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Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

independent.co.uk

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Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#11

Post by [deleted] »

111111IIIIIII wrote: post #10
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #8

I will say one thing for this experiment: it is good to put this out in the open. I believe that if educators attempt to suppress LLM usage, or deride it in front of their students, or persecute students when they believe they have detected LLM usage in homework, then students will not stop using LLMs, but instead the students will internalize this illicit perspective, and they will conceal their usage of LLMs, and t…

The preconditions for your vision simply cannot exist under capitalism.

[deleted]

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#12

Post by consp »

tempodox wrote: post #6

> “But the tools will only get better through feedback from students and teachers alike,” he said. “So they, too, will be very much part of the process.” So the students will be guinea pigs, and they all work for OpenAI.

And be input for a system as I interpret it. Maybe a creative student can figure out how to rig it for future generations.

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#13

Post by p-e-w »

userbinator wrote: post #3

Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.

That's because authority figures don't actually mean it when they tell people to "always think critically".

What they really mean is "think critically when others tell you something, but accept as gospel everything I am telling you".

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#15

Post by civilized »

userbinator wrote: post #3

Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.

"Always think critically"?

"Simply read the textbook" would be a more practical instruction, and also what I did in university anyway.

Critical thinking is a useful description but not a good prescription. It's like telling someone to always be orange. If you want that to happen you have to eat carrots. It won't just happen by fiat or willpower.

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#16

Post by msla »

userbinator wrote: post #3

Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.

It could be a sink-or-swim kind of thing: Saying you trusted the AI isn't accepted as a reason for bad work, so anyone who trusts the AI and gets burned learns a lesson.

Maybe I'm imputing too much intelligence to Harvard's administration.

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#17

Post by donmcronald »

userbinator wrote: post #3

Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.

Doesn’t thinking critical require enough basic knowledge about a topic to be critical of information? How does that even work if you’re there specifically to learn? Education requires an information source you can (mostly) trust blindly. How else do you learn?

If they think ChatGPT is ready to teach, they should offer an electrical course using it and force the administration to take it.

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#18

Post by chefandy »

CS50 was a gigantic intro class designed to whet non-comp-sci students appetite for coding and computer science, generally. (I took it when it was C/PHP, so they may have changed things.) While the lectures are very straightforward, the smaller 'sections' lectures with the dozen-or-so teaching fellows were more intensive, and p-sets were pretty challenging for newbies. The weekly help sessions ended up being a million lost students in a giant hall waiting to see one of a few dozen TAs offering uneven pedagogical quality. The assignments were often automatically graded upon submission and you often have some equivalent of a unit test to see if you got it right before submission, so you know if you got it wrong, but not how wrong. Just having a resource for sanity checks and walkthroughs of lesson concepts without trudging to the hall-o-TAs is prolly really useful.

Totally legit philosophical debates aside, I think this is a great use of the technology. It's a very, very well-funded class (bigger dedicated full-time year-round staff than some entire departments,) so I'm sure it's not a half-assed effort.

Malan is a great lecturer and his CS50 classes are all on YouTube. I sometimes send new coders to them but they're a fun watch, in general.

Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

#20

Post by PeterStuer »

"Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher:student ratio for every student in CS50"

Would this not be a 0:1 ratio? Not against LLM's for some coding assistance, I use it daily. , but equating a teacher with an LLM solution feels like calling a youtube video a 1 on 1 tutoring session.

Well at least a semester at Harvard isn't costing you much ...

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