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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

#91

Post by hereforcomments »

hgsgm wrote: post #84
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.

Exactly! Like most top universities. And especially MBAs. I wish I knew it earlier and made better use of it.

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

#93

Post by fn-mote »

p-e-w wrote: post #83
michaelt wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 [...]

You're talking about a Ph.D. level investigation, not something that is usually considered at the level of an undergraduate in the US.

Most beginners lack the contextual knowledge to recognize even glaring errors. For example, I once saw a distributed application that occasionally updated a central database without any locking. Occasionally the data would get corrupted by simultaneous writes, and the original dev had no idea why.

Consider adding more context if you want to continue to write about dogma in academia. Share your own experence. At the level of generality you are writing it's impossible to engage more because we don't share the same context.

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

#94

Post by fn-mote »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #41
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #14

What does the chatbot say, when asked to do a complete course assignment question?

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Just kidding, of course. In all seriousness, when I asked GPT-4 to solve a problem from the 2020 version of CS50, not only did it spit out a correct solution, it also correctly used "#include " I imagine they'd put some kind of guardrails up against literally spitting out the complete solution. I kinda doubt CS50 students would be sophisticated enough to a) realize that…

You can help the students who want to learn.

To my knowledge, nobody has any good answers about using LLM to cheat, but I would not use that as a reason to avoid them for teaching.

The cheaters aren't going to ask ChatGPT-CS-50 for the answers, they're going straight to GPT-4.

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

#95

Post by webmaven »

hgsgm wrote: post #87
chongli wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Of course they are useful, but the utility is broader than you think. Those skills are just as easily used for rationalization, eg. "Lies, damn lies, and statistics."

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

#96

Post by thumbuddy »

carlossouza wrote: post #74
thumbuddy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine going to an ivy League school and paying 10,000$ for a chat bot to teach you. What a racket

I think most people do not pay for teachers' quality. People pay for the diploma's brand. (Which is a proxy of the probability of landing a good job after graduation.) For that use case, as long as the chatbot teachers don't degrade the university's brand name, I think most people won't care. They might even actually prefer it. (I graduated from the top engineering university in my country and I'd certainly prefer Ch…

Considering degrees in CS are becoming less and less meaningful I personally wouldn't be investing in a branded one. Especially not in this economy.

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

#97

Post by Melchizedek »

carlossouza wrote: post #74
thumbuddy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine going to an ivy League school and paying 10,000$ for a chat bot to teach you. What a racket

I think most people do not pay for teachers' quality. People pay for the diploma's brand. (Which is a proxy of the probability of landing a good job after graduation.) For that use case, as long as the chatbot teachers don't degrade the university's brand name, I think most people won't care. They might even actually prefer it. (I graduated from the top engineering university in my country and I'd certainly prefer Ch…

That is something that I think hasn’t been fully realized yet - that many people will actually prefer AIs to most humans.

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

#98

Post by c7b »

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.

In some sense, for a class like CS50, experiencing first-hand that current LLMs are often confidently wrong could be seen as part of the educational mission. If you asked me what the first thing that a young user should know about today's tech is, then it's probably that.

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

#99

Post by joker_minmax »

RyanAdamas wrote: post #68
ekianjo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latin was not used to keep things away from people. It was the de facto international language of the time.

How something starts and is intended to be used becomes corrupted for the purposes of power and control; its clockwork and it absolutely happened with Latin. We could say the same thing about Medicine and Law today. All those technical terms in Latin are just for cohesion, right? Just coincidence they happen to be for the two largest union based professions in the west? I don't think so. Perhaps, they started out ori…

I see what you're saying about Latin usage being a barrier to understanding "legalese". However, in medicine it's absolutely justified, because it allows us to be more specific than using English alone. A lot of the English words for body parts are loanwords from Latin that mean something else because English does not have its own word for it. Cervix, for example, means "neck". English took the Latin word to describe it, as the phrase "cervix uteri" in the 1700s. You could call it the "neck of the uterus" I guess, but uterus came from Latin too. Medical dictionaries can be bought by laypeople and are worth owning, but now people just use WebMD or one of the other SEO-optimized clones.

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

#100

Post by Buttons840 »

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…

Steps to success: (1) Have lots of money. (2) Go to Harvard and have an AI "teach" you. (3) Receive a prestigious degree that indicates your class and signals that you play by the rules favorable to those already in power. (4) Receive a prestigious job that pays you even more money. (5) Have an AI do your job.
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