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cyber barriers ELENABSL/ADOBE
Large language models look set to provide students with new ways to learn
Editor’s comment

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to the future of He also believes LLMs are significantly worse at using languages engage with, and they can see great learning capabilities and
business software
other than the most popular European ones. Ling, which was potential,” says Jack Goodman, Studiosity’s founder and chair,
established to teach Thai and now covers 23 Asian languages, adding that great harm could be caused if this is not done well.
Harnessing large
language models will for the time being use human reviewers and impose controls Using LLMs trained on trusted material rather than the not-
for education over how LLMs contribute to its services, using CustomGPT.ai as entirely accurate contents of the internet may help with factual
a third-party tool with ChatGPT. reliability, although he says that feedback provided in seconds by
Ling plans to use general-purpose LLMs, but Studiosity, a software may not be taken seriously by students.
learning support service based in Sydney, plans to use two dec- And there are bigger problems, given that LLMs are gener-
ades of its own advice to students as training data. In that time, ally designed to accelerate work processes rather than enhance
its staff have reviewed millions of student essays, providing sug- human understanding. Students applying them to homework and
gestions and feedback rather than corrections, with its services assignments could undermine their own learning as they do so,
purchased by more than 100 universities globally. It expects to as productivity is not the point.
use its custom-built LLM to build hybrid capabilities that allow it to “There are not going to be shortcuts to the learning process
expand its provision of personalised learning services. – there are going to be better ways to learn and worse ways to
“Our university partners are clearly telling us that LLMs and AI learn,” says Goodman. “But you won’t learn to know what you
are absolutely something we need to engage with, they need to think if you don’t learn to express yourself with language.” n

computerweekly.com 21-27 November 2023 19