• Question: do you agree with schools teaching us how to use chatgpt or do you think it will make us lazy?

    Asked by anon-380915 on 17 Jan 2024.
    • Photo: Carl Peter Robinson

      Carl Peter Robinson answered on 17 Jan 2024:


      It’s very likely that chatbots such as ChatGPT and other AI tools are going to become more prominent in everyone’s daily life, in terms of providing assistive technologies that we use in a number of jobs. Learning how to use these tools effectively and how to analyse and cross reference their output are going to be very useful skills, so learning these types of skills at school, by using ChatGPT, is a good starting point for children.

      The ‘lazy’ angle is a good point. You need to be taught how to use these tools but not fully rely on them for everything you do, and that sometimes, using an AI tool is not the right method to solve a problem. All this will come from learning how to use these tools is added to the curriculum. It also doesn’t hurt to learn how to research and solve problems without these AI tools though, in the “old-fashioned” way, to keep your brain sharp.

    • Photo: Andrew Maynard

      Andrew Maynard answered on 18 Jan 2024:


      Yes — and I’m afraid that the person responsible for you being lazy is you! 🙂

      I’ve actually taught students how to use ChatGPT, and when taught in the right way it helps them learn faster, become more curious, and think more critically. This is because when yo are having a conversation with ChatGPT you have to read what it says and think about what you’ll say next — you have a conversation that engages your brain, and you end up learning!

    • Photo: Kevin Tsang

      Kevin Tsang answered on 19 Jan 2024:


      Being able to use tools like ChatGPT effectively can accelerate the way you learn. Interacting with AIs at an early age can give rise to brand-new thinking.

      But as ChatGPT becomes more accurate, we may become lazier in actually checking whether what we are told is true. I think it is important to keep a critical mindset as thinking for ourselves becomes more difficult. So think about whether the AI is driving you, or whether you are driving the AI to help you achieve what you want to achieve.

      Education will continue to develop, we may focus on learning different skills beyond information retrieval, and move towards information synthesis.

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