Like probably many people here I still remember having to find facts in books in libraries, before the internet made this skill mostly redundant. Then, as a student I remember having to put together facts from various (internet) sources into a coherent narrative. Now chatbots can just generate text and that skill seems less valuable.
I use both the internet and GenAI extensively now. But I feel that having gone through the "knowledge work" activities without the crutches puts me in a better position to assess the correctness and plausibility of internet sources and AI in a way that kids who grow up using them constantly don't have.
I feel quite privileged to be in that position, that I wouldn't be in had I been born 10 or 20 years later. I also feel sorry for kids these days for not having the opportunity to learn things "the hard way" like I had to. And I feel extremely snobbish and old for thinking that way.
It’s something reflected in the conversations I have with my academic friends. I’m told that every essay is written in the same “voice” and that although they are usually a simulacra of an academic paper, they say nothing. The sad part comes when we reflect that these students are not learning the deep thinking skills that comes with academic writing
There are two views of writing: one, as the production of a literary artifact that has value in its own right and stands alone as the embodiment of a complex idea itself; on the other hand, as a process and tool for thought, where the literary artifact is merely meant to represent the cognitive work that went into its production. From the latter perspective, the bulk of the value is not derived from the output of the process of writing, but rather from the understanding and insight that was gained during its production - "it's the journey, not the destination".
With generative AI we are now shortcutting directly to the destination while eliding all the knowledge and understanding we are supposed to be gaining on the way. It's deemed sufficient to merely produce and exchange the symbols of understanding without needing to possess any real underlying wisdom (the first view above), because it's through the exchange of these abstract symbols, irrespective of whether or not there is anything behind them, that we can play and win certain social games.
This is merely the natural continuation of trends that began during the dawn of the Internet era, when we started to consider pixels on a screen an accurate map of reality.
Then they’re using gen ai wrong. You can dump your research into the context window and ask it to outline the material. What you get out is a well organized story with a beginning middle and end, incorporating all relevant concepts from the research. You can then fill in with the details based on your research. Gen ai can be used to help students think and write more clearly.
They’re going to use it. Give them the training and guidance to use it correctly.
I have a related anecdote. When I grew up, we had page and/or word requirements on essays. I was always under the requirement after I wrote everything I needed to, so I learned to pad my writing to hit the requirement.
Terse prose was a "lost art" even in my generation (millenial-ish) and I'm not surprised that it has gotten worse.
I also lived through these phases and it makes me feel very, very much the same.
On the other hand I cannot not help thinking that this is similar to the arguments brought forward when the internet was new. How could correctness and plausibility be established if you don't have established trustworthy institutions, authors and editors behind everything? And yet it turned out mostly fine. Wikipedia is alive, despite its deficiencies, Encyclopedia Britannica not so much.
> On the other hand I cannot not help thinking that this is similar to the arguments brought forward when the internet was new. How could correctness and plausibility be established if you don't have established trustworthy institutions, authors and editors behind everything?
Not long ago I had the same viewpoint as you! But thinking back now — it dates me but I definitely lived a childhood without Internet access — probably the optimistic belief before our age of "misinformation" is that, in the marketplace of ideas, the truth usually wins. Goes along with "information wants to be free" — remember that slogan?
For us that grew up learning things "the hard way" so to speak, that made perfect sense: each of us, as should have the capability to discern what is good or bad as, individual independent thinkers. Therefore, for any piece of information, there should be a high probability, in the aggregate, that it is classified correctly as to its truth and utility.
Now there's no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet. Good luck! That's sort of like trying to nail jello to the wall. (Laughter.) But I would argue to you that their effort to do that just proves how real these changes are and how much they threaten the status quo. It's not an argument for slowing down the effort to bring China into the world, it's an argument for accelerating that effort. In the knowledge economy, economic innovation and political empowerment, whether anyone likes it or not, will inevitably go hand in hand.
I would say, what we have since learned after some 20 years, is that in the marketplace of ideas, the most charitable thing we can say that the memes with the "best value" win. "Best value" does not necessarily mean the highest quality, but rather there can be a trade-off between its cost and the product quality. Clearly ChatGPT produces informational content at a pretty low cost. The same can be said for junk food, compared to fresh food: the overall cost of the former is low. Junk food does not actively, directly harm you, but you are certainly better off not eating too much of it. It is low quality but has been deemed acceptable.
There are examples where we can be less charitable of course. We all complain about dangerous, poorly manufactured items (e.g. electronics with inadequate shielding etc.) listed Amazon, but clearly people still buy them anyway. And then, in the realm of politics, needless to say, there are many actors bent on pushing memes they want you to have regardless of their veracity. Some people on the marketplace of ideas "buy" them owing to network effects (e.g. whether they are acceptable according to political identity, etc.) in the same way that corporations continue to use Microsoft Windows because of network effects. We also probably say nowadays Clinton has been ultimately proven wrong by the government of China.
Survival of the "fittest" memes if you like: evolution does not make value judgements.
If you ask me, maybe our assumption of de-centralized truth-seeking was itself, not an absolute truth, to begin with. But it took years to unravel, as humans, collectively speaking, atrophy from disuse of the research and critical thinking skills before technology dropped the barriers of entry to producing and consuming information.
You're probably at an advantage now, but I think the effort/reward hardly pays out for the newer generation. They'll learn how to deal with this with less effort & time.
Remember that the new generation doesn't just have different tools; they're also much less experienced & mature, just like we were.You can only really compare yourself to them in the future where they're at the place you're at now.
I think that chatbots will lead to less information available, not more. Because they make writing information more useless and demotivating. So what we are looking toward is less written information overall available.
And when chatbots don't know, they lie.
Kids will learn the hard way. Possibly harder then we did.
The problem is that gen ai has no notion of fact and will just as happily confidently and incorrectly assert falsehoods. Teaching an entire generation of students with gen ai and no verification of facts will be a disaster.
Makes me wonder how someone would have found the answers before the printing press. Write to or visit the most knowledgeable person you could get an introduction to or who would answer you? Then go to their contacts or recommendations? Then draw a conclusion from all the responses?
And even this scenario assumes a working postal system, availability of paper and pen. But if you didn't have those, you may not have heard of Greek to even ask the question.
> And I feel extremely snobbish and old for thinking that way.
Old people usually make correct assessments given their knowledge and experience. They know how to maximize their expected gains and play safe. The problem is, real life often rewards those who take risks, and make seemingly wrong decisions, that later turn out to be good.
For example, as a kid I loved playing video games, while my grandma yelled at me for not wanting to help her with work at the farm. She had absolutely no way of predicting that playing video games, which were essentially just toys, would teach me the right skills at the right time, allowing me to move up the social ladder. At the time, forcing the god damn lazy kid to milk the god damn cow was the sensible thing to do.
People who read academic publications and do not see much of a fundamental difference between tattoos that contain information like a barcode and RFID chips that could contain the same information:
Also, the microchip has been around for a long time. I strongly doubt at least modern America could ever get close to even 25% adoption of something like that. There'd be riots, which i'd welcome. Article says there's 4000 users in Sweden which is pretty limited and they're all startup people. The same people that buy all the other constant tracking devices that companies constantly put out. Also i have doubts that full, total authentication will ever really work. Like, we've had decades and made some progress but were still a far far cry from universal auth into all our accounts, even with our phones. All it takes is for one service to go down, or for a competing service to crop up before the first one achieves critical mass and you'll be trapped in the change cycle forever
Well the good thing about the vaccine record tattoo is that the skin is always transforming and rebuilding. It would be impossible to get a set of literal quantum dots to stay forever. Apparently the record would only be viable for 5 years.
That there are lots of people who believe in 5G Bill Gates vax chips is itself fake news. It is well poisoning to pre-empt criticism of billionaires with too much power and free time to meddle in African population growth and pandemic response. Supported by "smart" people who want to feel good and trust the science on 5G safety.
There are Microsoft patents for microchips to track body activity to reward in cryptocurrency and subsidiaries who wanted to microchip vaccine passports into the hands of immigrants.
Yes, real or invented conspiracy theories are routinely amplified and exaggerated by the powerful in order to link critics of $THING to undesirable people.
Mention the word "elites" and you are a Nazi by association. Works every time.
I use both the internet and GenAI extensively now. But I feel that having gone through the "knowledge work" activities without the crutches puts me in a better position to assess the correctness and plausibility of internet sources and AI in a way that kids who grow up using them constantly don't have.
I feel quite privileged to be in that position, that I wouldn't be in had I been born 10 or 20 years later. I also feel sorry for kids these days for not having the opportunity to learn things "the hard way" like I had to. And I feel extremely snobbish and old for thinking that way.