But better in life…
Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
91–100 of 168 posts
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if the function they were using the tool for is basic reasoning?
ChatGPT is not the first tool used to replace basic reasoning, and we haven't collapsed yet. I would argue that nearly all tools can be used to remove basic reasoning, depending on if you choose to use it in such a manner.
What previous tools would you say replaced basic reasoning? I would not classify calculators, spreadsheets, spelling and grammar checkers etc as basic reasoning tools.
I'm talking about bringing together several independent concepts or sets of facts and forming a coherent point of view or argument from them.
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#93What if the test is irrelevant to the current times? “Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning.” So, in the real world, where people can use chatgpt in their jobs, the kids that use it will do better than the kids who don’t. Maybe a better test is: can you catch chatgpt when it is wr…
I’d argue the opposite, that rarely in the real world is chatGPT easily accessible/usable. Working with a customer/client? I don’t think you’ll take a minute to say “give me one second let me ask ChatGPT”
Depends on the job. My sister uses an AI (Gemini) so much that she has a subscription. Her husband also uses it frequently, and keeps it open in a tab at all times. He is a programmer, and she does marketing. I don't use an LLM for work, but very easily could if I wanted. All three of us mostly communicate with coworkers/partners/clients through email, so it's definitely doable.
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#94Story time. I always struggled with math as a kid. School to high school, then didn't touch it much until Uni. Teachers typically couldn't explain things in a way I "got it" in a school setting. I had some success with a private tutor to get me over the line in high school. Then at Uni I'm doing Computer Graphics, which included advanced (for me) math. I was panicked, and initially struggled until one of my good frie…
As far as I understand the current scientific consensus is that learning styles do actually not exist.
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#95Story time. I always struggled with math as a kid. School to high school, then didn't touch it much until Uni. Teachers typically couldn't explain things in a way I "got it" in a school setting. I had some success with a private tutor to get me over the line in high school. Then at Uni I'm doing Computer Graphics, which included advanced (for me) math. I was panicked, and initially struggled until one of my good frie…
How did your friend teach you math visually?
I'm using the term "visual" very loosely here. I prefer to be able to conceptually group and link things logically. He was able to explain things in a context that matched this, and greatly simplified things. Some things that I still suck at learning are foreign languages. Sometimes there are rules you can follow, sometimes you just have to "know", and sometimes the rules that apply in one case are the opposite in another. I'm amazed anyone can communicate effectively at all :-)
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#96When I was young, and learning math, my father always forbade me from looking at the answer in the back of the textbook. “You don’t work backwards from the answer!”, and I think this is right. In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, we have to work that out from the things we know. It’s this struggling that builds a muscle you can then apply to any problem. ChatGPT, I suspect, is akin to looking up the ans…
>In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, this sounds a lot like the "when you're an adult, you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" line we all heard in elementary school. and of course, we all know now how wrong that was. in life, chatGPT exists. and tools like it are only going to become more widespread. we are going to have the answers in front of us. knowing the things an LLM knows is not a u…
In order to develop the kinds of mental skills you need to tackle complex problems, you need to practice them on simpler problems first (particularly if you happen to be a child). If you decide at a young age it's worthless to attempt any problems that can be solved by a calculator or ChatGPT, you will probably never learn how to solve any problems that you can't use those tools for either.
Also, knowing what kind of things exist and what questions to ask is half the battle. If you haven't stored anything in your head on the grounds that you can outsource knowing things and thinking about them to ChatGPT, you're not going to be able to prompt it efficiently either. It's much harder to sanity check numbers and formulas given to you by others (or ChatGPT) if you can't do any quick mental math. Having original ideas that don't yet exist in LLM datasets also requires storing a lot of concepts and making new connections between them.
I suppose all this is moot if you expect AGI to be available to everyone in the near future, but if it turns out to be decades or more away unfortunately human mental effort will still be required in the meantime.
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
People sophisticated in a field can ask Sonnet or 4o questions that amount to a different way of searching and sometimes even a better one. If you ask a question in a direct, probing, narrow way you can sometimes come out ahead. Someone educated by the News Feed algorithm (which is what RLHF amounts to: reward for getting human to click) is going to be the worst kind of wrong: /r/ConfidentlyIncorrect.
+1 insightful PS was there ever a blog at b7r6.net?
Not yet.
I’m still grinding out what disclosure is and isn’t responsible.
But bet your bum I’ve got a theme picked out.
I didn’t realize anyone cared who I was enough to know I held the domain.
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#98Story time. I always struggled with math as a kid. School to high school, then didn't touch it much until Uni. Teachers typically couldn't explain things in a way I "got it" in a school setting. I had some success with a private tutor to get me over the line in high school. Then at Uni I'm doing Computer Graphics, which included advanced (for me) math. I was panicked, and initially struggled until one of my good frie…
Glad to hear you were able to find a mechanism that clicked and stuck with it after that! The concept of learning styles for individuals though is a common myth
https://onlineteaching.umich.edu/articles/the-myth-of-learni... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhgwIhB58PA&t=2s
There isn't any evidence that individuals learn best to a single style and generally approaching learning from multiple facets is the best way for everyone to learn!
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#99Are people not reading the article here?
Let me tldr:
- Study had 3 groups: normal GPT, system prompt to make GPT act as tutor and focus on giving hints, not answers, and no GPT
Group 1 (normal GPT)
- 48% better on practice problems
- 17% worse on test
Group 2 (tutor GPT)
- 127% better on practice problems
- equal test score to control group
GPT errors:
- 50% error rate
- 8% error on arithmetic problems
- step by step instructions we're wrong 42% of time
- GPT tutor was fed answers
- students with GPT and GPT tutor predicted that they did better (so both groups were over confident)
I'll reply with my opinion to this comment. But many comments are not responding to the article content
Re: Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
>In life, we rarely have the answer in front of us, this sounds a lot like the "when you're an adult, you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" line we all heard in elementary school. and of course, we all know now how wrong that was. in life, chatGPT exists. and tools like it are only going to become more widespread. we are going to have the answers in front of us. knowing the things an LLM knows is not a u…
>we all know now how wrong that was. How wrong was it ? I find myself having to do head math every time I playing video games.
Which video games?