Last November, I gave some volunteer drawing classes at a school. Since I had limited space, I had to pick and choose a small number of 9-10yo kids, and asked the students interested to do a drawing and answer “Why would you like to participate in the drawing classes?”
One of the kids used chatgpt or some other AI. One of the parts that gave it away was that, while everyone else wrote something like “I want because”, he went on with “By participating, you can learn new things and make friends”. I called him out in private and he tried to bullshit me, but it wasn’t hard to make him contradict himself or admit to “using help”. I then told him that it was blatantly obvious that he used AI to answer for him and what really annoyed me wasn’t so much the fact he used it, but that he managed to write all of that without reading, and thought that I would be too dumb or lazy to bother reading or to notice any problems.
That call out was after the first class, I didn’t tell him he was out and said “See you next week”. Still, he didn’t show up on the other 3 classes, though those were also very rainy days, so I can’t say what was the reason he didn’t show up again
It is so weird seeing these stories and trying to make sense of what it means for the future of humans using written communication.
I’ve heard stories from some of the youth that they see no reason why not to use genAI to save time and effort.
But it’s not like using a spell check, it’s like asking someone else to do the thinking for you.
And the only reason we have genAI is because it ingested oodles of real people’s creative output made before genAI was created.
“Why do you want to take the class?” --If you can’t be honest in how you answer, why should you get to take the class? On the other hand, if it’s not important to be able to write about it, why ask them to spend time on that assignment?
I get that step 1 is to stop assigning any homework that is drudgery. But they can’t all be replaced by oral reports, or in-class writing assignments, can they? Are teachers going to start asking for assignments to be handwritten, so it’s at least not so easy to copy and paste?
If education is for teaching kids how to think, and (I suppose) interact with emerging technologies, how do you teach people to think and write for themselves?
Or is the answer that with LLMs being so good at generating plausible text, people of the future won’t need to be good at the writing process, and the skill of writing will decline?
I mean, once we had texting and the internet, people wrote a lot fewer letters. It’s something of a disappearing art.
Last November, I gave some volunteer drawing classes at a school. Since I had limited space, I had to pick and choose a small number of 9-10yo kids, and asked the students interested to do a drawing and answer “Why would you like to participate in the drawing classes?”
One of the kids used chatgpt or some other AI. One of the parts that gave it away was that, while everyone else wrote something like “I want because”, he went on with “By participating, you can learn new things and make friends”. I called him out in private and he tried to bullshit me, but it wasn’t hard to make him contradict himself or admit to “using help”. I then told him that it was blatantly obvious that he used AI to answer for him and what really annoyed me wasn’t so much the fact he used it, but that he managed to write all of that without reading, and thought that I would be too dumb or lazy to bother reading or to notice any problems.
Did he get into the class after all that?
That call out was after the first class, I didn’t tell him he was out and said “See you next week”. Still, he didn’t show up on the other 3 classes, though those were also very rainy days, so I can’t say what was the reason he didn’t show up again
It is so weird seeing these stories and trying to make sense of what it means for the future of humans using written communication.
I’ve heard stories from some of the youth that they see no reason why not to use genAI to save time and effort.
But it’s not like using a spell check, it’s like asking someone else to do the thinking for you.
And the only reason we have genAI is because it ingested oodles of real people’s creative output made before genAI was created.
“Why do you want to take the class?” --If you can’t be honest in how you answer, why should you get to take the class? On the other hand, if it’s not important to be able to write about it, why ask them to spend time on that assignment?
I get that step 1 is to stop assigning any homework that is drudgery. But they can’t all be replaced by oral reports, or in-class writing assignments, can they? Are teachers going to start asking for assignments to be handwritten, so it’s at least not so easy to copy and paste?
If education is for teaching kids how to think, and (I suppose) interact with emerging technologies, how do you teach people to think and write for themselves?
Or is the answer that with LLMs being so good at generating plausible text, people of the future won’t need to be good at the writing process, and the skill of writing will decline?
I mean, once we had texting and the internet, people wrote a lot fewer letters. It’s something of a disappearing art.
Maybe good writing just goes away?