Post

Yes, that’s the issue. I’ve been trying to find a way to articulate this: to the extent that LLMs serve a purpose in education, it’s an indictment of the education system, not a praiseworthy feature of LLMs.

When my students proposed responses to LLMs in class, their ideas, which mostly involved frequent, detailed feedback, were impossible to enact in the configuration we have. That’s not a problem with their ideas: it’s recognition of a truth that’s obvious to every teacher. Students want to be seen.

Have you ever pulled a student quietly aside and said, “Hey. What you did was really, really good”? You can watch someone’s life changing in real time.

I once had the joy, on my way out of a job, of telling a new hire on my team (who had been an intern before) that she is really good at this. unfortunately it was over the phone so it was not the full experience

that's also what therapy clients want, which is why LLMs cannot be therapists. sure, there have been lots of explorations of therapeutic modailities where responses are more standardized and shallower, but real therapy is about two unique humans in relationship.

It’s like, duh, of course it is! Amazing to me that we even need to say this.

a lot of what I do in response to these technologies is just point to Hannah Arendt's ideas around natality and plurality and speech and action. the unique who that you are *matters*. that's what makes you a person, and you're really just going to throw that away and avoid being a person? mmhmm.