OER / ZTC Advocates Have an AI Problem
David Wiley,
improving learning,
Mar 21, 2023
Most of this post is directed against zero textbook costs (ZTC) advocacy, which I guess is a thing somewhere (Wiley says it prevails in U.S. higher education institutions) but the real intertesting discussion comes right at the end when he gets to Large Language Models (LLM) like GPT-4. "As with courseware, LLMs have real costs associated with their hosting and delivery, meaning that learning materials that incorporate LLMs will have a price greater than zero. And this means that students whose faculty, department, institution, or state have guaranteed that students will pay zero dollars for their course materials will miss out on these next-generation learning materials." Well, that does follow at all. Heating and light also have costs associated with them, but students don't pay extra for heating and light. More and more, interaction with these LLM will be the course, not 'resource materials that support the course'.
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