alt Hacker NewsAI has its own benefits but its really a bad idea to use it in education as a primary source. LLMs have lots of information, reasoning ability, however they have their own limitations and by the nature these limitations just amplify.
Few days ago my son was working on a problem which asked if square is a rectangle. Turns out his class teacher and external tutor (who was using AI) had different opinions on it. My wife consulted AI as well and she also came to the conclusion that square is not a rectangle cause AI told her so, AI told the same answer to external tutor. I understand that the context matters and if one probes AI more with additional context it may come up with correct answer, but this depends on the assumption that the person asking AI for something already knows the answer.
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I am very curious what either person asked that led them to say that AI had told them a square is not a rectangle.
The obvious question of “is a square a rectangle?” is definitely NOT causing any LLM to say “no”.
Hallucinations are an issue but they genuinely are no longer a concern for any modern non-tiny LLM for basic facts that you would expect a K-6 course to cover. Maybe you might be able to find a few random hallucinations in knowledge covered at the high school level but I’m quite skeptical even that still happens. Yes, they can still, at times, hallucinate sources but I cannot recall the last time I actually saw this happen. I think it was at least a year ago
What kind of AI is this? ChatGPT says a square is a rectangle. Google search says it.
In what world is a square not a rectangle?
I don't understand how your wife interrogated the AI to be told a square is not a rectangle.
And how can two tutors disagree on this?
Let me say this in a different way: If some rectangles can also be squares, then this intuitively shows that a square is a rectangle.
This is not a problem with AI, this is a problem with a human accepting an answer without understanding why it is correct. The tutor could also read a book that states "A square is not a rectangle" (or vice versa) and repeating it back to the student as established fact.