Intelligence: Artificial and Natural

Much to-do over Chatgpt and all those other natural language neural nets (also known as 'AI' by those who don't really understand things) these days.

Former student PS was the first to alert me to this and as soon as he told me it was pretty good at writing/explaining history and english papers/concepts, I tried it out on some physics topics I would expect my students to struggle with.  "How does anything accelerate if Newton's Third Law says for every force there is an equal and opposite force?" "If electrons are giving up energy as they pass through a resistor, how come the current doesn't decrease?"

The 'AI' did pretty poorly on these questions.  Although the sentences were coherent and smart sounding, the responses failed to actually answer the questions correctly or to address the central misconceptions.  

Here's the thing, after many years of teaching, I have learned that although almost everyone can string together sentences and use vocabulary in a sophisticated way - it is much more difficult to think logically and procedurally.  Teaching physics shows this to me every day.  All students can recite Newton's Laws back to me after I give them a short lecture on it.  But, several problem sets later with my elucidating the steps and emphasizing the underlying procedures that unlock all force problems, only about 10 percent can reliably apply this knowledge consistently in a novel situation.  

I have long been perplexed by this disconnect in students' fluency & confidence in discussing general physics concepts with me and their frustrated attempts at independent problem solving.  I really do find this as evidence that we humans are hardwired for language (which comes so naturally) and not hardwired for logic (which we have to train at length to get good at - we even invented another language (mathematics) to handle those issues separate from our usual mode of communication).

So, suffice it to say (with an admitted dose of STEM hubris) that it does not surprise me so much that neural nets trained to be excellent language processors will do a decent job at history and english assignments and yet fail at basic physics.

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So, my day job may be secure!  In fact, an additional job that I do outside the school day has now lightened.  Future students of Rideout, rejoice - for you may read your college letter of recommendation ahead of time.  Here it is:

Truth be told, this might be better than some letters I've written in the past!

;)

Oranges, Little House, and Prison

"Je t'apporterai des oranges" is an expression I remember my great-uncle telling my uncle when I used to work in the winery back in the day.  This would inevitably follow some kind of exchange where my great-uncle was recommending we engage in some outdated and slightly shady process in making wine.  When my uncle would balk or protest, he'd be told "Don't worry, I'll bring you oranges."   Often I would just wait and eventually figure out what an expression would mean by context but this one eluded me so I eventually asked my uncle about it.  He looked surprised and said "You know, when you go to prison, you'd want your family to bring you oranges.  Obviously." (A quick internet search reveals a late 19th century french poem mentioning this very act which may be the origin of this expression (?))

When I was a kid, the first book series I ever read (and fell in love with) was Little House on the Prairie.  I read and reread all of them!  One of my favorite scenes is when a family friend hikes over to visit the Ingalls for Christmas.  He makes the trip sound very arduous and then reveals a precious gift he has brought the family: a single orange.  What a special, rare gift!  They carefully sliced it up to share and enjoyed its sweetness and rarity.  I think it was the first time I realized how I was growing up in a profoundly different time that all the previous generations!

Today, I snapped the picture at the top of this post after I found myself annoyed with how many oranges we have sitting on our kitchen counter. What a burden to have to eat all these oranges in the middle of winter in a place that can not even sustain a single orange tree!  C'mon Ken - get a grip already!  What would Pa and Ma Ingalls say?