I agree with some of this (particularly the conclusion that better education methods are required) but lets be a bit generous for a second.
The ability to write well is (or was) an important skill. Being able to use correct grammar, to structure even a simple argument, to incorporate sources to justify one's statements, etc. Even if we're just talking about the level of what GPT 3.5 is capable of, that still corresponds to, let's say, a college freshman level of writing.
Now, perhaps with the advent of LLMs, that's no longer true. Perhaps in the near future, the ability to generate coherent prose "by hand" will be thought of in the same way we think of someone who can do long division in their head: a neat party trick, but not applicable to any real-world use.
It isn't at all clear to me though that we're yet a the point where this tech is good enough that we're ready (as a society) to deprecate writing as a skill. And "writing bullshit" may in fact be a necessary element of practice for writing well. So it isn't self-evident that computers being able to write bullshit means that we shouldn't also expect humans of being able to write bullshit (at a minimum, hopefully they can go well beyond that.)
The teacher (or developer of the curriculum) needs to decide both 1) what they consider to be cheating and 2) how important it is to establish a certain level of confidence that students aren't cheating. If writing grammatically without any external help is deemed to be extremely important, and it's far too easy for students to cheat on take-home writing assignments, then suck it up and use some of your in-class time for writing exams. Your in-class time is finite anyway, so deciding how to use it is already critically important.
If electronic earpieces become commonly used by students to cheat on in-class exams, and that's important enough to the teacher, I guess they better figure out a way to screen for those devices.
If eventually nearly everyone has some sort of brain link that can whisper grammatical phrases directly into their brain and cannot feasibly be detected in the classroom, well, then either your entire curriculum is on the honor system, or maybe you'll need to update your thoughts about what tasks are important for your students to be able to perform without "external" help.
Oh, I agree. Optimistically, the existence of LLMs will be a forcing function for education to focus on what actually matters. (IMO, this is the ability to critically assess and generate arguments, something GPT isn't particularly good at (yet)).
But your example is actually rather striking. In most highschool and college classes for algebra and calculus, we're asking students to solve/prove problems that computers have been easily able to solve/prove, and have been for decades.
But the educational consensus is that being able to do algebra or differentiate/integrate by hand is valuable (up to a certain complexity.) Which is why calculators are not allowed (at certain levels) and why "show your work" is an important part of grading at every level.
Perhaps this whole discussion is a nothingburger once we figure out what the language arts equivalent to "show your work" is for text generation.
> Now, perhaps with the advent of LLMs, that's no longer true. Perhaps in the near future, the ability to generate coherent prose "by hand" will be thought of in the same way we think of someone who can do long division in their head: a neat party trick, but not applicable to any real-world use.
Except that AI would be hard pressed to become a part of the in-circles of waves of new generations of artists and writers, who create new literature in part through being part of new literary movements. In a way AI is closer to God than to people, in their omni-ness. Unless ChatGPT eats and craps and needs to find a job, find love, find friends, loses things, installs tinder, gets hurt, and has its life literally threatened (even just once in a lifetime--whatever that means for LLM), it cannot be a wholesome part of society and thus react to political change by creating new modes of writing. Because of that, AI will forever play catchup with the new tendencies in human literature and art.
Unless AIs dominate consumption and pay for their Netflix subscription, of course.
> Even if we're just talking about the level of what GPT 3.5 is capable of, that still corresponds to, let's say, a college freshman level of writing.
Indeed - the output of ChatGPT to a very quickly thrown together prompt and essay question, was able to easily beat the average of a cohort of freshmen in terms of writing skills. I imagine this is partly due to a decline in writing skills generally (?), but also partly due to an LLM having a significant advantage in being able to roll a die and produce a completely grammatically valid sentence on any topic each time.
I suspect that we will see LMMs reach a point where they can pose a threat to weaker non-straight-A students - at least at freshman level, you can already get GPT to write an essay that's more factually accurate than the weaker students in a cohort. It won't be factually perfect, but it will be more factually accurate than the students' own attempts.
Fundamentally though, I do wonder - if the marginal cost of prose reduces to near-zero (through bullshit generation via AI), what will we move to?
Lengthy prose that you know someone won't read is a perfect situation for LMM generation. 5x short, sharp, action-focused bullet points that get to the crux of a situation and how to resolve it are far harder to bullshit, as ultimately people are focused on the substance, rather than style and presentation of your point. This would (I hypothesize) disadvantage both human and AI bullshitters equally.
I tend to see the best students feel less of a need to pad and write more, as they know they have said what needs to be said, and are finished. Those with a need to bullshit (perhaps through not having as robust an understanding of the subject matter) will pad, flounder, circumlocute, and eventually get to something resembling a point, eventually.
The ability to write well is (or was) an important skill. Being able to use correct grammar, to structure even a simple argument, to incorporate sources to justify one's statements, etc. Even if we're just talking about the level of what GPT 3.5 is capable of, that still corresponds to, let's say, a college freshman level of writing.
Now, perhaps with the advent of LLMs, that's no longer true. Perhaps in the near future, the ability to generate coherent prose "by hand" will be thought of in the same way we think of someone who can do long division in their head: a neat party trick, but not applicable to any real-world use.
It isn't at all clear to me though that we're yet a the point where this tech is good enough that we're ready (as a society) to deprecate writing as a skill. And "writing bullshit" may in fact be a necessary element of practice for writing well. So it isn't self-evident that computers being able to write bullshit means that we shouldn't also expect humans of being able to write bullshit (at a minimum, hopefully they can go well beyond that.)