As a college prof who has been grading critical thinking essays for 20 years, I can confirm, Yes, OpenAI is actively undermining education. - ThreadSky

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social • 117 days ago

As a college prof who has been grading critical thinking essays for 20 years, I can confirm, Yes, OpenAI is actively undermining education.

Reposted from Matt Seybold

OpenAI basically telling investors “our business model is ruining education.”

c/o @marcwatkins.bsky.social

Comments

psbaker10.bsky.social•117 days ago

This was an insightful though sad piece:
https://time.com/7026050/chatgpt-quit-teaching-ai-essay/

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•117 days ago

Oh that is sad, but relatable. Thanks for sharing it.

petrasabina.bsky.social•116 days ago

I think potentially it is undermining our own general ability to think and articulate. We don't need to even try anymore...in terms of putting a bit of ourselves onto paper.

stupidartpunk.bsky.social•117 days ago

Unrelated, but I would LOVE to take a few critical thinking classes. I dont have the time, money or space in my life but I wish I did. I wish we all had more space to explore learning of all kinds.

plesiomorphy.bsky.social•117 days ago

I recall reading a piece that described—at least at the grade school level—the modern emphasis on “critical thinking” resulting in students with huge gaps in basic factual information. It’s a skill that should ideally complement a well-rounded education.

stupidartpunk.bsky.social•116 days ago

Okay but Im not in grade school, and OP is teaching college.

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•116 days ago

I’ll also add that gaps in factual data seem to be the perfect thing to use the internet for. Relying on the web to do your critical thinking for you, on the other hand, makes for a gullible and immature public, which is bad for democracy, humanity, even bad for capitalism, ultimately.

drisaac.bsky.social•112 days ago

I’m done with my Orwell vs AI essay!

I hope you’ll read it (and print copies of it if you want them; see the end of the thread)

https://bsky.app/profile/drisaac.bsky.social/post/3lazb3d4xlc2j

drisaac.bsky.social•117 days ago

I’m working on an anti-AI essay right now that ties Orwell and our present dystopia in with it

otislmngrs.bsky.social•114 days ago

Does this automatically constitute cheating? Didn’t internet evolve from cheating tool to source or knowledge. I used to once consider googling during interview cheating. Now accept it, and assess how quickly the candidate can get to the right answer.

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•114 days ago

It depends on the assignment. If I assign an essay to students to write, and they don’t write it themselves but prompt an AI to do so, they are cheating.

It’s no different than instructing another student to write it for them.

otislmngrs.bsky.social•114 days ago

Agreed. Currently no argument it is helping people be lazy, take shortcuts, cheat. But over time our expectations will evolve, and we will move on tackling different challenges. This has happened throughout our history.

punkademic.bsky.social•117 days ago

Yup

christiemalry.bsky.social•117 days ago

its a disaster, education, art, youtube, human relationships, when the first person murders his family to stop the large language model he loves being deleted it'll already be too late, not skynet just a general degradation of everything of value

jhollowayj.bsky.social•117 days ago

Any thoughts on how to combat that trend? I don’t think we can expect new learners to not use it moving forward. Do we introduce new classes or change how we test/evaluate learning?

I loved the deep thinking but hated the writing, and I’d hate for my kids to miss out on that experience.

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•117 days ago

In class essay exams (in blue books) works, as do oral exams. For written at home work, I demand specific sources get cited and quoted carefully, and one side of an issue be defended and the other critiqued. ChatGPT doesn’t cite at all and always gives generic, watery “both sides” summaries.

shrewshrew.bsky.social•117 days ago

Yes LLMs are unable to cite sources even if that is explicitly fed into the assignment they are prompted with. Even if you tell it "it's in one of these two papers, tell me which." Because their whole thing is scraping other people's words and pretending they arose from nowhere!

sbarolo.bsky.social•117 days ago

📌

blackdragoncan.bsky.social•117 days ago

I had my first ChatGPT exam debacle this term. It’s only going to get worse. Multiple choice exams are going to go the way of the dodo

danadelibovi.bsky.social•117 days ago

Let’s go! Essays in longhand in blue books, in class with a) no phones and b) physical books for citations. Science and math exams with test paper, paper notes, physical books, pencil, calculator. Graded small group panel presentations, no notes or phones. Oral exams in small classes. Like 1975.

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•117 days ago

Exactly.

shinydh.bsky.social•117 days ago

This would have felt (to a lot of people, myself included) like the ravings of a Boomer reactionary ten years ago. It now feels entirely rational, maybe even absolutely necessary.

That's how much the plagiarism machines have changed things.

danadelibovi.bsky.social•117 days ago

Boomer, busted! It’s way harder to cheat in physical space. But there’s another side. I remember fondly the days of writing, reading, and calculating via interaction with objects. Like my teenage hand reaching up in the stacks for my first philosophy book (Thus Spake Zarathustra). Vivid, joyous.

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•117 days ago

I love that description of the feeling! I’ll confess I too have fallen prey to smartphones and my reading isn’t as good as it used to be.

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•117 days ago

I’ve resisted relying on ChatGPT though!

zodayn.bsky.social•117 days ago

As a grad student, I had a group assignment and a fellow student "rewrote" and "gave feedback on" parts of our paper. basically they kept adding outlandish claims that the AI dreamt up. And I had to keep removing them. 🙄

maraleia.bsky.social•117 days ago

And making students at all grade levels dumber.

disnothus.bsky.social•117 days ago

And that's putting it lightly. Media literacy has already been spinning down the drain

sarcasmodemiami.bsky.social•117 days ago

In the early days of the internet I thought the increase in junk would force skeptical reading. It apparently had no such effect.

disnothus.bsky.social•117 days ago

Me too, I was an optimist most of my life. It was really disheartening to learn more junk meant more people consuming more junk and that's it unless there's systemic filters for where the junk is going.

I remember back when ppl just scoffed at the National Inquirer and move on, now that's just news

drgwenmarshall.bsky.social•117 days ago

I’d recommend Harry Frankfurt’s “On Bullshit” for a prescient discussion of how bullshitters erode the respect for truth and undermine discourse and knowledge.

disnothus.bsky.social•117 days ago

Great suggestion! I had actually read it years ago when I first started my undergrad. A gem of a tiny book haha

sarcasmodemiami.bsky.social•117 days ago

Have it, live it.

sagittarius21.bsky.social•116 days ago

All you need to know is that Peter Thiel funded OpenAi. All these billionaires have God complex and want to control the world, including Bill Gates.

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