I think it just moves the definition of “learning” to a higher level of abstraction: so you know what AI tools to use, how to prompt them, and how to understand their output?
I’m reminded of the time when graphing calculators were going to destroy math programs because nobody would “really know” how to do the work. And yet here we are, and math is fine, and calculators are just another tool.
I hear this argument a lot and I think that it's fallacious. Let's go ahead and extend it to another AI tool - in this case let's talk about stable diffusion.
Let's say you teach a class on fine Art and painting, if you allow your students to use stable diffusion for all their drawings, would you make the case that they have learned how to paint?
Likewise you can't really make the case that somebody understands how to do recursion, if all they're capable of doing is typing the following prompt into chat GPT, "change my forloop into a recursive method".
And in my experience going through calculus, the usage of graphing calculators was heavily. We still had to understand how to calculate derivatives and integrals by hand.
> would you make the case that they have learned how to paint
Well, you’re assuming that “painting” is the physical act of moving a brush on canvas.
But that’s already not true. Plenty of people graduate art school with degrees, despite doing everything on a computer. Are they “painters”? Well, no, but they are artists.
And if you’re talking about a program for artists, where the work is judged on artistic merit (composition, concept, etc), I don’t think it matters what mediums are used.
But if we’re narrowly focused on something more like sign painting, where what matters is brush technique and conforming to customer expectations, sure, AI will reduce the need for such people and will allow those who exist to “cheat”. But who cares?
Most math classes are taught without graphing calculators and when they are used it is minimal. This is fundamentally different. This literally is being people trying to substitute actually know or successfully being evaluated to do anything. The advocates of “bringing down higher education with AI” also consider competence to be “ableism”.
I support using AI in education because it will be in the work environment. It seems insane that anyone would want to teach students on slide rules and typewriters and then send them out to a world of computers and word processors.
And I have no idea where your “ableism” comment came from. Just trying to inject some culture war?
This business of “ableism” is comes up all the time with ChatGPT discussions. I don’t know what your slide rule comment means. Even with calculators we expected students to be able to calculate without a calculator. I really don’t see how you expect people to do “complex” tasks if they cannot do simple ones. Is this magic?
I’m reminded of the time when graphing calculators were going to destroy math programs because nobody would “really know” how to do the work. And yet here we are, and math is fine, and calculators are just another tool.