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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

#311

Post by wrp »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #309
low_tech_love wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never say never, but I do not plan on doing this. This sounds quite surreal: a loop where the students pretend to learn and I pretend to teach? I would… hm… I’ve never heard of such… I mean, this is definitely not how it is in reality… right… (Jokes aside, I have an unhealthy, unstoppable need to feel proud of my work, so no I won’t do that. For now…)

I would have thought that the teaching comes before the test, and that the test is really just a way to measure how well the student soaked up the knowledge. You could take pride in a well crafted technology that could mark an assignment and provide feedback in far more detail that you yourself could ever provide given time constraints. I asked my partner about it last night, she teaches at ANU and she made some joke…

In discussing how to adapt teaching methods, we have also looked at evaluation by LLM. The most talked about concern now is the unreliability of LLM output. However, say that in the future, accuracy of LLMs improves to the point that it is no longer a problem. Would it then be good to have evaluation by LLM?

I would say generally not, for two reasons. First, the teacher needs to know how the student is developing. To get a thorough understanding takes working through the student's output, not just checking a summary score. Second, the teacher needs to provide selective feedback, to focus student attention on the most important areas needing development. This requires knowledge of the goals of the teacher and the developmental history of the student.

I won't argue that LLM evaluation could never be applied usefully. If the task to be evaluated is simple and the skills to be learned are straightforward, I imagine that it could benefit the students of some grossly overloaded teacher.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#312

Post by owenpalmer »

nitwit005 wrote: post #238
owenpalmer wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get an LLM to do almost anything I want. Sometimes I need to add a lot of context. Sometimes I need to completely rewrite the prompt after realizing I wasn't communicating clearly. I almost always have to ask it to explain it's reasoning. You can't treat an LLM like a computer. You have to treat it like a weird brain.

You're not exactly selling it as a learning tool with this comment. If the premise is that you first need to learn an alien psychology, that's quite the barrier for a student.

I was talking about coding in this context. With coding, you need to communicate a lot better than if you're just asking it to explain a concept.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#313

Post by 1910 »

rjh29 wrote: post #278
antod wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[dead]

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#314

Post by kamaal »

skydhash wrote: post #293
kamaal wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> One can use both the goodness of vim AND LLMs at the same time. Why pick one, when you can pick both? I mostly use manuals, books, and the occasional forum searches. And the advantage is that you pick surrounding knowledge. And more consistent writing. And today, I know where some of the good stuff are. You're not supposed to learn everything in one go. I built a knowledge map where I can find what I want in a more…

Well its entirely an individual choice to make. But I don't generally view the world in terms of ORs I view them in terms of ANDs.

One can do pick and use multiple good things at a time. Using vim doesn't mean, I won't use vscode, or vice versa. Or that if you use vscode code you must not use AI with it.

Having access to a library doesn't mean, one must not use Google. One can use both or many at one time.

There are no rules here, the idea is to build something.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#315

Post by dawidloubser »

ctrl4th wrote: post #289
dasKrokodil wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're not alone. With the inclusion of gemini generated answers in google search, its going down the road of most capitalistic things. Where you see something is wrong, but you have no option to use it even if you don't want it.

I like to idealistically think that in a capitalistic (free market) society we absolutely have the option to not use things that we think are wrong or don't like.

Change your search engine to one that doesn't include AI-generated answers. If none exist any more, all of Google's customers could write to them telling them that they don't want this feature and are switching away from them because of it, etc.

I know that internet-scale search is perhaps a bad example because it's so extremely difficult and expensive to build and run, but ultimately the choice is in the consumers' hands.

If the market makes it clear that there is a need for a search engine without LLM-generated answers at the top, somebody will provide one! It's complacency and acceptance that leads apparently-delusional companies to just push features and technologies that nobody wants.

I feel much the same way about the ridiculous things happening with cars and the automotive sector in general.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#316

Post by Fomite »

mbsa_cs wrote: post #240
Fomite wrote: post #203

I mostly teach graduate students, and in my first lecture, one of the slides goes through several LLMs attempts at a fairly simple prompt to write a seminar introduction for me. We grade them in terms of factually correct statements, "I suppose" statements (yes, I've worked on influenza, but that's not what I'm best known for), and outright falsehoods. Thus far none of them have gotten it right - illustrating at leas…

Falling an exam is many things but "catastrophic".

Those two exams being their preliminary exam and their dissertation defense.

Failing either is most certainly catastrophic.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#317

Post by 542354234235 »

girvo wrote: post #162
brookst wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Have you not run into trouble when your phone is dead but you have to contact someone? I have, it's frustrating. Thankfully I remember my partners number, though its the only one these days.

I had to maintain a little physical phone book because, while I can memorize 10 people’s numbers, I cant memorize 25, 50, 100. Not having that with me when I needed it, or if you lost it and had no backup, was far less convenient than today. It feels like this is a case of magnifying a minor, rare modern inconvenience and ignoring all the huge inconveniences of the past in favor of a super narrow case where it was debatably “better”.

Re: A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

#318

Post by sinuhe69 »

Eisenstein wrote: post #284
sinuhe69 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Although some studies have shown various gains in achievement (Marzano & Pickering, 2007), the relationship between academic achievement and homework is so unclear (Cooper & Valentine, 2001) that using research to definitively state that homework is effective in all contexts is presumptive." American Secondary Education 45(2) Spring 2017 Examining Homework Bennett

To conclude for yourself, just compare the PISA result of the US and other developing country like VietNam or China, where they still keep the school tradition of homework and practice alive. And what do we see? Much higher PISA scores in math than the US. I refuse to believe some some folks have a "math gene" and other not.

Practice does not improve skills? You got to be kidding me! I didn't state that homework is effective in all contexts, but I firmly believe that practice is absolute necessary to improve any kind of skill. Some forms of practice is more effective than other in certain context. But you need practice to improve your skills. Otherwise, how do you propose to improve your skills? Dreaming?

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