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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

#81

Post by chongli »

p-e-w wrote: post #24
donkey_oaty wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my experience most lecturers and professors welcome challenge because it allows them to expand on what they are teaching.

They welcome shallow challenges that allow them to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by correcting them. They most certainly don't welcome challenges to the basic assumptions on which their teachings rest. Not that professors are in any way unique in that regard; it is a trait shared by all people with power and authority.

They most certainly don't welcome challenges to the basic assumptions on which their teachings rest.

Professors are trying to teach a class, not engage in a debate with a student. Challenging basic principles that everyone in the class are already assumed to have accepted is usually seen as an attempt to derail the lecture.

Derailing the lecture and drawing the professor into a debate with you effectively denies the other students access to education. It’s roughly equivalent to heckling a comedian.

If you want to debate your professor, do it on your own time, in office hours. If the professor is still offended and unwilling to debate then you have reasonable grounds to complain. Most professors I’ve met absolutely love to debate outside of class.

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

#82

Post by dools »

civilized wrote: post #15
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.

I saw a project where someone had trained an AI on classic novels so you could have a conversation with the book.

I think AI trained on text books should be able to achieve the same thing relatively easily.

It’s just an interactive textbook, seems like a pretty good idea to me.

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

#83

Post by p-e-w »

michaelt wrote: post #48
p-e-w wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They welcome shallow challenges that allow them to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by correcting them. They most certainly don't welcome challenges to the basic assumptions on which their teachings rest. Not that professors are in any way unique in that regard; it is a trait shared by all people with power and authority.

Well, there are challenges and there are challenges. A professor teaching about evolution will answer students' questions within reason - and students with a religious background might have heard some anti-evolution gotchas the professor will be happy to explain - like how something as complex as the eye could evolve. But that doesn't extend to debating bible verses, allowing so many challenges that it disrupts the c…

That you leap from "basic challenges" to anti-science fundamentalism really shows how deep-rooted this problem is. Most educated people today earnestly believe that the only ones who would disagree on basic issues with the high priests of academia are fanatics, conspiracy nuts, and quacks.

The idea that academics are on the right path has turned from something that must be continuously demonstrated to something that is assumed by default, as part of a new orthodoxy that ironically is almost indistinguishable from the religious and ideological orthodoxies that science once sought to replace.

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

#84

Post by hgsgm »

logical_ferry wrote: post #75

This sounds dystopian. I went through a distance learning course and I don't see this being far from it. I mean, it's not like anyone will have to come to the brick and mortar classroom just to sit there and listen to this AI thing talk about CS, everyone will do it from their room. So on one hand you have a lack of proper instructor and on the other hand lack of social contact. Imagine being 18 and sitting at home a…

Harvard has not been about paying for access to the professors for over 100 years. It's about paying for access to fellow students.

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

#85

Post by fn-mote »

chongli wrote: post #71
Paul-Craft wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 walkth…

I have been a TA for first-year intro CS on multiple occasions. I have written the test suites that auto-grade student submissions. The problem with first year CS students is that, unlike math, they’re allowed to have a huge range of possible prior experience in the subject. Some have zero programming experience whatsoever, while others started programming in diapers and competed in numerous programming contests (and…

> So the course is dealing with (essentially) a strongly bimodal distribution of student ability and the professors don’t want to give the advanced students a free ride. That means the course is actually somewhat challenging for all but the most elite programmers and therefore extremely challenging for total beginners.

HN readers: universities that teach a so-called "How to Design Programs" curriculum [1] have discovered a partial solution to this problem. Emphasizing a design process in a functional language removes the advantage that students with experience but not a deep understanding gain from knowing how to cobble things together the way they learned in high school AP CS A.

I'm not saying it's the only route, but it works well and develops important skills that are (ime) not learned by tinkering.

[1]: https://htdp.org [2]: https://course.ccs.neu.edu/cs2500/labs.html

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

#86

Post by aClicheName »

Here’s a small project I had made that acts in a similar fashion, but is instead intended for therapy.

It’s not much, but I’ve open sourced it so that you can see how easy it is to make something like this. The ruleset in chat.php is really all that’d need changed.

https://github.com/HenryNewcomer/DrTherabot

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

#87

Post by hgsgm »

chongli wrote: post #78
dr_dshiv wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Definitely users are responsible for knowing this. And it is one of the key things that education needs to teach.

I’m generally skeptical of the critical thinking movement. There is not much evidence that students can be taught to transfer their critical thinking skills from one subject to another. I think much of what people refer to as critical thinking is more aptly called subject expertise.

Huh? Are you saying that math and logic are not useful in a wide variety of subjects?

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

#88

Post by hgsgm »

ekianjo wrote: post #64
Lio wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience with LLMs so far is that they very confidently give you an answer and very convincingly explain that answer but for certain portion of the time that answer is very wrong. You can even get it to break its reasoning down into little convincing but, none the less, incorrect steps. If I was running this course I would make that "artefact" part of the process. i.e. I would tell students that the chatbot will…

> My experience with LLMs so far is that they very confidently give you an answer and very convincingly explain that answer but for certain portion of the time that answer is very wrong. This is true of humans just as well

Humans are not programmed to avoid saying "I don't know."

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

#89

Post by hgsgm »

PeterStuer wrote: post #20

"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 ...

Harvards pricing system is such that it never costs much relative to student's family wealth.

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

#90

Post by hgsgm »

local_crmdgeon wrote: post #52
hourago wrote: post #50

> “Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher:student ratio for every student in CS50, as by providing them with software-based tools that, 24/7, can support their learning at a pace and in a style that works best for them individually,” Is the goal to improve students learning or to reduce cost? The article does not even mention it. And I think that it is important to state the goa…

Harvard is one a few institutions that's effectively not resource constrained. I believe them when they say this

Harvards resources are spent mostly on paying investment managers and acquiring real estate, not teaching.
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