It's not the students. It's the teachers and school using AI first, and publicly. Why does he talk about only students using AI?
Also, just like how calculators are allowed in the exam halls, why not allow AI usage in exams? In real-life job you are not going to avoid use of calculator or AI. So why test people in a different context? I think the tests should focus on the skills in using calculator and AI.
>Also, just like how calculators are allowed in the exam halls, why not allow AI usage in exams?
Dig deeper into this. When are calculators allowed, and when are they not? If it is kids learning to do basic operations, do we really allow them to use calculators? I doubt it, and I suspect that places that do end up with students who struggle with more advanced math because they off loaded the thinking already.
On the other hand, giving a calculus student a 4 function calculator is pretty standard, because the type of math they can do isn't what is being tested, and having a student be able to plug 12 into x^3 - 4x^2 + 12 very quickly instead of having to work it out doesn't impact their learning. On the other hand, more advanced calculator are often not allowed when they trivialize the content.
LLMs are much more powerful than a calculator, so finding where in education it doesn't trivialize the learning process is pretty difficult. Maybe at grad level or research, but anything grade school it is as bad as letting a kid learning their times tables use a calculator.
Now, if we could create custom LLMs that are targeted at certain learning levels? That would be pretty nice. A lot more work. Imagine a Chemistry LLM that can answer questions, but know the homework well enough to avoid solving problems for students. Instead, it can tell them what chapter of their textbook to go read, or it can help them when they are having a deep dive beyond the level of material and give them answers to the sorts of problems they aren't expected to solve. The difficulty is that current LLMs aren't this selective and are instead too helpful, immediately answering all problems (even the ones they can't).
I beg to differ. Tactical use of a scientific or graphing calculator can absolutely replace large parts of the thinking process. If you're testing for the ability to solve differential equations, a powerful enough calculator can trivialize it, so they aren't allowed in calculus exams. A 10-digit calculator cannot trivialize calculus, so they are allowed. That's the distinction. LLMs operate at the maximum level of "helpfulness" and there's no good way to dial them back.
I real life if someone with an administrative job would jot 50 * 3,000 in a calculator and not notice the answer 1,500,000 is wrong (a typo) I will consider them most definitely at fault. Similarly I know some structural engineers who will notice something went wrong with the input if an answer is not within a given range.
A calculator can be used to do things you know how to do _faster_ imho but in most jobs it still requires you to at least somewhat understand what is happening under the hood. The same principle applies to using LLMs at work imho. You can use it to do stuff you know how to do faster but if you don't understand the material there's no way you can evaluate the LLMs answer and you will be at fault when there's AI slop in your output.
eta: Maybe it would be possible to design labs with LLM's in such a way that you teach them how to evaluate the LLM's answer? This would require them to have knowledge of the underlying topic. That's probably possible with specialized tools / LLM prompts but is not going to help against them using a generic LLM like ChatGPT or a cheating tool that feeds into a generic model.
> Maybe it would be possible to design labs with LLM's in such a way that you teach them how to evaluate the LLM's answer? This would require them to have knowledge of the underlying topic. That's probably possible with specialized tools / LLM prompts but is not going to help against them using a generic LLM like ChatGPT or a cheating tool that feeds into a generic model.
What you are desribing is that they should use LLM just after they know the topic. A dilemma.
Yeah, I kinda like the method siscia suggests downthread [0] where the teacher grades based on the question they ask the LLMs during the test.
I think you should be able to use the LMM at home to help you better understand the topic (they have endless patience and you can usually you can keep asking until you actually grok the topic) but during the test I think it's fair to expect that basic understanding to be there.
Also, just like how calculators are allowed in the exam halls, why not allow AI usage in exams? In real-life job you are not going to avoid use of calculator or AI. So why test people in a different context? I think the tests should focus on the skills in using calculator and AI.