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ChatGPT will end high-school English

Discussion in 'Too Hot for Swamp Gas' started by philnotfil, Dec 9, 2022.

  1. philnotfil

    philnotfil GC Hall of Fame

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    I disagree with the title, students have been outsourcing high school math for years now, and it is still around.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...gpt-writing-high-school-english-essay/672412/

    Teenagers have always found ways around doing the hard work of actual learning. CliffsNotes date back to the 1950s, “No Fear Shakespeare” puts the playwright into modern English, YouTube offers literary analysis and historical explication from numerous amateurs and professionals, and so on. For as long as those shortcuts have existed, however, one big part of education has remained inescapable: writing. Barring outright plagiarism, students have always arrived at that moment when they’re on their own with a blank page, staring down a blinking cursor, the essay waiting to be written.

    Now that might be about to change. The arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, a program that generates sophisticated text in response to any prompt you can imagine, may signal the end of writing assignments altogether—and maybe even the end of writing as a gatekeeper, a metric for intelligence, a teachable skill.

    If you’re looking for historical analogues, this would be like the printing press, the steam drill, and the light bulb having a baby, and that baby having access to the entire corpus of human knowledge and understanding. My life—and the lives of thousands of other teachers and professors, tutors and administrators—is about to drastically change.

    That is the key question. Are we learning these basic things so we can do more complicated things, or are they just hoops to jump through?
     
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  2. danmanne65

    danmanne65 GC Hall of Fame

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    I usually side with progress. Kids can’t write cursive now but they almost all can type. My son wrote a 1500 word essay on his iPhone. Math skills are still important even with everyone having a calculator in their pocket. This concerns me when writing is no longer taught but wonder if I am just thinking like an old fuddy duddy.
     
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  3. WarDamnGator

    WarDamnGator GC Hall of Fame

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    Sure, but if the name implies it’s AI learning from chats, then the teachers might not like the number n-bombs it drops in a questing like “What was the emancipation proclamation and how did it shape America?”
     
  4. mrhansduck

    mrhansduck GC Hall of Fame

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    Can I get this to write appellate briefs? There is rarely such a thing as plagiarism in the law, so I may look into this. Seriously, has anyone on here tried it? Not sure I want to sign up but could be interesting.
     
  5. ursidman

    ursidman VIP Member

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    Documents for divorce and last will and testament have moved online. This might be the next step.
     
  6. PerSeGator

    PerSeGator GC Hall of Fame

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    It likely has rules to avoid profanity. Here's the output for your question, which took it about 3 seconds to draft. Easily better than many high school students could do:

    The Emancipation Proclamation was a presidential proclamation issued by President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863. It declared that all slaves in the Confederate states "shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free." The Emancipation Proclamation was a major turning point in the Civil War and helped pave the way for the end of slavery in the United States. It was a bold and politically risky move by Lincoln, who faced opposition from many people, including some in his own party. The Emancipation Proclamation was an important milestone in the fight for civil rights and helped to shape America into a more equal and just society.
    You can ask for longer explanations as well.
     
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  7. OklahomaGator

    OklahomaGator Jedi Administrator Moderator VIP Member

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    Could not the teacher require the answers/essay to be written in class without the help of electronic devices?
     
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  8. PerSeGator

    PerSeGator GC Hall of Fame

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    It won't generate extensive writing in its current form, but will give you a brief outline if you word the prompt right and the issue is relatively simple. Although it's mostly just rewording the prompt. Here's an example I just made:

    Plaintiff resides in California. Defendant is a 100-member LLC organized in New York, with its principal office located in Albany. One member of Defendant is a citizen of California.

    Write an appellate brief explaining why a federal district court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case based on diversity jurisdiction.


    Appellant’s Brief

    Statement of the Issue

    This appeal is brought to challenge the decision of the federal district court to hear a case based on diversity jurisdiction. Appellant contends that the court lacks jurisdiction because the parties are not completely diverse in citizenship.

    Statement of Facts

    The plaintiff resides in California and the defendant is a 100-member LLC organized in New York, with its principal office located in Albany. One member of Defendant is a citizen of California.

    Argument

    Under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, a federal district court has jurisdiction to hear cases between citizens of different states, when the amount in controversy exceeds $75,000. However, a court does not have jurisdiction to hear a case between citizens of the same state. In this case, the plaintiff is a citizen of California and one member of the defendant LLC is also a citizen of California.

    As a result, the parties are not completely diverse in citizenship and the federal district court lacks jurisdiction to hear the case.

    Conclusion

    For the foregoing reasons, Appellant respectfully requests that this Court reverse the decision of the district court and remand the case with instructions to dismiss.​
     
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  9. GatorRade

    GatorRade Rad Scientist

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    Yes they probably do, but that is a different kind of writing than the one you research and go through drafts, which is the way most professional writing happens.
     
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  10. swampbabe

    swampbabe GC Hall of Fame

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    This is what I do. In addition, all chapter outlines/reading questions must be handwritten.
     
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  11. mrhansduck

    mrhansduck GC Hall of Fame

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    That's better than I expected. Pretty cool. Thanks.
     
  12. lacuna

    lacuna VIP Member

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    Another bad idea adding impetus to the further dumbing down of America. Writing under pressure on an assigned subject that may hold no interest is not fun, but it's a necessary step in a person's intellectual development. The writing of essays is intended to challenge the intellect, develop critical thinking and organizational skills necessary for communicating ideas, while utilizing grammatical skills and vocabulary words learned if the student has been paying attention and completing assignments. Students who resort to shortcuts are foolish and harm themselves. As a person who fails to exercise will never develop muscular strength or endurance, a student who relies on shortcuts and crib sheets will never reach his or her potential. Staying in a zone of comfort can be a trap.
     
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  13. mrhansduck

    mrhansduck GC Hall of Fame

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    Not really disagreeing with you, but I always loved grammar but didn't like fiction. I cliff-noted my way through Canterbury Tales in HS. It made zero sense to me, and still not sure I would understand it now. I was eating lunch recently with a friend who's a maxillofacial surgeon and told him I was frustrated by these little social media puzzles asking me to subtract or multiply fractions or apply orders of operation or something. He told me he can't remember how to do that either but he was probably just being nice to me. But I agree that getting through basic algebra is important even if we don't use it day to day.
     
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  14. WC53

    WC53 GC Hall of Fame

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    Go all Battlestar Galactica, pen and paper in class
     
  15. ElimiGator

    ElimiGator GC Hall of Fame

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    You may not remember how to do orders of operations but you know life is full of them and you know if you do something out of order, shit breaks or doesn’t work right. That’s what you need to know from that. Also, many complicated physical or chemical concepts can be broken down to simple algebra keeping in mind the (=) equality sign. What you do to one side you have to do to the other. Otherwise inequality exist.
     
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  16. docspor

    docspor GC Hall of Fame

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    Humans will be happy to be pets. Feed us, keep the tube on & give us special treats & a cozy bed & we’re good.
     
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  17. PerSeGator

    PerSeGator GC Hall of Fame

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    I don't think that's right. Some are like that, but plenty get fulfillment out of self-improvement.
     
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  18. vaxcardinal

    vaxcardinal GC Hall of Fame

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    Seems like some posters already use this on some of the too hot threads
     
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  19. slocala

    slocala VIP Member

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    It’s an interesting tool. I tried it for the first time. It’s impressive. As user interface expands, it will become more powerful.

    I would argue that it could improve thinking and critical analysis. There will be a bridge period where it will be used to cheat the system, but ultimately things will normalize and humanity will evolve our way of approaching written language.

    The question for me is if it could reproduce a Thomas Pynchon or James Joyce stylized writing? At first blush the juxtaposition of words, themes, and literary tools is somewhat lacking.
     
  20. g8trjax

    g8trjax GC Hall of Fame

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    Half the country's already there.
     
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