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Does AI actually help students learn? A recent experiment in a high school provides a cautionary tale.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students who had access to ChatGPT while doing practice math problems did worse on a math test compared with students who didn’t have access to ChatGPT. Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning.
A third group of students had access to a revised version of ChatGPT that functioned more like a tutor. This chatbot was programmed to provide hints without directly divulging the answer. The students who used it did spectacularly better on the practice problems, solving 127 percent more of them correctly compared with students who did their practice work without any high-tech aids. But on a test afterwards, these AI-tutored students did no better. Students who just did their practice problems the old fashioned way — on their own — matched their test scores.
I’m not at all confident in the answers directly. I’ve gotten plenty of wrong answers form AI and I’ve gotten plenty of correct answers. If anything it’s just more practice for critical thinking skills, separating what is true and what isn’t.
When it comes to math though, it’s pretty straightforward, I’m just looking for context on some steps in the problems, maybe reminders of things I learned years ago and have forgotten, that sort of thing. As I said, I’m interested in actually understanding the stuff that I’m learning because I am using it for the things I’m working on so I’m mainly reading through textbooks and using AI as well as other sources online to round out my understanding of the concepts. If I’m getting the right answers and the things I am doing are working, it’s a good indicator I’m on the right path.
It’s not like I’m doing cutting edge physics or medical research where mistakes could cause lives.
Its sort of similar to saying poppy production overall is pretty negative, but if smart critical people use it sparingly and apprehensively, opiates could be of great benefit to that person.
Thats all well and good and all but AI is not being developed to help critical thinkers research slightly easier, its being created to reduce the amount of money companies spend on humans.
Until regulations are in place to guide the development of the technology in useful ways then I dont know any of it should be permitted. What’s the rush for anyways?
Well I’m definitely not pushing for more AI and I like to try to stay nuanced on the topic. Like I mentioned in my first comment I have found it to be a very helpful tool but if used in other ways it could do more harm than good. I’m not involved in making or pushing AI but as long as it is an available tool I’m going to make use of it in the most responsible way I can and talk about how I use it knowing that I can’t control what other people do but maybe I could help some people who are only using it to get answer hints like in the article to find more useful ways of using it.
When it comes to regulation, yeah I’m all for that. It’s a sad reality that regulation always lags behind and generally doesn’t get implemented until there’s some sort of problem that scares the people in power who are mostly too old to understand what’s happening anyways.
And as to what’s the rush, I would say a combination of curiosity and good intentions mixed with the worst of capitalism, the carrot of financial gain for success and the stick of financial ruin for failure and I don’t have a clue what percent of the pie each part makes up. I’m not saying it’s a good situation but it’s the way things go and I don’t think anyone alive could stop it. Once something is out of the bag, there ain’t any putting it back.
Basically I’m with you that it will be used for things that make life worse for people and that sucks, and it would be great if that was not the case but that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t do anything about that and meanwhile it can still be a useful tool and so I’m going to use it the best that I can regardless how others use it because there’s really nothing I can do except keep pushing forward the best I can, just like anyone else.
It might just be the difference in perspective. I agree with your assessments if how things are but not how they will be in the future. There are countries that are more responsible in their research, so I know its possible. Its all politics and I dont believe in giving up on social change just yet.