ChatGPT banned from New York City public schools’ devices and networks (opens in new tab)

> I'm not sure if there's much value in learning things like basic SQL queries anymore which was something I had to learn when studying computer science.

I really disagree, a major function of education is to teach concepts before introducing tools. I took a physics class in undergrad that required a graphing calculator, does that mean I wasted years learning all of the mathematical concepts that could be performed by a graphing calculator?

Having an understanding of what's going on is so important, especially when something is broken. If we encourage students to start with AI and not learn the fundamentals themselves, they won't wind up learning how to identify root cause when the tool causes an issue (and ChatGPT is by no means perfect).

If a student can look up anything on ChatGPT it could very well inhibit their ability to develop critical thinking skills. They could just copy the output of ChatGPT rather than actually engaging with a text like Of Mice and Men, for example, and considering what it's trying to say about the American dream or interpersonal connections. Lots of learning exercises are relatively meaningless in isolation but are a part of a greater skill development journey. It's like just taking the answers from the back of the book rather than working through exercises. Getting the answer isn't the point. The point is actually doing the work so you develop skills that can be used beyond your current homework assignment or exam.

> For example, I'm not sure if there's much value in learning things like basic SQL queries anymore which was something I had to learn when studying computer science. ChatGPT is great at writing SQL queries if you're able to tell it exactly what you need.

Using ChatGPT to generate something that you can't independently verify is a terrible idea. Most of the time it'll be fine, but when it's not you need to be able to recognize the flaws. Hopefully you at least test it before pushing, but if you don't know how to write the query you also don't know its failure modes, so your tests will likely miss important edge cases.

AI tools are great for speeding up processes you can do by hand, but because they're all statistics you can't count on them to do it alone: some percentage of the time they will inevitably be wrong.

EDIT: Note that this stands in contrast to a wholly deterministic tool like a calculator, which in most circumstances doesn't need to be second guessed.

I don’t entirely agree with this. My math education relied way to heavily on mechanical substitute-and-compute, but there’s definitely value in making sure that children can actually do and understand what computations are actually happening.

I would imagine writing is similar - the endless essays full of bullshit I pumped out in high school were obviously pointless. But being forced to write much earlier in school was super foundational for having the skill in the first place.

As to the SQL example, I also think it’s flipped - learning the basic sql queries is probably the most valuable as it’s a foundation.

> For example any maths test which only tests students on problems which are easily solvable by a calculator isn't testing any skill of real world use.

True in university, but memorizing multiplication tables and learning the mechanics of long division and multiplication are important parts or math education for kids. Most of school is not strictly for "real world" skills anyway (even if doing basic math unaided is almost as close as we come in school to teaching a real world skill).

Same goes for say, basic reading comprehension and summarization.

I don't buy your argument

This would replace the skill of SQL with the skill of being able to ask specific questions which is a valuable skill, also when collaborating with humans.

At the same time it is a completely different mode to operate. Writing and editing SQL while you are trying to solve a problem will lead you to a different way of thinking, iterating, maybe even induce fewer context switches.

Using ChatGPT can be similar to delegating those type of tasks to a colleague. There are upsides and downsides to this but never underestimate the benefits of strengthening your own abilities.

While I see your point, it is not hard to see the implications of your argument. Should students be allowed to use calculators in basic math? Don't you think they should learn arithmetic and be tested on that? What about reading? Why learn how to read when you can just use a device to read text to you?

When you first learn it is generally important to learn the basics without tools. In your example knowing the times takes, at least for single digits is important... But can be fine with a calculator. When you first learn SQL knowing sums simple queries is important. Maybe they'll pick it up after asking chatgpt, stack overflow, or Google, but one shouldn't have to do a search everytime they need to do a basic thing

Not sure I entirely agree. Imagine there's a trainable skill like writing, and GPT can write at low-intermediate level, but can't at high level. How do you test students before they completed intermediate level?

It will also make stuff up if it doesn't know the answer. A tutor who did that would get fired.

It was endlessly patient until they introduced rate limiting. :)

When I was playing with extracting stories from ChatGPT my feeling was always that it writes like an 8th grade honors student.

Did you even read the article? You completely side stepped the argument they are making:

> While the tool may be able to provide quick and easy answers to questions, it does not build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success

The problem is that calculators are correct 100% of the time, ChatGPT is not. What makes it more difficult is that it's often really hard to tell when ChatGPT is correct or not.

Not all tools are equal. Google Translate is a tool but it's not allowed in your language class, how surprising.

I see ChatGPT more akin to Wikipedia and Google than a calculator. We don't consider Wikipedia or Google as much of a tool as they are a knowledge reservoir of truthiness.

The difference is that calculators have been around for decades and everyone is familiar with them, but chatgpt has been around a few weeks.

This is excellent! It also helps people to learn the tools that we would inevitably need to learn how to use.

Prompt engineering is a skill I'm seeing a need for

Are you praising ChatGPT by explaining how it allows your kid to avoid having to think and learn their lesson?

My question is, did you learn the truth from ChatGPT? It seems like it will always give plausible sounding answer, that may or may not be correct. For example I asked it today to enumerate the rights given to all christians as part of the priesthood of believers according to Luther. It enumerate a couple of plausible sounding rights. Unfortunately none of them were correct.

ChatGPT is a chatbot, not Google. It just produces answers that are plausible-sounding. ChatGPT is not doing any searches or data lookups for you in the background. Unfortunately, you may have learned total garbage.

Typically, yes, a student in fourth grade learning multiplication isn't allowed to use a calculator. We tend to assume that you need to be able to do something by hand first so you have an intuition for what a right answer looks like. Only then can you use the machine to speed up the process.