the ambition level. Which they would be negligent not to do at this point.
I used to hate homework. All this mindless drudgery that you had to do at home and then submit to some poor overworked teacher that then had to manually verify all that stuff. Just not necessary anymore. A lot of the verification can be automated. And a lot of curiosity can be satisfied without teacher involvement. The teacher's role then becomes nudging that process along and making sure the student is challenged enough.
Teachers should be tailoring exercises to individual students in a way that challenges them on their own level and then focus their efforts on verifying whether the student is actually at that level. That used to be hard because it didn't scale if they use the right tools. But now it can scale. They could be challenging individual students at their own level, whatever that is. But that requires using available tools more effectively.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#266If you'd told people 50 years ago that "literacy" would decline to the level of the reddit poster's style of writing, with poor sentence structure and words in ALL CAPS, they'd be pretty shocked. Now it's just normal communication. Older people are shocked that young people can't do long division, or easily add a column of numbers mentally. I'm not saying LLMs won't negatively influence the next generation, but the n…
Yes, agreed. Actually the very existence of the problem described in the original post is an indication that the work being assigned is ultimately useless. If the teacher can't reliably distinguish between a student's answer and an AI answer then what's the point of giving that assignment? Kids with street smarts or a hacker mentality are always going to figure out the easiest path from A to B, and it's arguable if we should even be discouraging that—it's quite an important skill in real life.
We're at a major transition point and I don't envy teachers who need to figure out ways to adjust to it, but giving the same exact assignments clearly isn't going to cut it. They should instead try to come up with assignments where an AI may be a helpful assistant but isn't able to complete 100% of the task to a high standard. Then evaluate the result regardless of how the student got there. Presentations, discussion-based evaluation, and projects with a physical component are all examples.
I remember when I was a kid, some teachers would assign research papers and then tell us we weren't allowed to use the internet; we needed to go to the school library and use physical books instead. This holy war of teachers vs. chatgpt is likely going to seem similar in hindsight.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#267But last month I went to court to fight a parking ticket and won thanks entirely to chatgpt
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#268There's some grim humor in the fact that the poster reflects on his sister's use of chatgpt, and just ends on that point. I have to wonder if he decided to talk to her or his parents about the situation. I didn't see anything in the post to suggest it, just a "this next generation is cooked." Who cooked them is the question? Children won't raise themselves generally.
> Who cooked them is the question? Children won't raise themselves generally. Society. Parents, schools, whatever technology kids are exposed to (so, all of it). We've had 4 years of literally every form of media pushing AI as the solution to all life's problems. Is it really so surprising that our youth looks to AI for the solution to their problems? I think it's extremely optimistic to expect this can be addressed…
I think a better question is what we do about it, because (like alcohol) I'd assume that parents and teachers by themselves are entirely out of their depths here. I suspect it will take some type of sweeping societal change like we've started seeing with cell phone bans in schools.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What's the point of homework if they're not going to do it themselves and they're not going to learn? My theory is that most homework is given to ensure the parents take an active interest in the kids education. The fact that the kid needs help to do it is part of the goal, but completely impractical in a small family with 2 working parents. Unfortunately, the homework is all done in the after-care program, where t…
I don’t have a partner and have 50% custody of my child. It’s difficult to do it on my own, but as long as I capture lost time it works. For example, we do math, reading and spelling while we are in the car. I also use voices (my kid is 8 so it still works). We have two characters - Monkey and Lulu. They are very useful because Monkey is a monkey so was never educated in a human system. He always has lots of question…
Wait, are you saying you use voices when you're teaching your kid? If so, that's awesome.
Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking
#270Counterpoint: maybe, if anyone is even cooked, it is just this one student and not an entire generation. Go back generations and it was always something else ruining the youth: not playing outside enough, Internet, videogames, hip hop, playing outside too much, TV, rock & roll, books, etc. In my own studies and brief time as a tutor, you get students like this who just see school as an obstacle to something else. Eve…
Self-reported measures of well-being have been steadily decreasing. Mental illness has been steadily increasing. Maybe grandpa was right?