[ExI] AI harming humanity

[Dave S]

On Sunday, December 11th, 2022 at 7:35 AM, BillK via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> AI is here, and it’s harming future generations (and the present ones)
> An English teacher’s thoughts on “The College Essay is Dead” and ChatGPT.
> Natalie Kay Dec 9, 2022

As she says, it's not just AI that's a problem. Finding answers with a quick search and plagiarizing papers available online are making it easy to cheat on homework. The problem isn't technology; the problem is that education isn't adjusting to accommodate technology. The calculator didn't remove the need to learn arithmetic and it didn't make it impossible to teach arithmetic.

I think we need to get smart phones out of the classroom, even though parents want to be able to hear from their children in the event of a mass shooting--an exceedingly rare occurrence. But cheating isn't even the main reason they need to go: they're a major distraction.

Educators should know by now that cheating on homework is rampant. They should know that AI can generate decent essays. They need new ways to evaluate a student's skills and understanding. Perhaps a verbal question and answer session, possibly administered by a bot, and recorded for evaluation by the educator (or their staff, whether human or AI) could replace the essay. I'm sure we can think of a myriad of ways to adjust education to technology.

-Dave