When it comes to ChatGPT and similar ai tools, Jane Rosenzweig has a simple question: What problem is ChatGPT the solution for?
That question is the focus of a course that Rosenzweig, director of the Harvard University Writing Center, teaches this semester. “I imagine there will be many wonderful uses for ai in the future and some mentoring interfaces will be created that will have great value,” he says.
However, he adds, “given everything we know about the limitations of generative ai we have right now, it’s hard for me to see that the mentoring models I’m looking at are actually solving a problem that’s been identified.”
While many educators have touted the tutoring potential of GPT technology and encouraged students to explore ways ChatGPT can provide writing advice, Rosenzweig isn’t convinced, at least not yet. She sees limitations to this technology for teaching writing and literature, although she emphasizes that these are her personal opinions and do not reflect any Harvard policy or position.
<h2 id="is-ai-a-reliable-tutor-xa0″>Is ai a reliable tutor?
Proponents of ai tutors point to the potential to provide more individualized learning and immersive experiences for students. One such ai tutor is Khangmigo, a GPT-4-powered interactive tutor launched for select schools by Khan Academy. In a TED talk about Khanmigo, the founder of Khan Academy Sal Khan, who I’ve interviewed several times this year., shared an example of how Khanmigo can allow a student to interview a historical figure like Albert Einstein or even a character from literature. In the example, a student asks ai Jay Gatsby why he is staring at the green light. ai Gatsby responds: “I look at it with nostalgia, as it represents my longing for the past and my hope of being reunited with Daisy, the love of my life.”
The problem, Rosenzweig wrote in a post on (formerly Twitter) with the exchange is: “That, of course, doesn’t sound like Gatsby. “It sounds like an AP exam answer written in first person.” And he added: “It would be fantastic to meet and talk to historical and literary figures! But this is more like having a puppet read Wikipedia to us. What problems are solved by offering students the opportunity to talk to an Einstein puppet?
Getting flashcard-style answers from digital animatronics is not the way Rosenzweig wants his students to “engage with literature,” he says. But more important than his opinion on the tool is that he wants educators to think critically about this technology and its uses. “Maybe there’s a big answer to why I want my student to get their answers from Jay Gatsby instead of a class discussion,” he says.
ChatGPT Editing Tips
Many ai advocates say ChatGPT and similar tools can serve as an editor for students’ work, offering helpful advice in the same way a human would. However, when Rosenzweig put a fragment of his writing with intentional errors on ChagGPTNot only did the tool not fix them, it sometimes made suggestions that made things worse.
“Sometimes the answer wasn’t very good and I knew it because I’m a writer and I teach writing,” she says. “But if my students, or anyone’s students, went through that process, would they have learned the things they would need to know to evaluate that feedback?”
He points out that ai advocates might retort that his prompts were no good if he received a bad response. “I’m not convinced that’s the case, but that raises the same question, right? How would our students know what kind of editing advice to ask for?”
Ultimately, Rosenzweig says, educators should avoid using ai simply because it’s there and instead base their use on that question central to their thinking about ChatGPT and ai: What teaching problems is ChatGPT for? the solution?
“What are our learning objectives? And how do we want to get there?’ “It should be applied to think about these new technologies with as much care and consideration as we make those decisions in other contexts,” she says. He adds that if you use it in the classroom it should be because you have a pedagogical reason for doing so and not because it is “a shiny new thing.”
