comment: >
  
  I used to teach middle school, history, and it was about the time when they started really hard-core pushing critical thinking into every single lesson. I was at a disadvantaged school, and more than half of my students didn’t get to take geography in their sixth grade year, because the teacher quit a few weeks in. I got written up multiple times for trying to teach basic geography terms to kids Because it wasn’t critical thinking on a 7th grade level. You can’t discuss tribalism as a concept without first understanding what a tribe even is. It was like that with everything. 
  Eventually, kids get to vote. And if they never actually understand what the terms being discussed mean, then we have mindless husks that think socialism means communism and capitalism means oligarchy. There’s elements of each within, but you can’t have an honest conversation if you don’t agree on what the terms are.
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  A more effective method would simply be to adjust the educational apparatus to focus less on completing what amounts to busy work assignments and focus more thoroughly on understanding of the material.
  The vast majority of "homework" is in place only to verify that a student completed the reading/practiced learned materials.
  Fundamentally, AI systems such as ChatGPT are going to be integrated into modern productivity, adjusting the education system to preclude students from learning how best to utilize them in a formalized setting wouldn't be an effective way to set them up for the future. >
  
  
  A more effective method would simply be to adjust the educational apparatus to focus less on completing what amounts to busy work assignments and focus more thoroughly on understanding of the material.
  
  How is a teacher supposed to measure someone's understanding of the material if there's no writing, no essays, no assignments? >
  
  I took some classes in college where the exam was a 1 on 1 conversation about the material with the professor. It really separated the people who were just good at busy work from people who understood the material. >
  
  
  I took some classes in college where the exam was a 1 on 1 conversation about the material with the professor. It really separated the people who were just good at busy work from people who understood the material.
  
  So anything but a one-on-one oral exam is busywork? Is that your contention?
  People don't need to acquire the skills to write comprehensibly? To be able to summarize or relate information in any way but a conversation? People don't need to be able to relate specifics? >
  
  As I said it separated people “who were just good at busy work”. The oral exams were only part of the work we did, and there were essays and research papers. But writing a paper on a super well feed topic can be done without having a very good grasp of the material particularly when there’s a ton published about the topic already. Having to answer probing questions in the spot is a lot harder. >
  
  So, again, everything but the oral exam your professor gave is busy work? >
  
  What's with this false dilemma?
  A lot of stuff that is currently assigned is busy work. An oral exam is not.
  That doesn't mean everything but the oral exam is busy work, just that it's a solid alternative, and one of many. A traditional piece of homework can be done well to evaluate understanding, but is not always done well. An oral exam, overall, is more likely to yield a better analysis of a student's understanding, though is of course not without its own flaws (especially, that a shy student and a non-understanding student can be hard to tell apart). >
  
  
  What's with this false dilemma?
  A lot of stuff that is currently assigned is busy work. An oral exam is not.
  That doesn't mean everything but the oral exam is busy work, just that it's a solid alternative, and one of many. A traditional piece of homework can be done well to evaluate understanding, but is not always done well. An oral exam, overall, is more likely to yield a better analysis of a student's understanding, though is of course not without its own flaws (especially, that a shy student and a non-understanding student can be hard to tell apart).
  
  There's no false dilemma. I've asked you what you consider not busy work and your only answer is your professor had an oral exam.
  So I asked if that is the only thing you don't consider busy work. You've given no other examples of anything you don't think is busy work. >
  
  Like I said, traditional homework can be done well. And if done well, it is not busy work. >
  
  
  Like I said, traditional homework can be done well. And if done well, it is not busy work.
  
  That's on the student, not the teacher, class,, etc. If a student doesn't care, they don't care. >
  
  Who would remain on site for the additional time that students would remain to do at school homework? Would you have a second shift of teachers or require teachers to work far more hours?
  Would not an easier method be to eliminate homework entirely? There are some studies that show homework doesn't significantly improve student learning. >
  
  I will not argue the efficacy of homework.  That was not part of the CMV.
  I assume students will need to do independent research, homework, coding projects, and so on as they have always done.
  Regarding who would supervise this.  Again that would have to be a school official.  Perhaps it could also be a part-time job offered to a senior student after school.  
  These labs I don’t believe would be open 24/7.  But they could be used to vouch for students time spent doing homework to begin with as a measure teachers could use. >
  
  
  I will not argue the efficacy of homework. That was not part of the CMV.
  
  That's not how CMV works. The response of "all homework is dumb" is a perfectly valid response to your claims that the way homework is done needs to change. You can't exclude logical arguments because you don't like them. >
  
  Exams shouldn't be impacted. These should be done without the aid of a computer already. I do agree, though, that this should be maintained.
  Perhaps the best way to overcome the impact of ChatGPT would be to utilize a more flipped-classroom style approach. In a flipped classroom, you generally learn much of the content at home, and engage with the material in class. I had almost none of this in high school (graduated in 2015), but a handful of these styles of classes in college.
  A teacher could assign content that should be covered at home, and possibly institute relatively low complexity homework assignments as an attempt to make sure the students are actually addressing the material, and it wouldn't matter that much if they use something like ChatGPT or not in this setting. Then, class would be spent engaging in things like graded discussions or debates or whatever else, perhaps with an opportunity to try to clear up any confusion. Even something as simple as graded worksheets could be implemented. If you wanted to assign an essay to test understanding and force someone to try to think critically, you could do it in class now and guarantee that they are doing their own work.
  This would be more critical in subjects that require some sort of opinion-based analysis like history or English. Something like math wouldn't need to change that much, especially since the resources available to cheat in math have existed long before ChatGPT went online. This probably applies to most STEM subjects, too. There are ways to create assignments that do a better job of engaging students without necessitating ChatGPT.
  Your plan reflects the right idea but taken to a completely outrageous extreme, and would disrupt any sort of extracurricular activity available to students. >
  
  If that was the method my school used when I was a student I can 100% guarantee I'd fail. A piece of class related information just won't enter my brain unless a teacher is verbally saying it to me. No matter how much I read, unless I can listen and ask questions I'm not going to get it. And it's not going to help when I get to school and the teacher assumes I know the subject and starts a graded discussion about it... when I just have no clue. How does your system treat students like me? >
  
  Generally the discussion is graded on participation, not knowledge. If you don't know shit but you're asking a ton of questions, you'd get a good grade. It also helps if you happen to have friends who can tutor you, the school offers free tutoring, or your teacher has hours before or after school to ask questions. >
  
  That's even worse for shy/socially anxious students who are not comfortable speaking up. >
  
  With guided discussion the teacher should be looking out for students who aren't participating and specifically ask them questions. >
  
  The creators of chat GPT and I'm fairly certain other  writing AI are in the process of implementing invisible "watermarks" in the writing.
  And you may think "Oh they say they're doing that for things like academic honesty but they'll just put in a perfunctory, easily circumventable effort." But actually it's incredibly important to the development of the chat bots themselves that their work be easily recognized. You see it trains by pulling from a massive array of other writing. As these bots gain popularity, more of the writing online available to be pulled will be AI generated. If bots are trained on bot output, you get a feedback loop which gets in the way of their goals of making better output.
  It's like if the image generators were trained on their own output, you'd bake in the bad hands instead of eventually transcend them. They want and need to avoid the same thing with writing.
  So in the era of AI writing, AI will be at least as easy to spot as plagiarism is NOW with things like Turnitin. Teachers won't need to rework their whole pedagogy and abandon work at home, which is crucial. Remember that these AI systems are expensive as hell and massively complex. At least for the next decade the ones powerful enough to write a school essay well are owned by companies who want their output to be identifiable and who want their reputation as a service to be positive. >
  
  How are watermarks ever going to work in text?
  I think it's actually the best way to go but it requires overhauling pretty much of all our software in existence in a really significant way.
  Images and videos are much less of a problem to watermark I think, but at the end of the day, someone can just type out something ChatGPT has produced. Or not even type out, just use an image to text program.
  I worry that for text, detection is an intractable problem. This has serious negative implications but I don't know what we do about it.
  If the text watermarking isn't digital but is based on how it reads/sentence structure/vocabulary etc, it'll be an arm's race between cheaters and detectors, with loads of false positives. >
  
  As I understand it, the watermarking isn't going to be done on a file or an image, but a pattern within the text itself which serves as an invisible tell.
  ​
  
  If the text watermarking isn't digital but is based on how it reads/sentence structure/vocabulary etc, it'll be an arm's race between cheaters and detectors, with loads of false positives.
  
  When the main issues are detecting lack of student effort, there's a pretty low benchmark where it's easier just to write the paper than to research how to defeat the watermarking. Will some students do it anyway? Sure, just like some students work hard to cheat the current system without AI. >
  
  The students don't do this work, the people who make AI software for the cheaters do this.
  From the point of view of the cheater, it will still be low effort. >
  
  At the moment, generative AI  is incredibly expensive and resource heavy to create. There isn't the incentive to develop such a project just to help students cheat. I expect at some point there will be more accessible ways to enter and piggyback of others work, but that's not what the playing field looks like now.
  There are some unsavory third party AI software at this point, but it's mostly just using the existing large project software. A third party using GPT won't be able to crack GPT's watermarking. >
  
  There absolutely are incentives to develop versions of LLMs that cannot be detected. You may be correct that the incentive isn't for allowing students to cheat, but I suspect generating misinformation is worth more than enough to warrant it.
  If the watermarking is not part of the digital asset in some way, but a feature of the structure of the text, detectors are always going to struggle, even if people use GPT directly through its API. There will even be real content by real people that will be flagged as AI generated.
  Currently you can look at Hive AI's attempt at detection of ChatGPT generated content for an illustration into how difficult this problem is going to be.
  Also it's extremely early days. StableDiffusion is already out in the wild as an image GAN, it's a matter of time before LLMs are out there outside of big tech. >
  
  ChatGPT exists, that bell can't be unrung. Personally I think the best education is one that prepares children for the conditions they are likely to work in, it's unhelpful to make computer scientists work without internet when every real computer science project ever will heavily rely on the internet advice and support for development. 
  Surely given that the children being educated today will have machine learning language tools at their disposal, we should be changing our questions and marking to reflect that rather than contriving the test environment.
  So focus on what ChatGPT doesn't provide well, ask questions about much more niche aspects of books/topics being studied, put more focus in the marking on writing style rather than structure, and novel insights rather than broad comprehension.
  While this change in technology is a big one, it's not too dissimilar from the introduction of spelling and grammar checkers, these days is expected that everyone will have near perfect spelling with these tools, so achieving this only gives the minimum marks. >
  
  I could make an argument that using spelling and grammar checks is a crutch.  The fundamentals of spelling, punctuation and grammar are lost without being routinely reinforced.  It almost becomes mechanical as your brain is programmed to never write correctly.
  For example the word I routinely misspell is “comunications”.  I just did it again.   It’s part of my programming as I rapidly type.  I write technical books to this day and still spell it wrong because my brain is just wired like that now.   I think that is happening all over with spelling checkers today and ChatGPT amps up that effect in other areas. >
  
  I mean, you haven't made any spelling or grammar mistakes in that reply other than those you have consciously chosen to leave in, so the system of spell checkers is clearly working fine for you.
  I just don't think there is much point to pretending these tools don't exist, it makes the entire education process a waste of time. Imagine if we applied this standard to mathematics, forbid anyone from using calculators in all exams, have everyone spend loads of time memorising sine and cosine graphs so they could do trigonometry. What would be the point? The moment the exam is over they will pick up the relevant tools and never use the knowledge again.
  It also doesn't tell you anything useful, sure the person who has memorized a complete slide ruler can do logarithms in his head in an exam, but if you give that person and another person calculators they will both be equally as able to solve x = log(32)
  And if you want to make sure people are capable of decent spelling and grammar, you can do that with in person handwritten exams, you don't need every assessment to test for every aspect of a field nor should you. >
  
  
  Imagine if we applied this standard to mathematics, forbid anyone from using calculators in all exams, have everyone spend loads of time memorising sine and cosine graphs so they could do trigonometry. What would be the point? The moment the exam is over they will pick up the relevant tools and never use the knowledge again.
  
  All higher mathematics from trig to linear algebra/differential equations can be done with ease using modern software tools and having no/little idea the process to getting to the answer, but all of the courses I took required that you learn the process nonetheless. 
  In all of my college level math courses I was required to take every test without a calculator and remember all of the trig tables, but we were allowed a single side of a page of notes. >
  
  And are you any more efficient than someone who hasn't memorised the? armed with a calculator?
  
  All higher mathematics from trig to linear algebra/differential equations can be done with ease using modern software tools and having no/little idea the process to getting to the answer
  
  But the important knowledge is not photographic memory of the trig tables, it's when to use trig and the correct equations to use >
  
  I totally agree with that. Arm us to use the tools, don't make us jump through effectively useless hoops. But that's how it is. It's mostly a filter, not much of a prep for industry. >
  
  Chatgpt points out the failure of current teaching. The majority of assignments are just mindless filler that does little to challenge and promote critical thinking. If current ai can easily complete an assignment, it probably wasn't the kind of assignment that would properly prepare students for life after school. >
  
  Two things; one, I think you drastically underestimate the power of chatgpt. I asked It to write a 500 word, essay comparing and contrasting the benefits of capitalism versus socialism, taking the side of Socialism in the end, and citing relevant sources, on a high school reading level. It wrote a damn good essay. It’s not simply filler or definitions, the AI is capable of articulating unique opinions, in a sense. 
  And two, while critical thinking is the highest level of learning, it is not the only important level of learning. Memorization and internalizing some skills and knowledge is necessary. you can’t analyze if you can’t compare and contrast. You can’t compare and contrast if you can’t clearly define what you are talking about. It’s like being mad at music teachers for having students play scales and not having them only bang out Vivaldi right away. >
  
  
  Memorization and internalizing some skills and knowledge is necessary.
  
  This is also why the "YoU WoN't HaVe A CaLcUlAtOr WiTh YoU EvErYdAy" argument falls flat. Sure, we have calculators, but you also need to use them correctly for them to be effective.
  Yesterday I was doing some tax work and I noticed that there was a mistake as two numbers that should add up to a third number didn't. I didn't calculate the actual answer, but I could see that they were a few thousand short by doing rough calculations.
  This was because I made a mistake which caused January to be excluded somewhere, so the answer the "calculator" (google sheets) gave was wrong and I only spotted that because my mental math was good enough to spot the discrepancy.