Is learning with ChatGPT really learning?
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(Published version)
Date
2024
Authors
Stolz, S.
Winterburn, A.L.
Palmer, E.
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Journal article
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Educational Philosophy and Theory, 2024; 56(12):1253-1264
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Steven A. Stolz, Ali Lucas Winterburn and Edward Palmer
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Abstract
The recent proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) raises questions as to the role of such tools both within an educational learning environment and their epistemic capacity. If, as Alfred North Whitehead remarked, western philosophy indeed ‘consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’, it would be of doubtless importance to evaluate the position of LLMs in his epistemological framework. We analyse Plato and existing scholarship regarding his epistemology, combining this with a brief outline of the architectural features of GPT-3 and similar LLMs, before finally addressing whether they meet Plato’s criteria, and where they stand in relation to education in general. We conclude that, in conjunction with the well-known factual unreliability of LLMs, they are likewise unsuited for the satisfaction of a Platonic epistemological standard. On account of this, we find LLMs to be sub-optimal within an educational learning environment, and this is why we suggest that their use be accordingly circumscribed.
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Published 22 July 2024
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© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.