this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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Kids who use ChatGPT as a study assistant do worse on tests (hechingerreport.org)
submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Does AI actually help students learn? A recent experiment in a high school provides a cautionary tale. 

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students who had access to ChatGPT while doing practice math problems did worse on a math test compared with students who didn’t have access to ChatGPT. Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning.

A third group of students had access to a revised version of ChatGPT that functioned more like a tutor. This chatbot was programmed to provide hints without directly divulging the answer. The students who used it did spectacularly better on the practice problems, solving 127 percent more of them correctly compared with students who did their practice work without any high-tech aids. But on a test afterwards, these AI-tutored students did no better. Students who just did their practice problems the old fashioned way — on their own — matched their test scores.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

I use it for explaining stuff when studying for uni and I do it like this: If I don't understand e.g. a definition, I ask an LLM to explain it, read the original definition again and see if it makes sense.

This is an informal approach, but if the definition is sufficiently complex, false answers are unlikely to lead to an understanding. Not impossible ofc, so always be wary.

For context: I'm studying computer science, so lots of math and theoretical computer science.