Making sense of AI

When models are capable enough to not just process an entire academic paper, but to understand the context in which “checking math” makes sense, and then actually check the results successfully, that radically changes what AIs can do. In fact, my experiment, along with others doing the same thing, helped inspire an effort to see how often o1 can

... See more

So how do we do it? Let’s imagine that we want to come up with 20 ideas for marketing slogans for a new mail-order cheese shop. The AI can generate those for us, but we will get even better quality if we remember the principle of telling AI who it is: You are an expert at marketing. When asked to generate slogan ideas you come up with ideas that

... See more

Some assignments ask students to “cheat” by having the AI create essays, which they then critique—a sneaky way of getting students to think hard about the work, even if they don’t write it. Some assignments allow unlimited AI use but hold the students accountable for the outcomes and facts produced by the AI, which mirrors how they might work with

... See more

If you want to do something with AI, just ask it to help you do the thing. “I want to write a novel; what do you need to know to help me?” will get you surprisingly far. And remember, AI is only going to get better at guiding us, rather than requiring us to guide it. Prompting is not going to be that important for that much longer.

This doesn’t mean

... See more

We have already outsourced the worst part of writing (checking grammar) and math (long division) to machines like spell checkers and calculators, which freed us from these tedious tasks. It would be natural to use LLMs to extend the process. And this is indeed what we have seen in some early research on using AI for work. People who use AI to do

... See more

The issue is that in order to learn to think critically, problem-solve, understand abstract concepts, reason through novel problems, and evaluate the AI’s output, we need subject matter expertise. An expert educator, with knowledge of their students and classroom, and with pedagogical content knowledge, can evaluate an AI-written syllabus or an

... See more

By the mid-1990s, calculators were part of the curriculum and were used to complement other ways of learning math. Some tests allowed them, some did not. A practical consensus was achieved. Math education did not fall apart, though debate and research continues today, a half century after the calculator appeared in classrooms.

To some extent, AI

... See more

The Homework Apocalypse threatens a lot of good, useful types of assignments, many of which have been used in schools for centuries. We will need to adjust quickly to preserve what we are in danger of losing and to accommodate the changes AI will bring. That will take immediate effort from instructors and education leaders and clearly articulated

... See more