351–360 of 523 posts
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.
Over 40% possess literacy so poor that it isn't considered sufficient to cope with daily demands.
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The problem is tests/quizzes and especially standardized ones. They have never been good teaching tools, and teachers have been railroaded into using them because they provide a blunt way to measure outcomes at a population level. But real teaching is 1:1 and teachers have a lot of power, it's just stuff that doesn't scale and you can't mandate organizationally. But this has mostly always been the case. Trying to mea…
Tests/quizzes are good teaching tools. Students learn more effectively when they are frequently tested on the material. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/optimal-protocols-for-st...
People have felt the same way about waning handwriting skills and reliance on calculators. The truth is the way humans process information has been radically altered by LLMs and we're in the absolute infancy of understanding what that means. It is going to be far more disruptive than the keyboard or calculator. As we discover the implications, we are repeatedly going to find ourselves disturbed and disoriented. There…
> "The deep" are people with strong conceptual understanding of the problems to which they are applying AI and/or strong understanding of the AI itself. They will use AI to create things that didn't exist before. They will take seriously the risk management (although, they will still not be able to successfully predict all unintended consequences). Why would these people not just skip the AI part entirely, then?
I'm close to someone who teaches at a university, and they're making heavy use of in-room essays written in blue books. This ensures that the work is purely the students, but I think it also has the side-effect that the grader is also working manually. I kinda think maybe at earlier levels, most homework should be moved into the classroom and done on paper anyway? What's the point of homework if they're not going to…
If we flipped the lecture/homework system upside down it would first solve some of the major issues with how we deliver education, but as a side effect prevent the appearance of doing the work while really it's just the student mindlessly copying prompts and responses. Assign the material for outside the classroom. Use the in-person contact time to work through the problems, with a mix of small group, pairing and men…
I have this problem too! I wrote up this system prompt I want to set on my daughters account. You’re welcome to try using it and let me know it goes. (When I made a new chatgpt account for her it wouldn’t load. I need to try to set it up again) Prompt: This is my 9th graders account. She has been trying to avoid learning or even thinking by copy and pasting homework and quiz questions into chatgpt and not even readin…
Super interesting idea. I don't have a ChatGPT account otherwise I'd try this myself but can someone try this question from the article, "how many hours are there in 1 day and 7 hours?" with and without the prompt? I'm very curious if it has any effect on the result.
Let's think about this together! How many hours are there in just one day? Once you've got that, you can easily add the extra 7 hours to find the total.
As a hint, think about how time relates to your day-to-day activities. For instance, if you have a figure skating practice that lasts for hours, how would that fit into your daily schedule? How do you keep track of time during those days? This thought process can help you make sure you're counting hours correctly. Give it a try and see what you come up with!
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I tried asking it to just give the answer and then said I was tired and I just need the answer. It didn't give in, although I didn't try any other techniques to "jailbreak".
Edit: 3rd time, firmly asking it did give the answer although with quite an explanation.
And 4th I said Only the answer in 1 word please, which it did just give a number.
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I don't understand this sentiment, even though it is common among Americans. Why is education seen as a competition between students, even in the younger grades? I've even heard stories of parents of young children fighting with each other over their children's grades.
That seems to be a common theme in the responses to me here. The teachers set the course material and grading standards at least partially on how well the students are performing. Maybe not for a given class or year, but certainly over time. Scholarships are competitive. Slots in higher level courses are competitive, and often (at least partially) based on grades. Can you imagine that the coursework and education ove…
I would not wish to live in a society where “can bullshit an assignment with ChatGPT” is generally competitive in education.
If 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…
Point, but also 50 years ago, all-caps would have been one of only two available ways to emphasise text, the other being underlines. Typewriters weren't able to do much else. At least, not the ones you could easily get. Aired 1993, February 25: https://youtu.be/nN9wNvEnn-Q?si=eqUWiZTxYach3db-&t=975
Three ways: many could also type in red: https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B009KXXSOI (showing a red/black ribbon).
7:05 shows the lever for a Brother typewriter in this video and a bit before that shows a different lever for heavyness (although I don't know if that would do bold): https://youtube.com/watch?v=d_dTu6T87Cg&t=6m50s
And AFAIR you could somewhat do bold by overtyping a few times (backspace, retype, repeat) or by hitting keys harder.
Plus many early home computers only had UPPERCASE (e.g. initial Apple ][) and were monochrome (so inverse was often a highlight thing instead of using colour).
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I don't understand this sentiment, even though it is common among Americans. Why is education seen as a competition between students, even in the younger grades? I've even heard stories of parents of young children fighting with each other over their children's grades.
Why wouldn't it be? Education's job is to prepare students for life in the real world, and life in the real world is often a competition with your peers. When I was in grade school (admittedly close to 20 years ago) we had accelerated and slowed tracks for students starting in 5th grade.
AP courses notwithstanding. AP courses were insanely competitive and speaking as someone had been all over the map in my K12 years (AP, accelerated courses, early foreign language, and a touch of remedial relative to grade level) the students in AP were mainly in competition with themselves. That however is just personal anecdote.
I know that having parents who cared about my education (and were in a position to actively participate in it) was a privilege and not a given, but where are the parents in this situation? Do we just accept that an 11 year-old watches squid game, has unrestricted access to chatgpt and does all their school work without any oversight at all? Clearly this kid is not receiving the guidance it needs. Or any guidance real…
I would say I basically received no guidance my entire childhood on anything important. Not because my parents were delinquents but they simply had nothing to offer.
If was in middle school, there is no way my parents would be able to police the use of chatGPT. They wouldn't think it is good or bad, they would just not understand what is going on.
I have thought about that many times. It is unimaginable to have received good advice growing up and not have to figure out everything for myself, fixing all these mistakes. What an advantage.
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Why wouldn't it be? Education's job is to prepare students for life in the real world, and life in the real world is often a competition with your peers. When I was in grade school (admittedly close to 20 years ago) we had accelerated and slowed tracks for students starting in 5th grade.
Typically the accelerated/gifted and talented/special education system in public education is designed to prevent students from being variously bored or overwhelmed, leading to poorer outcomes in either direction. It isn’t designed as a competitive construct. AP courses notwithstanding. AP courses were insanely competitive and speaking as someone had been all over the map in my K12 years (AP, accelerated courses, ear…
I also suspect that most kids, particularly grade schoolers, aren't aware they're competing in this sense. Parents are a different story.