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CheatGPT

blog.humphd.org

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Re: CheatGPT

#21

Post by ford »

Perhaps this is another of the early (?) nails in the coffin for traditional higher education.

If it becomes harder to assess if someone learned something (with a grade), the results of that assessment (GPA) become less valuable. Software has traditionally been at the forefront of allowing people with non-traditional backgrounds (bootcamps, other degrees, self-taught) to work in the highest echelon of jobs, because of experience outside of the classroom (open source, personal projects).

ChatGPT and its ilk put more pressure on evaluation of candidates in interviews and should lend more weight to impact/experience based criteria on resumes (vs education-based).

There is a spectrum of people using ChatGPT to cheat vs learn. But, ideally, "cheaters never win", so interviewers and resume screeners will soon be under as much pressure as educators to holistically evaluate candidates beyond the crutch/immediate signal of a degree. They're just further downstream

Re: CheatGPT

#22

Post by jehb »

misnome wrote: post #12
paxys wrote: post #8

> Apparently, it's not even something students feel they need to hide. Which is good! If a bit of work is trivially accomplished by a machine, we should take it for granted and move on to the next layer of complexity. I have always maintained that teachers complaining about students cheating at homework assignments with AI need to instead work on providing better homework.

You seem to have misunderstood the purpose of homework.

To be fair, I'm not sure there's consensus around the purpose of homework.

Re: CheatGPT

#23

Post by rippercushions »

sublinear wrote: post #16

When I was a freshman in college the professor would live code various data structures and algorithms on the projector and ask the students to follow along. Each time he did this it was subtly unique. It was required that you continue to use this same base code for the assignments plus your edits to complete it. This made it obvious who didn't attend the lectures and who they copied from. Assignments were graded by y…

Good for you, but that's not how the vast majority of CS courses operate.

Also, coding on paper with no access to devices is both terrible and has next to nothing to do with how CS grads will actually work.

Re: CheatGPT

#24

Post by ramesh31 »

CS programs will have to adapt to this or die. The reality is that five years from now, we'll all just be talking to LLMs all day and compiling/checking the results. It's no different than the shift from assembler to higher languages in the 80s.

Re: CheatGPT

#25

Post by sublinear »

rippercushions wrote: post #23
sublinear wrote: post #16

When I was a freshman in college the professor would live code various data structures and algorithms on the projector and ask the students to follow along. Each time he did this it was subtly unique. It was required that you continue to use this same base code for the assignments plus your edits to complete it. This made it obvious who didn't attend the lectures and who they copied from. Assignments were graded by y…

Good for you, but that's not how the vast majority of CS courses operate. Also, coding on paper with no access to devices is both terrible and has next to nothing to do with how CS grads will actually work.

A CS degree is not a "bootcamp" or any other form of vocational training. Also, there are criteria for the school to maintain accreditations, you know.

Re: CheatGPT

#26

Post by thfuran »

jasmer wrote: post #17
paxys wrote: post #8

> Apparently, it's not even something students feel they need to hide. Which is good! If a bit of work is trivially accomplished by a machine, we should take it for granted and move on to the next layer of complexity. I have always maintained that teachers complaining about students cheating at homework assignments with AI need to instead work on providing better homework.

??? By this reasonning nobody should ever learn anything, because it's all 'trivially doable' by machine. Like 'addition' and 'subtraction'. So let's gaslight those dumb teachers by saying they should make up 'better' homework assignments?

Intractable and unsolved problems only!

Re: CheatGPT

#27

Post by ramesh31 »

jasmer wrote: post #17
paxys wrote: post #8

> Apparently, it's not even something students feel they need to hide. Which is good! If a bit of work is trivially accomplished by a machine, we should take it for granted and move on to the next layer of complexity. I have always maintained that teachers complaining about students cheating at homework assignments with AI need to instead work on providing better homework.

??? By this reasonning nobody should ever learn anything, because it's all 'trivially doable' by machine. Like 'addition' and 'subtraction'. So let's gaslight those dumb teachers by saying they should make up 'better' homework assignments?

>By this reasonning nobody should ever learn anything, because it's all 'trivially doable' by machine.

>Like 'addition' and 'subtraction'.

A better analogy would be low level coding. I don't know (or care) how my processor calculates `var f = 3+2` at the register level. And being able to ignore that allows me to focus on higher level concerns.

Re: CheatGPT

#28

Post by sebzim4500 »

sublinear wrote: post #25
rippercushions wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, but that's not how the vast majority of CS courses operate. Also, coding on paper with no access to devices is both terrible and has next to nothing to do with how CS grads will actually work.

A CS degree is not a "bootcamp" or any other form of vocational training. Also, there are criteria for the school to maintain accreditations, you know.

Then why are people paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for them?

Re: CheatGPT

#29

Post by brookst »

ford wrote: post #21

Perhaps this is another of the early (?) nails in the coffin for traditional higher education. If it becomes harder to assess if someone learned something (with a grade), the results of that assessment (GPA) become less valuable. Software has traditionally been at the forefront of allowing people with non-traditional backgrounds (bootcamps, other degrees, self-taught) to work in the highest echelon of jobs, because o…

I think it just moves the definition of “learning” to a higher level of abstraction: so you know what AI tools to use, how to prompt them, and how to understand their output?

I’m reminded of the time when graphing calculators were going to destroy math programs because nobody would “really know” how to do the work. And yet here we are, and math is fine, and calculators are just another tool.

Re: CheatGPT

#30

Post by giancarlostoro »

ford wrote: post #21

Perhaps this is another of the early (?) nails in the coffin for traditional higher education. If it becomes harder to assess if someone learned something (with a grade), the results of that assessment (GPA) become less valuable. Software has traditionally been at the forefront of allowing people with non-traditional backgrounds (bootcamps, other degrees, self-taught) to work in the highest echelon of jobs, because o…

You could force tests to be done in testing centers. My college had these and they were strict about what you can bring, you get up to a whole week to show up on your own time, and you're only allowed a paper and pencil if anything at all, that they provide. Make the Final and Midterm tests worth roughly 60% of their grade, and it wont matter if they cheat on their homework.

Edit:

Alternatively, have students do presentations of their code from their homework, just as we all do peer review professionally. Let students learn and teach other students.

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