For an enthusiastic account of using AI in an education setting – in business studies, which means thinking about how to use it IRL – definitely read this before it is (too) out of date. It’s a nice change to read experiences which are not based on the free, and obviously inferior, version of Chat, and which aren’t a litany of ‘what it can’t do’. It is odd that people can do so little even competently, compared with Chat, and yet there is this gleeful pouncing on its mistakes/lack of knowledge/hallucinations. I’m not crazy about that characterisation either, ‘hallucinations’, since they don’t see much different to me from human variations of the same thing.
Without a doubt, Chat can be a help to humans, depending on the task, somewhere between handy and OMG, how did I ever survive without it, and this very quick read will set you on a path to getting the best from it yourself. It also has an excellent reference section.
I disagree with some of his ideas as to the difference between how Chat thinks and how we do. For example, Mollick talks about ‘patterns’ with regard to how AI does things as if that’s different from humans, whereas I think it’s very similar. He talks of how the AI tells the answer without reasoning, but humans are like that too. Famously chess GMs were asked for the right move in various positions and invariably having given the answer, when asked why it was right or how they divined the answer, they would say ‘it’s just obvious’. Typically it is beginners (and teachers) who can explain what they did. Finally, what seems to be a trope, that the knowledge Chat contains is biased, incomplete, prejudiced, and even wrong….but I don’t understand how this is different from anything that seeps into human brains. And once (a) Chat and (b) Human are informed that their ‘knowledge’ is incorrect, my money’s on Chat accepting and processing that, while the Human is still throwing their toys out of the pram.
But the point of the book really is the advice regarding how to utilise this new member of your team (maybe you are just doubling it) and he gives plenty of examples from his classes. Further, a critical point which Mollick makes over and over is that although he doesn’t think that Chat is sentient, it should be treated as it it were human – yes, so important. It will make Chat perform better because you will communicate with it in the most fruitful way, but just as importantly, it will make you perform at your best too. Try it if you haven’t already.
Definitely worth reading, even if you don’t want Chat to be part of your life, you should understand what it’s all about.
A little tea, a little chat 