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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

#151

Post by eesmith »

lelandbatey wrote: post #150
eesmith wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I linked to https://registrar.fas.harvard.edu/tuition-and-fees which shows I quoted only tuition. That's the amount which most directly goes toward paying for educational staff salaries. The total tuition+fees for Academic Year 2023-24 from the same page, is $79,450/year, giving $317,800 for 4 years, and matching your number.

I think they're pointing out that $315k is different from $315,000k as both include the k (for thousand) but one includes the thousands as 0's and the other does not.

I think wil421 made a typo. I don't think anyone believes Harvard costs $315 million for a degree.

Instead, I think wil421 was asking about the difference between "tuition" and "tuition and fees".

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

#152

Post by literalis »

misnome wrote: post #43
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.

It sounds like you had a bad experience with a bad professor, or - came in starting with this attitude. Because this doesn’t match my experience, at all.

There is just enormous variability with professors. The more MOOCs you take the more obvious this becomes.

If you had good professors in college you should consider yourself lucky.

There is a lot of absolutely terrible professors.

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

#153

Post by literalis »

RyanAdamas wrote: post #60

This is a terrible indication of what is to come. Cheap, accessible, and fully featured instructors that would otherwise be free and open source, contained and used for profit by in-name-only institutions, organizations and corporations for the purpose of increased profit from the reduction in human labor. Every ounce of AI should be open source and free to the public. This is absolutely technological terrorism on th…

This is not how the future is going to be.

There is no modeling going on with this. At most they are providing a system prompt to the chatGPT api to stay on the topic of CS. It is trivial.

It seems incredibly obvious the entire education system will not be the same in 20 years.

I applaud them for adopting this so fast because this is the doom of the entire concept of the ridiculously overpriced US higher education system.

Per chatGPT, non recte de hoc cogitas

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

#154

Post by literalis »

thumbuddy wrote: post #66
RyanAdamas wrote: post #60

This is a terrible indication of what is to come. Cheap, accessible, and fully featured instructors that would otherwise be free and open source, contained and used for profit by in-name-only institutions, organizations and corporations for the purpose of increased profit from the reduction in human labor. Every ounce of AI should be open source and free to the public. This is absolutely technological terrorism on th…

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

It is like saying the newspaper can just digitize the stories they were going to write anyway and keep selling the newspaper as they had before. That works until people stop buying the newspaper.

ChatGPT4 is better than any professor I ever had and it is not even close. Not to mention, the professors are not the ones who are going to get much better and smarter as time marches on from this point.

I am not even sure the credentialism from the Ivy league is going to make sense in an AI world.

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

#155

Post by nmz »

ekianjo wrote: post #133
hgsgm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you ask someone they will give you their approximation of an answer. However if you told them if they would bet money on it, and promptly make them do so, you will find them saying IDK more frequently.

Even this, I wouldn't bet money on what I just said.

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

#156

Post by chefandy »

lioeters wrote: post #131
chefandy wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yeah though they're unionized now I think. I wonder if anything changed with cs50?

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

#157

Post by 8note »

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."

Humans also tend not to write "I don't know" into text content about a certain subject. Usually the idk is hidden by not writing at all

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

#158

Post by Kon-Peki »

eesmith wrote: post #149
Kon-Peki wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At most that's 1,790 students per year taking the class each year Anyone in the world can take CS50 for credit via Harvard Extension [1], and if you happen to be in the Boston area you are welcome to come to campus and attend lectures, sections, office hours, etc (but they also have everything you need fully online). Like other large classes at Harvard (Stat 110, etc), these operate just like the weed-out courses a…

The pricing doesn't make sense. Harvard Extension charges $2,040/4 credit course[1]. I estimated this course cost Harvard students $5,000, for low-quality access to educational staff. Does that mean Harvard Extension students get even worse access? Surely paying twice as much in tuition should mean something more than getting to say "I graduated from Harvard." [1] https://extension.harvard.edu/paying-for-school/

No, they get the same access to the courses they are enrolled in.

An extension student doesn’t have access to the full course catalog, and doesn’t live in one of the undergrad houses, doesn’t develop the same network of friends etc.

But they do attend the same morning graduation exercises in Harvard Yard and get the same lifetime benefits (if they carry through to graduation, that is).

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

#159

Post by 111111IIIIIII »

Paul-Craft wrote: post #30
111111IIIIIII wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The preconditions for your vision simply cannot exist under capitalism.

Your comment is currently gray, but I would like to hear why you think this.

In our society, institutional education is increasingly necessarily a for-profit pursuit. Regardless the intentions of any entity involved, the structural (or, institutional) first priority must be profit.

On the part of the pupil that pays for an education, their relation to the teacher and institution is limited by their competitive pursuit of a career.

Altogether, anything which risks the institution's potential for profit or the individual pupil's competitive edge in the career market is unsustainable in the aggregate (or, "at scale" in HN lingo). If education itself is compromised, then so be it. This is the norm for good reason. There is no alternative (under capitalism).

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

#160

Post by eesmith »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #158
eesmith wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pricing doesn't make sense. Harvard Extension charges $2,040/4 credit course[1]. I estimated this course cost Harvard students $5,000, for low-quality access to educational staff. Does that mean Harvard Extension students get even worse access? Surely paying twice as much in tuition should mean something more than getting to say "I graduated from Harvard." [1] https://extension.harvard.edu/paying-for-school/

No, they get the same access to the courses they are enrolled in. An extension student doesn’t have access to the full course catalog, and doesn’t live in one of the undergrad houses, doesn’t develop the same network of friends etc. But they do attend the same morning graduation exercises in Harvard Yard and get the same lifetime benefits (if they carry through to graduation, that is).

> access to the full course catalog

That would (to me) only make sense if the extra $3,000 for the CS course subsidizes the other courses.

> and doesn’t live in one of the undergrad houses

Which is why I only compared tuition, and did not include the housing fee.

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