OpenAI’s Education Head Says Real Learning Takes Struggle—Not Just ChatGPT Help — from observer.com by Rachel Curry; via Ray Schroeder on LinkedIn
Students must struggle to learn, and offloading to ChatGPT risks weakening critical thinking skills, OpenAI’s head of education warns.
“We know that true learning takes friction. It takes struggle,” said Mills. “You have to engage with the materials, and if students offload all of that work to a tool like ChatGPT, they will not learn those skills and they will not gain that critical thinking. That said, when ChatGPT is used correctly as a learning assistant and as a tutor, the results are powerful.”
Given that 40 percent of ChatGPT users are under the age of 24—and that learning is the platform’s number one use case, according to Mills—the need to fine-tune guardrails is becoming increasingly urgent. Pew Research reports that twice as many teens now use ChatGPT for schoolwork compared to 2023, with nearly one-third of teen respondents saying it’s acceptable to use the tool to solve math problems.
In response, Mills said OpenAI is actively researching what appropriate A.I. use in education looks like, with plans to share that guidance widely and rapidly with educators around the world.