By Andrew I. Fillat And Henry I. Miller/inside Sources Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller/InsideSources
Remember blank 鈥淏lue Books鈥 for taking exams? Well, they鈥檙e back.
A company called Roaring Spring Paper Products is experiencing a resurgence in 鈥淏lue Book鈥 sales to educational institutions seeking to thwart the use of chatbots like ChatGPT for tests. The blank books are handed out at the beginning of the exam, and no screens, apps, or phones are permitted. The company鈥檚 windfall reflects the latest chapter in a long-standing debate about using tools as a substitute for acquiring reasoning and analysis skills.
When we were students of science and engineering in the 1960s, we became proficient at using devices called slide rules (the precursor of calculators).
Soon, smart calculators capable of complex calculations emerged. That made the solution of simple problems easy, but for more complicated calculations, framing them and knowing when and how to use these devices shifted the strategic goalposts. In other words, correctly defining the problem became the real challenge. That was a task for the brain, and proficiency in using tools was no substitute.
The ability to use ChatGPT or another chatbot skillfully is only a substitute for research, writing or analysis when all that matters is the answer. In school, however, it is considered cheating, officially and academically, because it hinders the students鈥 accumulation of knowledge and analytical skills. In the working world, just arriving at an adequate solution may be sufficient for some tasks. However, how many people will get ahead by being a ChatGPT jock any more than just being a whiz at Microsoft Word or Excel?
This evolution is hardly a surprise, given the not-so-recent trends in education. How and why anybody ever thought that praising a student who did not answer that two and two equals four is the ultimate example of a teacher鈥檚 betrayal of students. Although no error of this basic nature will emerge from ChatGPT, as it is challenged with increasingly complex tasks, will today鈥檚 students be able to detect and correct the errors or subtle misdirections that do occur?
That might seem unlikely to us today. After all, most people accept Microsoft Word鈥檚 grammar recommendations that are incorrect.
We predict that the best innovations will still emerge from well-trained human minds, with or without the assistance of supercomputers and chatbots; however, our educational system is increasingly less focused on this realization. More and more, diplomas are participation trophies. Honors classes are deemphasized because not everyone can succeed in them.
America鈥檚 continuing prosperity and the advancement of its citizens鈥 well-being will depend on the nurturing and challenging of its best and brightest minds. If our core population of properly educated minds continues to shrink, sooner or later, the critical mass of advancement will go elsewhere. So, let鈥檚 get out the Blue Books.
Andrew I. Fillat spent his career in technology venture capital and information technology companies and is the co-inventor of relational databases. Henry I. Miller, a physician and molecular biologist, is the Glenn Swogger Distinguished Fellow at the American Council on Science and Health.