Sorry, Paul, but Excel gives the ability to able to remember millions of arbitrary facts and make vast arbitrary calculations without putting pen to paper.
It’s clearly economically beneficial and, if used properly, is probably enough to ace any standardized test.
I don’t think so. Take someone stupid, give him a laptop with Excel full of whatever data she wants to put into it, and let her take a standardized test with more relaxed timing (to account for searching in that spreadsheet). I don’t think she’ll ace the test, in particular things like reading comprehension or logical puzzles would not be made easier by having large tables full of data available.
Always good to have skeptics to stretch your creativity!
So, the counterfactual as it stands right now is that we’re giving somebody additional mental powers through high-speed access to software hooked directly into the brain.
We’re not assuming this technology includes advanced AI that does not presently exist. We’re sticking for the most part with software that we have now, but we would be safe to give x1000 of existing hardware capabilities.
We could give them an internet connection, but let’s say that’s cheating. We will not allow them to utilize anybody else’s genius or just any available database. For now let’s say that they can download large, structured data sets which others have built into their brain-interfaced computers in advance, but they cannot access outside sources in real-time.
OK, so someone like this is going to study for a test. They can study in an ordinary fashion, but we can also build dozens of spreadsheets for them to use during the process.
First of all, any time any question relies on vocabulary, they are going to have that piece in place. They will have a definition of every word or unusual phrase at their immediate beckon call. That solves a lot of reading comprehension problems, but maybe not all of them.
What about those questions where there is a passage to read and, for instance, she has to discern something about the author’s intentions?
Here, we get to give whatever kind of custom solver we might choose to provide. For example, we can give her an ability to accumulate a score all of the emotional words in the passage.
It’s a standardized test, not a general test of problem-solving ability. Therefore, she gets to include a lot of previous test questions and templates for answers in her data. How much of an advantage will this provide?
She is never going to make an error in arithmetic or algebra, and she will be able to perform these functions very rapidly.
She gets to immediately convert different kinds of units, one to another. She gets to use any formula that can be recorded.
On these tests, there are a rather limited number of kinds of logic problems. She has to somehow recognize which kind she is dealing with in order to answer them correctly, but I think we can build her some kind of classifier in Excel.
The incorrect answers on these tests also fall into some discernable patterns. There is nothing to stop us from including rules of thumb in these spreadsheets, and she can use these rules of thumb to winnow out many of the fakes.
The counterfactual is not complete unless we decide how much time she has to practice for the exam, and how many practice tests she can do in advance. I think that her ability to upload many tests and practice them without using her hands to write is going to give her more benefit from practice than most people get.
We also can presume that she has years of practice using her inbuilt software.
I’ll grant you this: The ability to extract critical information from a word problem or a passage, and the ability to translate words into algebraic or logical expressions-these things seem a bit trickier. It’s hard to say how much canned computer programs can aid the brain in that realm without actually trying to build them.
Excel permits programming, so the scenario does seem to allow us to give her some Watson-like powers in addition to everything else.
I would really like to know exactly how well a version of Watson can extract meaning from passages of text. My understanding is that is how it answered a lot of the history questions on Jeopardy.
Her special skills may not increase her attention span, though. If she does not care about the test, or if here mind wanders and she starts playing mental video games, then no.
Increased mental capacity is not going to help someone who does not want to use it.
So, the counterfactual as it stands right now is that we’re giving somebody additional mental powers through high-speed access to software hooked directly into the brain.
Um, no. That’s part of the issue—we’re not giving her access to additional mental powers. We’re giving her easy, fast, and convenient access to some information tools. Her mental powers remain the same—if her working memory is limited, it remains limited. Being able to look up things in a second does not imply a large working memory. If she gets confused with longish logical chains, direct access to Excel isn’t going to help. Etc., etc.
She is never going to make an error in arithmetic or algebra
Oh, but she will. Go talk to, say, accountants—people who professionally use Excel and have been doing it for a while. Ask them if they ever make an arithmetic error :-)
Excel permits programming, so the scenario does seem to allow us to give her some Watson-like powers in addition to everything else.
Well, Excel includes VB which is Turing-complete. So you could treat Excel as a general-purpose computing environment and provide her with an narrow AI which, basically, solves the test for her. But I don’t think that’s what we are talking about :-/
Sorry, Paul, but Excel gives the ability to able to remember millions of arbitrary facts and make vast arbitrary calculations without putting pen to paper.
It’s clearly economically beneficial and, if used properly, is probably enough to ace any standardized test.
I don’t think so. Take someone stupid, give him a laptop with Excel full of whatever data she wants to put into it, and let her take a standardized test with more relaxed timing (to account for searching in that spreadsheet). I don’t think she’ll ace the test, in particular things like reading comprehension or logical puzzles would not be made easier by having large tables full of data available.
Always good to have skeptics to stretch your creativity!
So, the counterfactual as it stands right now is that we’re giving somebody additional mental powers through high-speed access to software hooked directly into the brain.
We’re not assuming this technology includes advanced AI that does not presently exist. We’re sticking for the most part with software that we have now, but we would be safe to give x1000 of existing hardware capabilities.
We could give them an internet connection, but let’s say that’s cheating. We will not allow them to utilize anybody else’s genius or just any available database. For now let’s say that they can download large, structured data sets which others have built into their brain-interfaced computers in advance, but they cannot access outside sources in real-time.
OK, so someone like this is going to study for a test. They can study in an ordinary fashion, but we can also build dozens of spreadsheets for them to use during the process.
First of all, any time any question relies on vocabulary, they are going to have that piece in place. They will have a definition of every word or unusual phrase at their immediate beckon call. That solves a lot of reading comprehension problems, but maybe not all of them.
What about those questions where there is a passage to read and, for instance, she has to discern something about the author’s intentions?
Here, we get to give whatever kind of custom solver we might choose to provide. For example, we can give her an ability to accumulate a score all of the emotional words in the passage.
It’s a standardized test, not a general test of problem-solving ability. Therefore, she gets to include a lot of previous test questions and templates for answers in her data. How much of an advantage will this provide?
She is never going to make an error in arithmetic or algebra, and she will be able to perform these functions very rapidly.
She gets to immediately convert different kinds of units, one to another. She gets to use any formula that can be recorded.
On these tests, there are a rather limited number of kinds of logic problems. She has to somehow recognize which kind she is dealing with in order to answer them correctly, but I think we can build her some kind of classifier in Excel.
The incorrect answers on these tests also fall into some discernable patterns. There is nothing to stop us from including rules of thumb in these spreadsheets, and she can use these rules of thumb to winnow out many of the fakes.
The counterfactual is not complete unless we decide how much time she has to practice for the exam, and how many practice tests she can do in advance. I think that her ability to upload many tests and practice them without using her hands to write is going to give her more benefit from practice than most people get.
We also can presume that she has years of practice using her inbuilt software.
I’ll grant you this: The ability to extract critical information from a word problem or a passage, and the ability to translate words into algebraic or logical expressions-these things seem a bit trickier. It’s hard to say how much canned computer programs can aid the brain in that realm without actually trying to build them.
Excel permits programming, so the scenario does seem to allow us to give her some Watson-like powers in addition to everything else.
I would really like to know exactly how well a version of Watson can extract meaning from passages of text. My understanding is that is how it answered a lot of the history questions on Jeopardy.
Her special skills may not increase her attention span, though. If she does not care about the test, or if here mind wanders and she starts playing mental video games, then no.
Increased mental capacity is not going to help someone who does not want to use it.
Um, no. That’s part of the issue—we’re not giving her access to additional mental powers. We’re giving her easy, fast, and convenient access to some information tools. Her mental powers remain the same—if her working memory is limited, it remains limited. Being able to look up things in a second does not imply a large working memory. If she gets confused with longish logical chains, direct access to Excel isn’t going to help. Etc., etc.
Oh, but she will. Go talk to, say, accountants—people who professionally use Excel and have been doing it for a while. Ask them if they ever make an arithmetic error :-)
Well, Excel includes VB which is Turing-complete. So you could treat Excel as a general-purpose computing environment and provide her with an narrow AI which, basically, solves the test for her. But I don’t think that’s what we are talking about :-/