Since the advent of ChatGPT, many industry leaders have predicted that it will bring huge changes to education. But how exactly has it changed? Is the impact good or bad? Although the jury is still out, some parents have decided to start first and make ChatPGT a "one-on-one" personal tutor for their children. AI does live up to its trust, but this process also allows parents and educators to see what abilities can make children stand out in the AI era.
Wen 丨 Zhang Nan ed. Luna
Now, almost no one doubts that general artificial intelligence, represented by ChatGPT, will change the world. The change in the education sector can be called the most fundamental change of AI to the future of human society.
But what kind of change will it bring?
The views are still clearly divided into positive and negative sides:
The opposite side believes that students will use ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence to cheat and do homework, which will cause them to gradually lose the ability to learn and think deeply, and then completely destroy our current education ecology, including major universities at home and abroad that have banned ChatGPT;
Zhengfang believes that the ability of artificial intelligence to customize the curriculum for students' personalization will greatly improve the efficiency and resource imbalance of current education. And its popularity can not only help students, but also help teachers, help prepare lesson plans for teaching materials. Holders include Khan Academy, Xueersi and other educational institutions that have embedded similar products into teaching.
The arguments are at odds with each other, and naturally each has its own reasons. It's just that at this time, the middle-class parents who are most nervous about their children's education will not continue to watch from the wall - instead of continuing to worry that their children have no future, it is better to start first, whether it is an enemy or a friend, and will talk first...
"With ChatGPT,
We stopped the English writing class."
May is a stay-at-home mom with an 8-year-old daughter. May has been tutoring her daughter with homework for a few years, but as her child gets older, textbooks become more challenging and require more guidance from parents.
Recently, May heard about ChatGPT and decided to give it a try. She arranged an hour for her daughter to do homework and encouraged her to use ChatGPT to ask questions, including various subjects such as math, science and English. Unexpectedly, this AI's answer is so accurate, helpful, and able to provide explanations in language that children can easily understand.
After a few attempts, May decided to use ChatGPT as a daily tool to help her supplement her daughter's tutoring and teaching, help her get more detailed and professional guidance, and learn more efficiently.
Regarding how ChatGPT can help children learn, ChatGPT "himself" described one of the most intuitive family scenarios: tutoring children's homework.
What's even more magical than ChatGPT's ability to advertise itself is that this actually happens in our real lives.
Xin's mother works in an Internet company, and her husband is engaged in artificial intelligence-related industries, so she paid attention to and tried ChatGPT early. After trying a few days with work-related topics, Xin's mother found that this legendary artificial intelligence seemed to be really good. So, she naturally thought of another important cause in her life - studying with her baby.
Mama Xin's daughter is in the first grade at an established bilingual school in Shanghai, and her family is also very concerned about English learning. Just as the child was learning to write an English essay, she asked ChatGPT: "If you were an American elementary school teacher and this is an essay for a first-grade child, how would you evaluate this essay?" ”
As a result, ChatGPT really gave a rather surprising evaluation like a conscientious teacher-
ChatGPT grading essay comments
"First of all, the most basic grammar, tense, spelling errors, it all recognizes; Second, it also commented on the structure, idea, advantages and disadvantages of the entire composition; Moreover, under the follow-up, he also gave well-founded scoring criteria and suggestions for improvement. What are the criteria for B? What kind of essay can achieve A+? ”
If the first point is still a basic operation, then the last two points are indeed beyond Xin's expectations.
In a small expository describing how to make a handmade work, the child begins by writing, "Do you know how to make a small fish by hand?" ”
In the review, ChatGPT especially affirmed this opening and clear writing, which makes the theme and ideas of the entire composition very clear. At the same time, it also objectively points out some shortcomings of composition, such as insufficient coherence between paragraphs and sentences, insufficient details about the production process, and so on.
In Xinma's words, this is like opening the door to a new world.
Immediately afterwards, Xin's mother found that not only grading essays, but also letting ChatGPT draw inferences from each other under the premise of clarifying the study plan and goals, and then a few propositional essays. From the topics of different genres such as narratives, expository essays to letters, to the writing tips attached below, they are very clear and accurate.
ChatGPT propositions according to requirements,
The child completes the exercise, and the mother corrects
Originally, the child was still in a small class of English writing at that time, and Xin's mother listened to it several times, and she was always a little disappointed. First, the teacher is one to many in the class, and the energy must always be divided equally among several people; Second, teachers rarely mark word for word, and the feedback to children is not very accurate.
ChatGPT, an on-call native English native "one-on-one personal trainer", is almost all advantages in comparison.
No matter when and where, it can provide timely feedback on children's problems, and the efficiency soars;
Round-the-clock online and unconditional cooperation with parents and children at convenient time;
One-on-one personalized guidance, completely specific analysis and answers for children's specific problems, and appropriate correction and motivational language to guide;
The most important thing is that it is also free.
So, about a week later, Xin's mother stopped her English writing class and began to "chicken at home".
The more the era of artificial intelligence,
The more advanced "volumes" you want
The sweetness she tasted in English writing made Xin's mother quickly broaden her thinking to English reading.
Xin's mother has always been accompanying her children to do graded reading. Moreover, the accumulation of long-term learning with the baby has made Xin's mother almost become a half professional teacher, and every time she reads, she must be equipped with a complete reading plan.
From the accumulation of new words to reading comprehension and reading notes, there can be no less;
There is also a special reading method, which ones are good to read once? Which ones to pick out and read carefully?
Finally, design a few questions to test the reading effect, preferably including one or two open-ended questions to inspire children's thinking...
In the past, Xin's mother needed to read it by herself first, and then sort out her ideas, prepare lessons, come up with topics, and complete a set of processes, how could it take an hour or two; But now, this lesson preparation work has basically been handed over to ChatGPT. If you want to teach in English, you can also use it to generate verbatim lesson plans.
This can't help but be reminiscent of CallAnnie, which came out some time ago, and the scene design of direct video chat with ChatGPT makes the most expensive foreign teacher oral communication in English learning seem to lose its meaning all of a sudden. Affected by this, even the stock price of the American extracurricular tutoring online education platform Chegg fell a lot.
However, to say that ChatGPT can really replace teachers or parents to independently tutor children's homework, Xin's mother thinks, it will not be. Moreover, unlike the scene described by ChatGPT itself mentioned earlier, Xin's mother can use it with confidence precisely because of what the child is currently learning, and she can also tutor.
"It's me who really dominates, including framework requirements and long-term plans, but ChatGPT is really a very practical tool, a small assistant, and as a daily use, the efficiency is simply improved."
ChatGPT designs intensive reading lesson plans based on requirements
What Xin's mother values more is this new way of learning, so that the child's own learning efficiency has also improved a lot.
One small detail is telling: ChatGPT makes it especially easy for children to recognize new words in reading.
On the one hand, input can get timely feedback, which can save the time of looking up the dictionary; On the other hand, Xin's mother will input the title and author of the book at the same time as entering new words, so that ChatGPT can explain it more professionally in relation to the context;
Moreover, Xin's mother hopes that the child will recognize the meaning of new words through English, but sometimes, when the child checks the dictionary, he finds that there are more words that may not be recognized in the definition, but ChatGPT can give a better understanding of the word definition under the condition box of "explanation to first-grade students".
Enter the title author and words that the child does not know into ChatGPT and ask it to generate a word list with notes, parts of speech, and example sentences
It is this idea of improving efficiency that she wants her children to learn and feel the most.
Since she works in the Internet industry, Xin's mother hopes that her children can understand from an early age that what ChatGPT can replace is actually the part of the work that is valuable by selling time, and the core is still people. When this core can also be superimposed on the use of artificial intelligence, the imagination space in the future will only be larger.
This is also why, although Xin's mother has not yet let her children talk directly with ChatGPT, she has begun to consciously cultivate her children's ability to ask questions.
The attributes of general artificial intelligence determine that it is an existence of the same frequency as the questioner. The more precise and effective the question, the closer the answer is to expectations. In other words, the more children can ask questions, the more they will "use" ChatGPT in the future.
Children's questioning, on the one hand, is limited by the cognitive level, on the other hand, it is also an intuitive manifestation of thinking ability and expression ability. The former evolves with age, while the latter needs the guidance and help of parents and teachers.
And this first requires adults to take this step first.
In the first two months, the news that ChatGPT has passed the doctor, lawyer and even Google engineer exams has had a big impact on parents, and seeing that the industry that children are likely to work in soon has become easy for ChatGPT today. Therefore, some parents say that in the era of AI, is it still meaningful for children to "roll" down?
But Xin's mother, who has really taken her children to experience the AI era in a shallow way, feels that it is more necessary to "roll" and "roll" more advanced. If you don't continue to learn, you can't reach a certain understanding, and you don't even have the ability to control this future universal tool, then you really may be eliminated.
Angels or demons
How to use artificial intelligence well?
However, when we can finally look directly at this new technology, we must also realize that the potential negative impact is also an objective existence that cannot be ignored.
Christina Caron, a reporter for The New York Times, is a mother of two. In her daily life, she is in charge of family education, mental health and culture, and has also paid attention to the influence of ChatGPT on education early.
The mother is thinking of parents who are as nervous as she is: many parents already struggle with their children's excessive use of electronic devices and social media, and now that ChatGPT has complicated the situation, they may just want to bury their heads in the sand.
Helplessly, whether we like it or not, once the new technology is produced, it will not disappear, and escape and anxiety cannot change reality. So Justine Cassell, a professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, said, "The worst decision parents can make is to ban their children from using these new systems because they are here to stay." ”
So she opened ChatGPT and experimented for hours to get a more complete picture of how it works, help other parents, and how to help their children prepare for it all early.
She concluded that sitting down with her child and using ChatGPT might be easier to discuss.
At the end of the day, children will only be quicker to embrace new things, but how to "take the best and remove the bad" is crucial at the beginning.
The technology that powers AI is complex, and adults have difficulty fully understanding how it works, let alone kids. But through practical use and explanation of some basic concepts, it is possible to help children understand its advantages and limitations in advance.
It could even start with the principles of ChatGPT, a so-called "neural network" that sounds like a human brain but is actually a mathematical system that gathers information through a sea of digital, textual, and image information from sources such as websites, social media platforms, and specialized databases.
Only, it doesn't always choose the most reliable source. In other words, even if ChatGPT's answers always seem authoritative, rigorous, and trustworthy, they are in fact unreliable and may produce incorrect, outdated, and even offensive and biased content.
If you can establish an objective understanding of AI under the leadership of adults from the beginning, the problem of over-reliance or even loss of subjective judgment is likely to be avoided.
Recently, Sal Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, shouted again in a TED Talk that artificial intelligence will trigger the biggest positive change in education in human history.
It is precisely because, in his opinion, these potential negative effects on the field of education are completely likely to be avoided. Like the company announced early on the Khanmigo using GPT-4 as its AI assistant, it's like a "teen mode" GPT.
First of all, there is a very important security barrier, all conversations are recorded and can be viewed by the teacher.
Second, it refuses to provide answers directly, and when a student says, "Tell me the answer," it simply says, "I'm your mentor." What do you think is the next step in solving this problem? ”
Khan also singled out one of the questions students are most likely to ask: "Why should I learn this?" Khanmigo's AI assistant would ask, like Socrates, "So what do you care about?" ”
If a student says they want to be a professional athlete, the AI assistant can follow the trend and say, "Well, learning the size of cells, which is what this video is about, is useful for understanding nutrition and how the human body works." ”
In short, it can answer students' questions, provide quizzes, and connect students' various ideas to guide them.
For parents, products like Khanmigo are also an idea.
Khanmigo's AI assistant
Since ChatGPT is not open to Chinese users, and IP review efforts are further increasing, it may not be realistic for many domestic parents to directly use ChatGPT to tutor their children's homework. But fortunately, many similar products in China are also developing rapidly.
For example, iFLYTEK, which focuses on specialized fields, has been deeply engaged in education, medical care, human-computer interaction and other fields in the past few years, although it is not as good as ChatGPT in "general", but fortunately, iFLYTEK has also performed well in these focus areas.
On May 6, iFLYTEK released the Spark cognitive model. Some industry insiders analyzed that from the overall output effect, the Spark model is basically equal to ChatGPT, and the logic of the answer is very similar, and the very complex logical reasoning problem, Spark is not as good as GPT-4, but it is obviously better than ChatGPT in the understanding of the Chinese context.
On the other hand, on May 8, the news of MathGPT, a self-developed mathematical model, came out. This product-level application for global mathematics enthusiasts and scientific research institutions, with problem-solving and problem-solving algorithms in the field of mathematics as the core, is also on the short board of ChatGPT.
It can be hoped that by combining the capabilities of large language models and calculation engines, MathGPT will make large language models responsible for understanding topics, analyzing them step by step, and making breakthroughs in the tutoring of mathematics subjects.
In the past, we learned through pen and paper, and later, the post-90s and post-00s became Internet natives, and today, another generation of artificial intelligence was born. In terms of the speed of accepting new things, they will only be faster, but how will they meet that mixed future?
Perhaps, this is what parents need to really prepare their children.
Bibliography:
1. New York Times: The A.I. Chatbots Have Arrived. Time to Talk to Your Kids., Christina Caron
2. Xueqiu: "AI video chatbot CallAnnie goes online, why education platform Chegg plummeted 50%!" , cooked and not rotten
3. Renxing Shan: "iFLYTEK surpasses ChatGPT? It's not necessarily the technology that attracts people," Shan said
4. Qubits: MathGPT is coming! Specializing in mathematical large models, solving problems and lecturing at the same time