Search Engines (Continued)

 

Fall Colors (Yes, I know that it is spring)

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Taking up my conversation from Saturday, again, I am going to be be discussing the idea of artificial intelligence and its limitations.  Here is the punchline that I will be using as a springboard to this continuation:

Overall, what grok gave me was approximately equivalent to what I would expect from an average freshman at a small state college.  

Now, for those of you who have had the experience of grading such things (for me, three quarters of being a TA back in the eighties and one quarter of covering for a sick professor at the local community college in the early 2000’s) you need to know that this is at best, an awkward and singularly unrewarding experience.

First problem is the use of the language and words.  Freshman really haven’t spent that much time writing and when faced with a 1,000 word essay, they see it as comparable to an assault on the south face of K2. The results tend to confirm the abilities of the individuals in the class and, as a slap to the new-generation educators out there, the results also conform with the ancient apostasy of “grading on the curve”.

In the dark past of my undergraduate days, the majority of professors graded on the curve (5%=F, 10%=D, 50%=C, 10%=B, and 5%=A) though there was differences in the ratios, with changes in curve shape to allow for more people to pass as time went on.

From my limited experience, the results being presented by Grok seem to parallel the easy curves.  The easier the question, the more the curve becomes right handed with more good results.  The harder the question (more controversial), the further the quality of the answer skews toward the left side (with higher quality being on the right). 

Most of the complaints about AI is asking it to come up with a decent web search for a difficult question and then write the answer in a manner that agrees with the questioners preconceptions.  People love AI when it spews back an answer that agrees with the way that they already think.  Kinda like grading undergraduate papers, anyone doing this unpleasant task gives good grades to the students that parrot back the instructors beliefs.