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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

#271

Post by dasKrokodil »

dawidloubser wrote: post #266
kamaal wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I wonder if my coding skill will deteriorate in the years to come... Well that's not how LLMs work. Don't use an LLM to do thinking for you. You use LLMs to work for you, while you tell(after thinking) it what's to be done. Basically things like- . Attach a click handler to this button with x, y, z params and on click route it to the path /a/b/c . Change the color of this header to purple. . Parse the json in param…

I think that anybody who finds the process of clumsily describing the above examples to an LLM in some text box using english and waiting for it to spit out some code which you hope is suitable for your given programming context and codebase more efficient than just expressing the logic directly in your programming language in an efficient editor, probably suffers from multiple weaknesses: - Poor editor / editing set…

At the time I'm writing this, there are over 260 comments to this article and yours is still the only one that mentions the enormous energy consumption.

I wonder whether this is because people don't know about it or because they simply don't care...

But I, for one, try to use AI as sparingly as possible for this reason.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#272

Post by c4c68004 »

James_K wrote: post #151
achierius wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By what means will -they- avoid hitting the same issues? Neither Russia nor China have magic detectors for is-this-essay-written-by-AI either.

Well China has already shown some legislative teeth in these matters. IIRC they put a hard limit on the amount of time minors can play videogames and use TikTok (Douyin). Banning AI for minors is also something I could see them doing.

[dead]

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#274

Post by fransje26 »

jancsika wrote: post #163

Anecdote-- every single high school student and college student I've talked to in the past year (probably dozens) use chatgpt to write their papers. They don't even know how to write a prompt, or in some cases even what "writing a prompt" means. They just paste the assignment in as a prompt and copy the output. They then feed that as input to some app that detects chatgpt papers and change the wording until it flows…

> Most of them seem overconfident that they could write papers of similar quality if they ever tried. But so far, according to all of them, they have not.

Ah, the illusion of knowledge..

Coming from an education system where writing lengthy prose and essays is expected for every topic from literature to mathematics, I can confidently say that, after not having actively practiced that form of writing for over a decade, I wouldn't be able to produce a paper of what was considered average-quality back then. It would take time, effort, and a few tries, despite years and years of previous practice. Even more so if the only medium in front of me would be a blank sheet of paper and a pen.

So to confidently claim you can produce something of high quality when you've never really done it before is.. ..misguided.

But in the end, perhaps not really different to the illusion knowledge one gets with google at its fingertips. Pull the plug, and you are left with nothing.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#275

Post by olivierduval »

ratedgene wrote: post #25

I was talking to a teacher today that works with me at length about the impact of AI LLM models are having now when considering student's attitude towards learning. When I was young, I refused to learn geography because we had map applications. I could just look it up. I did the same for anything I could, offload the cognitive overhead to something better -- I think this is something we all do consciously or not. Tha…

Actually, it shows the real problem about education... and what education is for!

Education is not a way to memorize a lot of knowledge, but a way to train your brain to recognize patterns and to learn. Obviously you need some knowledges too, but you generally dont need to be an expert, only to have "basic" knowledges.

Studying different domains allow to learn some different knowledges but also to learn new way of thinking.

For example : geography allows you to understand geopolitic and often sociology and history. And urban city design. And war strategy. And architecture...

So, when students are using LLM (and it's worst for children), they're missing on training their brain (yes... they get dumber) and learning basic human knowledge (so more prone to any fake news, even the most obvious)

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#276

Post by sinuhe69 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #224
wrp wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does pedagogy have established and verified methodology that will result in a completely PHYSICALLY developed student, if only the student does the EXERCISE as prescribed? No, but we still see the value in physical activity to promote healthy development. > many things we were forced to do in school were not helpful at all I've never had to do push-ups since leaving school. It was a completely useless skill to spend…

You haven't proved that it made a difference or that doing something else wouldn't have been as or more effective, which is my point. You did it, so these students must do it, with no other rationale than that.

You have forgotten that pedagogy is based on science and research. That is why it is effective for the masses. Anecdotal evidence will never refute the result. Take learning to read, for example. While you can learn to read in a number of ways, some of which are quite unusual, such as memorising the whole picture book and its sound, research has clearly shown that using the phonics approach is the most effective. Or take maths. It's obvious that some people are good at maths, even if they don't seem to do much work. But research has shown time and time again that to be good at maths you need to practice, including doing homework.

So learning to recognise the phonics and blend them together may not be better for one pupil, but it is clearly better for most. This is what the curriculum and most teachers' classroom practice is all about.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#277

Post by 71bw »

jancsika wrote: post #163

Anecdote-- every single high school student and college student I've talked to in the past year (probably dozens) use chatgpt to write their papers. They don't even know how to write a prompt, or in some cases even what "writing a prompt" means. They just paste the assignment in as a prompt and copy the output. They then feed that as input to some app that detects chatgpt papers and change the wording until it flows…

1st year college student here, and an alumni of a certain high school programme I'd rather not mention ever again.

I've used LLMs MULTIPLE times during "academic" work, often for original idea generation. Never for full-on, actual writing.

Think of my usage as treating it as a tool that gives you a stem of an idea that you develop further on your own. It helps me persevere with the worst part of work: having to actually come up with an entire idea on my own.

And AI detection tools are still complete garbage as far as I can tell, a paper abstract I've written in front of one of my professors got flagged as 100% AI generated (while having no access to outside sources).

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#278

Post by rjh29 »

antod wrote: post #167
rjh29 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Writing regexes by hand is hard so there will always be some level of testing involved. But reading a regex and verifying it works is easier than writing one from scratch.

My overly snide point about regexes was that most of the time "verifying it works" is more like finding and fixing a few more edge cases on the asymptotic journey towards no more brokenness.

Yeah I agree with that! 100% test coverage seems impossible when every part of the regex is basically an if condition.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#279

Post by 71bw »

deprecative wrote: post #79

The only logical course is to not use LLM garbage for anything. I know this is heretical within the tech bro monoculture of HN.

>I know this is heretical within the tech bro monoculture of HN.

Because it's objectively a false statement.

The LLM output is only "garbage" if your prompt and fact-checking also are garbage.

It's like calling a Ti-84 calculator "garbage" because the user has a hole in their head and doesn't know how to use it, hence they can't produce anything useful using it.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#280

Post by kamaal »

skydhash wrote: post #208
kamaal wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I wonder if my coding skill will deteriorate in the years to come... Well that's not how LLMs work. Don't use an LLM to do thinking for you. You use LLMs to work for you, while you tell(after thinking) it what's to be done. Basically things like- . Attach a click handler to this button with x, y, z params and on click route it to the path /a/b/c . Change the color of this header to purple. . Parse the json in param…

Maybe I'm too good at my editor (currently Emacs, previously Vim), but the fact is that I can type all of this faster than dictating it to an AI and verifying its output.

Yes, editor proficiency is something that beats these things any day.

In fact if you are familiar with keyboard macros, in both vim and emacs you can do a lot of text heavy lifting tasks.

I don't see these as opposing traits. One can use both the goodness of vim AND LLMs at the same time. Why pick one, when you can pick both?

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