It isn’t clear what ChatGPT is good for, but that doesn’t stop people from predicting it’s going to take all the jobs. Try hiring a handyman or someone to cut your grass. They are busy and expensive.
This Wired article on ChatGPT, doesn’t help explain anything, but this post on Ace of Spade HQ makes sense.
ChatGPT – LLMs in general – are very good at form but absolutely terrible at function. That’s because they are supercharged autocorrect engines; they know only what words fit where, statistically.
They can make a legal filing that looks correct, but it will reference laws and decisions that don’t even exist.
Physical jobs like home maintenance or lawn care are safe, but knowledge work is where ChatGPT is supposed to be a threat. Teachers talk about this quite a bit.
Radio, television, videotapes and the internet were all predicted to replace classroom teachers. Instead, these technologies are effective for motivated people and tools for a teacher. That got me thinking about what ChatGPT could have helped me with when I was teaching.
Visual presentation, the form part of a lesson, was important to me, but function was critical. I can’t think of any aspect of lesson preparation, presentation or assessment where ChatGPT could help.
For the most part, teachers like their students and want to help them master the concepts. What teachers hate is the bureaucratic bullshit that ineffective administrators may insist on. It’s work that doesn’t advance the educational objective at all, and takes the teacher away from the core objective.
I would have been happy to set ChatGPT to generating lesson plans, curriculum benchmarks and pedagogical objectives to be submitted weekly. The content doesn’t matter because shitty administrators are dumb bullies.
Where they genuinely are transformative is in visual art, because there form largely is function.
I think I might like this ChatGPT ability. My PowerPoints, worksheets and assessments were loaded with copyright infringing images.
