AI can do your homework. Now what?

We interviewed students and teachers on how schools should handle the rise of the chatbots.
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For a year now, students have had access to AI chatbots, otherwise known as Large Language Models, that can write at a high-school level and answer specific and diverse questions related to many school subjects. OpenAI's ChatGPT kicked off a race among tech companies to release their own chatbots and integrate them into existing consumer products.
The most advanced language models, like GPT-4 and Claude2 are kept behind paywalls. They offer more nuanced answers and make fewer mistakes but because reliability is not guaranteed, many businesses cannot yet deploy these systems. That means a significant portion of chatbot use cases are for low-stakes applications, like school work.
This presents a major challenge to educators, who now need to rethink their curriculum to either incorporate chatbot use or to attempt to deter it. In this video, we hear from students and teachers about how they're thinking through the problem, and review research in the science of learning to understand how the "fluency" of a chatbot experience could disrupt the learning process that we go to school for.
00:00 Intro
02:28 Path 1: Banning AI
06:03 Path 2: Allowing AI
09:52 The problem with the calculator analogy
11:18 The science of learning
15:44 Conclusion
Sources:
www.similarweb.com/blog/insig...
help.openai.com/en/articles/8...
hai.stanford.edu/news/ai-dete...
www.ibo.org/news/news-about-t...
"Rethinking GPS navigation: creating cognitive maps through auditory clues" www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
"Habitual use of GPS negatively impacts spatial memory during self-guided navigation" www.nature.com/articles/s4159...
"Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom" www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas...
wac.colostate.edu/repository/...
AI-text-detection error rates:
Turnitin www.turnitin.com/products/fea...
Originality.ai originality.ai/blog/ai-conten...
GPTZero gptzero.me/faq
Sapling.ai sapling.ai/ai-content-detector
Compilatio support.compilatio.net/hc/en-...
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[@CatherineKimport]

Honestly, until our education system figures out how to prioritize learning over grades, we're going to have problems with this.

[@keryharrelson7157]

Spot on. Everything we think about when we think about school-- the pillars, if you will-- has to change: grades, grade levels, rigid start and end times (bankers' hours), bell schedules, seat time-- everything.

[@Coal-RubL]

How should schools prioritize learning over grades?

[@crapshoot]

@@as-cf7rx I dunno, looks like AI is making grades obsolete as we speak :P

[@abreezeofwind8037]

@@crapshoot That's true, grades simply doesn't cut it especially in our day and age.

[@Cami555555Sheep]

Schools shouldn’t be factories for producing workers, but places of genuine curiosity and furthering interests. Something that’s incentivized against under capitalism

[@2stoon]

The goal of education, is to get the grades you need, to enter the program in the college you need, to get the job you want. As long as that is how the system is set up, and grades decide a substantial amount of someone's formative years, then don't expect them to actually try and properly learn. Because at that point, the objective isn't to learn, that's not how the system is set up, the objective is to pass.

[@Bellaa4578]

THIS THIS THIS! I learned nothing in school, I just passed 😂

[@user-zy1dm8bo3i]

this is the problem

[@smikkelbeer7890]

This is so true. The system has always been terrible when it comes to actual learning and now the people keeping up the status quo are panicking because a tool is exposing the shallowness of their system.

[@seiwarriors]

Yep

[@Michael-on3ku]

I feel this in my own interests. I’m getting into writing stories and I’ve not once thought of using an AI. Why? Because I want to write those stories myself and get good at it, not take the easy way and have a computer do it.

[@user-vu3np1pg9c]

My daughter got accused of using AI to write her paper, along with about a dozen other kids in class. I don't know about the other kids, but I read my daughter's paper and it's clearly something she wrote. It was about a performance she did over Summer break that I attended, and the paper sounded very similar to when I've heard her recount the story to someone else. She's also a good writer that writes stories on her own outside of school just for fun. So 100% she wrote this paper. I asked the teacher what tool she'd used to identify it as a paper written by AI. She said "Winston AI" and she also said that Winston AI has a 98% success rate, so it's basically never wrong. I mentioned that I had a degree in Computer Science and that I actually had certification in ML (which is the more accurate term for what Winston AI is doing) and the teacher back pedaled a bit. @4:47 this video clearly identifies that no error rate is published. I do believe the teacher is in a tough spot, BUT it is scary how many teachers are placing a high degree of confidence in these detection tools when they don't understand that any ML with an 80% success rate is basically deemed "ready for the market" at this moment in our culture.

[@NeoKailthas]

Oh no they are not in a tough spot. They are lazy and send students home with homework. All education should happen in class. It's like telling your kid to go play with the iPad.

[@napoleonbonerfart278]

Imagine if we had an 80% success rate driving to the grocery store...

[@lightningterry]

Those AI detections are the reason I never got a good grade. When I wrote good essays the detector would automatically deduct points if it assumed there was some ai written dialogue. My professor never questioned it and said that the detector is “often right about these things”. I hate all of them now I don’t care how high their success rate is. 😂

[@Masterbaiter1000]

Sorry to tell you but your kid isn't too bright. Or maybe the kid is. But a real kid is not only just gonna have grammatical errors but a genius will make errors on purpose after putting the essay through AI as well. But most are not a genius and will allow the essay to be perfect. Writing stories and writing an essay perfectly are not the same things. Essays MUST follow the proper formats and rules. And so getting a perfect essay score is the goal. Which Is almost impossible. Even at a college level. Because teachers do not teach everything.

[@Zer-ei4co]

@@Masterbaiter1000 Lol what are you rambling about? Are you an AI?

[@AwokenEntertainment]

it's so different growing up now then it was just 10 years ago..

[@kevinsherwood8677]

The issue with our education system is that students are too afraid to get the answers wrong and for good reason, their grades take a hit. This is why students don't like trying rather they like finding quick answers to get by.

[@drusillawinters212]

The pressure to emphasize grades comes at the expense of learning. The blame for this attitude does not lie with the students or the teachers, but with the principals and the legislators/

[@slashz8]

The problem is whites

[@mikemondano3624]

Exactly. It is based on punishment. Mistakes should be viewed like wrong turns in a maze. That turn has been tried and found wrong so we won't make it next time.

[@slashz8]

@@mikemondano3624 it’s white people they are the problem

[@mondoseguendo6113]

That’s what happens when you commodify the education system.

[@benr3799]

I can’t believe I’m old enough to tell kids about how much harder school was “back in my day”

[@renzogaspary8259]

We couldn't use calculators and had to write everything on paper.

[@tomikexboii5403]

@@renzogaspary8259 Yep. I am a millennial, but I still had teachers call family to allow them to collect our calculators. In every case, the family allowed the teacher to collect calculators before every lesson. Till everyone stopped carrying one.

[@southcoastinventors6583]

@@renzogaspary8259 So this whole video just said at the end you can use any tool you want but you need to test in class on a regular basis if you want to know if people are learning the material. Pretty long winded could have been a 2 min video.

[@angelr194]

​@@southcoastinventors6583 And that's the problem with using AI, you want the fast answer but not to listen to the different perspectives and have your own judgement. At least two times on the video they formulated questions that, if you paused the video, you could try to answer yourself...

[@Bellaa4578]

LOL

[@anyama2914]

One of the worst things that I found to come from AI in education is that oblivious instructors assuming that the students that secretly use this AI tech are far more advanced than the students who don’t use it. As someone who refuses to generate paragraphs from AI, I have been left behind because I work “too slow”. As I am looking over and my classmates are generating entire paragraphs. I have felt pressure to fall in line and use the tech to just keep up at this point.

[@user-ed3yy8gy2l]

Then use it. Or you could complain to your future boss that your colleagues are using AI to be more productive than you.

[@fairyymaple]

exactly how i feel !! i dont necessarily hate AI but i wish it wasn't stripping us of our creativity.

[@gracieofgod8899]

Remember that your education should benefit you. If using AI is going to make you smarter and better skilled, then it might make sense to incorporate it for some assignments. If you’re just looking for an easy way out of a jam, I think you need someone to help you advocate for yourself on this.

[@anenglishmanplusamerican7107]

“I am sorry you’re going through this, and the students who are literally generating entire paragraphs are basically not doing the work. I am a totally blind individual, and I only use ChatGPT to proofread and fix grammar and visual discrepancies. I really hope that one day students will find some sort of middle ground, as I did while using AI in assignments - not to cheat but to make my points clearer.”

[@keryharrelson7157]

That's not "falling in line", that's using your resources. If you don't learn to use your resources, expect to be left behind.

[@XCHDragox115]

As a teacher I always find hands on activities for students to do. Instead of essays and test, I test their abilities to debate verbally. Instead of math problems, I ask them to demonstrate the concept using objects found in the classroom. All my questions are always live and only used for assessment only. The remaining time (the actual learning time) is spent in group discussions. The entire learning space itself is also framed with game design elements to encourage and incentivize learning.

[@CatFish107]

Engaged learning, rather than min/maxing standardized tests ftw.

[@sambosak]

I love your way of teaching so much! I hope everywhere else uses your model instead of our soulless, "do this homework sheet made since 1985 for the rest of the year" model.

[@Phrikeares]

How counterintuitive is it that adults push students not to use AI while pushing and rewarding their use at workplaces? If the future workplace will leverage AI to improve productivity, teaching effective use of AI should be a whole new class topic.

[@porsche911sbs]

how many students do you have?

[@XCHDragox115]

@@porsche911sbs currently, a class of 22. On average about 20. This number does not include math and language arts which is another 15 in each class.

[@RadialSeeker113]

Now we need to re-evaluate the entire education system for the future. Unis have barely caught up to the internet, let alone the future of ai.

[@CallMeRabbitzUSVI]

Do you think the people in charge will have the resources, funding, and the wherewithal to do so?

[@rafa.frqnz1188]

@@CallMeRabbitzUSVIyes ….. will they … no …..

[@entechcore]

Open University has already conquered this step.

[@vitoc8454]

In my country, the bar exams only switched to "digital format" *last year* (i.e. answering it with a laptop and exam software instead of handwritten tests in paper booklets) It's a bit silly that, as late as 2019 or so, the *official* guidelines for taking the bar exams included things like "if the test taker's handwriting is illegible, they may use a typewriter. Only noiseless typewriters shall be permitted." ...Freakin' *typewriters.*

[@donnieamz2938]

it's quite simple, actually. they should just use live verbal exams instead of written essays. For example, if you give me an assignment, once i submit the assignment to you, you call me in front of class, and you (as the teacher) will ask me questions that i have written directly in that assignment, to confirm that i actually know what I wrote. Most people who use ChatGPT without re-reviewing the output will never be able to pass this verbal exam. and since it's verbal, the students won't be able to use ChatGPT live in front of the class.

[@nuomitang30]

As an educator, I think AI simply divulges how primitive and rigid our eductional system is. It's one thing to passing down our knowledge. Whereas another to developing students into a self-evolving state, whom we failed miserably.

[@user-sq5sl4uz3c]

I think the solution is to make education actually about learning and problem solving and actually knowing how to do something instead of test taking. For example I take classes with a lot of writing exams and I have to write papers and those always go through a check where they check and see if you stole someone’s work and the computer with catch it if you cheat and I can keep making original work because it’s not like math or science or coding where there’s 1 answer. So I think this is a sign that we need to make education more about problem solving than just about getting the right answers on a test for a grade.

[@joshuamhardwick]

I feel like the IB system and enquiry lead learning grasped this a while ago. Personally excited for the changes that will likely come.

[@KerupukKeju]

@@joshuamhardwick oh yea, IB was harder than uni but I learned a lot

[@kovryzhenko]

Wanted to say the same. The schooling system where students were made to remember things was useful for beltline workers in the early 20th century but got obsolete after that. Why make someone remember anything that can be found online within 30 seconds? And now AI makes this even more convenient. Schooling should be project based, it should teach how to collaborate, and to develop critical thinking.

[@SaltySparrow]

Solid comment

[@Anna_Rae]

I feel like students wouldn't rely on AI as much if school wasn't so hyper focused on tests, homework, and results. When I was in high school I didn't care about learning, I just wanted the grade, because that's all that mattered to my teachers, peers, and parents.

[@SFgamer]

Most of us been in the same boat.

[@bunk95]

Fiction used for?

[@CheesyHfj]

While I agree that the best way to learn is to go the more difficult route, this comes to a head when we look at the realistic priorities of high schoolers. Most high schoolers are focused on what will be most advantageous for their future lives and careers, often through getting good grades in order to get into prestigious colleges to pursue their chosen field. As students we’re told “get good grades, and you’ll go to a great college”, so above all else the real education that happens is completely secondary to the almost arbitrary, gamified system of grades. While getting good grades can be a sign of resourcefulness and adaptability, if the goal is to incentivize learning then I believe there needs to be a fundamental change to how students are evaluated- because as it stands, whatever gets the kid an A is what’s gonna be done.

[@elinor158]

I was disappointed that this video never touched on this. I feel exactly the same way. High school isn't really about learning anymore. It's about setting yourself up for a successful career path. Good grades basically secure your path out of minimum wage work for the rest of your life. Of course you'll use AI to help you get them; it's disingenuous to students' intelligence and understanding of the world to think they wouldn't or shouldn't.

[@EnchWraitsMusic]

@@elinor158 And it never was about really learning skills, mostly just learning to behave and to have some general knowledge

[@buggypc9753]

Oh snap the real cheesy. Also, you are right.

[@derpylemon852]

Small world

[@bunk95]

High schoolers are fictional.

[@etta5487]

One of my profs had a writing assignment she uses every year. The premise is writing a summary of a scientific article for the general public. This year, instead of having us write the summary, she had ChatGPT write the summary and it was our job to mark it for accuracy and writing quality. I thought that was a really smart solution.

[@CanOfCorn16]

Well, you gotta adapt to the changes this technology provides to our daily activities/assignments. I'm pretty sure it is more good than bad if you use it right (same as with social media/internet, etc...)

[@Dave_of_Mordor]

Your professor has problem solving skills. Unfortunately, your parents allow people in office to represent us and they don't even have this skill. How does it feel to have parents like this?

[@gy7694]

@etta5487 so we're the AI's spellchecker now? oh that's a step forward

[@etta5487]

@@gy7694 it forced us to read the article ourselves and see how accurately it summarized the information. It wasn't a grammar check...

[@kuzcous]

ChatGPT can do that too. It can self criticize, optimize, and rate its own output.

[@ch_one2one]

My heart goes out to Ayub. Realizing that the biggest threat from Chatbots is that we'll lose the belief that it's worth it to think for ourselves.

[@nuclearsimian3281]

Maybe it'll just be the death of busywork and primitive 19th century archaic teaching methods that only focus on getting enough workers into factories with the most rudimentary educations unless you were in the know with the right people who could get you into a college.

[@TaxManATX]

Many educational institutions are the ones responsible for destroying that belief. Students are rarely engaged in the process of learning through discovery, critical thinking, or other forms of original thought; instead, they are viewed as ignorant receptacles in which to deposit 'knowledge' (read: facts they need to memorize to pass standardized testing to keep the school from going under).

[@MHG796]

​@@nuclearsimian3281 finaly someone who can think

[@SkipKiplinger]

After 25 yrs in America, I'm convinced thinking for one's self has been throughly destroyed. What a shame

[@Luis-kg5gm]

almost the entire world doesnt think for themself

[@reprovedcandy]

I vividly remember once turning in an exam for my finance class and being told I'd receive a 0 for what I'd just turned in. I was told to show my work. I was busy working 2 jobs, was super stressed, crammed for 10 hrs straight, nailed the exam and was forced to a breakdown in front of the entire class. they ultimately "generously" told me theyd only give me a 25 point reduction for not showing my work. I got a 75 on that exam. The system is BROKEN. It doesn't care about learning, it care about being an arbitrary gatekeeping system to prevent people from taking on their desired career path unless they play the game of higher education.

[@naritruwireve1381]

100%, and it also shows that the education system values those who are more financially well off. Parents who can afford tutors, their kids' rent, health care and all will of course have children who perform better in school than others who are just as hard working and intelligent but struggle with undiagnosed health conditions, are working multiple jobs, and who have to take care of family members because they can't afford professional care.

[@EnchWraitsMusic]

Showing work was why I hated mathemathics and eventually learned less of it than I should have, because doing assignments was way too huge of a pain and timesink.

[@TheGamingG810]

Showing work is how teachers understand the thinking of students. If there is no work shown, then students aren't communicating how they got the solution to the teachers.

[@IndyRevolutions]

This isnt tied to chatGPT since i graduated before it became widespread, but in particular, the section about lectures resonated with me. Feeling like i learned during the lecture didnt translate at all to exam scores, and i definitely frequently tried to sidestep diffficult assignments as best as i could, simply because the school system didnt set me up to handle difficulty. Being concerned for my GPA above all really just punished me trying to learn.

[@thatRyzzle]

“Critical literacy is a problem. But we have that problem with humans as well,” had me in stitches.

[@abstract5249]

It's funny because it's true.

[@Monsieurlemon2]

fufufufu

[@BlueScreenCorp]

The major difference is ChatGPT isn't capable of critical literacy but most people are

[@abstract5249]

@@BlueScreenCorp Maybe the real treasure was the AI we villified along the way.

[@BlueScreenCorp]

@@abstract5249 What vilification, our current AI is great and can do somethings well. The problem is the media hype that AI companies have produced the last few years since taking "AI" from a nearly fully commercial domain to a consumer domain. Its got limits, thinking and feeling is not something our current understanding of AI will ever accomplish, no matter how many computers are networked together.

[@GeorgeCollier]

I made an AI tool that gives feedback on homework. It's a cheaper ChatGPT wrapper that allows students to use AI honestly (getting feedback from AI is no different ethically to getting feedback from a friend or teacher). Well, turns out it wasn't students using it. Most of my customers are now TEACHERS using it to give feedback on students' work (from middle school through to post-graduate level...). I have no clue if they inform their students that the feedback is AI generated, but it's at least moderately entertaining to me that I now have a website that allows teachers to use AI to grade student's AI generated essays.

[@AllAmericanGuyExpert]

Found your comment! I was just thinking that there will be a really smart AI tech company that will sprout up and make their tool the de facto standard that is approved by schools for kids and teachers to use. It will be marketed as a "fair" and useful tool that checks off all the buzzwords: 1) engages students in learning, 2) enables teachers to monitor student progress, 3) supports student critical thinking, 4) promotes discipline by removing distraction, 5) encourages fair outcomes, 6) it's time to ask an AI what to list in this KZbin comment.

[@Yosef9438]

That's really messed up, actually. Just one more step toward total ruin of the educational system, but I see you're proud you're making a buck on it. Good job.

[@CT-gl2zj]

Oh boy. Robots teaching robots. Humans are working on becoming obsolete.

[@mememan4552]

when are you going to ask Laufey out

[@sidharthghoshal]

Wait that’s terrifying? Don’t they have to read answers as part of their job?

[@erenoz2910]

I've found that ChatGPT completely lacks any kind of critical thinking - the kind of thinking that it needs to debug its own code. If it can't get it right the first 4-5 attempts, it will simply go around in a loop forever.

[@tb620]

You are probably using the free version.

[@erenoz2910]

@@tb620 No, but the free version is even worse

[@Samanth3Mari3augusto]

You have to optimize and prompt correctly

[@rosawoxo]

This is because it inherently lacks critical thinking. At it's core it's a word-pattern frequency list, just on steroids, which is what it uses to generate output. Y'know what else uses word-pattern frequency lists? Your phone keyboard software's suggestions and auto-correction, and that surely doesn't know how to think.

[@GreasePotato]

you fix that by pointing out the mistake and giving new ideas/information. Also, paying for GPT4 helps a lot.

[@STEAMerBear]

Just another reason that I, as a teacher, am glad I have abandoned homework (well, except for students who WANT it) because compulsory homework fails more often than it succeeds. Here’s what I mean: 1) Others are doing it. This is proven by both differing handwriting and by students being totally unfamiliar with the work they turned in. 2) It was rarely getting done. As of 2012 , the last year I routinely assigned it, I was seeing 58% completion of administratively mandated assignments (and 36% total non-compliance with nothing turned in). I later discovered that many of their homes basically did not allow students to even DO homework, regarding it as avoidance of other family responsibilities! 3) It was ineffective. Even among the students appearing to do all of their work, it became far less correlated with success than it was when I started teaching in 1991. My position is this: school is where academic learning should happen and I can actually control a lot of that. Now that AI can super-cheat all students of any actual learning, everyone who cares will be hopping into and swamping my lifeboat (then we’ll swim amidst bad student conduct “icebergs” while being forced to teach everything in class). Ultimately, what’s the point of homework if students aren’t learning!?!?

[@myles6235]

For decades students with privilege have had chatgpt in their home. I know dozens of students whose parents/siblings/cousins/friends did their homework for them. Obviously that opportunity only exists for people who are connected to smart people with lots of free time. Suddenly it's a problem when the less fortunate have the same opportunity.

[@thomaslai1381]

Such an interesting take, from a teacher no less! I take it you are someone from the cultural West? Possibly even North America? Because as someone who was in the Taiwanese educational system until grade three, let it be known that in East Asia, there is ABSOLUTELY NO CHANCE of a teacher even conceiving of the notion of NOT assigning homework, even less of parents deriding it as a useless waste of time and actively discouraging their children from doing it, quite the opposite! While I certainly don’t question the validity of your conclusions about the efficacy of homework in your teaching environment (indeed, I rather think you’ve demonstrated a commendable degree of adaptive pragmatism where others would have griped about “the good old days”), it sounds like the cultural context you’re teaching in has simply stopped valuing learning outside of classroom contexts, and I think that’s quite problematic because even without homework, a lot of learning still has to happen outside of the classroom. If your students aren’t even doing (let alone encouraged to do) homework, I can only imagine that they’re also not studying, since homework was already too much of a hassle/waste of time. It seems to me then that these students are going to grow up unaware of the effort they need to put into learning outside of class, and that they’re in for a rude awakening once they reach university, where they’ll not only be required to study, but turn in assignments as well; I know from personal experience that universities have not budged on the question of homework, and likely will not. I’d be very interested to know your thoughts on my reservations of the no-homework learning style as it relates to post-secondary education, @STEAMerBear.

[@myles6235]

@@thomaslai1381 I don't do homework at all in university. Most I do is read and study.

[@thomaslai1381]

@@myles6235 I stand slightly corrected then, may I ask where you studied/are currently studying? Because I definitely had homework (mainly essays and presentations) at the Universities of Alberta and Aberdeen.

[@myles6235]

@@thomaslai1381 The "homework" the video is referring to is busy work. It's problem sets, graded reading questions, etc. Daily graded assignments that are designed to keep students busy rather than teach them anything. Essays and presentations aren't homework. The are large assignments that you work on over the course of many class periods. It gives students the opportunity to engage with the teacher and ask questions and get help. In the east, the homework is used more as a measure of dedication. School systems are trying to find the students who put in the most effort. I study at Willamette University and I find my classes are far more interested in how I argue in class, how I present my knowledge than the absolute amount of it. Regarding AI, I think as the world continues to automate the education system should have less of an emphasis on raw knowledge and more of an emphasis on ideas and creativity. Knowledge will become more and more accessible so I find the need for homework less and less important.

[@Devilishelise]

Honestly I’ve been avoiding using chatgpt because it really feels like cheating, but because schools require good grades, it’s hard to see my own work being worse than an AIs. Like I spend hours on an assignment and get a subpar grade while all it takes is three sentences on Chatgpt to create a perfect essay. I do like that the point of schools is to learn, but it really doesn’t feel like it when my whole future is practically dictated by what percentage I get. With the introduction of AI, I hope the education system can reevaluate the difference between promoting one’s learning or placing importance on the mark teachers slap on.

[@andrewscruggs5906]

It doesn't write a perfect essay

[@pritapp788]

It's time to bring back classwork, quite simply. But the first ones who abhor and oppose it are... teachers themselves. Because they love a good old status quo that allows them to "set and forget" homework with minimum responsibility for themselves.

[@Livetoeat171]

It doesn't, just, "feel like cheating", it IS CHEATING!

[@LewisWin]

​@@Livetoeat171What constitutes 'cheating'? In that case the internet would be cheating too since your not the one who looked through pages and pages of books to find the answer , instead it's at the click of a button written by another person on the internet

[@Livetoeat171]

@@LewisWin that's right, It is cheating if you plagerize what is on Google. When all students had were encyclopedias, they could look up something, but they couldn't use it word by word.

[@sarakajira]

Millenial here. I remember going through elementary through highschool, and that was when graphing calculators just started being a thing. Learning cursive was still mandatory when I was in elementary school. And I remember going through math classes, and struggling at certain things, and wondering: "Why the heck can't I just use a calculator for this?" And I remember asking my teachers that: and they were like: "Well, what if you don't have a calculator on you? What are you going to do then?" And of course, we all now carry a calculator with us everywhere we go. Our smartphones are basically a brain prosthetic that we always have with us. Same with cursive: I knew back then that typing was a much more important skill. But I still had to learn cursive. I still know it, and my cursive looks beautiful, but the only time I ever use it is for decorating holiday handmade cards as a kind of artistic calligraphy. It's pretty: and I think it'd be a fun art elective for people to learn: but has absolutely no daily utility for me. And like, I think we need to recognize that just like we all have smartphones with us, and we all use GPS: that some ways of doing things (like typed homework assignments) are just kind of obsolete. And good riddance! I hated homework assignments. I always hated the idea that I needed to keep doing schoolwork even when I wasn't at school. It took away from time with my family, time with friends, time to relax: and just kind of trains kids into a mindset of thinking that "work never ends even when you go home", which I don't think is a healthy relationship with a work-life balance. The reality is: technology is going to make a lot of human labor kind of obsolete. And people will probably end up with a lot more free time as a result: and I say good! People should have more time to relax, and enjoy life.

[@andreadag]

yes, but we don't want to become COMPLETELY reliant on tech. I agree with a lot of the stuff you are saying (like learning cursive & homework). We should learn the basics, & then get to decide if we WANT & NEED to know this stuff for the life & career we plan to have (I feel like math should teach up to negative numbers, then stop. Reading is just the same skills OVER & OVER AGAIN. It's so freaking boring.)

[@Frostbiker]

Over the past hundred years or so when technology has made certain forms of labor obsolete the result has not been more free time, but rather unemployment and lower salaries.

[@napoleonbonerfart278]

Are you sure you're a millennial? I was born in '81 and graphing calculators were already a thing when I was in middle school...

[@katandra8819]

AI is definitely NOT a good thing. You mentioned that people will now have time to relax when it’s actually replacing people’s jobs that they need to live. Retail jobs, accountancy, receptionists are all being replaced, leading to an even smaller job market and further unemployment.

[@onemorechris]

100% even back then school was broken. the ‘you’ll never have a calculator all the time’ was really saying ‘i have the power, the system isn’t changing, do as you are told’. from my vantage point as an adult, those of us who figured out how to unlearn basically everything we were told before the age of 16 were successful

[@ninojamestan8895]

The reason why I was an advocate about AI is not because I can get better grades with less effort but to let the educators show that the education paradigm needs to change. From "we should have knowledge" to "how should we utilize information", instead of battling with AI, use them as a tool.

[@felixftw4702]

"AI can do your homework. Now what?" i graduated high school in 2018 and I used online calculators for my homework. i just made sure i understood the process so i wouldn't do poorly on tests if you want to let AI do all of your homework, there's really nobody that can stop you. but your failing grade on the finals might get you held back

[@sir_albaxious1909]

Agreed, my friend 👍

[@RRM693]

U can use AI to get a perfect score, but are u really learning anything

[@borgwardd24]

Great point. Always way easier to cheat on homework than on tests. ChatGPT hasn't changed that.

[@Faroesx]

They don’t really hold people back in the USA anymore. They’d rather pass you and let you fail your way though.

[@SpottinPlanesForLife]

​@RRM693 yes you are I do it all the time

[@DawnBurn]

One of the better takes on this that I've seen. I have a wife in college who is having to compete against other students using Chatbots, and professors who are doing weird things to try to avoid having AI work turned in. She's 40+, so an older student, but super frustrating. And I have a child coming up through who will be tempted by this. And I do think a lot is on the focus for grades. Grades mean that students DO NOT view learning as the goal. The goal is to get a good grade. And teachers are themselves judged on how their students do and a test is the easiest way to 'judge' 30 students quickly and frequently.

[@nuclearsimian3281]

The point of the American education system has never been to create intelligent and well knowledgable graduates, it has only ever been to create more peons to throw into factories to keep enriching the owner class. That's why homework exists, and why school is the same length as most full time workdays, and starts at 0800 on the dot in most cases. Its to train the kid to be up at the asscrack of dawn, to go to their factory or office, and to go home with an armful of binders to finish. School is there to break curiosity and to break the spirit of individuals to make them obedient little lever-pullers that don't object to the status quo.

[@cariwaldick4898]

@@nuclearsimian3281 I don't think this is the intention.....but it IS the result.

[@null_pointer_deref]

​@@cariwaldick4898 Huh, I think it's a little bit of both. The elites are always pleased when the masses don't think critically, so there's that...

[@selohcin]

@@cariwaldick4898 It definitely was the intention. Rockefeller specifically demanded this setup when he bankrolled the creation of the modern school system back in the 1800s. The goal was to create people who were smart enough to do a job, compliant enough to never question orders and rules, and disciplined enough to show up on time to work every day. That was literally the whole point of the schools and has been ever since.

[@lemminjuice]

@@nuclearsimian3281 i completely agree with your take, but the less conspiracy version on this is that education system is the way by which we prepare kids for the workforce in an economic system (both education and capitalism are broken). Also school is the same length of workdays because the kids aint gonna pick themselves up from school, schools are essentially giant free daycare. You're also right about the factories thing, one of the early models for schools was called the factory model

[@TheGoldenboyo]

When I was in high school back in 1999, I was an average student but one day I submitted an English poem and surprisingly got top grade in the class. However, the teacher openly joked about the result and even wrote on the paper "Amazing poem. If it was genuinely your work then it would have been even better." He just did not believe I could do something like that. That was almost 25 years ago before internet got started. Forget about the cheaters, I can't even imagine how hard it will be nowadays for students who actually have worked hard and submit work honestly. Suspicion will rule the classrooms

[@alimiller6589]

I submitted a paper written by AI because I was failing the class and didn’t understand the assignment. It was not detected and I got an 89. It was a philosophy essay, it saved me from failing the class! Other than that I use it to simplify and explain things, and give me ideas to get my mind rolling. Apparently grammarly is too AI for some schools tho? Glad mine isn’t like that lol

[@alexmariethegreat]

It’s not just that we create an environment in which students feel like they’re there to be evaluated though. We take that even further and reinforce it once we’ve graduated both high school and college. Our scores are really what gives us an upper hand in our next endeavor. Or even just determines if we pass or fail regardless of how much we learned along the way. If you fail the whole semesters assignments and then ace the final exams or improve at the end generally because you’ve learned throughout the semester, your grades still suffer overall. The process hasn’t really cared if we actually learned anything or not for some time now. It’s not really about AI or chatGPT it’s about the underlying culture around what students are taught matters most. Grades. Scores. GPA’s. Being top of class. Etc.

[@rylvn3058]

this is honestly the best explanation. learning does not feel rewarding as your overall grade is what matters, not if you suffer early and improve later.

[@edwardb4730]

I was kind of yelling similar sentiments at the video the entire time I was watching it.

[@malloryharrison1350]

This is exactly how I felt in school. I wholly echo these sentiments, thank you for sharing!! AI didn't cause these problems, if anything, it's highlighting the pre-existing short-comings in how the U.S.A. does education.

[@adammasterx5854]

100% agree with you on this, the education system values grades and scores above actually learning well

[@gayakola3]

True. I can explain concepts with more clarity from the engineering classes I failed and had to retake.

[@Ashley-xu1lk]

Grades don't monitor the learning, it's more of a monitor of how much we memorized in the short term to pass the class. Students do need to learn that struggling is okay and part of the learning process, but students also needs the support to get past that struggle. When you have teachers and professors that are simply not good at teaching, at passing down information to someone first learning it, the struggle for the students turns into desperation to pass the class and that leads to cheating. I felt that hard at 4 year university and used Chegg and Slate so much. I tried to use the step-by-step solutions as a learning opportunity to understand how to get from A to D, but at some point you have to get to your next class, move on to the next homework, or turn in the assignment before the deadline passes. School is made too hard to learn.

[@user-lj5wy9hz2y]

It's not that teachers are bad at teaching; most teachers want to teach totally differently. The education systems of most countries are designed to categorise and numberically label student data. Teachers are not responsible for the structure of the education system - in fact, most teachers push back against it. If teachers were allowed to restructure education the way we KNOW it could work better, the world and schools would be entirely different experience.

[@SFgamer]

Most people just use it for grammar help, brainstorming, paper structure, etc. no one really just types stuff into an AI and copy and pastes it - thats a recipe for disaster. Use it for things you struggle with when writing and it becomes a tool to help you get better at writing

[@mitwy]

As a software engineer, I decided to switch frameworks and languages. I would first use AI as much as possible, trying to find answers, and through time and iteration, I got faster at doing it by myself. Now, I use AI to improve what I've already done, get a different perspective, or explain new concepts. I would probably have had the same path with a search engine; it just would have been slower.

[@boodrift]

15:29 As a current 11th grader, I found this particularly interesting because the "bad way" (i.e. using AI chatbots to rewrite words to sound perfect) is what my school district has offered & *even pressured* students to use through AI grammar checkers like Grammarly for at least 5 years already. This created problems for me last year, when AI procedures began to be implemented into classrooms. I had submitted an original essay to one of my teachers that I only ran through grammar checkers such as Grammarly, and I received a bit of a frightening email from my teacher saying that I had cheated on my essay using AI. Well, you can expect students to be using AI when they've been using AI for 5 years already! btw, no hate to the teacher, he has been one of my favorite teachers of all time.

[@SFgamer]

The ai detecters aren't always accurate.

[@koko-soko561]

I like that you used a calculator as an analogy. We use them after like seven years of ensuring that students know arithmetic. High school and middle school students do not come pre-installed with composition skills. They need to be taught and learned and not cut away. This is the problem.

[@Charlie-gf4mv]

Completely agree, my uni is letting us use AI tools for coursework (while citing it). We are all capable of writing up an experiment but ChatGPT is simply saving us time. Letting a high school student use ChatGPT to do their first write up is completely different.

[@Drkbowers1]

@@Charlie-gf4mv Yeah this is where I'm conflicted and have my own biases on chatgpt. I was interested in lots of subjects to build my own motivation for learning, but I kind of hated writing. I was good in most subjects but writing I was just alright, and it never really clicked for me how to improve it. I would have loved ChatGPT. Maybe while I was in college it would have been alright. I mean my actual career path has very little importance on writing pages of words. If I had it in highschool however it probably would have been damaging to my already average writing.

[@guitarem100]

At high school, make a shared google doc that they have to type in and cannot copy and paste large boxes of text. Then you can see their log to see when they typed at what time

[@koko-soko561]

@@guitarem100 I don't have a problem with this personally. If you know the kid and know what they're capable of, it's incredibly obvious when they're cheating. Teachers make such a big fuss about this stuff that I wonder how well they even feel the pulse of their class.

[@brenomanhaes9322]

@@guitarem100kids will still use chat gpt in their phones and then copy type the ai generated text. There is no workaround based on restricting use, there needs to be a reformulation of the education system.

[@verify5610]

I think this problem has a really simple solution actually - drastically reduce the amount of homework given outside of class and optimize class time to cover topics that have already been introduced to the student (by readings or completion-based assignments) and have them mostly do assignments during class time. I think we've already seen the pretty significant downsides of homework and how they (in my opinion) give children an unreasonable amount of work to complete. If we apply the university model to most classrooms, which consists of learning content outside of class and clarifying that content in class, as well as in-person exams, this will drastically reduce AI use for homework. I don't think we should fully restrict AI, but it's too easy to overly rely on it and end up learning nothing at all. As a current college student, I have never used an AI chatbot to do assignments for me, and I never will. With AI we are seeing more and more value given to people who can truly problem solve and synthesize new ideas, which excessive AI use just kills.

[@jacobnoelle8428]

A.I make it impossible to keep using this homework heavy schedule.

[@captainrico4948]

I had a professor who said to learn, you had to “struggle through the homework”. His tests were also some of the hardest I had in undergrad. But he was one of my favorite professors at the end because I learned a lot in his courses. Struggle is important for learning.

[@SFgamer]

Agreed. Struggling is one thing. We also resources to help (e.i online, staff-faculty, *nootropics*, tutoring, AI, natural learning ability, external intervention (divine guidance, if asked), etc)

[@bearilliantbear1769]

I tried chatgbt once just to see what it could do. I think it could be useful for inspiration and help with finding errors, but like most AI I find it better as a support rather than a replacement for myself, no matter how clear or human or accurate it may seem.

[@etta5487]

I'm a university student and I use ChatGPT but I use it kind of like a study buddy. I'm in science, so most of my assignments don't require a ton of creative writing, but instead focus on facts. I'll input scientific papers and have it summarize, and ask it questions to help me understand. But I am also well aware it gets a lot wrong, or misses important context, so cross checking everything is important. It's more like working with a friend who has similar knowledge to you than it is like using an all-knowing calculator.

[@theyxaj]

I've found that this is one of the best use-cases of ChatGPT for me personally. I like to use it as a partner that I can talk through ideas with and get feedback from, without expecting it to be accurate or even good all the time. I also like using it to help me gain motivation. Having "someone" to talk through why I don't want to do something while knowing that these thoughts I'm sharing won't affect my relationships can really help.

[@felixvarghese2307]

Same here. I am able to study more obscure stuff. This really can bring down barriers for kids who cannot afford proper tutors.

[@moonasha]

this is the correct way to use it. I'm not in college anymore but I still learn, recently learned russian and I'm always learning new things while coding, and it's invaluable for when you actually WANT to learn. It will rephrase things so maybe it clicks with you better, you can give an example or metaphor of a concept it's trying to explain, and it will explain whether you understand the concept or not, and so on. It's like having a free tutor always on call. I guess just like any other tool it can be used for good or bad...

[@greenbubbleboy5673]

Im a college student. For my classes i cant really use chatgpt to cheat. But i have used it to explain complex topics. I love it. I can ask followup questions. Its like a private tutor who is always available. I also think students will cheat one way or another. I get that this makes it easier. However, my thought is if you cheat then it will come back to haunt you later. Whether thats on a test or in the workplace. And if it doesn't come back to haunt you then it was useless information

[@montypylon4618]

I've tried to ask him some organic Chemestry questions and ChatGPT struggles a lot in scientific subjects honestly...

[@mymydigitaldiary]

Generative AI like chat gpt has honestly depressed me for a while (I’m currently a college student). Every now and then I remember that my future career may look completely different by the time i actually enter the workforce, and my 4+ years of studying will be pointless. I also hate that chat gpt gives people the option to “be creative” without doing any of the work. Using it as a tool to critique your writing or give feedback is one thing, but to allow it to MAKE your “ideas” for you entails literally no work on your part. No one has to be original or creative anymore, chat gpt has that covered. Makes me sad.

[@edwardbrito4010]

No AI isn’t creative harness that route memorization I ignored is useless now dates, names, grammar.

[@mstmompj]

Your 4+ years of studying will hopefully teach you skills in information literacy, critical thinking, and the ability to learn how to learn. Yes, the world will change in the future, but if you have those skills, you'll be able to keep up. But your peers who outsource their thinking to ChatGPT, who are uncritical about its output, and who treat higher education as a degree mill rather than an opportunity to learn and grow *will* be left behind. They may get through their degree program okay, but they won't have a foundation to build on for the future. And who knows what the future will bring. Good luck to you!

[@volcandymackson3088]

There will also be people who use AI to augment their creativity to create better stuff than they could otherwise. People on the other hand who have to use AI to create everything for them were never going to create anything interesting on their own anyway. I don't think AI is a bad thing when it comes to creativity.

[@chelseafisher6881]

Ai is not creative, it’s generative but it lacks human creativity. A lot of human creativity is about going on learning journeys where we are genuinely involved and invested in figuring something out or figuring out how to do something, ai can be a tool but it can be a human for you.

[@manumyon7999]

14:30 “You do not become a better writer by just editing other people’s work. You do it through the struggle.” 💯 The struggle I had as a student many years ago, the amount of work needed to construct a high-quality piece of work was phenomenal. Students these days don’t know how lucky they are to have ChatGPT which can summarise and explain in any way that you want.

[@Jake-lc1lh]

The morale of the story is: People learn by struggling, and AI is dangerous because it can help you skip all of the hard problem-solving that helps your brain learn. Ultimately, it is up to the student to regulate themselves to avoid taking the easy routes that skip learning.

[@edwardwetzel4578]

It’s the same as spell checking and auto correct. All some kind of AI

[@ovum]

Except when the education system really puts emphasis on scores (looking at you, Korea and Mainland China)....

[@oksowhat]

for i am now doing all my codes from chat gpt learning nothing, and i cant just leave it, fml

[@sir_albaxious1909]

EXACTLY!

[@ovum]

You currently learn nothing because you haven't challenged the code it puts out for you. The fact that it can still hallucinate requires you to have a closer look. It only took away the burden/drudgery of typing it all in and the chances of missing a semicolon or some other syntax@@oksowhat

[@composinggloves]

I teach college classes in music theory and a few other subjects. My class has always been easy to google answers for. So I lead with composition and active demonstration rather than a strong lecture based system using similar strategies like the stuff you had at the end of the video, except I generally give more detailed answers and info before harder questions come up otherwise its just more frustrating than anything. Students learn to respect these small lectures because they know after it will be all on them. Students come to the board and answer questions, sometimes in groups sometimes by themselves and they are expected to be able to explain what they are doing. If they get stuck they can call on someone to help. Im a last resort and if i have to get involved it means the entire class has a fundamental misunderstanding and i need to adjust my teaching. I have found massive success with it. I catch students who dont get it that i used to miss before. Now what stands out more than ever to me is students who dont care vs those who do. It removes google and ai from being a problem, if they wanna use it go ahead. When your at the board we will find out what you really learned.

[@hassanbeydoun2460]

Thank you for doing that. I appreciate teachers that actually get into the details, not just saying a speech.

[@Game_Hero]

What will you do when the IA do composition the way it does text today?

[@composinggloves]

@Game_Hero we do the composition in class. When HW is turned in, I ask questions and want details. If they can't answer, then they don't grasp concepts well enough for the homework to really have done its job, and they usually get a new assignment. If I really want honest info, I can always just make a similar assignment and have them do it at the board. This process is what detemines how fast and far the class goes. If they can do it, then i dont care if they used AI. I run into this often when people take a piece and plagiarize it so AI will just be an extension of it. My class is basics focused, composition isn't a major focus it's more of a fun way to learn the topic, but if I had to grade on personal composition I would probably set apart time in class to have them compose if I really wanted to be sure it was genuine.

[@gemmeldrakes2758]

We had to go to the board and work out maths problems when I was a child, way back in the 90's. It seems that sometimes Low -tech solves the problems that Hi-tech creates.

[@gmenezesdea]

Reminds me of when I took Latin in college. We were fully allowed to check our grammar and textbooks during tests. The point of the class wasn't to make us fluent in Latin with all its rules and cases, but to give us enough familiarity to navigate Latin classics. During the tests it was easy to tell those who weren't applying themselves as they didn't even know where to look when going through the grammar book.

[@Eastwood991]

I loved the format of this video and also the way you handled the topic. Great job!

[@petalsofwisteria]

I’m a bit puzzles by this bc when I was in high school. Our draft was graded as well, from the thesis, to the peer editing and the notes we took. It was a minor part of the final grade for finished draft. So it surprised me that people were turning in essay from chatGPT. Currently in college, my rhetoric class also have a similar element of grading our work in progress. Admittedly, the only time I tried chatGPT, I had it make love letters from famous book characters to one another. It was really neat but after reading a few times I could see it followed a pattern. And all of the love was very sophisticated sounding.

[@CharlieCapp]

I think it's really difficult to incentivize students to learn in the current system we have. It's hard to learn in a high risk environment where your grades can be a benefactor of where you go to college. When so many students are convinced that a competitive/selective college will offer better education and future work, it puts pressure on them to do well and places a lot of fear on failing and getting things wrong. If there is less pressure to get good grades (or if "grades" were not even implemented) then there will be a greater incentive to learn.

[@ShieldToad-mk2rp]

I don't think so, I enjoyed learning, but just my own wish to learn isn't that strong. I know I revised more when I had exams coming up. Also an evaluation of how good you are in a subject is needed at some step along the way for Employers and Colleges. What you're saying seems to be more about stress surrounding grades. Which is just normal

[@cosmiclightbulb7056]

This is one of the best videos I've seen from Vox. Thank you for this. I will be sharing this with a lot of people. As a middle schooler visual arts educator, the biggest problems I face are convincing my students that they are capable, to try, and to rely on their own imaginations and creative processes to create work, rather than immediately turning to technology to solve their problems. Technology is a wonderful tool and I use it all the time, but I refuse to let it make all the decisions for me. My students really struggle to believe in their own ability and agency. They just want someone else to tell them what to do and how to do it. The bit in the video that mentions being responsible with AI like ChatGPT is the key. Are any of us responsible enough with the massive amounts of tech at our fingertips? I believe each and every one of my students is capable of learning and making good decisions, but the trick is getting them to believe it too. What content I teach them always comes a far second to that.

[@pritapp788]

Or maybe, set tasks that are not a complete waste of time. My father is a teacher and I remember him boring the brains out of me with his repetitive, stock-standard essays EVERY SINGLE WEEK of the year for 2 years. If I had ChatGPT today I would let it write the outline of my essay and then just complete it with my own words.

[@kofiababio1870]

Drink responsibly 😉

[@markusfjellheim1367]

I usually use chatGPT to learn, it is not perfect and does hallucinate. The ability to learn something and then ask chatGPT to ask questions is really great. I feel I learn a lot more nowadays with the help of chatGPT than before, but then again according to this video how I feel is the best way of learning might not be the best metric

[@Herkulesperkules]

I also learn a lot more with the help of chatgpt, it never gets tired or angry about my relentless amount of questions. It has allowed me to do some of my passion projects in programming I thought would be so insanely complex that would require asking so many questions from so many people and places. I like to think chatGPT as a librarian, it might not know everything and sometimes gets some facts wrong, but it can point me to the correct direction.

[@kittykittybangbang9367]

​@@HerkulesperkulesI like to think of ChatGPT as a more advanced Google search

[@SamClark-zl6nf]

Here is my take as a recent grad from a graduate stats program. GPT plus could 100% do all of my homework and exams for me. But, I paid $3,000 for the course so I thought I might as well learn the actual material I'm paying to learn. I used GPT plus as a processing tool. I would upload my entire lecture, ask it to summarize the ideas, then I would would use it's talk feature on my phone to speak out loud what I thought the concepts were that I was learning. I used it as a way to think out different problems and almost as though I had someone who was an expert to guide me along in that processing of the information. It's all in how you use this tool and I think this is what educators should be teaching students how to do.

[@jb_19]

Homework is the equivalent of unpaid overtime. Keep work and home separate. Expecting kids to go to school for 8 hours then go home and study for 4 more hours is unreasonable when adults are only expected to work 8 hours a day. If students are going to be required to learn at home, shorten their time in class.

[@vertexvortex5]

Homework is exhausting 😂

[@richardli6130]

I disagree slightly. I think homework should be optional. Guidance should be provided on how to get ahead at school by doing extra, but if students don't want to do it, they don't have to.

[@SnewpTD]

Say it louder for the people in the back!

[@fhujf]

Adults absolutely are expected to study after work, at least if they want to progress and have a career, rather than just a job.

[@Andrew_Passantino_1]

@@fhujf 8 hours a day is plenty enough. If studying after work is required, than that is just work and I should be paid for that lol

[@MCamposOcampo]

I'm a Literature professor at the University of Costa Rica. At the end of the first semester of 2023, I became weirdly famous (I was even interviewed by CNN) for detecting a few papers in which my students used ChatGPT: since they were supposed to read some literary texts, relate them to the theory we saw in class and produce their own ideas, I rejected their work and asked the to do it again by hand. Anyway, I received a lot of hate on Instagram and TikTok, from people who even adviced how to cheat using AI. Anyway, I think your piece is AWESOME and I will share it everywhere I can, and I'm going to use it in my classes, but I am going to download the subtitles and translate them to spanish, for not allof my students speak english. I really hope you upload translations of the subtitles because this is the best piece I have found about IA, in terms of clarity, honesty, criticism, objectivity, possibilities, and more. Great work.

[@PBlueturtle]

Such an interesting video with so many interesting questions. Thank you for asking them and creating further dialogue.

[@colinbakker4085]

Not an issue. Students cheated on take home assignments before AI. Now it applies to writing focused classes as well. They will simply weight take home assignments less than in person exams just like how it is in a math class.

[@Bogfrog1]

Chat GPT came at my freshman year of highschool and I was so jealous of the high schoolers. My business writing professor said this about it: “whether you like it or not, the business environment is using this software. This is a tool and like all tools there’s a correct way to use it. Make sure I can’t tell you’re using it wrong.” I wonder if in the future it’ll be impossible to know if it was used.

[@pscar1]

At the written level, no. At the person level, I feel it will be obvious since they may or may not be able to answer questions on the topic.

[@heindijs]

Went back to college after working for a couple of years and I notice everyone including teachers having a ChatGPT tab open. But some just use it wrong. I use it as a substitute teacher. Instead of ChatGPT doing all my work, I let ChatGPT (or Bard) explain problems I'm having in a way a teacher would. It really has helped me understand stuff a lot better than just copying everything and asking again when it doesn't work.

[@AmandaVieiraMamaesouCult]

Same. I make Chat GPT explain me difficult concepts like I'm 5

[@anacharsiss6003]

AI can be used to amazing effect for making mind maps and practice tests. It saves time allowing for more repetition for mindless memorization while saving time for comprehension.

[@0479]

Another great video, Vox! Not only is the topic interesting, but the walking bubble is also inspiring.

[@luneta3081]

This reminds me of how underrated problem based learning is. I feel like we should revisit and introduce this concept more in our schools. No Chatbot would be enough to get through a classroom set like that. Active learning requires training for it to work effectively

[@hcyt915]

Eh you’d be surprised. While it still requires a human to guide it, you could probably rely on the chatbot to do most of the heavy lifting.

[@salemsaberhagan]

And that means training teachers in the first place

[@JCW7100]

​@@hcyt915It depends on how it's implemented. You're probably imagining taking the problems home for homework. If you have to do them in front of the teacher "live", that's different

[@hcyt915]

@@JCW7100 Yeah. That would definitely help. Although thinking about my classrooms with 38 kids (and some teachers are in districts with even higher max limits), it can be pretty hard to monitor all students all the time. But honestly, I'm the teacher who leans more towards students being taught how to use these tools responsibly and effectively anyway. I think my main point is that I could definitely see LLMs being extremely useful in completing PBL-type assignments, projects, and classwork. My objection was against the claim that "No Chatbot would be enough to get through a classroom set like that." I disagree. As a teacher and as someone who works on a variety of projects in and outside of school (work), I think LLMs can definitely help students and people in general tackle PBL-type tasks.

[@Ehem_Ai]

I think the most important lesson from this is that concept of "desirable difficulties". The challenges and the difficulties are the actual tutors in all fields of life. Removing them while still getting all As is to not learn.

[@242proPRODUCTUONS]

As a postgraduate student I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. As a disclaimer I haven't used any AI to do any work not even idea conception. My opinion is that it's okay for anything other than university work. When you get to University level, the synthesis of information is critial and learning how to do that is a big step up from previous education. With AI, students will not learn how to synthesise information on their own so when they encounter events where they need to and can't use an AI then they are going to be stuck or come up with an incorrect report. This would be horrible in areas such as the medical field or when writing a report about protected species in an area.

[@geoffreydowdle5751]

As an educator, I have WAY more conversations about what my students deliver to me. It quickly becomes apparent who leaned on the internet a little too much. If I don't have enough time, I use Flip where the students record a minute video about what they learned. I also do many more projects that aren't so defined or written. Last thing I'll usually do is put my instructions into a bot to see what it spits out to have an idea of what they might find. The point is for me that educators now have to do a bit more work for meaningful engagement. For all the overtime I'm doing, thank goodness the financial compensation is fabulous ... Oh wait lol. At least the work isn't for anything too important ... Shoot, something isn't adding up here. Oh well, I love my work too much to leave so the decision makers will call my buff until they realize that they could probably pay me in potatoes

[@Kkubey]

It is not very different from having your parents or siblings do your homework that has always been possible. If you want the kids to truely learn from it, let them do it right there.

[@Cukito4]

What does truely mean?

[@bruh-dq8sx]

No literally no point in homework if the child forgets by the time they are done

[@Cukito4]

@@bruh-dq8sx What does No literally no mean?

[@Faroesx]

Exactly! Homework is pointless and does not help anybody learn.

[@aenetanthony]

@@Cukito4 Truly (“truely”) is similar to “actually” or “genuinely”, here it’s used to contrast actual learning and the appearance of learning without actually retaining the information. “No literally” is a slang expression of agreement, then the second “no” is being used normally in “no point” and should be separated by a comma from “No literally” to reduce confusion.

[@FranticGuitar88]

I wish I had this tool when I was a student. 90% of school was about hard memorizing things I never ever used in my life and I never will. I could have used this time and energy to learn things I was actually interested in and become much more valuable in professional life. I really hope that over time the AI will force a positive change in education system.

[@treasuretshabalala132]

A.I freed me! I'm still a student and yes I now have time to learn actually useful skills as I prep for adulthood such as taking courses in financial literacy, personal development and philosophy. It's not perfect, but it works great so far and it's taught me that wasting my time in schoolwork just isn't worth it anymore.

[@alan-daniel]

It's been ~10 years since I was in school, but a lot of the classes that have stuck with me to this day are those that embraced the internet and textbooks. And some of the most difficult exams I ever took had an "open-anything" policy during the exam: internet, textbook, notes, anything other than explicitly asking someone else for an answer (granted, these were mostly science or math-related, not just essay writing). Obviously this was pre-generative AI, but I think the ideas behind that educational strategy would still work. I'm glad I never had to deal with the "oh just ask ChatGPT" temptation. I'd like to think I would have stayed away from inappropriately using it, but who knows?

[@juansinaga6470]

I love the little subtle message at the end. really enforcing that 'Desirable Difficulties'.

[@deetlebee]

I work in business and I’m tempted to send this to our C-suite who don’t yet seem to understand the risks, dangers, and opportunities that generative text learning models provide. Half of them don’t seem to realize that it just guesses next word, and has no fact checking.

[@VulpeculaJoy]

If only they would ask ChatGPT if it is safe to use ChatGPT, since their own critical thinking seems to already have left the chat.

[@user-sf9gs2pg1b]

Idk if ChatGPT 4 is different, but now it can search on the web and for math it does a better job at calculating real answers. Whereas before it would guess the answers based off of databases, now it actually uses Python to perform math. It still is imperfect of course. I have used it for real world things, like when I can’t remember the name of a book, but I mostly use it for math.

[@wiseyoutube2078]

I think frequent in-class paper exams is a good idea to check comprehension. Each lesson should have these analog tests of comprehension. And these should count for the largest portion of the grade with homework basically being fizzled out.

[@lastgen2615]

Yeah. Homework is an oxymoron anyway

[@kahoutek15]

If the path is what matters and not the product, why grade me on the product? The education system is flawed. If the A is what matters, then it’s hard to stop me from using AI.

[@nords8691]

Personally, I’m using chat gpt for studying, I can ask the AI to ask me questions on certain subject, I can ask if I forget some points, wich lectures or books can be interesting to read more etc.. Chat gpt can be a really complementary tool to learn

[@kevinmanan1304]

Our school system is dated. Literally students graduate and can’t find a job because AI/computer/automation replaced the skills school teach. I’ve never had to write a 8 page book report after school. It’s honestly daycare for teens.

[@pedror.4617]

"Struggling is OK"; "Is not about getting the right answer" (14:30) but then you realize that we were never measured by effort but by result. Now that the students can get results (with assistance) suddenly the effort was always the point, that it was about the journey all a long. The way people are penalized by not learning correctly its the whole point.

[@stvltiloqvent]

Ever heard of "show your work" type of math questions? Yeah, assignments that are graded according to the effort shown as opposed to the student's ability to arriving at the absolutely most correct answers do exist. The issue is that currently, majority of assessed assignments tend to neglect the "show your work" part of the equation, but it's not impossible to shift the focus to more of grading and rewarding students according to the effort spent on "struggling " and trying to learn.

[@sulitjc5yearsago421]

I love these types of title for a video. straight to the point, no all caps

[@jakhongirazimov4952]

What a brilliant video! Thank you! I will have to show it to my students.

[@iqbal55]

Thank you Joss for shedding light on this topic! As a parent to a 4 year old kid, I am both excited and nervous thinking about the evolution of Ai in the next 10 years and what that will mean for my kid once she grows up to be homework age. I think as parents it will also be our responsibility to sit down with our kids and guide them through this... Not to ban them from using chatgpt outright, but to help them decide pros and cons of using chatgpt for in certain cases

[@edendoesstuff]

i really love the art direction in this specific video - the projections behind joss are really nice

[@unaquetzadilla]

Joss is the key mind behind lot of Vox videos! It's really nice to her leading this one as the presenter! She rocked the topic.

[@MatthewNelson12]

This is an excellent summary of a lot of issues that revolve around AI and education. Thank you for creating this! 👍😁

[@alXmarkW]

Very important conversation. Thank you for providing a lot of angles and perspectives as well as some insight into how we can use this technology successfully with our learning and development. Great scope

[@desmond-hawkins]

Great video! On the topic of essays, I read about teachers who use online editors that shows a document's *editing history* as a requirement for writing the essay itself (like Google Docs). It let them see how students gradually grew the essay from a blank page, and that could also give them more information about their thought process and the way they reached the final version compared to simply a submitted copy. It still let students get ideas from a chatbot if they want to, but pasting the whole essay into the doc would not be allowed for essay assignments.

[@harmanbaidwan1713]

There's a way to work around that. The student could print the ChatGPT output and manually type it up themselves. To show the "thinking" process, they could ask ChatGPT to make a list of bullet points for the essay. There is NO work-around to stop students from using AI. The only thing that needs to change is the approach of the school system in teaching kids.

[@stormcrow1685]

This is a good temporary solution, but it's easy to work around by manually typing your essay over a period of time and getting rid of the bloated ChatGPT words as part of the "editing process". The better solution is to move forward with in-class essays and discussions to actually test your critical thinking skills. I also wish more schools required teacher comments in addition to grades.

[@__nog642]

@@harmanbaidwan1713That's a lot more work than copy paste though. Makes it less worth it.

[@harmanbaidwan1713]

Well that is the lengths most students are willing to take to ensure they get good grades; because that is what the education system is built around. @@__nog642

[@haxwell901]

This is what happens when all that matters is whether you pass or not. The education system doesn't care whether you've understood the material and actually learned anything; all that matters is that you get their questions right. There's no need to understand anything, just memorize a bunch of answers. There's no need to know why that is the answer, just know that's how it is answered. It feels like we are there at school to know how to answer exam questions, nothing more. And this is what brings the problem: people are not looking for knowledge to understand; they are just looking for answers to memorize

[@chadmarkley]

Outstanding reporting and what a great segment. This is literally what I am working through with my own kids and their homework, etc. AI is here to stay. Lets teach them how to best use it as a tool

[@advaitvagupta3180]

Usually I don't stay too long listening to all these responses but these cartoonish embedding held me.I like the way you presented various views. Keep up 👍

[@BlackCeII]

Throughout my life, I've always been surprised by how often people cheat and who. In High school, people cheated all the time, in the military people cheated on exams and training, and university, at a prestigious world class research Institution, a lot of people were shirking their studying and cheating

[@salemsaberhagan]

One classmate of mine, way back early in ye olde lockdown times, actually had the guts to take a photo of an online test question & ask everyone in a group chat what the answer was because it was a relatively easy paper & everyone else got done early. One of us even commented about the answer to it being confusing before I pointed out that the photo showed her timer was active & then she unsent the thing. Got great grades, that she did, but never gonna actually trust her on having learned anything, no siree

[@wilstewart5743]

I am glad at the rise of AI. It speeds up the process of anki flash card design, with anki flash cards being the closest thing to a cheat code in exams. Simply transcribe a syllabus using AI or even typing it into anki decks yourself and you’ll end up covering every possible question in an exam before you even take the exam. It seems strange but with changing my mindset to “the content is not important, the ability to remember content is the most important” I was able to do better in school with exams. I only found active recall and anki in my last year of university in the Netherlands. I wish my teachers back in England and I presume students around the world wish their teachers stressed the importance of active recall over content in subjects.

[@jaetrnn6000]

I love learning and will spend a lot of time on KZbin and Q&A platforms because I'm curious about a topic or want to learn something that sounds interesting. At the same time I'm also a university student and the quality of information I get from university just isn't even up to par to what I can find elsewhere. So then university becomes a space of challenge and growth in productivity more then knowledge acquisition. The other thing is, self learning gives you the ability to learn at your own pace and the freedom to ask the next question. School has curriculum which can be interesting or stale and for whatever reason, I have a lot of challenge soaking in information that just doesn't sound interesting or relevant. Maybe modern access to technology is a large part of that ✌️

[@CT-gl2zj]

I basically write for a living and even my job wants me to just generate text with chatbots. Granted, they'll probably decide they don't need humans after a few years, once they get us to train our replacements. It's probably worthwhile for high-schoolers to consider that their bosses won't even expect them to be able to write. Human-written text is going to be the same kind of archaic novelty as a hand-knitted sweater.

[@Turquise8]

I taught a class where for the first assignment we asked students to talk about pretty pictures and what they liked about them/what made them nice to look at. There was still at least one student who tried to give us ChatGPT garbage. Some students are going to try to use it whenever they can, to their own detriment. The really unfortunate thing was that it became blatantly clear when a student was using AI-produced work because their writing skill would jump from about a 4th grade level to a high school level. This was for college.

[@keryharrelson7157]

If you had students writing at a 4th grade level in college, there's a different discussion to be had.

[@Turquise8]

@@keryharrelson7157 BELIEVE ME, I know, but there's only so much a gen-ed astronomy class can do on that front 🙄

[@WifeWantsAWizard]

Homework was a mistake before AI. Young minds need downtime in order to absorb the knowledge they spent NINE hours learning. The registry within our zeitgeist of what it means to be "educated" is now antiquated.

[@YouilAushana]

That's the idea behind, "year round schooling".

[@WifeWantsAWizard]

@@YouilAushana Well, that and teaching everyone that "year-round" gets a hyphen. ;P

[@AceIsInLastPlace]

as someone who recently graduated from university by my senior year, chat gpt was never going to solve my homework for me because largely what we were learning was still considered theoretical, however, it was an extremely useful tool when i would get stuck, i could ask it to dive in on topics and sometimes that would give me the word i actually needed to google to find what i was looking for. Most of the time it’s answers were wrong BUT it knew how to better phrase my question technically so i could even search my textbook for the info i was looking for.

[@maximuscraig8222]

This is something that’s definitely been on my mind as a student for the last few months. Insightful video

[@lilied1]

AI just wrote a Matlab code for me, which would have taken me 2-3 days to figure out. Don't get me wrong, it started out with errors and it wasn't even doing what I asked it to do. I had to look over the code to see what the errors meant and why it was calculating something I hadn't even asked for. But eventually, with some looking around and refining the code I got the code I wanted in half a day. I still needed to understand how Matlab worked, what each line of the code meant and what it was producing but it saved me a lot of time. Given that this code wasn't essential to my work and I only wrote it to speed up the process of data analysis, I still needed to have a decent grasp of the syntax and format.

[@UNVIRUSLETALE]

Same with R, I did in a week what would've taken me a month or more

[@CallMeRabbitzUSVI]

Now imagine in 5 years where the AGI can not only write code but understand the parameters for which the code is used and finish the project with a few guidelines. You better hope you're the Senior Programmer because most coders will be out of a job and even then as a Senior you would be inundated with proofreading all the AGI scripts and codes and what else your boss will make you do all while trying to pay you the least possible

[@lesbaguette4381]

@@CallMeRabbitzUSVI While I decidedly don't disagree with that vision of the future, where I think this code will be most applicable is outside of entry-level programming jobs. For the chemist or the career executive or the conservation ecologist, not having to have as rigorous of an understanding of coding languages saves them time and leaves them free to do their "jobs" (in quotes because the career exec doesn't really have one).

[@pcizzle22]

sounds like it did absolutely nothing for you besides waste your time when you could have just read the manual and figured it out faster

[@pcizzle22]

@@CallMeRabbitzUSVI lol chatgpt is incapable of doing that but keep believing magic

[@keplerkangroo8715]

this how you know schools are more about sounding and looking right and not neccesarly about thinking critically and creatively.

[@Florinedev]

spot on

[@Hasutora]

I think an interesting way that this could be used is to have students generate things using chat gpt but then offer critiques and alterations of the produced text. As wells as comparing different prompts. We do this a lot in ancient languages translation is very important but being able to critique and identify possible methods for translating something differently is perhaps more important.

[@niharikadeokar8934]

loved your take on this!

[@BSplitt]

Incredibly informative. As a graduate student who both takes and teaches classes, it’s so enlightening to see how “desirable difficulties” can be necessary parts of the academic journey.

[@aeonspast]

I really liked the way you guys were able to rephrase the easy normal go-to use of ChatGPT into something that can actually help aid learning at the end. Heck, having it quiz you on a subject for school or maybe having you try to explain a subject to it would be useful in prepping for a quiz instead of reading notes and textbooks.

[@didiMao]

I'm a fervent adversary to tools like these but this video made me feel positive in approaching the tool with mindfulness. Thank you for sharing. It helped me be more open to the tool and how to apply it in a manner that cultivates and adds to my pursuit of personal growth.

[@Dervis128]

As a writing teacher, AI has become the bane of my existence. I say at least once every class, "AI should assist and enhance your thinking, not be a substitution for it." I do my best to teach literacy skills so that students can write about things they are interested in. None of it matters if I have everyone type the prompt into Chat GPT, copy and paste it, and send it to me with their names on it. What was the point? What did you learn? What sort of thinking was involved with that? I'm about to start accepting pen and paper assignments only. At that point, if they used AI, at least I know they actually took the time to read and copy it.

[@GalacticNovaOverlord]

I have a suggestion: you could use oral exams to verify whether they know what they wrote or not.

[@Immudzen]

I find writing to be physically painful after more than a few minutes. I will be quite happy to never write by hand again for anything meaningful.

[@TheScapegoat420]

I have learned and retained a lot more information by writing it on paper rather than just reading something. To me that sounds like a great idea.

[@evilleader1991]

0:00: 🤖 Students are using AI-generated text like ChatGPT to cheat on their schoolwork, leading to a surge in its usage. 3:21: 🤖 Students discuss challenges and workarounds for using A.I. in exams. 7:01: ⚠ The video discusses the challenges of using chatbots for information and the importance of critical literacy. 10:12: 📚 The video discusses the use of ChatGPT for solving equations and the true purpose of school assignments. 13:40: 📚 Fluency in learning is important, but struggling is also necessary for growth. Recap by Tammy AI

[@michael_0ceanic]

Quite ironic lol

[@MrMichiel1983]

Do you agree with this characterization, or would you think it's lacking here and there? In other words, does it convey all important information in this video, and in what context would that information be important?

[@juliav.mcclelland2415]

At any point, does it discuss the ethics, the personal danger, or the societal danger of people getting degrees where they don't have the skills or knowledge necessary to write a paper on the subject?

[@enyipreshious]

😂😂

[@broshmosh]

@@juliav.mcclelland2415 Yes, but not in granular detail. This video is very surface level.

[@dldietz82]

There is one thing that some of the educators pointed out which is accurate but rarely implemented. The answer should not matter as much as the process to get to that answer. I think this is especially true in Maths where the soultion is derived from an arbitrary statement that has no intrinisic value (specifically in pure Maths). I am more interested in seeing how students came up with their soultions and less about what that solution is. Grading work on how many right answers vs wrong answers are provided regardless of why they are right or wrong teaches nothing and pushes students towards using tools like AI.

[@mercury2mercury]

Great video! How did yall do that cloud background? Was it green screen or was it a short throw projector?

[@jaimetorres3113]

It's fairly simply in my opinion. Change working to tasks that require learning topics such as reading content or research a certain topic. Test their understand of that content in the classroom. Write the essay in the class room. Takes tests in the classroom that show understanding of content.

[@opnuul]

i think this video hits on all the notes of why maths is one of the most detested subjects in my circles. maths is hard, in order to learn it you absolutely MUST grapple with problems, and people inevitably fixate upon the answer rather than the uncomfortable process of generating the solution through work.