What about AI? - Ranger College Library at Ranger College

When Chat GPT broke over the world three years ago, I did not know anything more about AI than any other ordinary person. I did know that it was important and it could seriously change the world as we know it. I also immediately saw its potential for students to use it to do their homework for them. That is the primary thing I have been studying and learning since the beginning. There are a lot of really useful ways for everyone to use AI. Students have to remember, though, that they are learning and sometimes you just have to do things the hard way in order to make them stick.

One of the places I get my information is a blog called One Useful Thing by Ethan Mollick. Earlier this month, he published a blog called Against ‘Brain Damage’ exploring how AI can help or hurt the way we think. It had a lot of useful information and I may revisit some of the topics later, but today I want to look at a specific study.

According to Mollick, researchers “at Penn conducted an experiment at a high school in Turkey where some students were given access to GPT-4 to help with homework. When they were told to use ChatGPT without guidance or special prompting, they ended up taking a shortcut and getting answers. So even though students thought they learned a lot from ChatGPT's help, they actually learned less - scoring 17% worse on their final exam (compared to students who didn't use ChatGPT).”

The same study surveyed the students four months later and found students who had used Chat GPT remembered less than students who did not use AI for the same assignment. What it boils down to is that getting the answers is not the same as finding the answers. Do the work, do the research. I am able to pull information from papers I wrote twenty or more years ago out of my memory because I had to learn the material as I was working on it. You can (and should) too!

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Homogeneity and AI Tutoring

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Getting answers is not the same as finding answers

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