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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] -1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I mean, why are you confident the work in textbooks is correct? Both have been proven unreliable, though I will admit LLMs are much more so.

The way you verify in this instance is actually going through the work yourself after you’ve been shown sources. They are explicitly not saying they take 1+1=3 as law, but instead asking how that was reached and working off that explanation to see if it makes sense and learn more.

Math is likely the best for this too. You have undeniable truths in math, it’s true, or it’s false. There are no (meaningful) opinions on how addition works other than the correct one.

[–] Rekorse 3 points 2 months ago

The problem with this style of verification is that there is no authoritative source. Neither the AI nor yourself is capable of verifying for accuracy. The AI also has no expectation of being accurate or revised.

I don't see how this is any better than running google searches on reddit or other message boards looking for relevant discussions and basing your knowledge on those.

If AI was enabling something new that might be worth it but allowing someone to find slightly less/more shitty message board posts 10% more efficiently isnt worth what's happening. There are countries that are capable of regulation as a field fills out, why can't america? We banned tiktok in under a month didnt we?