Fillat & Miller: Can AI make up for poor education?

Remember blank Blue Books for taking exams Well they re back A company called Roaring Spring Paper Products is experiencing a resurgence in Blue Book sales to educational institutions seeking to thwart the use of chatbots like ChatGPT for tests The blank books are handed out at the beginning of the exam and no screens apps or phones are permitted The company s windfall reflects the latest chapter in a long-standing debate about using tools as a substitute for acquiring reasoning and analysis skills When we were students of science and engineering in the s we became proficient at using devices called slide rules the precursor of calculators Soon smart calculators capable of complex calculations emerged That made the resolution of simple problems easy but for more complicated calculations framing them and knowing when and how to use these devices shifted the strategic goalposts In other words correctly defining the concern became the real challenge That was a task for the brain and proficiency in using tools was no substitute The ability to use ChatGPT or another chatbot skillfully is only a substitute for research writing or analysis when all that matters is the answer In school however it is considered cheating officially and academically because it hinders the students accumulation of knowledge and analytical skills In the working world just arriving at an adequate resolution may be sufficient for specific tasks However how multiple people will get ahead by being a ChatGPT jock any more than just being a whiz at Microsoft Word or Excel This evolution is hardly a surprise given the not-so-recent trends in development How and why anybody ever thought that praising a trainee who did not answer that two and two equals four is the ultimate example of a coach s betrayal of students Although no error of this basic nature will emerge from ChatGPT as it is challenged with increasingly complex tasks will in the modern day s students be able to detect and correct the errors or subtle misdirections that do occur That might seem unlikely to us in current times After all majority people accept Microsoft Word s grammar recommendations that are incorrect We predict that the best innovations will still emerge from well-trained human minds with or without the assistance of supercomputers and chatbots however our educational system is increasingly less focused on this realization More and more diplomas are participation trophies Honors classes are deemphasized because not everyone can succeed in them America s continuing prosperity and the advancement of its citizens well-being will depend on the nurturing and challenging of its best and brightest minds If our core population of properly educated minds continues to shrink sooner or later the critical mass of advancement will go elsewhere So let s get out the Blue Books Andrew I Fillat spent his career in apparatus venture capital and information apparatus companies and is the co-inventor of relational databases Henry I Miller a physician and molecular biologist is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Vitality