Is AI useful?

[MarkBR]

Thought this was amusing. https://www.techlearning.com/news/high-school-math-students-used-a-gpt-4-ai-tutor-they-did-worse

Much I have seen seems to be the same that AI seldom helps, except in very limited tasks.  Pattern recognition for detecting cancers, is one good example I can think of.

But for education I doubt they are very useful except for generating examples in English of possible use words or grammar examples to put into questions for students.  Two friends who teach English both use AI to generate examples for teaching then has to spend time correct the AI examples but it is faster than generating stuff from scratch.

Anyone think they may be more useful for education? I have great doubts that AI would help in Thailand, it seems to have far more fundamental issues in its education system that need to be solved first.

 

Edited September 23 by MarkBR
Typographic error

[newbee2022]

On 9/23/2024 at 6:29 PM, MarkBR said:

Thought this was amusing. https://www.techlearning.com/news/high-school-math-students-used-a-gpt-4-ai-tutor-they-did-worse

Much I have seen seems to be the same that AI seldom helps, except in very limited tasks.  Pattern recognition for detecting cancers, is one good example I can think of.

But for education I doubt they are very useful except for generating examples in English of possible use words or grammar examples to put into questions for students.  Two friends who teach English both use AI to generate examples for teaching then has to spend time correct the AI examples but it is faster than generating stuff from scratch.

Anyone think they may be more useful for education? I have great doubts that AI would help in Thailand, it seems to have far more fundamental issues in its education system that need to be solved first.

 

I just googled: "how and where AI can help?"

Do it too and you will be stunned, what you missed. It's all there to answer your question 👍

[Lacessit]

AI is only as good as the information it stores. I have proved it factually wrong on several occasions.

[MarkBR]

29 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

AI is only as good as the information it stores. I have proved it factually wrong on several occasions.

Factually, it seems to have many problems, coupled it to the tendency to hallucinate (specific AI term). 

[NorthernRyland]

I use ChatGPT for work (programmer) and it's often better at searching for information than Google. It can even produce snippets of code that you would otherwise need to research just to see examples.

 

However it's also wrong often and can hallucinate so you always need to double check things. Still I find it the most useful search tool in many cases.

[Straight-Beginning98]

AI is mostly a Search-Copy-Regurgitate IT tool. It does not create anything. As the primary goal of education is to teach how to think, the plagiarism done by AI is kind of going the opposite way, reheating old and sometimes false or exaggerated information. 

[GreasyFingers]

AI: Artificial Information

[MarkBR]

19 minutes ago, Straight-Beginning98 said:

AI is mostly a Search-Copy-Regurgitate IT tool. It does not create anything. As the primary goal of education is to teach how to think, the plagiarism done by AI is kind of going the opposite way, reheating old and sometimes false or exaggerated information. 

Fully agree, have been a biology teacher & tutor; think it is currently irrelevant to good teaching.

[MarkBR]

4 minutes ago, GreasyFingers said:

AI: Artificial Information

AI = marketing term nothing more = more like Artificial Stupidity (AS).

[NorthernRyland]

29 minutes ago, Straight-Beginning98 said:

AI is mostly a Search-Copy-Regurgitate IT tool. It does not create anything. As the primary goal of education is to teach how to think, the plagiarism done by AI is kind of going the opposite way, reheating old and sometimes false or exaggerated information. 

It can copy paste at a granule level so it can build some things but in a lego-like fashion, not new information. Even so it's useful for programming because often you're searching for examples in some codebase you've never used and ChatGPT is helpful there.

[NorthernRyland]

15 minutes ago, MarkBR said:

AI = marketing term nothing more = more like Artificial Stupidity (AS).

AI is totally BS indeed. It's a LLM. 

 

Even more stupid is Apple integrated it into the OS and calling it "Apple Intelligence". 🤮

[Pouatchee]

i actually pay the 20 a month fee and i find it incredibly useful. if i have a worksheet that is a bit too difficult for my kids i upload it and ask it to simplify the questions or text. it does make mistakes and has to be proofread. in its defense many of the teachers i used to work with made mistakes regularly, even on tests.

 

it helps with lesson plans an gives ideas for projects. it is good and getting better. it is the future and teachers who dont adapt will be left behind.

[Grusa]

42 minutes ago, MarkBR said:

AI = marketing term nothing more = more like Artificial Stupidity (AS).

I always thought it was Artificial Insemination.......... and useful to farmers.

[MarkBR]

9 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

i actually pay the 20 a month fee and i find it incredibly useful. if i have a worksheet that is a bit too difficult for my kids i upload it and ask it to simplify the questions or text. it does make mistakes and has to be proofread. in its defense many of the teachers i used to work with made mistakes regularly, even on tests.

 

it helps with lesson plans an gives ideas for projects. it is good and getting better. it is the future and teachers who dont adapt will be left behind.

Yes, I know it can be used for teaching, I have English teacher friends who use it, but it needs to be corrected.  Also, I agree that teachers often make mistakes on tests, specifically those with little subject knowledge.

Edited September 26 by MarkBR
typographic error

[HappyExpat57]

I use this site to generate images for my students, and it's been great! The examples I used to have to spend HOURS on Photoshop creating are damned near instant. 60 free images a day (15 requests x 4 results). MORE than enough for my needs and the price is right.

 

https://www.bing.com/images/create

[Pouatchee]

2 minutes ago, MarkBR said:

but it needs to be corrected. 

 

i did mention that. Also, it does not do text formatting very well. When i ask it to underline key words it makes them bold. So still much to work on.

 

I am going back home soon and I will have to teach French immersion. So far it has really helped me translate things from english to french and there are very few mistakes. I dont remember where the accents are on the keyboard so for now i rely on it to make sure my french grammar and spelling are ok. I am quite rusty in french.

 

I apy the 20$ a month for it and have no issues with the expense. It will only get better. Unfortunately I have spent a lot of time getting ready for going back home and have not had the time to play with it as much as i want.

 

It can also generate pictures useful for story telling and descriptive writing. Combined with speech recognition (dragon naturally speaking 16) it makes my life way easier. Anyone who 'disagrees' with it or does not believe in it will be left behind. People scoffed at the computer and the internet... 

[MarkBR]

1 minute ago, Pouatchee said:

 

i did mention that. Also, it does not do text formatting very well. When i ask it to underline key words it makes them bold. So still much to work on.

 

I am going back home soon and I will have to teach French immersion. So far it has really helped me translate things from english to french and there are very few mistakes. I dont remember where the accents are on the keyboard so for now i rely on it to make sure my french grammar and spelling are ok. I am quite rusty in french.

 

I apy the 20$ a month for it and have no issues with the expense. It will only get better. Unfortunately I have spent a lot of time getting ready for going back home and have not had the time to play with it as much as i want.

 

It can also generate pictures useful for story telling and descriptive writing. Combined with speech recognition (dragon naturally speaking 16) it makes my life way easier. Anyone who 'disagrees' with it or does not believe in it will be left behind. People scoffed at the computer and the internet... 

True.  I love technology that is useful.  But abhor outrageous marketing by those with little knowledge.

[thaibeachlovers]

15 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

teachers who dont adapt will be left behind.

Well as it will eventually replace teachers anyway, that's irrelevant, IMO.

AI as it is now is not autonomous at all- it's just a faster computer. It can only regurgitate stuff, just as a computer does now, but faster.

Once  real AI comes in big business will lay waste to the work force to make more profit, as will private schools. Governments will see savings from not paying teachers. Won't even need schools, just learn at home.

 

A computer can't do a worse job of teaching than the teachers I had.

[retarius]

I tried it 3 times when it was launched but wasn't too impressed with the output. I couldn't see me using it if I was working as I was  concerned with the mistakes in the results. 

[thaibeachlovers]

6 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

It can also generate pictures useful for story telling and descriptive writing.

Sometimes it gives people more fingers than normal, or bigger heads. Also sometimes gets perspective wrong.

 

However really good AI can make pictures almost as good as a photo. The easiest way to know, is if the picture is too perfect.

[john donson]

it sure made some rich dudes even richer and now pulling out nvidia as what does AI , except using lot's of electricity, provide to improve life ?

 

did big pharma invent new stuff with it to be forcefully injected?

 

did the military design new super bombs/planes to go kill and invade other countries ?

 

[WDSmart]

AI is definitely useful, but it all depends on what you're using it for. Like any tool, the danger of AI is our tendency to develop a dependency on it and abandon our abilities to do what we now depend on AI to do. One thing to note is all AI I know of is done on digital computers, whereas our (humans') reasoning process is analog. Which one is better for dealing with complex problems, especially those related to human evolution, is at least questionable.

[Pouatchee]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Well as it will eventually replace teachers anyway, that's irrelevant, IMO.

 

a professor i had at uni told me that sooner than later that teaching would be a career forgotten. He told me that classes would be taught online and that one teacher would teach hundreds at the same time. Come the pandemic... exactly what happened... not on the scale of the hundreds per class but a glimpse of things to come. A chinese online company i taught for, before uncle xi banned them all on mainland china, actually did start to use AI 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZWSOh4z4I4

 

this link is to korean ai teaching. I did get a glimpse of the ai that was replacing the teachers, but i did not bookmark it. it looked a bit like max headroom and always gave praise, even when the students were wrong. still a ways away yet, but coming to a theater near you soon...

[brianthainess]

Not when it's used to write 'news' stories or 'give advise' on how to do something,  they end up with false information, causing confusion to those with real intelligence, and could cause undue stress, or worse, to those fed misinformation and act on it. 

[MarkBR]

28 minutes ago, Pouatchee said:

 

a professor i had at uni told me that sooner than later that teaching would be a career forgotten. He told me that classes would be taught online and that one teacher would teach hundreds at the same time. Come the pandemic... exactly what happened... not on the scale of the hundreds per class but a glimpse of things to come. A chinese online company i taught for, before uncle xi banned them all on mainland china, actually did start to use AI 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZWSOh4z4I4

 

this link is to korean ai teaching. I did get a glimpse of the ai that was replacing the teachers, but i did not bookmark it. it looked a bit like max headroom and always gave praise, even when the students were wrong. still a ways away yet, but coming to a theater near you soon...

Before AI becomes useful it has to do a lot better, a high-tech version of rote learning where there is no capacity to judge whether accurate or not, is NOT useful in teaching young humans.  AI is incapable of know what is correct or incorrect just what is statistically likely which does not necessarily mean it is correct.  AI often hallucinate, BIG PROBLEM!

Imagine an AI-controlled robotic surgeon is doing an operation on and also is hallucinating - What is it going to cut surgically?

[OneMoreFarang]

AI can do lots of things very fast. And it can combine knowledge from many fields together.

 

I use now this AI if I have some questions and often it has good answers.

Perplexity

And I can ask additional questions.

The reason why I use this AI is because it shows footnotes where the information comes from. So, I can dig deeper myself if I want to.

Obviously, nobody should make the mistake to 100% trust the AI. But it can help a lot.

 

Something to compare might be a calculator. I know it works different and all that, but it can answer questions of a limited scope very fast and accurately. And we should be aware of input errors and if we are not sure, doublecheck the details.

 

[zakalwe]

AI is a force multiplier. Zero times a force multiplier is zero.

 

A smart human needs to be in the loop. Get better at prompt engineering. Iterate until you get something useful. You can ask Chapgpt about prompt engineering.

 

 

 

Edited September 26 by zakalwe

[MarkBR]

1 minute ago, zakalwe said:

AI is a force multiplier. Zero times a force multiplier is zero.

 

I found this AI image amusing.

 

My Thai partner was NOT amused

[MarkBR]

Just now, MarkBR said:

My Thai partner was NOT amused

🤣

[KhaoNiaw]

This is a decent little course from Google that can show current possibilities for educators who aren't really familiar with using any form of Generative AI. 
https://grow.google/ai-for-educators/