Thoughts on teaching generative text literacy | James' Coffee Blog
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I was in a discussion yesterday about introducing young people (17-18) to generative text models. I noted that

Thoughts from James who recently held a Gen AI literacy workshop for older teenagers.

On risks:

One idea I had was to ask a generative model a question and fact check points in front of students, allowing them to see fact checking as part of the process. Upfront, it must be clear that while AI-generated text may be convincing, it may not be accurate.

On usage:

Generative text should not be positioned as, or used as, a tool to entirely replace tasks; that could disempower. Rather, it should be taught to be used as a creativity aid. Such a class should involve an exercise of making something.

  • Lvxferre
    6·
    1 year ago

    Sorry for the double reply. Let’s analyse the LLM output that you got:

    4. Ambiguity in “Naturally”: The word “naturally” could be interpreted in multiple ways. It could mean that the green color is natural to him (not dyed), or it could mean that the hair turned green on its own. The ambiguity could lead to confusion.

    The word is not ambiguous in this context. The nearby “currently” implies that it can change.

    5. Tense Mismatch: The sentence uses “is completely bald” (present tense) and “is currently naturally green” (also present tense) for the hair, which is contradictory.

    The issue here is not tense. The issue is something else, already listed by the bot (#2, logical contradiction).

    6. Redundancy: The word “currently” may be considered redundant if the sentence is understood to be describing a present condition.

    Nope. Since the bot doesn’t conceptualise anything, it fails to take into account the pragmatic purpose of the word in the sentence, to disambiguate “naturally”.

    7. Clarity: The sentence overall is confusing and lacks clarity due to the contradictions and ambiguities mentioned.

    Nope. The sentence is clear; as clear as “colourless green ideas sleep furiously”. It’s just meaningless and self-contradictory.

    It sounds convincing, but it’s making stuff up.