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Dr. Jeanne Beatrix Law's avatar

I always appreciate your reasoned consensus-based approach to discussion. It resonates with me :)

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Wolfgang's avatar
Stephen Fitzpatrick's avatar

Thanks. As I've said before, it's important to note other points of view and certainly Gary Marcus is a strong voice who tries to hold those in the industry who are pushing the hype accountable. For those of us without a strong tech background, it's hard to know what to make of all this, especially when there are equally distinguished voices on the other side. Predictions here are really tricky but the self-driving car example is a good one. I don't know if that ever gets solved to the point where people will trust it even if they can show it's, on average, better than a human driver. It's clear we won't tolerate mistakes with machines that we would otherwise with humans.

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Knopf, Noah's avatar

Good piece, Fitz

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Richard Bush's avatar

Steve, I am grateful for the time and thought given to this essay. Thank you from a retired educator and teacher trainer.

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Stephen Fitzpatrick's avatar

Thanks, Richard. It's certainly an interesting time to be teaching!

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Robert Litan's avatar

Very well done, everyone is groping for right way to do this. But it is undeniable that AI is the future, it can't be ignored. And by the time your kids get to the job market, or well before, knowing how to get the best out of AI -- and most importantly checking on to catch hallucinations -- will be rewarded. Maybe that's part of the answer, getting students to source things for AI statements that are not already sourced. As part of an effort to distinguish crap from real sources on the Net.

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Stephen Fitzpatrick's avatar

Thanks, Bob. The Deep Research models are already quite good at cutting down on hallucinations. The issue is less inaccuracy and more getting access to the higher quality materials. Once these models get access to paywalled databases, the quality will shoot through the roof. And I don't think this is in 10 or even 5 years but at most 2 or 3 years away. I've followed the space closely and the speed of improvements is exponential. Of course, something could happen to slow everything down, but the current administration is totally uninterested in regulation. It can be hard to separate the hype from the skeptics, but even more sober minded folks are leaning towards the scale of improvements. Unfortunately (though for understandable reasons), the conversation in schools right now is mired at the level of cheating.

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