How to Teach and Learn with ChatGPT: AI and new horizons for assistive technologies

A poll result from an earlier talk: a pie chart beside the answers Use ChatGPT in my work (5), Have used once or twice (32), Have heard a lot and seen examples (21), Have heard something but not sure (23) and Other (share in chat) (1).

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Poll: What do you think AI might be best at?

A raised-hand icon beside the poll question.

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What do you think AI might be best at?

Looking up facts
Performing complex calculations
Writing computer code based on text
Making complex decisions from data
Writing poetry
Making beautiful art

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Comparison with a recent talk

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What it is actually good at?

A superhero-flying icon beside the question.

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Nobody expected AI to be any good at this

Two ChatGPT conversations side by side. Left: the prompt asks for a poem to remember the bones in the hand and the answer is a four-stanza rhyming poem. Right: the prompt asks for a mnemonic for the carpals and the answer is the sentence “She Left The Party To Take Cathy Home” with each carpal bone matched to a word.

Prompt (left): Write a poem to help me remember the bones in the hand.

In the realm of hands, a tale unfolds,
Of bones and joints, a story told,
Listen close, my friend, and hear,
The names of bones, so you'll endear.

Twenty-seven bones, a framework grand,
Form the structure of our hand,
Three groups of bones to memorize,
Carpals, metacarpals, phalanges arise.

Begin with carpals, eight in sum,
In the wrist, they're not cumbersome,
Proximal row, four in row,
From lateral to medial, here's how they go:

Scaphoid, lunate, triquetrum align,
Pisiform, a small pea, so benign,
Distal row, to continue the tour,
Trapezium, trapezoid, capitate, hamate ensure.

Prompt (right): Make a mnemonic for the carpals

Recall the carpals, eight in all,
With this mnemonic, you'll never stall:

She Left The Party
To Take Cathy Home

Scaphoid - She
Lunate - Left
Triquetrum - The
Pisiform - Party
Trapezium - To
Trapezoid - Take
Capitate - Cathy
Hamate - Home

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Or this

A collage of AI-generated pictures: a man sitting beside a hole in a wall, colourful retro robot and computer characters, a smiling person with a tree of leaves for hair, and a robot reading in a hollow.

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We thought AI could do this

A ChatGPT conversation about the arithmetic “4^2 - 234 * (-23) * 329870134987”: it works through the steps and its answer reads 10825535722618; beside it a calculator shows 1775361066500050.

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But it is also unexpectedly good at this

A ChatGPT conversation. The prompt is “Write code to add two numbers in python”. The answer explains the + operator and gives a short Python program with an add_numbers function, followed by an explanation of the code.

Prompt: Write code to add two numbers in python

In Python, you can add two numbers by simply using the + operator. Here's a simple function to add two numbers:

def add_numbers(a, b):

return a + b

number1 = float(input("Enter the first number: "))

number2 = float(input("Enter the second number: "))

result = add_numbers(number1, number2)

print("The sum of the two numbers is:", result)

In this code, the add_numbers function takes two arguments, a and b, and returns their sum. The user is prompted to enter two numbers, which are then passed to the function to perform the addition. The result is then printed.

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How do we know what modern AI will be good or bad at?

A puzzle-piece icon beside the question.

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