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A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

openai.com

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Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#131

Post by duderific »

Swizec wrote: post #27
joshdavham wrote: post #4

I'm really curious to see where higher education will go now that we have LLM's. I imagine the bar will just keep getting higher and more will be able to taught in less time. Are there any students here who started uni just before LLM's took off and are now finishing their degrees? Have you noticed much change in how your classes are taught?

> I'm really curious to see where higher education will go now that we have LLM's. I imagine the bar will just keep getting higher and more will be able to taught in less time On the other hand, 54% of US adults read and write at a 6th grade level or below. They will get absolutely left in the dust by all this. https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/08/02/us-literacy-rate/

They have already been left in the dust, even before LLMs, which explains a lot about our current political situation.

Ironically, those who can work with their hands may be better positioned than "lightly" college educated persons; LLMs can't fix a car, build a house, or clear a clogged pipe.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#132

Post by JadeNB »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #121
JadeNB wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve seen a lot of places that require students to reference their ChatGPT use — and I think it is wrong headed. Because it is not a source to cite! Why is it not a source? I think that it is not if "source" means "repository of truth," but I don't think that's the only valid meaning of "source." For example, if I were reporting on propaganda, then I think that I could cite actual propaganda as a source, even thoug…

Because otherwise it becomes convoluted. It is acceptable to cite and source published material. Having to account for the source of one’s ideas, however, citing friends and influences - it shouldn’t be a moral requirement, just imagine!

> Because otherwise it becomes convoluted. It is acceptable to cite and source published material. Having to account for the source of one’s ideas, however, citing friends and influences - it shouldn’t be a moral requirement, just imagine!

But there is, I think, a big gap between "it is not a source to cite" from your original post, and "it shouldn't be a moral requirement" in this one. I think that, while not every utterance should be annotated with references to every person or resource that contributed to it, there is a lot of room particularly in academic discourse for acknowledging informal contributions just as much as formal ones.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#133

Post by mattmanser »

85392_school wrote: post #20
SunlitCat wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I got chatgpt (gpt4o) to write me a very basic json parser once (and a gltf parser). Although it was very basic and lacking any error checking, it did what i asked it (although not in one go, i had to refine my questions multiple times).

In my experience 4o/Claude are really good at one shotting complicated but isolated components (eg streaming JSON parsers).

It does spectacular job with well trodden paths. Asked it to give me a map react control with points plotted and got something working in a jiffy.

I was trying to get it write robot framework code earlier and it was remarkably terrible. I would point out an obvious problem, it would replace the code with something even more spectacularly wrong.

When I pointed out the new error, it just gave me the exact same old code.

This happened again and again.

It was almost entirely useless.

Really showed how the sausage is made, this generation of AI is just regurgitation of patterns it stole from other people.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#134

Post by alwayslikethis »

freedomben wrote: post #51

I sit on my local school board and (as everyone knows) AI has been whirling through the school like a tornado. I'm concerned about student using it to cheat, but I'm also pretty concerned about how teachers are using it. For example, many teachers have fed student essays into ChatGPT and asked "did AI write this?" or "was this plagiarized" or similar, and fully trusting whatever the AI tells them. This has led to som…

If there's something more unethical than AI plagiarism, that's going to be using AI to condemn people for it. I'm afraid that would further devalue actually writing your own stuff, as supposed to iterating with ChatGPT to produce the least AI-sounding writing out of fear of false accusations.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#135

Post by alwayslikethis »

wcfrobert wrote: post #120

Lots of interesting debates in this thread. I think it is worth placing writing/coding tasks into two buckets. Are you producing? Or are you learning? For example, I have zero qualms about relying on AI at work to write progress reports and code up some scripts. I know I can do it myself but why would I? I spent many years in college learning to read and write and code. AI makes me at least 2x more efficient at my jo…

> a certain degree of "productive struggle" is essential

Honestly, I'm not sure this would account for most of the difficulty in learning. In my experience most of the difficulty involved in learning something involved a few missing pieces of insight. It often took longer to understand the few missing pieces than the rest of the topic. If they are accurate enough, LLMs are great for getting yourself unstuck and keep yourself moving. Although it has always been a part of the learning experience, I'm not sure frantically looking through hundreds of explanations for a missing detail is a better use of one's time than to dig deeper in the time you save.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#136

Post by Falimonda »

booleandilemma wrote: post #123
wcfrobert wrote: post #120

Lots of interesting debates in this thread. I think it is worth placing writing/coding tasks into two buckets. Are you producing? Or are you learning? For example, I have zero qualms about relying on AI at work to write progress reports and code up some scripts. I know I can do it myself but why would I? I spent many years in college learning to read and write and code. AI makes me at least 2x more efficient at my jo…

I used to have dozens of phone numbers memorized. Once I got a cell phone I forgot everyone's number. I don't even know the phone number of my own mother. I don't want to lose my ability to think. I don't want to become intellectually dependent on AI in the slightest. I've been programming for over a decade without AI and I don't suddenly need it now.

I'm curious what your exposure to the available tools has been so far.

Which, if any, have you used?

Did you give them a fair shot on the off-chance that they aid you in getting orders of magnitude more work done than you did previously while still leveraging the experience you've gained?

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#137

Post by alwayslikethis »

youoy wrote: post #62

I actually think that this is the most important part of the article: > Similarly, it’s important to be open about how you use ChatGPT. The simplest way to do this is to generate shareable links and include them in your bibliography . By proactively giving your professors a way to audit your use of AI, you signal your commitment to academic integrity and demonstrate that you’re using it not as a shortcut to avoid doi…

I don't like the idea of requiring it in school. It is tantamount to the government (of which school is a manifestation) forcing you (a minor) to enter into a rather unfavorable contract (data collection? arbitration? prove you are a human?) with "Open"AI. This type of thing is already too normalized.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#138

Post by ojosilva »

WalterBright wrote: post #21
amelius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chatgpt is great for writing regular expressions by the way.

Just because it spits out a RE doesn't mean the RE is what you wanted. For one thing, you'll need to be precise in your prompt.

Yeah, in line with the old RE adage: I had a problem. I used AI. Now I have two problems.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#139

Post by brookst »

booleandilemma wrote: post #123
wcfrobert wrote: post #120

Lots of interesting debates in this thread. I think it is worth placing writing/coding tasks into two buckets. Are you producing? Or are you learning? For example, I have zero qualms about relying on AI at work to write progress reports and code up some scripts. I know I can do it myself but why would I? I spent many years in college learning to read and write and code. AI makes me at least 2x more efficient at my jo…

I used to have dozens of phone numbers memorized. Once I got a cell phone I forgot everyone's number. I don't even know the phone number of my own mother. I don't want to lose my ability to think. I don't want to become intellectually dependent on AI in the slightest. I've been programming for over a decade without AI and I don't suddenly need it now.

Interesting perspective. I read your first line about phone numbers as a fantastic thing -- people used to have to memorize multiple 10 digit phone numbers, now you can think about your contacts' names and relationships.

But... I think you were actually bemoaning the shift from numbers to names as a loss?

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#140

Post by alwayslikethis »

l33t7332273 wrote: post #30
joshdavham wrote: post #4

I'm really curious to see where higher education will go now that we have LLM's. I imagine the bar will just keep getting higher and more will be able to taught in less time. Are there any students here who started uni just before LLM's took off and are now finishing their degrees? Have you noticed much change in how your classes are taught?

> I imagine the bar will just keep getting higher and more will be able to taught in less time. But more won’t be able to be _learned_ in less time

A lot of teaching is wasted on those who already knew and those who are ill-prepared to learn. Although I am skeptical of many of the current proponents of AI in education there is clearly a lot of opportunity for improved efficiency here.
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