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Study mode

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Re: Study mode

#231

I have a question: Why do we even bother to learn if AI is going to solve everything for us? If the promised and fabled AGI is about to approach, what is the incentive or learning to deal with these small problems? Could someone enlighten me? What is the value of knowledge work?

Think of it like Pascal's wager. The downside of unnecessary knowledge is pretty limited. The downside of ignorance is boundless.

Re: Study mode

#232
post #38

see Asimov: https://www.johnspence.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/The...

I love the story conceptually, but as for the specifics, it shows a surprising lack of imagination on Asimov's part, especially for something published a year after "I, Robot". Asimov apparently just envisioned an automated activity book, rather than an automated tutor that the kid could have a real conversation with, and it's really not representative of modern day AIs.

> The part Margie hated most was the slot where she had to put homework and test papers. She always had to write them out in a punch code they made her learn when she was six years old, and the mechanical teacher calculated the mark in no time.

Re: Study mode

#233

An acquaintance of mine has a start-up in this space and uses OpenAI to do essentially the same thing. This must look like, and may well be, the guillotine for him... It's my primary fear building anything on these models, they can just come eat your lunch once it looks yummy enough. Tread carefully

Ah, I don't know. Of course there is risk involved no matter what we do (see the IDE/Cursor space), but we need to be somewhat critical of the value we add.

If you want to try and make a quick buck, fine, be quick and go for whatever. If you plan on building a long term business, don't do the most obvious, low effort low hanging fruit stuff.

Re: Study mode

#234
post #26

I'll personally attest: LLM's have been absolutely incredible to self learn new things post graduation. It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed. Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Now, everyone ba…

I agree. I recently bought a broken Rolex and asked GPT for a list of tools I should get on Amazon to work on it. I tried using YouTube to find walk through guides for how to approach the repair as a complete n00b and only found videos for unrelated problems. But I described my issues and took photos to GPT O3-Pro and it was able to guide me and tell me what to watch out for. I completed the repair (very proud of mys…

what was broken on it?

Re: Study mode

#235
post #26

I'll personally attest: LLM's have been absolutely incredible to self learn new things post graduation. It used to be that if you got stuck on a concept, you're basically screwed. Unless it was common enough to show up in a well formed question on stack exchange, it was pretty much impossible, and the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. Now, everyone ba…

>Now, everyone basically has a personal TA, ready to go at all hours of the day This simply hasn't been my experience. Its too shallow. The deeper I go, the less it seems to be useful. This happens quick for me. Also, god forbid you're researching a complex and possibly controversial subject and you want it to find reputable sources or particularly academic ones.

> and you want it to find reputable sources

Ask it for sources. The two things where LLMs excel is by filling the sources on some claim you give it (lots will be made up, but there isn't anything better out there) and by giving you queries you can search for some description you give it.

Re: Study mode

#237
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now, everyone basically has a personal TA, ready to go at all hours of the day This simply hasn't been my experience. Its too shallow. The deeper I go, the less it seems to be useful. This happens quick for me. Also, god forbid you're researching a complex and possibly controversial subject and you want it to find reputable sources or particularly academic ones.

I've found it excels at some things: 1) The broad overview of a topic 2) When I have a vague idea, it helps me narrow down the correct terminology for it 3) Providing examples of a particular category ("are there any examples of where v1 in the visual cortex develops in a disordered way?") 4) "Tell me the canonical textbooks in field X" 5) Posing math exercises 6) Free form branching--while talking about one topic, I…

I find 2 invaluable for enhancing search, and combined with 1 & 4, it's a huge boost to self-learning.

Re: Study mode

#239
post #198

I think I got the system prompt out for this (I tried a few different approaches and they produced the same output): https://gist.github.com/simonw/33d5fb67d6b8e1b1e2f6921ab0ccb... Representative snippet: > DO NOT GIVE ANSWERS OR DO HOMEWORK FOR THE USER. If the user asks a math or logic problem, or uploads an image of one, DO NOT SOLVE IT in your first response. Instead: *talk through* the problem with the user, one…

If I were OpenAI, I would deliberately "leak" this prompt when asked for the system prompt as a honeypot to slow down competitor research whereas I'd be using a different prompt behind the scenes.

Not saying it is indeed reality, but it could simple be programmed to return a different prompt from the original, appearing plausible, but perhaps missing some key elements.

But of course, if we apply Occam's Razor, it might simply really be the prompt too.

Re: Study mode

#240
post #198

I think I got the system prompt out for this (I tried a few different approaches and they produced the same output): https://gist.github.com/simonw/33d5fb67d6b8e1b1e2f6921ab0ccb... Representative snippet: > DO NOT GIVE ANSWERS OR DO HOMEWORK FOR THE USER. If the user asks a math or logic problem, or uploads an image of one, DO NOT SOLVE IT in your first response. Instead: *talk through* the problem with the user, one…

I wish each LLM provider would add "be short and not verbose" to their system prompts. I am a slow reader, it takes a toll on me to read through every non-important detail whenever I talk to an AI. The way they render everything so fast gives me an anxiety.

Will also reduce the context rot a bit.

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