I mean, something like chatGPT (that will refuse to invent things) is perfect for student companion. It's endlessly patient and willing to explain every word you don't understand. No teacher can do that to this degree. If i were a teacher i d want to offload work to it.
ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#12I've said it in another thread, but if you have to ban a tool to preserve the value of some course or examination then it's likely they have little to no value in the real world. In most cases the courses are fine, but the examination probably isn't testing anything useful if it can be cheated with tools like ChatGPT. For example any maths test which only tests students on problems which are easily solvable by a calc…
Not sure I entirely agree. Imagine there's a trainable skill like writing, and GPT can write at low-intermediate level, but can't at high level. How do you test students before they completed intermediate level?
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#13ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it jus…
The problem is that calculators are correct 100% of the time, ChatGPT is not. What makes it more difficult is that it's often really hard to tell when ChatGPT is correct or not.
For whom is that a problem, in this case? If you have a hallucinating computer do your test and it doesn’t work out for you, that’s on you.
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#14I learnt a ton from asking random questions to ChatGPT. This move is clearly temporary and will be reversed
My question is, did you learn the truth from ChatGPT? It seems like it will always give plausible sounding answer, that may or may not be correct. For example I asked it today to enumerate the rights given to all christians as part of the priesthood of believers according to Luther. It enumerate a couple of plausible sounding rights. Unfortunately none of them were correct.
I am learning a JS game dev platform and ChatGPT has been a GREAT help, even though it’s only right 90% of the time.
It cooler if it were an “auto-answer” tool for Stack Overflow. That way I could still get instant answers, and the community could asynchronously validate the answers.
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#15Are mathematics students allowed to use calculators, or did they ban those too?
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#16I've said it in another thread, but if you have to ban a tool to preserve the value of some course or examination then it's likely they have little to no value in the real world. In most cases the courses are fine, but the examination probably isn't testing anything useful if it can be cheated with tools like ChatGPT. For example any maths test which only tests students on problems which are easily solvable by a calc…
Not sure I entirely agree. Imagine there's a trainable skill like writing, and GPT can write at low-intermediate level, but can't at high level. How do you test students before they completed intermediate level?
Make students write in the classroom using a pen and paper? Isn’t that more or less the standard at low-intermediate level?
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#17I've said it in another thread, but if you have to ban a tool to preserve the value of some course or examination then it's likely they have little to no value in the real world. In most cases the courses are fine, but the examination probably isn't testing anything useful if it can be cheated with tools like ChatGPT. For example any maths test which only tests students on problems which are easily solvable by a calc…
> I'm not sure if there's much value in learning things like basic SQL queries anymore which was something I had to learn when studying computer science.
I really disagree, a major function of education is to teach concepts before introducing tools. I took a physics class in undergrad that required a graphing calculator, does that mean I wasted years learning all of the mathematical concepts that could be performed by a graphing calculator?
Having an understanding of what's going on is so important, especially when something is broken. If we encourage students to start with AI and not learn the fundamentals themselves, they won't wind up learning how to identify root cause when the tool causes an issue (and ChatGPT is by no means perfect).
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#18ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it jus…
I see ChatGPT more akin to Wikipedia and Google than a calculator. We don't consider Wikipedia or Google as much of a tool as they are a knowledge reservoir of truthiness.
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#19I wonder if the script can be flipped to both encourage the use of ChatGPT and scrutinize its output among students. I imagine that analyzing the results of ChatGPT output for something like a routine essay prompt requires a higher degree of precision and subject-matter expertise than writing the essay itself.
Re: ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks
#20ChatGPT is just a tool, like a calculator. Calculators are banned in certain circumstances and required in others. At first they were probably seen as cheating, but then the system realized they could be used to enhance what kids learn. Why take away a tool that could be used everywhere in life? That's not how progress should work. The system should evolve to embrace such tools, but the obvious problem is that it jus…
The problem is that calculators are correct 100% of the time, ChatGPT is not. What makes it more difficult is that it's often really hard to tell when ChatGPT is correct or not.
The problem is, people assume the tools they use are correct 100% of the time.
An early example: http://files.righto.com/calculator/sinclair_scientific_simul... (see Bugs and limitations).
More contemporary (I think): https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/courses/resources/example...
Granted though, ChatGPT is confidently and convincingly wrong more often. I expect that will improve, but in the meantime I think it's an opportunity to question and evaluate the results rather than ban outright. That's a sticking plaster that hopefully needn't stay on for long.