This blog post essay by @bretdevereaux was a marvelously fantastic read from beginning to end

https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/

Really, read it. It's far more than just "about ChatGPT". It goes into musings about teaching, learning, the point of writing, and the fundamental limitations of technology and pedagogy that make up our current situation.

Simply fantastic

@bretdevereaux One thing that really stuck out at me was the very correct observation that ChatGPT will indeed disrupt education... But not in the way people think.

Low quality education will suffer. Teachers will need to put more effort into writing good assignments, pedagogy, explaining the *why* and the *how* behind the learning, and treat it more as a journey of exploration than an assembly line of diplomas. The era of professors that exist only for research might end soon

@bretdevereaux I see a lot of parallels here with how programming works.

Every time we build a "better" language or framework, or a more powerful paradigm, or a smarter set of tooling... We don't actually take away from a programmer's meaningful work. But for programmers who exist to only do trivial work or busy work, that might be a problem; for companies that aren't innovative, that might also be a problem.

@bretdevereaux "great!" You might think. Fuck the mediocre companies. Fuck the useless programmers, the content mills, and the other farcical crap strewn about everywhere in today's society. Right?

Well. If we eliminate everything that isn't innovative and useful, what remains is that which is upheld as a boon to society. With the appearance of a quality, there's also the assessment of that quality.

We're at heavy risk of building a society that is even more oppressive

@bretdevereaux Our society conflates utility with white supremacy. It conflates goodness with white power. It reserves true education for the elites. It stifles innovation unless it comes from "the right people".

Until we fix that, I can't help but worry about the true costs of ChatGPT and other automation that society will bear. It might not take our jobs, but it might irrevocably destroy our ability to cherish the diversity of humanity.

I think that might be worse

Although I’m in general very tired of LLM discourse, as usual, @bretdevereaux@historians.social’s post on it os very good.

RE: https://hachyderm.io/users/hazelweakly/statuses/109899466768596312