this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023

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The summer is over, schools are back, and the data is in: ChatGPT is mainly a tool for cheating on homework. (www.businessinsider.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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The summer is over, schools are back, and the data is in: ChatGPT is mainly a tool for cheating on homework.::ChatGPT traffic dropped when summer began and schools closed. Now students are back, and they're using the AI tool again more.

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[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 4 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

ChatGPT was supposed to be the fastest-growing tech product in history, so this reversal got the technosphere theorizing as to why the chatbot wasn't so hot anymore.

Then there's the amusing comparison with interest in Minecraft, a popular video game that kids love to play when they're not using ChatGPT to cheat on their homework.

However, if usage is only recovering because students are back, that may be a bad sign because it suggests there's a limited range of use cases for ChatGPT and other AI-powered chatbots.

Mark Shmulik, a top internet analyst at Bernstein, made this point at the start of the summer, when usage fell.

In other words, if a big part of ChatGPT growth is driven by cheating students, this means the technology, or at least the chatbot format, may not be the dominant computing platform of the future.

OpenAI did release this guide for teachers at the end of August, which suggests ways to use ChatGPT in the classroom, including prompts and lesson plans.

The original article contains 470 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 64%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Egh Moody adults are ignorant to how it works, how to prompt well, and are scared of using it at work.

Kids are going to gobble that shit up. It's being used for cheating until the kids get into the workforce.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If anything, people who like chatGPT are the ones ignorant of how it works (spoiler: it doesn't).

And kids with their understanding of technology being limited to youtube and tiktok have no clue about what an AI is. They see it, like most people, as a magic black box that is incredibly smart. Apart from being a black box, none of that is true.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It works well if you know how to prompt well. LLMs are able to do so much, but a user just needs to know how to use it correctly. The technology is still in its infancy, so it's a bit difficult to use well.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It does not work. At most it looks like it works.

A human brain is able to understand and process information. An AI simply calculates a mathematical function. There is no reasoning and no understanding of anything, all that ChatGPT does is try to look like a human. And by "try to look like a human", I mean "generate sentences that can be believable, on shape, to be written by a human".

If you ask it to calculate 2+2, and then tell it that it is equal to 5, it won't see any problem because it doesn't understand any of it. But it will give you answers that are, grammatically speaking, reasonably human.

If I ask a rock how much is 2+2 and I throw it, and it bounces 4 times, it does not mean that this rock knows how to count. ChatGPT and similar are just better illusions, but they're nothing more.

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[–] ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago

Literally unusable.

[–] naught@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, shitty article. AI is the same as calculators. So what! Kids don't have to waste mental cycles with your tedious and borderline sadistic amounts of homework. Go fly a kite.

edit: clarification

[–] ShittyRedditWasBetter@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never said anything to the contrary. Using ti86 was cheating when I was in school, now it's taught in 6th grade.

[–] naught@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

I was agreeing and speaking more at the article. Sorry for the confusion :)

[–] beeng@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 1 year ago

Yes it's a better search engine... Google and the like are shitting their pants that ClosedAI are keeping the users for themselves

[–] muntedcrocodile@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I feel this is a political issue on the understanding of ai. It is a powerful tool and all powerful tools garner a certain amount of fear. Ultimately the protests against ai will fail and if history has taught us anything that protesting efficiency will be futile.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure whether or not to call my daughter lucky that she couldn't get away with this on her school-issued Chromebook, but it's probably for the best.

[–] Player2@sopuli.xyz 0 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If anything, services like that can be better than mindless scribbling off of someone else's paper as you can ask clarifying questions and have it explain concepts to you with some accuracy.

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