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AI Homework

stratechery.com

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Re: AI Homework

#11

Post by ahelwer »

tejohnso wrote: post #3
yamtaddle wrote: post #2

Oh thank God, I took a lot of poli-sci classes in college and read that ChatGPT output going, "holy shit, did I totally mis-remember Hobbes' whole deal, was all that time totally wasted if I've got the wrong idea about something that basic?" but no, ChatGPT was just wildly wrong. Phew.

I had no idea, and for me it was another wake up call not to believe everything I read, especially on the internet. I thought it was very well written, made perfect sense, and what motive would there be to lie or misattribute? So I believed and thought I had learned something. I consider myself skeptical, but for things like this I don't have my radar on because it's not a hot topic issue that is known for misinforma…

Pop history generally is so far from accurate that I don't think you really have much to worry about. Nearly 100% of fun historical facts upvoted to the front page of reddit are basically incorrect, for example.

Re: AI Homework

#12

Post by fudged71 »

tejohnso wrote: post #3
yamtaddle wrote: post #2

Oh thank God, I took a lot of poli-sci classes in college and read that ChatGPT output going, "holy shit, did I totally mis-remember Hobbes' whole deal, was all that time totally wasted if I've got the wrong idea about something that basic?" but no, ChatGPT was just wildly wrong. Phew.

I had no idea, and for me it was another wake up call not to believe everything I read, especially on the internet. I thought it was very well written, made perfect sense, and what motive would there be to lie or misattribute? So I believed and thought I had learned something. I consider myself skeptical, but for things like this I don't have my radar on because it's not a hot topic issue that is known for misinforma…

"On the internet nobody knows you are a dog"

Re: AI Homework

#13

Post by ahelwer »

jcranmer wrote: post #9
ahelwer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could easily imagine an ordinary person giving this exact same wrong answer (confusing Hobbes and Locke) - we're talking about value-over-replacement here! In the process of learning things we take in wrong information all the time. A lot of it is even intentionally wrong, in the sense of being simplified. These are rarely large obstacles to true understanding. Sometimes they're even beneficial, as correcting prior…

If this were a test question, the response given would be marked wrong, likely with no partial credit awarded. It's that egregiously wrong, even if the attribution is perhaps understandable.

Well thankfully I haven't been in school for over a decade at this point, so rarely (never?) encounter these hard-cutoff no-second-chances trivia situations. I operate in the real world, where continually making something that's not-quite-correct then refining it and fixing the errors is how basically everything is accomplished.

Re: AI Homework

#14

Post by daniel-cussen »

ThalesX wrote: post #8

I love talking to GPT, but I've tried using it for some serious stuff (research, biz-dev) and less than serious stuff (Dungeons & Dragons) and the magic is still there but it has obvious blind spots which might be solved in the future but we're talking about the present. I am wholly amused how everyone got on that dude from Google that accused the AI of being sentient and Google about not caring, and now you have hug…

No post body was provided.

Re: AI Homework

#15

Post by soco »

fellerts wrote: post #7

There has been a lot of "well, we had a good run" comments on ChatGPT threads from engineers lately. I get where this sentiment is coming from, but I also think that the article paints a good picture of how we must "pivot" as a species to avoid faceplanting completely. Zero Trust Homework sounds like a strategy we will be forced to implement: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident…

I can imagine somebody knowing the answer being able to properly verify the output. But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

Re: AI Homework

#16

Post by pdonis »

"The solution will be to start with Internet assumptions, which means abundance, and choosing Locke and Montesquieu over Hobbes: instead of insisting on top-down control of information, embrace abundance, and entrust individuals to figure it out."

While this sounds good, it depends on a crucial assumption: that there are places on the Internet where people can go to find content that is not generated by an AI, but by some human who has taken the trouble to check it for accuracy before posting it.

Just one problem: what happens when all of the content on the Internet (or at least the vast majority of it) is generated by AI? Then there is no longer any other source of information available to check it against (or if there is, it's so hard to find that it might as well not be there at all).

Re: AI Homework

#17

Post by dragonwriter »

> This is a confident answer, complete with supporting evidence and a citation to Hobbes work, and it is completely wrong.

This is a confident criticism, but the referenced AI response does not cite supporting evidence, it just states (mostly incorrect) conclusions about Hobbes positions; it also has no specific citation to Hobbes work, handwaving at it referencing only the title of a book.

Re: AI Homework

#18

Post by [deleted] »

ThalesX wrote: post #8

I love talking to GPT, but I've tried using it for some serious stuff (research, biz-dev) and less than serious stuff (Dungeons & Dragons) and the magic is still there but it has obvious blind spots which might be solved in the future but we're talking about the present. I am wholly amused how everyone got on that dude from Google that accused the AI of being sentient and Google about not caring, and now you have hug…

[deleted]

Re: AI Homework

#19

Post by pdonis »

pdonis wrote: post #16

"The solution will be to start with Internet assumptions, which means abundance, and choosing Locke and Montesquieu over Hobbes: instead of insisting on top-down control of information, embrace abundance, and entrust individuals to figure it out." While this sounds good, it depends on a crucial assumption: that there are places on the Internet where people can go to find content that is not generated by an AI, but by…

Ironically, another article on the HN front page makes this same point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33864276

Re: AI Homework

#20

Post by dragonwriter »

pdonis wrote: post #16

"The solution will be to start with Internet assumptions, which means abundance, and choosing Locke and Montesquieu over Hobbes: instead of insisting on top-down control of information, embrace abundance, and entrust individuals to figure it out." While this sounds good, it depends on a crucial assumption: that there are places on the Internet where people can go to find content that is not generated by an AI, but by…

> Just one problem: what happens when all of the content on the Internet (or at least the vast majority of it) is generated by AI?

The vast majority of the content of the internet is junk now, how do people deal with that? They have specific known sources that they trust to faithfully relay primary works and/or to provide trustworthy analysis.

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