Why are US states, school districts banning smartphones in schools? - eviltoast
  • ulkesh@beehaw.org
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    4 months ago

    They may eventually be useful in this space. But for now, they are more work than they’re worth and completely discredited for proper fact-based research. And the teachers my kid has had who used it for testing resulted in completely wrong answers that the teacher didn’t bother to check.

    Yes that is the teacher’s fault, but so is using it to generate a test in the first place.

    I will die on this hill. LLMs of any kind right now are not something that should be trifled with in a critical thinking-based curriculum. In time, perhaps. But not yet, not when LLMs are so easily manipulated (whether trained on public data or private). The various implementations haven’t earned credible trust despite CEOs drooling over them.

    • blindsight@beehaw.org
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      4 months ago

      It’s a shame your child’s teacher used the tool incorrectly. That was unprofessional of them.

      If it helps, there are people like me running training sessions for educators to let them know what LLMs are (and are not) capable of. The main point I was pushing this year was that LLMs don’t know or understand anything. “The I in LLM stands for Intelligence.”

      • ulkesh@beehaw.org
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        4 months ago

        I like that last statement. I might steal it 🤣

        Thanks for your insights.