Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 175 posts

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

#131

Post by lioeters »

chefandy wrote: post #112
eesmith wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to reconcile "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." with "very, very well-funded class". Why didn't the funding go to hiring more staff? My experience in a state school had far more access to education staff than what you describe, and for less funding.

Harvard is bizzaro land. I don't know what CS50s setup looks like internally, but after taking the course, and working there for a couple of decades— one full time— I think I'm pretty close. I learned that they always have money for stuff but rarely for staff. The class seemed to have significant corporate support from Facebook and Microsoft, and probably others— both Zuck and Ballmer have given guest lectures— but I…

> grad students

Why buy the cow, amirite?

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

#132

Post by relativ575 »

agentgumshoe wrote: post #79
carlossouza wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is not the solution you think it is. How do you determine how knowledgeable the chatbot is? Or is 'the computer told me so it's correct' good enough these days?

> How do you determine how knowledgeable the chatbot is?

The same way you determine if a professor is knowledgeable -- they are employed by a school with certain level of reputation that you are comfortable to attend.

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

#133

Post by ekianjo »

hgsgm wrote: post #88
ekianjo wrote: post #64

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. This is true of humans just as well

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

Oh really? You will find very few people admit that they don't know something.

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

#134

Post by ekianjo »

Topfi wrote: post #73
ekianjo wrote: post #64

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. This is true of humans just as well

Whilst that is true, I feel that if that human is an educator employed by a reputable institution, answering questions in their field, the expectation of most is going to be that they provide accurate information. As this is an introductory class, any arguments that even experienced teachers can occasionally cling to incorrect or outdated information becomes moot in my opinion. LLMs as of now simply appear not reliab…

> an educator employed by a reputable institution,

What's a reputable institution? These days most "experts from institutions" are proven to be wrong. The COVID-19 pandemic was a clear eye-opener on how little you could just trust anyone.

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

#135

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

some_random wrote: post #127
chongli wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m a math student. Of course I think math and logic are useful. They’re still subject expertise. They will not help you analyze a painting or a piece of music or a poem. They also generally won’t help you evaluate scientific claims unless you also have enough scientific background. If someone says “humans will set foot on Mars within 30 years”, you’re going to have a hell of a time determining whether that’s reasona…

Critical thinking isn't about evaluating the claim "humans will set foot on Mars within 30 years" by examining rocketry, physics, space travel, etc. It's about asking questions like "who is telling me this, why would they say this, what other beliefs do they have that might influence this one, what do other people say about this claim?" It's universally applicable but gets more effective the more you know about a giv…

That’s tautological about whether or not the claim itself has merit. It only says if the claim doesn’t have merit, here is a set of motivations that might have biased the claim. But there’s no way to determine just from that whether the claim has merit. It goes double for the vast majority of the way we get information: ad hoc through conversations with other humans. If a neighbor tells me it’s thunder storming tomorrow, therefore I should postpone putting up my new fence plans, I’m not going through a bizarro world decision matrix involving surveying the neighborhood for validity!

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

#136

Post by tbrownaw »

some_random wrote: post #126
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.

I don't believe that at all, the idea of challenging what you know and how you know it is extremely useful across all subjects. The problem is that the efforts to teach critical thinking has been colossal failures.

Thing is, doing a consistency check on your collection of purported facts is the easy part. What's hard is the soundness check where you need a lot of domain knowledge to see if things actually match objective reality.

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

#137

Post by anticensor »

voakbasda wrote: post #122
joker_minmax wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't they just distribute the class ability level correctly using a placement test?

The advanced students looking to boost their grade could easily lower their score intentionally, so they get sorted into the beginner group.

There is a solution to that too: Have the placement exam counted as a proficiency course in the student grades, like foreign language requirements or scientific prep courses in graduate-level schools for those majored in a different field.

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

#138

Post by chongli »

anticensor wrote: post #137
voakbasda wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advanced students looking to boost their grade could easily lower their score intentionally, so they get sorted into the beginner group.

There is a solution to that too: Have the placement exam counted as a proficiency course in the student grades, like foreign language requirements or scientific prep courses in graduate-level schools for those majored in a different field.

My school is a public university. They’re not allowed to introduce mandatory placement exams like that. They have to work within the government-set high school curriculum.

They also don’t want to allow the advanced students to “test out” of the intro course, as some schools do, because the advanced students may be highly skilled at programming but totally lacking in introductory CS knowledge.

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

#139

Post by some_random »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #135
some_random wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Critical thinking isn't about evaluating the claim "humans will set foot on Mars within 30 years" by examining rocketry, physics, space travel, etc. It's about asking questions like "who is telling me this, why would they say this, what other beliefs do they have that might influence this one, what do other people say about this claim?" It's universally applicable but gets more effective the more you know about a giv…

That’s tautological about whether or not the claim itself has merit. It only says if the claim doesn’t have merit, here is a set of motivations that might have biased the claim. But there’s no way to determine just from that whether the claim has merit. It goes double for the vast majority of the way we get information: ad hoc through conversations with other humans. If a neighbor tells me it’s thunder storming tomor…

You are massively overthinking this. Critical thinking isn't some giant flowchart of questions and rules that you have to run on every single thing you ever hear or think in your entire life, that's obviously insane. Frankly I don't understand how you could even think that. Critical thinking is just saying "Hey this neighbor has a history of lying to me and my other neighbor said that they tried to get a court order to stop them from putting up a fence. Maybe I should check the forecast before canceling my fence building plans".

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

#140

Post by [deleted] »

tbrownaw wrote: post #136
some_random wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that at all, the idea of challenging what you know and how you know it is extremely useful across all subjects. The problem is that the efforts to teach critical thinking has been colossal failures.

Thing is, doing a consistency check on your collection of purported facts is the easy part. What's hard is the soundness check where you need a lot of domain knowledge to see if things actually match objective reality.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN