Once upon a time, a college student used ChatGPT to help with an assignment, got caught, and no one lived happily ever after.
He had not used it for writing but to gather the facts, which he thought was permitted.
His teacher disagreed, and things went downhill from there.
While there are questions about whether the rules were clear, whether the teacher’s reaction was disproportionate, etc., I am interested in the situation in a broader sense.
The massive missed learning opportunity: always check your sources!
He got caught because the facts were untrue, and the sources didn’t exist.
No matter what the rules are, this is bad. Very bad.
Had they focused on that, he would have learned a crucial. Each of his classmates would have had a chance to learn, and all the news readers would have as well.
But no.
As best I saw, no thought this piece of the puzzle worthy of attention.
I can retell amusing AI hallucination stories, but the story is wider than AI.
Forty years ago, I met an inventor who had spent 18 months building something that couldn’t possibly work. (2nd law, etc.)
He had based his work on what he thought was a scholarly article but was from a humor magazine (Journal Of Irreproducible Results). He wasted more than a year of his life by not checking sources.
Every day, I hear more sad tales of fake health interventions, all without AI in the loop.
I didn’t want this learning opportunity to go completely to waste.
Perhaps it will aid some of my readers.
