Care and Feeding He can't do this.
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Care and Feeding is Slate's parenting suggestions column.Have a concern for Care and Feeding?Send it here
Dear Care and Feeding,
I've simply been notified of a task my boy “Patrick” was given up intermediate school. He's to pick a subject from a pre-approved list, ask ChatGPT to compose an essay about it, send that essay to the instructor, and after that fact-check the essay, searching for things the AI got incorrect. I do not desire Patrick doing this task. ChatGPT is an irreducibly sexist gadget that checks out and after that spits up trash that presses impressionable boys into misogyny and inceldom. He is definitely prohibited from utilizing AI of any sort in our family, and if I can keep him from ever connecting with it till he's 18, I consider it the least I can do for him as a moms and dad. Just now the school is mandating he utilize it. Exists any method I can get the instructor to alter his mind about this task? Definitely it can't be that difficult to simply produce a bad essay and have him fact-check that?
— Can't We Just Protect the Kids from the Robots?
Dear Can't We,
I approve you, AI is creepy. It is here to remain. And for all its disadvantages (amongst them: being so simple to utilize for unfaithful, deceptiveness, and producing incorrect stories and “news” [absolutely not an inclusive list]it is not accountable for developing incels. I guarantee you, there is no requirement to overemphasize AI's prospective damage.
Patrick's instructor is clever– developing a chance for his trainees to see on their own what a bad task AI does at the important things kids are more than likely to utilize it for is creative. Pretending it does not exist, prohibiting its usage in your home, and thinking of that your kid will never ever be lured to utilize it to compose a paper for him is not going to safeguard him, even if it makes you feel much better. A workout in finding its constraints will assist to make him doubtful about it; it will make him smarter about it. That's precisely what you desire. And it's not what your proposed replacement task will do.
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Dear Care and Feeding,
I have a parenting-adjacent issue. For several years I had a buddy, somebody I felt more detailed to than anybody else. That relationship started to reveal fractures when I was pregnant with my child (who is now 19 and in college, so as you see it's been a long period of time).
