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I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

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Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#221

Post by sn9 »

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter.

It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia.

They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that work builds knowledge and skills and experience.

Students who know least of all and don't understand the purpose of writing or problem solving or the limitations of LLMs are currently wasting years of their lives letting LLMs pull them along as they cheat themselves out of an education, sometimes spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to let their brains atrophy only to get a piece of paper and face the real world where problems get massively more open-ended and LLMs massively decline in meeting the required quality of problem solving.

Anyone who actually struggles to solve problems and learn themselves is going to have massive advantages in the long term.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#223

Post by palata »

_qswe wrote: post #201
palata wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doing the exact same work more slowly by hand just to prove a point to someone on HN isn't a productive way to deliver business value. You prove my point again: it's not "just to prove a point". It's about internalising the information, improving your ability to synthesise and be critical. Sure, if your only objective is to "deliver business value", maybe you make more money by being uninteresting with an LLM. My p…

Understanding or being interesting has nothing to do with it. We use calculators and computers for a reason. No one hires people to respond to API requests by hand; we run the code on servers. Using the right tool for the job is just doing my job well.

> We use calculators and computers for a reason. No one hires people to respond to API requests by hand; we run the code on servers

We were talking about writing, not about vibe coding. We don't use calculators for writing. We don't use API requests for writing (except when we make an LLM write for us).

> Using the right tool for the job is just doing my job well.

I don't know what your job is. But if your job is to produce text that is meant to be read by humans, then it feels like not being able to synthesise your ideas yourself doesn't make you excellent at doing your job.

Again maybe it makes you productive. Many developers, for instance, get paid for writing bad code (either because those who pay don't care about quality or can't make a difference, or something else). Vibe coding obviously makes those developers more productive. But I don't believe it will make them learn how to produce good code. Good for them if they make money like this, of course.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#224

Post by kevinventullo »

necovek wrote: post #54

I've already asked a number of colleagues at work producing insane amount of gibberish with LLMs to just pass me the prompt instead: if LLM can produce verbose text with limited input, I just need that concise input too (the rest is simply made up crap).

Something I’ve found very helpful is when I have a murky idea in my head that would take a long time for me to articulate concisely, and I use an LLM to compress what I’m trying to say. So I type (or even dictate) a stream of consciousness with lots of parentheticals and semi-structured thoughts and ask it to summarize. I find it often does a great job at saying what I want to say, but better.

(See also the famous Pascal quote “This would have been a shorter letter if I had the time”).

P.s. for reference I’ve asked an LLM to compress what I wrote above. Here is the output:

When I have a murky idea that’s hard to articulate, I find it helpful to ramble—typing or dictating a stream of semi-structured thoughts—and then ask an LLM to summarize. It often captures what I mean, but more clearly and effectively.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#225

Post by eric_cc »

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#226

Post by Hasnep »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #193

I just want to point out that AI generated material is naturally a confirmation bias machine. When the output is obviously AI, you confirm that you can easily spot AI output. When the output is human-level, you just pass through it without a second thought. There is almost no regular scenario where you are retroactively made aware something is AI.

I've heard this called the toupee fallacy. Not all toupees are bad, but you only spot the bad toupees.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#227

Post by [deleted] »

derefr wrote: post #180
scarface_74 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried changing the house style. https://chatgpt.com/share/6817c9f4-ed48-8010-bc3e-58299140c8... In the real world I would at least remove the em dashes. It’s a dead give away for LLM generated text.

That was not a good attempt at changing the style. You can't just say "don't sound like an LLM." The LLM does not in fact know that it is "speaking like an LLM"; it just thinks that it's speaking the way the "average person" speaks, according to everything it's ever been shown. If you told it "just speak like a human being"... that's what it already thought it was doing! You have to tell the LLM a specific way to spe…

[deleted]

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#228

Post by palata »

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

> Students who know least of all and don't understand the purpose of writing or problem solving or the limitations of LLMs are currently wasting years of their lives

Exactly. I tend to think that the role of a teacher is to get the students to realise what learning is all about and why it matters. The older the students get, the more important it is.

The worst situation is a student finishing university without having had that realisation: they got through all of it with LLMs, and probably didn't learn how to learn or how to think critically. Those who did, on the other hand, didn't need the LLMs in the first place.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#229

Post by gyomu »

andy99 wrote: post #6

I used to teach, years before LLMs, and got lots of copy-pasted crap submitted. I always marked it zero, never mentioning plagiarism (which would require some university administration) and just commenting that I asked for X and instead got some pasted together nonsense. As long as LLM output is what it is, there is little threat of it actually being competitive on assignments. If students are attentive enough to par…

Yeah, the author here is as much a part of the problem. If you let students get away with submitting ChatGPT nonsense, of course they’re going to do that - they don’t care about the 3000 words appeal to emotion on your blog, they take the path of least resistance.

If you’re not willing to cross out an entire assignment and return it to the student who handed it in with “ChatGPT nonsense, 0” written in big red letters at the top of it, you should ask yourself what is the point of your assignments in the first place.

But I get it, university has become a pay-to-win-a-degree scheme for students, and professors have become powerless to enforce any standards or discipline in the face of administrators.

So all they can do is give the ChatGPT BS the minimum passing grade and then philosophize about it on their blog (which the students will never read).

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#230

Post by palata »

eric_cc wrote: post #225
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though. There are lots of ways to challenge the mind even if you use llm’s to write some papers.

> Using llm’s for papers does not mean your brain is atrophying though.

It means that you are losing your time. If you are a university student and use LLMs for your classes while "challenging your mind" for stuff outside of class, maybe you should just not be studying there in the first place.

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