From the Penn Language lab, that I worked with years ago,
The AI threat: keep calm and carry on
June 29, 2023 @ 1:36 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Language and education
Three weekends ago, I (Victor Mair) delivered a keynote here:
New Directions in Chinese Language Education in the 21st Century
The Eighth International Conference on Teaching Chinese as a Second Language
Swarthmore College, June 9-10, 2023 .... ' (Considerable piece follows) ...
In ORMS Today Informs by Elham Torabi Rhonda A. Syler
June 13, 2023 in Issues in Education
Data Analytics Education with ChatGPT: Unlocking New AI-Powered Possibilities
https://doi.org/10.1287/orms.2023.02.14
In late 2022, OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT, its chat-based language model, and the world has been abuzz and filled with a cacophony of thoughts and opinions – everything from cries of doomsday prophecies and trepidation to elated expressions of excitement and awe as businesses and society have been scrambling to contemplate the vast array of possibilities the latest artificial intelligence (AI) technologies bring. For as many who are embracing its dazzling linguistic prowess, there are equally as many shuddering at its potential to set us back and compound myriad ethical and moral dilemmas that we are struggling to solve as it is – concerns ranging from the implications of erroneous responses, the ability to create imaginary companions, and the further deepening of the challenges of being able to distinguish fact from fiction in the never-ending battle of disinformation and misinformation.
The world of academia has been no exception. There was an immediate sense of alarm among faculty and administrators alike. Not only had yet another new tool erupted to help students cheat, this novel tool, within seconds of receiving a prompt, could produce humanlike responses in any narrative style requested. The consensus: ChatGPT was a game-changer. In addition to concerns with cheating, many academicians also expressed concerns that ChatGPT would put an end to critical and creative thinking, hinder development of oral and written communication skill development, and all but end the ability to think autonomously.
On the flip side, however, ChatGPT has captivated our minds and ignited our curiosity. We argue that ChatGPT can be used to encourage critical and creative thinking rather than destroy it; improve and enhance communication skills; and provide a vehicle for encouraging independent thought. We will acknowledge the dark side of ChatGPT (and similar tools sure to come) in the classroom, but the primary impetus for this article is to provide pragmatic ways in which these tools can add value and enhance the student and instructor experience. We aren’t alone in this endeavor; there has been much discussion about its use in education in general, but there has been little discussion about how it could be adopted for use in more specialized curriculum such as data analytics courses. Our goal for this article is to begin a discussion, and perhaps ignite a debate, about the opportunities AI-driven tools like ChatGPT provide for the data analytics student, educator and curriculum.
Potential Roles for ChatGPT in Data Analytics Education
After testing and evaluating the features and capabilities of ChatGPT, we believe this tool could potentially improve the student experience and facilitate learning and engagement in the data analytics classroom. Many data analysts and data scientists are already using AI as an aid in their daily work environment. ChatGPT promises to join the ranks as a valuable resource.
Among the knowledge, skills and abilities expected of new data analytics graduates, three key areas emerge as potential areas in which learning can be augmented by ChatGPT: coding, data analysis, and communication of the interpretation and insights from the analysis. The key to adding value with ChatGPT, as we will discuss, is providing thoughtful exercises that are laser-focused on key learning outcomes. From this approach, we believe that ChatGPT can, in fact, assist students in strengthening their coding abilities, data analytics skills, and ability to articulate analysis interpretation and data insights to technical and nontechnical audiences – all of which will enhance critical and creative thinking skills, communication skills and students’ ability to think autonomously.
Coding
Driven by natural language processing, ChatGPT’s specialty is text and language, including programming languages. When asking ChatGPT what programming languages it can write code in, the tool quickly responds with a sample list of 19 languages including SQL, Python, R, Java, C#, Ruby, Swift and even Scala. Although ChatGPT seems proud of its extensive knowledge, it does caution the user, “keep in mind that while I can provide assistance and generate examples in these languages, my proficiency might not be as extensive in all of them. If you need help with a specific language or task, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to help.”
ChatGPT can help students with writing simple codes in myriad programming languages, and it quickly becomes clear that complex code must be broken down into smaller pieces. Students must be familiar enough with a given language and its syntax and logic to put together the pieces to come up with a complex code that executes the instruction the student intended. Rather than being a hindrance, these limitations provide an opportunity to encourage students to think critically about how to assess the accuracy of output and work autonomously to determine how to use it most efficiently.
In the case of existing code, ChatGPT can debug, optimize and add comments. It can also explain what a block of complex code does in simple language. These features of ChatGPT provide an opportunity for students to dive into code to better understand its structure and logic while engaging their critical thinking skills. Assignments that require students to use ChatGPT to write and then examine code for bugs, or exercises that require students to input buggy code and assess the output for accuracy, could help students improve their coding skills while engaging in critical thinking.
Data Analytics
ChatGPT is not a specialized tool for analytics, but it can provide assistance given a data set and context. Students can copy and paste a data set into ChatGPT and ask for basic descriptive analytics (e.g., means, medians, standard deviation and correlations). ChatGPT can also create data dictionaries and tables and conduct sentiment analysis. Although these use cases are straightforward, students still need to understand the data set and the purpose of the analysis and perform more advanced analysis themselves in other tools. Providing assignments that require the student to input data analysis and prompts to critique and score ChatGPT’s output can help students think critically while fostering a deeper understanding of statistics and mathematical models.
In addition to being limited to basic operations, it is important to note that on its own, ChatGPT cannot create data visualizations (at least not yet). However, it can provide guidance, instructions, code and insight on how to create visualizations. When asked about this competency, ChatGPT responded:
“Unfortunately, I cannot create visual elements like a bar chart as a text-based AI. However, I can help you prepare the frequency distribution table for your data. Please provide the data you’d like to analyze, and I can guide you through the process of creating the table. Once the table is ready, you can use a tool like Excel or Google Sheets to create the bar chart easily.”
We see this limitation as an opportunity. As you can see in Figure 1, when given the data, ChatGPT can create the frequency distribution table and provide instructions for creating the bar charts in another tool. A craftily created exercise can use ChatGPT to guide students through this process to help introduce and/or reinforce the connection between a visualization and its underlying data, as this case does with a bar chart and its underlying frequency distribution. ...
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Interesting, but have by doubts on ultimate efficiency.
Metaverse Education Blossoms in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan
Nikkei Asia (Japan)
Dylan Loh, May 8, 2023
Schools and other organizations in Asia are using the metaverse as an instructional tool. South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), for instance, hopes to become a "metaversity," where cyber training courses are held in metaverse classrooms. POSTECH's Moo Hwan Kim said, "Virtual reality (VR) technology can be applied in fields that are difficult to access in reality, such as outer space and the nanoworld. In the long run, it will be able to replace classes that require more hands-on experiences or training in dangerous environments." Meanwhile, 7,000 students at online N and S high schools in Japan are using VR headsets in the classroom as part of an effort to learn in an immersive environment without physical constraints. Among other initiatives, South Korea's science ministry plans to develop a "Metaverse Academy" as it works to build a metaverse ecosystem....
Still wondering the ultimate value of the Meta. Have seen simple examples, but not the strongest.
Metaverse education blossoms in South Korea, Japan, Taiwan
Teaching taps VR even as emerging tech's mass adoption remains in doubt
South Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology wants to become a "metaversity" with digital classrooms. © Photo courtesy of Pohang University of Science and Technology
DYLAN LOH, Nikkei staff writer
May 8, 2023 11:29 JST
SINGAPORE -- Educators in Asia are dipping their toes into the metaverse, the much-hyped virtual reality where humans can interact socially in cyberspace, even as emerging technology in this space grapples with finding its place in the real world.
From South Korea to Taiwan, schools and other organizations are tapping the metaverse as a tool for instruction, experimenting with VR applications to bring teaching beyond the classroom and devise new ways of imparting knowledge and skill.
Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea is working to become a "metaversity" where classrooms are digitalized into the metaverse, offering training courses in cyberspace.
The university, known as POSTECH, serves 1,400 undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students who work with 450 faculty members and 820 researchers in fields like energy, materials, basic science, information communications technology and health.
"Virtual reality technology can be applied in fields that are difficult to access in reality, such as outer space and the nanoworld," Moo Hwan Kim, the university's president, told Nikkei Asia. "In the long run, it will be able to replace classes that require more hands-on experiences or training in dangerous environments."
POSTECH said it invests $300,000 a year to buy equipment and develop educational programs for students and has pooled $500,000 to build classrooms that tap the metaverse.
In Japan, at N and S high schools, the largest online high schools in the country, 7,000 students learn through VR headsets.
Director Riichiro Sono told Nikkei that the organization took to the metaverse to conduct lessons without physical constraints while providing an immersive environment for individual learning.
The schools surveyed the VR participants last year and found a satisfaction rate of 98.5%, he said, but noted that "it can take time for users to get accustomed to a VR environment" and that "the additional weight of a VR headset can be a deterrent" for some users. ... '
The topic has often been mentioned. Adaptations are under under way. In ScienceNews.
It’s no wonder other tech companies have been racing to put out competing tools. Anthropic, an AI company founded by former OpenAI employees, is testing a new chatbot called Claude. Google launched Bard in early February, and the Chinese search company Baidu released Ernie Bot in March.
A lot of people have been using ChatGPT out of curiosity or for entertainment. I asked it to invent a silly excuse for not doing homework in the style of a medieval proclamation. In less than a second, it offered me: “Hark! Thy servant was beset by a horde of mischievous leprechauns, who didst steal mine quill and parchment, rendering me unable to complete mine homework.”
But students can also use it to cheat. ChatGPT marks the beginning of a new wave of AI, a wave that’s poised to disrupt education.
When Stanford University’s student-run newspaper polled students at the university, 17 percent said they had used ChatGPT on assignments or exams at the end of 2022. Some admitted to submitting the chatbot’s writing as their own. For now, these students and others are probably getting away with it. That’s because ChatGPT often does an excellent job.
“It can outperform a lot of middle school kids,” Vogelsinger says. He might not have known his student had used it, except for one thing: “He copied and pasted the prompt.”
The essay was still a work in progress, so Vogelsinger didn’t see it as cheating. Instead, he saw an opportunity. Now, the student and AI are working together. ChatGPT is helping the student with his writing and research skills. ... '
Clearly a strong connection to elements of education.
How ChatGPT and Similar AI will Disrupt Education
By ScienceNews, April 14, 2023
Students are turning to ChatGPT for homework help. Educators have mixed feelings about the tool and other generative AI.
"We need to talk," Brett Vogelsinger said. A student had just asked for feedback on an essay. One paragraph stood out. Vogelsinger, a ninth grade English teacher in Doylestown, Pa., realized that the student hadn't written the piece himself. He had used ChatGPT.
The artificial intelligence tool, made available for free late last year by the company OpenAI, can reply to simple prompts and generate essays and stories. It can also write code.
Within a week, it had more than a million users. As of early 2023, Microsoft planned to invest $10 billion into OpenAI, and OpenAI's value had been put at $29 billion, more than double what it was in 2021.
From ScienceNews
More on COPPA and updates, protecting children online.
ACM NEWS
Protecting Children's Privacy Online By Gregory Goth, Commissioned by CACM Staff, August 30, 2022
Digital games and educational apps for children can be a boon. They keep youngsters engaged in interactive play and learning, and can give parents a break.
Unfortunately, though, a large percentage of those games' characters and features are designed not to altruistically enlighten children, but to make them spend more time on the platform–and to get their parents to spend more money on extra features.
"We assume adults are better at recognizing persuasion pressure and are hopefully less magically engaged with their parasocial relationships with characters," said Jenny Radesky, M.D., principal investigator of the Radesky Lab at the University of Michigan Medical School. "Kids' relationships with Elmo or Daniel Tiger or Strawberry Shortcake are very important to them, and they are more likely to follow those characters' instructions."
In her lab's most recent research on children's mobile apps, Radesky found concerning evidence that game developers are putting their interests ahead of their young audience in designing and creating their products: only 20% of 133 mobile apps played by 160 children aged 3 to 5 had no manipulative design features intended to better monetize the child's experience.
The manipulative features Radesky and her colleagues found included parasocial relationship pressure, fabricated time pressure, navigation constraints, and the use of "attractive lures" to encourage longer game play or more in-app purchases. These features are usually tied to data collection mechanisms that exploit a child's inherent trust.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association's JAMA Open, seemed to confirm concerning results published elsewhere in recent months:
An analysis of evident privacy policies in products in the Google and Apple app stores by fraud, privacy, and compliance data analytics firm Pixalate, found 11% of child-directed apps in the Google Play store, and 21% of those in the Apple store, had potential access to users' personal information but no detectable privacy policy; almost 250,000 had no discernible country of origin, a nightmare for enforcement agencies.
An examination by Human Rights Watch of how well (or poorly) educational technology deployed for remote schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic protected children's privacy found that 145 of 169 educational applications "appeared to engage in data practices that put children's rights at risk, contributed to undermining them, or actively infringed on these rights."
Radesky said that while it is evident across all this research that children's privacy and priorities are given short shrift by app and game designers, it is also an encouraging sign that children's needs are now being given more widespread attention. What is not so evident is some sort of consensus about how best to address these shortcomings.
Numerous existing laws such as the U.S. federal government's Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), in place since 1998 and updated in 2013, and the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in place since 2018, offer some level of privacy protection. However, the increasing complexity of the digital ecosystem has revealed loopholes in some of these policies that allow app developers to skirt the boundaries–and sometimes, to cross the line–of what's thical, if not outright illegal. .... '
For example, COPPA's primary goal is to place parents in control of the information online games and services collect from their children under age 13. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), it applies without question to developers whose products collect, use, or disclose personal information from those children, or on whose behalf such information is collected or maintained (such as when personal information is collected by an ad network to serve targeted advertising). .... '
Not till it can become very adaptive to many contexts. Replacing if it does better than teachers perhaps.
Many contexts are at play. Selective humans are still the most adaptive teachers. Great Question.
Will AI Destroy Education?, By Moshe Y. Vardi
Communications of the ACM, January 2022, Vol. 65 No. 1, Page 7 10.1145/3501359
Artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. The National AI Initiative Act became law in the U.S. on Jan. 1, 2021, aiming "to accelerate AI research and application for the Nation's economic prosperity and national security." The U.S. National Science Foundation launched in 2020 several AI Research Institutes to push forward the frontiers of artificial intelligence. One of the themes of this research initiative is "AI-Augmented Learning."
This quest to improve education via technology reminds me of "Profession;" a 1957 science-fiction story by Isaac Asimov. The story takes place in the 66th century, where children are educated via direct computer-brain interface, a process known as "taping." At the end of the story, the protagonist realizes that, unlike taping, reading books produces "men and women with capacity for original thought." This 1957 warning—perhaps in response to a U.S. push for educational technology following the Sputnik shock—against a techno-solutionist approach to education is probably more relevant today than it was then. After all, 15 years ago Facebook had the beautiful sounding goal to make "the world more open and connected." In 2021, a massive leakage of internal documents revealed the company knew of the serious societal harm caused by its technology but ignored it in the pursuit of profits.
The previous techno-solutionist wave aimed at education surged in the fall of 2011 when approximately 450,000 students signed up for three computer-science courses offered by Stanford University, launching the MOOC ("massive open online course") tsunami, with the lofty goal of "reaching the quality of individual tutoring." In 2012, I authored a Communications column, "Will MOOCs Destroy Academia?"a I argued the enormous buzz about MOOCs is not due to the technology's intrinsic educational value, but due to the seductive possibilities of lower costs. As we now know, MOOCs did not destroy academia, probably because of their low educational value. But more than decade after the 2008-2009 recession, state spending on public higher education remains well below historical levels in the U.S. Yet MOOCs have become a fixture in U.S. higher education; my own institution run dozens of them. While the availability of free or almost-free academic courses is, of course, beneficial to students, such MOOC-based programs make nominal profits only by ignoring the true cost of faculty labor involved in producing and running MOOCs.
AI-augmented learning also seems to be a technology in search of a problem. The drive comes from the tech industry, for whom AI is a new "shiny hammer in search of nails." The goal of NSF-funded AI Institutes in this area is "AI-driven innovations to radically improve human learning and education." But we do not know what needs to be improved, so how we will know that we have succeeded? I see many big questions and few answers: What problems are we trying to solve? How do we measure improvements? Are we trying to improve teaching or replace teachers? What are the drivers? Societal need? Technology? Money? Finally, since AI Ethics is a hot topic these days, is it ethical to deploy AI in education without a clear understanding of its benefits? Using AI in education is inevitable, I suspect, and it can be used for good, I hope, but these questions must be addressed.
Good feedback as to what works in the new contexts.
Top Educational Apps for Children Might Not Be as Beneficial as Promised
Penn State News, Katie Bohn, May 11, 2021
An analysis of the most frequently downloaded educational apps for kids by a team of researchers led by the Pennsylvania State University Brandywine found such apps may not provide high-quality educational experiences. The researchers used previous research on the pillars of learning to develop criteria for the assessment of the top 100 children's educational apps from the Google Play and Apple apps stores, among others. After the apps were scored from 0 (low) to 3 (high) for each pillar of learning, the researchers found a score of 1 was most common for each app with regard to all four pillars. The University of Michigan’s Marisa Meyer said, “If app designers intend to engender and advertise educational gains through use of their apps, we recommend collaborating with child development experts in order to develop apps rooted in the ways children learn most effectively. .... '
Intriguing, especially as it differs from other intense activity. Is age dependence very different from individual dependence? Language vs logic? Kinds and method of scans?
Scientists Decode Neural Mechanisms of Computer Programming By News-Medical Life Sciences
Johns Hopkins University scientists mapped the brain activity of expert computer programmers while they puzzled over code, to find the neural mechanics behind this increasingly vital skill.
Johns Hopkins University (JHU) scientists mapped computer programmers' brain activity during coding exercises to uncover the underlying neural processes.
JHU's Yun-Fei Liu scanned the brain activity of 15 experienced programmers skilled in Python via functional magnetic resonance imaging, as they worked on coding questions.
The exercise activated the brain region responsible for logical reasoning in each participant, with coding largely skewing to the left hemisphere, which correlates with language.
The JHU researchers hope to determine if programming, like learning language, is easier for young people.
JHU's Marina Bedny said, "It could be that our education system is wrong, and we should be teaching kids to code in middle school or else they're missing an opportunity to be the best they can."
Admit I did not know what LARPing was. And thus not its use in education. Or is it just like interning? Or could it be linked to gaming? You could use 'fictitious' experiences to broaden the possibilities for learning. Guess it depends on the details.
The Role of LARPing in Computer Science Education. By Logan Kugler in CACM
Live-action roleplaying (LARP) is often associated with dress-up and make-believe, but if intrepid researchers have their way, it could also have a positive effect on real-world computer science education. Is it better to find real scenarios rather than fictitious ones?
The act of "LARPing" is when participants put on costumes and embark on made-up adventures in the physical world, which can include large mock battles and fantasy quests "kind of like a Dungeons and Dragons or a video game come to real life," as one passionate LARPer told Business Insider.
"LARP is a particularly profound vehicle for self-discovery, therapy, and education," says Sarah Lynne Bowman, an adjunct professor in Humanities, English, and Communications at Austin Community College and Richland College in Texas, and Ashford University in California; she also is a role-play studies researcher. "When players physically embody their characters, they often experience a strong degree of immersion into the physical, emotional, and social world of the setting."
Because of that, LARP may be a potent way to teach computer science. By immersing students into fictional scenarios that teach real-world computer science skills, some researchers claim LARPing can promote learner engagement and subject matter recall. In fact, one high-profile project funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is trying to prove just that. ... '
Always an interesting question. The nature of instruction. In theory it could be precisely tailored to every student and by testing it could be altered in real time to get better results. Personalized to get the best possible results for each student. How practical is this, how will it alter the business of education? How much is the human touch needed?
Using Technology to Tailor Lessons to Each Student, The New York Times, Janet Morrisey
Computer algorithms and machine learning are helping to personalize instruction to individual students, a trend experts say is long overdue. Some think the Covid-19 pandemic is accelerating U.S. schools' migration to personalized learning programs; American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said, "Innovations like this can help educators meet students where they are and address their individual needs." Companies like New Classrooms are striving to advance personalized learning; the nonprofit's Teach to One 360 algorithm gives each student access to multigrade curriculums and skills, in order to better address learning gaps in those who are several grades behind. Other companies working aggressively on personalized learning solutions include Eureka Math, iReady, and Illustrative Mathematics.
