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by ponector 264 days ago
>> child will hear are explanations given with authority, which would probably be correct a very high percentage of the time (maybe even close to or above 99%), BUT the few incorrect answers and subtles misconceptions finding their way in there will be catastrophic for the learning journey because they will be believed blindly by the child.

Much better results than asking a real teacher at school, though.
3 comments
korse 262 days ago
Disagree with this. Kids are sponges who pick up on many secondary factors when an actual human gives them an answer. These factors add significant weight to their view of the response. In many cases, this actually reaches an extreme where what is said end up being tertiary to how it was said and who said it. I am sure you've experienced this even as a an adult.

An AI walkman removes this aspect of the interaction. As a parent, this is not something I would want my children to use regularly.

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VSerge 263 days ago
Wouldn't you know whether a teacher is reliable or not? If reliable, they probably have this reputation also because they can also say when they don't know something. And if you found out a given teacher isn't reliable, you'd be careful about what they say next - or you would just ask someone else.

The problem here is for a child to be thinking this system is reliable when it is not. For now, the lack of reliability is obvious as chatGPT hallucinates on a very regular basis. However, this will become much harder to notice if/when chatGPT will be almost reliable while saying wrong things with complete confidence. Should such models be able to say reliably when they don't know something, this would be a big step for this specific objection I had, but it still wouldn't solve the other problems I mentioned.

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93po 263 days ago
the amount of misinformation i had a kid due to a lack of internet is nothing compared to the rare hallucination a kid might get from chatgpt

swallowing gum is bad for you, or watermelon seeds, cracking knuckles causes arthritis, sitting too close to tv ruins your eyes, diamonds come from coal, newton's apple story, a million other things

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