I know this is unpopular as hell, but I believe that LLMs have potential to do more good than bad for learning, a long as you don’t use it for critical things. So no health related questions, or questions that is totally unacceptable to have wrong.
The ability to learn about most subjects in a really short time from a “private tutor”, makes it an effective, but flawed tool.
Let’s say that it gets historical facts wrong 10% of the time, is the world more well off if people learn a lot more, but it has some errors here and there? Most people don’t seem to know almost no history at all.
Currently people know very little about critical topics that is important to a society. This ignorance is politically and societally very damaging, maybe a lot more than the source being 10% wrong. If you ask it about social issues, there is a more empathetic answers and views than in the main political discourse. “Criminals are criminals for societal reasons”, “Human rights are important” etc.
Yes, I know manipulation of truth can be done, so it has to be neutral, which some LLMs probably aren’t or will not be.
Am I totally crazy for thinking this?
as a pedagoge
so the problem is the inherent larger picture of learning. when you sit at school the teacher, classroom and system is in general designed to teach you the basic skills of life.
for that to work it kinda needs to be trusted and transparent. not to mention critical thinking which is supposed to be in all subjects.
AI can’t think. AI can’t hold a story together for long without dropping the point.
LLMs could potentially be useful in engaging students in spesific materials before a lesson - especially for critical thinking.
I’d say it’s in that regard more important to use it when it gets it wrong, start a class with “ai work” and let the kids work on a subject you’ll tell them the details of afterwards. problem is ofcourse that not all kids will listen to you and still mislearn from the bot.
Tldr. yes ai can potentially be good. but we know they bad already - especially in a reduction of learning in kids currently exposed to it. so no. llms will be mostly bad for learning.
Teachers are sometimes wrong.
Teachers sometimes have personal issues (divorce, bills, etc) and consciously or not take it out on the kids.
Teachers have finite time and patience and can’t divine the individual learning styles of all 20+ kids in the classroom.
Teachers should be looking at using AI tools to save their jobs the exact same way software engineers are right now.
Teachers already are, and kids are already seeing drastic reductions in the quality of material they are being given to work with.
You’re right that these are not new problems, but they are now happening at far greater scale/pace.