So, in learning environments we might not have an option but to open the floodgates to AI use, but abandon most testing techniques that are not, more or less, pen and paper, in-person. Use AI as much as you want, but know that as a student you'll be answering tests armed only with your brain.
I do pity English teachers that have relied on essays to grade proficiency for hundreds of years. STEM fields has an easier way through this.
Andrej and Garry Trudeau are in agreement that "blue book exams" (I.e. the teacher gives you a blank exam booklet, traditionally blue) to fill out in person for the test, after confiscating devices, is the only way to assess students anymore.
My 7 year old hasn't figured out how to use any LLMs yet, but I'm sure the day will come very soon. I hope his school district is prepared. They recently instituted a district-wide "no phones" policy, which is a good first step.
I guess high schools and junior highs will have to adopt something similar, too. Better condition those wrists and fingers, kids :-)
1. Corporate interests want to sell product 2. Administrators want a product they can use 3. Compliance people want a checkbox they can check 4. Teachers want to be ablet to continue what they have been doing thus far within the existing ecosystem 5. Parents either don't know, don't care, or do, but are unable to provide a viable alternative or, can and do provide it
We have had this conversation ( although without AI component ) before. None of it is really secret. The question is really what is the actual goal. Right now, in US, education is mostly in name only -- unless you are involved ( which already means you are taking steps to correct it ) or are in the right zip code ( which is not a guarantee, but it makes your kids odds better ).
Putting aside the ludicrous confidence score, the student's question was: how could his sister convince the teacher she had actually written the essay herself? My only suggestion was for her to ask the teacher to sit down with her and have a 30-60 minute oral discussion on the essay so she could demonstrate she in fact knew the material. It's a dilemma that an increasing number of honest students will face, unfortunately.
The professor noticed it (presumably via seeing poor "show your work") and gave zero points on the question to everyone. And once you went to complain about your grade, she would ask you to explain the answer there in her office and work through the problem live.
I thought it was a clever and graceful way to deal with it.
Zero homework grades will be ideal. Looking forward to this.
I think that AI has the possibility of weakening some aspects of education but I agree with Karpathy here. In class work, in person defenses of work, verbal tests. These were corner stones of education for thousands of years and have been cut out over the last 50 years or so outside of a few niche cases (Thesis defense) and it might be a good thing that these come back.
A much bigger question is what to teach assuming we get models much more powerful than those we have today. I'm still confident there's an irreducible hard core in most subjects that's well worth knowing/training, but it might take some soul searching.
That is just such a wildly cynical point of view, and it is incredibly depressing. There is a whole huge cohort of kids out there who genuinely want to learn and want to do the work, and feel like using AI is cheating. These are the kids who, ironically, AI will help the most, because they're the ones who will understand the fundamentals being taught in K-12.
I would hope that any "solution" to the growing use of AI-as-a-crutch can take this cohort of kids into consideration, so their development isn't held back just to stop the less-ethical student from, well, being less ethical.
ekjhgkejhgk•40m ago
I'm not minimizing Karpathy in any way, but this is obviously the right way to do this.