I’ve been working with so many students who turn to it as a first resort for everything. The second a problem stumps them, it’s AI. The first source for research is AI.
It’s not even about the tech, there’s just something about not wanting to learn that deeply upsets me. It’s not really something I can understand. There is no reason to avoid getting better at writing.
I’m so old I remember when Wikipedia and Google were the enemies of the educational system. This is the same sentiment.
Superficially. But Google (or “the Internet”) and Wikipedia were criticized because they are very easily accessible and not curated/high quality enough, not because the technology is inherently untrustworthy. LLMs on the other hand are marketed as thinking machines and they just aren’t.
I don’t know about where you were taught, but we were taught that Wikipedia was unreliable because anyone could edit it. Google wasn’t untrustworthy because it was an aggregator - it was the aggregation that was untrustworthy because anyone could publish anything. You couldn’t verify sources from a blog post that didn’t supply any.
I think it’s all the same gambit. You ether know you need to follow up with more research, sources, and citations, or you don’t.
I’m trying to get at the difference between regular websites/search engines and LLMs.
Websites and search engines are about storing and retrieving information. Nothing wrong with that inherently, but yeah, people can write nonsense. Same with books and libraries, except that it’s much easier to store and retrieve data. It’s just a medium used by people and people can be untrustworthy.
LLMs don’t store/retrieve, they aren’t just another medium. In a way it’s the whole Internet except with lossy compression. Sometimes you get good output, sometimes you get nonsense that sounds convincing enough. I’d trust that about as far as 4chan.
I have always taught my students how to use Wikipedia. I teach them to never cite Wikipedia, but I have an entire back pocket lesson on proper Wikipedia use that I have taught hundreds of times.
It used to be that the students who refused to put effort in would just copy the first line from the first Google result without reading. This was easy to reject when grading. LLM slop can have the appearance of legitimate work at first, which can be frustrating when you are trying to quickly grade a stack of papers.
Wikipedia and Google still are enemies. Published papers do not site Wikipedia or Google in their references.
Wikipedia and google are the gateways to that information. All of the AI are just condensing that information from those a little further, we’re just not always sure if it’s accurate.
There is a big difference. Wikipedia and Google link back to the original source of information. You can follow that and quote an academically legitimate source.
You can’t follow the link from an LLM back to the original source information.
On duck duck go, it links to wikipedia. That’s what I was trying to say.
And LLMs don’t link to anything.
What Google and Microsoft do to make links is infer a link comparing the LLM output to their search engine.
They also do not cite libraries. Are libraries not a valid place to find information?
To cite a library is like to cite “the internet”.
That just makes no sense.
Agreed. Does that mean there are no credible sources of information in the library?
Yes. They still don’t cite “the library”. If they cite a book they found on the library, I don’t expect them to say the book was from the library either.
You either said something wrong or something silly. Admitting the former prevents you from doubling down on the latter.
The user I replied to initially said Google and Wikipedia are enemies of the education system because you shouldn’t cite them as a source of information. They contain sources of information, like a library. No reasonable person believes libraries shouldn’t be utilized in finding credible information. As you stated, you wouldn’t list a library in a citation. You cite the sources found within the library. By saying Wikipedia and Google are enemies of the education system, you’d have to make that claim for libraries or any other aggregator of informstion and data.
If I did say something wrong or silly you will have to point it out for me.
As stated, nobody cites “libraries”.
By the way, you’re replying to somebody saying published papers don’t cite google or Wikipedia, not that you shouldn’t cite them. Well, you shouldn’t cite google anyway the same way you don’t cite the library.
Wikipedia isn’t an aggregator, and it’s not considered a reputable source. It’s a good surface level, or entry point, but it that’s the extend of you’re research, you’re doing a lot wrong. Like considering citing google wrong.
You chose the latter.
I understand what the user I replied to said. Now ask yourself why don’t published papers cite Google or Wikipedia? I know you know the answer because we already agreed on it. Despite that reason, I don’t believe that makes Google or Wikipedia “enemies of education”. This is where my library analogy comes in. Just because you wouldn’t cite “the library” doesn’t mean libraries are the enemy of education.
Do you want to point out where I said something wrong or silly? I’m still not seeing it.
You can find information from a library. What you can’t do is write a quote in a paper and source it as “my local library”.
LLMs are worse than Google, Wikipedia and libraries because they are unable to cite journal, volume, issue and page number.
Much like a library you would use Google and Wikipedia to find information, not use them as sources themselves.
We agree. My original comment was
That was only half of your comment.
Here’s where I disagree. All together the two sentences read as though you’re second sentence is the reason for why you believe the first sentence.
The point I was trying to make with the library analogy is that although you wouldn’t list "the library " as a source of information, you probably wouldn’t consider them to be enemies of education.
Perhaps I should have been more explicit about the subject
Wikipedia and Google are enemies of academic papers just as much as LLMs.
They are not enemies of learning. Neither are libraries.
I am hesitant to say that an LLM is a good source of learning because it bullshits regularly in ways that are undetectable.