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AI Homework

stratechery.com

261–270 of 296 posts

Re: AI Homework

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not go to a technical high school and therefore had no opportunity to learn technical drawing in school. When I when to university to study electronics and computer engineering, I had to take technical drawing as a required subject. Needless to say, I sucked at it, and it was the one and only class that I ever failed. I passed with flying colours the second time around, and still graduated in minimum time, thou…

You can’t always have your AutoCAD with you when taking measurements off real-world objects. An engineer must be able to draw and write unambiguously.

I was probably in the last class in my school where we did mostly hand-drawing, including technical drawings. Annoying but found it useful to practice spatial thinking and precise visual communication. Of course, even harder to be ambiguous in CAD.

Re: AI Homework

#262
post #3

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…

I agree. Now I feel very attuned to any instances of the verb "to be" that I encounter in writing because to me they seem to inspire overgeneralizations. Yes, thinking and writing like this can interfere with readability.

Re: AI Homework

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not go to a technical high school and therefore had no opportunity to learn technical drawing in school. When I when to university to study electronics and computer engineering, I had to take technical drawing as a required subject. Needless to say, I sucked at it, and it was the one and only class that I ever failed. I passed with flying colours the second time around, and still graduated in minimum time, thou…

You can’t always have your AutoCAD with you when taking measurements off real-world objects. An engineer must be able to draw and write unambiguously.

You really probably could: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/autocad/id393149734

Re: AI Homework

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. You could have also let someone else do your homework for you. Does that also count as "using tools that you have access to"?

> I don't know. You could have also let someone else do your homework for you. Does that also count as "using tools that you have access to"? Keep in mind that the reverse is also true: If he did try to do it all manually & without the tracing method, is his use of already-available graphite "using tools that you have access to"? Should he be made to go to a mine & dig out coal for graphite in order for it to count a…

> Should he be made to go to a mine & dig out coal for graphite in order for it to count as his work?

That argument doesn't make any sense. There are restrictions for any homework, some explictly given by their professor (such as the deadline), and some implicitly known from general academic guidelines and common sense (such as "not using a photocopier in an art class"). Obviously mining coal is not among those restrictions.

Re: AI Homework

#265
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then a bot would say that. (I feel like these tools are incredibly neat to see but also likely to lead to a corrosive effect on trust as people no longer know who's real — and that'll get worse the first time someone launches a good AI assistant to handle email / chat trained on your writing style)

> and that'll get worse the first time someone launches a good AI assistant to handle email / chat trained on your writing style That one might actually be easy to solve: all we need is to normalize the idea that you're personally responsible for whatever your email/chat assistant AI says or does in your name. After all, it's you who are making a decision to reroute other people to a bot. (Many would say just using s…

I agree, but I'm not sure that's sufficient. ChatGPT is pretty good and say that the next version actually works well enough to handle most non-close social interactions. Then I run into you in person and realize you have _no_ idea of what “we” have been talking about — I'm not sure there is a good way to repair that.

Ideally, we'd require labels but there's no easy way to enforce that without something like random auditing of AI implementers.

Re: AI Homework

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can (unfortunately) see this happening - it seems incredibly futile and pointless to try and fight such an arms race. When AI-supported writing becomes the norm having students write essays without AI-assistance will be like trying to force students to do complex arithmetic without calculators. Universities and schools need to accept that writing essays without AI support will simply not be a useful skill any…

>Universities and schools need to accept that writing essays without AI support will simply not be a useful skill anymore It’s kind of mind-blowing that anyone could think this. You’re posting on a website for essays. Small essays, generally speaking, if we restrict ourselves to the comments section, but essays nonetheless. You yourself just wrote one, because you wanted to express your thoughts on an issue and you w…

> Would you be fine with a future where all written text on the internet, everywhere, was generated by AI? Do you not see any problems with that?

if it makes the discussions more poignant and concise, why not?

Do you also walk every where? Or do you use a transportation vehicle? When a tool makes something better, there's no reason not to use it. The replies being written by an AI doesn't make it less of a reply - you can judge the replies objectively, rather than from where it is sourced.

Re: AI Homework

#267
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's everyone choice - odd, ironic or appropriate - what to think of how GPT's answers to keeps getting quoted on the question of how to detect it. The thing is, I'd see these answers as similar to everything else the program produces. A bunch of claims from the net cobbled together - I've read a number of Sci-fi novels and stories where "inability to understand humor" is the distinguishing quality of an AI (I'm gues…

>A reasonable answer is that the AI's output tends to involve this running-together of common rhetorical devices along with false and/or contradictory claims within them. The question here is this an actual AI only failure mode. Are we detecting AI, or just bullshittery?

Gotta be honest, I wouldn't mind throwing out bullshittery with the AI that much.

Re: AI Homework

#268
Here's a 10 points summary of the article from ChatGPT if you're lazy to read the entire thing like me:

1. The author's daughter asked for help with a homework assignment on Thomas Hobbes.

2. The author used the ChatGPT service to answer the question, but the response was incorrect.

3. The ChatGPT service uses the GPT-3 language model and applies reinforcement learning to create a new model with an intuitive chat interface and memory.

4. The service has sparked interest in OpenAI's capabilities and the impact of AI on society.

5. Nat Friedman, former CEO of GitHub, believes there is a shortage of real-world AI applications.

6. Many AI startups mimic OpenAI, focusing on publishing and citations rather than customers and products.

7. The author believes that OpenAI's model is not sustainable and will be challenged by companies such as Google.

8. OpenAI's model relies on large amounts of data, which may become more difficult to obtain as privacy concerns increase.

9. OpenAI's model also relies on compute power, which is becoming more expensive and less environmentally friendly.

10. The author suggests that OpenAI should focus on building products and platforms to sustain its growth.

Re: AI Homework

#269
post #102

One of my subjects at highchool was technical drawing. The teacher was a quite old man who was set on his ways. We would have to draw 3D pieces by hand, using our squares, bevels and compasses, and lining everything with an ink pencil afterwards, and he gave us a lot of homework to do, which he examined for imperfections. I was incredibly bad a it. I would start a drawing, only to discover halfway through it that it…

In my technical drawing class for some reason the teacher was such a softie.. that we basically learned nothing. The class had two sections, there was the front part of the classroom with drafting desks and the chalkboard etc, but there was an enclosed space at the back where there was a small computer lab. At some point during the year we all just would go back there and play computer games for the majority of the period. The computers all had games installed, Quake, SNES emulator etc. And we all ended up with As and learned nothing. This was my regrettable curriculum.

Re: AI Homework

#270
The described output sounds like a perfect example of an MBA essay. You can fine-tune it if you want the output to resemble HBR articles, HBS or MIT Sloan cases and there you go, your homework done in a minute. Writing MBA essays was the largest waste of time and I can't imagine TAs were actually reading them instead of scanning for keywords.
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