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I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

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Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#91

> I noted where arguments were unsound. I pointed to weaknesses such as stylistic quirks that I knew to be common to ChatGPT (I noticed a sudden surge of phrases such as “delves into”). That is, I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students. > So I quit. This strikes me as a non-sequitur. Her students were making a certain class of mistakes, so... she quit? Don't students always make mis…

Yeah it seems like they quit to make a point but the point is lost on me unless the point is that they can write an article about how they quit.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#92
> However, these types of comparative analyses failed because most of my students were not developed enough as writers to analyze the subtleties of meaning or evaluate style. “It makes my writing look fancy,” one PhD student protested when I pointed to weaknesses in AI-revised text. IMO teachers, and academia specifically, are to blame for what AI is doing to students because they’re the ones that have defined good writing as “fancy writing”. The hardest part of learning to be a good writer has been undoing all the years of style over substance engrained in high school and college. If we’re taught to write like robots, is it any surprise we just have robots write for us given the opportunity? And is it any surprise we don’t see the point of learning to write if robots seemingly do it so much better?

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confidently say that a car would be useless to me without gps. I can navigate the small town (10k people) I grew up in, but that’s it. I wouldn’t try to navigate the city I live in now (~350k people) in a car, beyond the street I live on. If I had to and knew gps was broken (hypothetically), then I’d try to reschedule, instead of attempting to navigate with signs and a paper map. I could probably work with prin…

You don't ever walk in your city without gps? Wouldn't you know the streets after a while?

Lots of people don't live in walkable cities. There's no realistic way they'd get to where they're going by walking. They might walk their neighborhood and know that, but these days lots of people don't even bother walking around their neighborhood.

So they'll end up driving everywhere they go. Work, groceries, restaurants, etc. Always driving. Many won't go down paths that weren't previously suggested by their GPS. And often those destinations aren't designed to be walkable either. Massive parking lots separating the various storefronts. Corporate campuses completely surrounded by a sea of parking lots and garages. Nowhere to walk.

That said, there's still exploring possible in a car-centric place. I tend to take alternate paths to get places, purposefully "get lost" driving around, and explore places I've never been before. But that has costs and lots of people don't bother doing that.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#94
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already see it in people who cannot navigate their automobile without google maps or some equivalent.

I think what is more readily apparent is that younger folks cannot reverse their car without looking at the camera. Older folks still turn around and look.

I'm old. I like the camera. It gives a better view for many things.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#95
I'm excited for these kids, to be honest. My experience in the education system in the 90's was a goddamn nightmare. I didn't make it to the 9th grade. It just wasn't designed for someone with my ADHD and chaotic situation at home. I didn't care about most of the subjects they were teaching me, and I would get beaten regularly for doing poorly. I get hyper focused on things I care about, and that system provided very few things that I cared about. Today, I'm a senior DevOps engineer. Guess what I do care about?

And it's not just that I only care about computers. I became an autodidact after I left school, and learned about the things that interested me, and only those things. I still got a great education and know a lot of things that provide value to society, and enrich others. It was just that the education system packaged my value as a human being into one big bundle that was graded in aggregate.

I have high hopes that our world's societies can have such an amazing tool as their disposal that kids don't feel like they have to cram the entirety of human existence into their brains for 12/16/18/20 years or suffer the consequences of a failed life; that they can be productive through a creative use of the tools at their disposal, and feel accomplished even if their brains don't work the same way as others'.

Not to mention the social benefits of having nearly instantaneous fact checking available, and building their opinions around it. Then, they can also be good people instead of allowing lazy idiot talking heads convince them that their situation is an immalleable doom spiral, locking them into a ecosystem of fear and idolatry that's only return is manifest destiny.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#97

> I noted where arguments were unsound. I pointed to weaknesses such as stylistic quirks that I knew to be common to ChatGPT (I noticed a sudden surge of phrases such as “delves into”). That is, I found myself spending more time giving feedback to AI than to my students. > So I quit. This strikes me as a non-sequitur. Her students were making a certain class of mistakes, so... she quit? Don't students always make mis…

Can’t you empathise? The thought of having to grade and give advice on AI generated content makes me want to run away and live in a remote forest.

Well I am not very good at empathy, indeed. Sorry.

But really. Teachers have complained about stupid or uninterested kids for ever. This does not make schools pointless. I am not good at teaching, but some people are, and manage to do it despite some setbacks. Is this AI thing really insurmontable? Did she at least attempt to fix the problem, before quitting?

Feels to me like "we've tried nothing, and we're all out of ideas".

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#98

This kind of thing is going to be the split between the technically inclined and the non-technically inclined. Those that believe thinking and understanding is too hard or that school is not cool or whatever will have technology to slide by on. They will be apart of the non-technical society and they will languish there. Comfortable in their lower pay and social media and grocery store tomatoes. Truly one of the herd…

My concern is the assessment divide. In the district I live I happen to be on a parent board that's providing input to the leadership with respect to technology. Privacy and security are a huge component of LLMs currently, but beyond that I think the biggest area of interest is the assessment divide.

Currently the district is looking at it through the lens of having students still "test" in traditional ways so that if, and when, assessment doesn't align with daily work they can start to understand where this divide exists.

I really like the Ted Chiang quote from the article: "Using ChatGPT to complete assignments is like bringing a forklift into the weight room; you will never improve your cognitive fitness that way". I can already see this divide in some of the surrounding friend-circle wherein a lot of young (under the age of 12) are leveraging LLMs very heavily to direct them. I fear that these kids will lose the confidence, at a very early age, to even start something. It's widely discussed how getting started in projects is often the most cumbersome in a task timeline, and so without making things uncomfortable for this young generation to work at this skill I feel as though we're going to see the start of a significantly handicapped generation because they will over-rely on these tools. And, really, this is just one of many issues of over-reliance.

> Now the youth is going to be more and more clever and not necessarily more intelligent instead because that is what is valued, taking a shortcut that technology enables.

I 100% agree with this. A lot of students will fool their parents, and even a number of educators by leveraging this new "cleverness". But it's going to hit a dead end as soon as they're forced to do. I also think you're right in that this may become a class divide that further segments the population and also provides facilities for unfortunate control over the lower class through trained and targeted LLM responses.

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#99

I'm thinking of going back into teaching because of ChatGPT. I created an entire scheme of work for my wife today, including all the lesson plans, and next I'll work on some student resources and quizzes. It took about thirty minutes. She'll need to check them over to make sure they're okay, but still a massive time saver. I've taken photos of my son's revision activities and had ChatGPT mark them. It's surprisingly…

Why would anyone pay you to be a teacher when they could just use ChatGPT directly. Prompt it to develop a lesson plan to learn whatever, create the learning materials, and then evaluate their mastery of it. And be endlessly available, nights and weekends, for further discussion and help with any difficulties?

Re: I Quit Teaching Because of ChatGPT

#100
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can already see it in people who cannot navigate their automobile without google maps or some equivalent.

I think what is more readily apparent is that younger folks cannot reverse their car without looking at the camera. Older folks still turn around and look.

I wouldn't call those the same. My wife's car has a camera and mine doesn't. Since having children, I prefer backing up in her car because I'm so much more aware of the blind spots I have without it. We also live somewhere with lots more kids now, which adds to it. I can back up my own (camera-less) car, obviously, but it made me realize that I can't back it up without a bit of "cross my fingers and hope no kid darts into a blind spot from a blind spot."
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