Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ Arizona State announces a plan to give up on education

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

The title above is the original title of the article (still present as I write in the article's metadata). The display title has since been changed to "ChatGPT Can't Teach Writing". The context is an agreement made between Arizona State University (ASU) and OpenAI to make ChatGPT-4 available free to "approved students". John Warner shows admirable restraint in his response: "that sound you heard was thousands of souls of first-year writing instructors being snuffed, as though the Empire had fired a bolt from the Death Star." Why there should be thousands of first-year writing instructions at all, given that students have presumably completed secondary education, was not examined. Warner argues that writing is a uniquely human skill that chatGPT cannot master, let alone teach," because there is no genuine intent at meaning or communication behind the generation of that syntax." I would say the jury is still out on that. In my own experiences with chatGPT I would say it writes quite well. Wayback version, in case you are forced to sign in.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
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Last Updated: Dec 11, 2024 11:46 p.m.

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