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My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

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Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#381

Post by satvikpendem »

mberning wrote: post #69
Peacefulz wrote: post #3

I'm not trying to justify, or infer here, but I read recently that around 20% of American adults are functionally illiterate. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2019/2019179/index.asp I wonder how LLMs are going to affect these metrics.

It has to be much higher than that. Look at the reddit op. I assume this person is nearly an adult and their writing is very broken and meandering. Sure you could argue “it’s just a reddit post”, but I find how people write informally is generally indicative of their overall writing ability.

Code switching. I don't write my reddit comments like I do my HN ones, my emails, my formal papers, etc.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#382

Post by satvikpendem »

ibejoeb wrote: post #132

> she uses chatgpt on my account Don't let her do that. Blows my mind that this one weird trick isn't suggested in the top 100 comments.

How does that solve anything? She'll just use it on her own account... At least this way OP was able to see what their sister was up to.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#383

Post by fnordpiglet »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #361
throwaway314155 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about the way the world should be. Reality is different. For instance, having graduated from Harvard is going to get you a fairly good job _regardless_ of their GPA. Similarly, there is no objective way to measure "merit" that isn't unfair to _someone_ and also scales to dozens/hundreds/thousands of students. So people use GPA. Life isn't fair.

Why does it matter if there is an ‘objective way’ or not? Clearly peers do evaluate each other in any ways they choose, pretty much every day at Harvard I imagine.

When discussing percentile ranks of students and their admission to top schools the school needs some way of measuring the percentile according to some measurable metric. It’s not a vibe based process. GPA and test scores are heavily leaned upon.

I would note that students who depend on AIs to answer questions on homework will do poorly on tests. I am not really sure what all the fuss is about. Kids cheating on homework is nothing new and a machine doing it for your is little different than all the other ways kids cheat on homework. And cheating on homework doesn’t help you in your grades - it hurts you because you’re unprepared for exams, which typically dominate the weighting of a grade. Then once you take a standardized placement exam you’re totally screwed.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#384

Post by ibejoeb »

satvikpendem wrote: post #382
ibejoeb wrote: post #132

> she uses chatgpt on my account Don't let her do that. Blows my mind that this one weird trick isn't suggested in the top 100 comments.

How does that solve anything? She'll just use it on her own account... At least this way OP was able to see what their sister was up to.

Well 1) she's 11 years old and is ineligible to create her own account and 2) she needs a credit card, which is pretty easy to control.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#385

Post by fnordpiglet »

moduspwnens14 wrote: post #15
clejack wrote: post #12

There'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.

Competing with what? Homework is usually the minority of grade weight in almost every course and college entrance is largely based on entrance exams. Using AI to cheat on homework only cheats the students ability to complete and exam, let alone an entrance exam.

People act as if cheating on homework is new with LLms. It’s not. The homework is there to guide you towards the exam, and exams are generally proctored to prevent cheating in ways homework is explicitly not. Generally teachers grade homework to create an incentive for students to practice rigorously for the in course and final exams. Any student who doesn’t avail themselves of that practice invariably flunks their exams. Your homework grade won’t help you then.

So who cares? Sooner or later the cheating student either learns why it doesn’t pay to cheat or suffers the life consequences of not learning in school. This isn’t new with LLMs.

What is new is you have a tool that you can get advice from on topics that are difficult or even get up front grading and advice on homework before turning it in that helps you master the material better. Students who use this will be able to master the material faster, even if their parents both work and can’t invest the time to tutor their children at night.

(N.b., The threads here imply every parent works at a cushy tech job and has plenty of time to be invested in their kids education and any parent who isn’t is negligent - while the truth is many are just struggling to make ends meet - as my parents did … I didn’t get the investment my daughter gets not because they didn’t care but because they were busy feeding me and keeping us from being homeless. I would have loved to have ChatGPT help me as a kid)

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#386

Post by satvikpendem »

ibejoeb wrote: post #384
satvikpendem wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does that solve anything? She'll just use it on her own account... At least this way OP was able to see what their sister was up to.

Well 1) she's 11 years old and is ineligible to create her own account and 2) she needs a credit card, which is pretty easy to control.

ChatGPT is free without the need for a credit card. Age restrictions don't actually stop kids from making accounts.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#387

Post by datavirtue »

magimas wrote: post #291
beardedmoose wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hell, I’d argue a similar prompt could be useful for a lot of people. I use something similar for coding and ask it not to provide direct code and more a guide on coding principals with source links if possible.

one of the more important ones in my opinion would be a prompt to make ChatGPT much less agreeable. Unless explicitly asked for, it never really challenges your observations and will just keep being supportive and telling you how well of an argument you're making. I fear this will push even more people into deep rabbit holes they won't be able to get out of because they think this neutral AI has confirmed their suspi…

I know, when we discuss physics it has me feeling like I'm Stephen Hawking-Einstein.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#388

Post by LilBytes »

djeastm wrote: post #269
hluska wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not OP but I'm 16 years senior my youngest sister, when she was a wee child I did exactly this.

Voices were like personas for me.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#389

Post by MichaelZuo »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #383
MichaelZuo wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does it matter if there is an ‘objective way’ or not? Clearly peers do evaluate each other in any ways they choose, pretty much every day at Harvard I imagine.

When discussing percentile ranks of students and their admission to top schools the school needs some way of measuring the percentile according to some measurable metric. It’s not a vibe based process. GPA and test scores are heavily leaned upon. I would note that students who depend on AIs to answer questions on homework will do poorly on tests. I am not really sure what all the fuss is about. Kids cheating on homew…

> When discussing percentile ranks of students and their admission to top schools the school needs some way of measuring the percentile according to some measurable metric. It’s not a vibe based process. GPA and test scores are heavily leaned upon.

How does this relate to the prior comment?

I’m clearly not an admissions officer at Harvard, nor likely are the other HN commentors here.

Re: My little sister's use of ChatGPT for homework is heartbreaking

#390

Post by travisporter »

wngr wrote: post #321
Pet_Ant wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how that helps. Watching TV with my kid has been the best way to teach him I've found. There are great videos and shows that you can watch together and then discuss afterwords. Baking videos. Chemistry. Physics. History. Seeing something on TV is great way to fire up the imagination and inspiration for real world activities.

I totally agree with you, but those shows are not what parent means.

Yeah agreed. Really a ton of kids with tablets everytime I go out for dinner
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