Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Study mode

openai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 828 posts

Re: Study mode

#241

Post by [deleted] »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #193
no_wizard wrote: post #49

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.

It's a floor raiser, not a ceiling raiser. It helps you get up to speed on general conventions and consensus on a topic, less so on going deep on controversial or highly specialized topics

[deleted]

Re: Study mode

#242

Post by JoRyGu »

0000000000100 wrote: post #155
JoRyGu wrote: post #135

Is that not something that was already possible with basically every AI provider by prompting it to develop learning steps and not to provide you with a direct answer? I've used this quite a bit when learning new topics and pretty much every provider does this without a specialized model.

It's really nice to have something like this baked in. I can see this being handy if it's connected to external learning resources / sites to have a more focused area of search for it's answers. Having hard defined walls in the system prompt to prevent just asking for the answer seems pretty handy to me, particularly in a school setting.

Yeah, for sure. I wasn't asking from the framing of saying it's a bad idea, my thoughts were more driven by this seeming like something every other major player can just copy with very little effort because it's already kind of baked into the product.

Re: Study mode

#243

Post by tech234a »

mkagenius wrote: post #240
simonw wrote: 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.

This was in the linked prompt: "Be warm, patient, and plain-spoken; don't use too many exclamation marks or emoji. [...] And be brief — don't ever send essay-length responses. Aim for a good back-and-forth."

Re: Study mode

#244

Post by jlebar »

no_wizard wrote: post #49
czhu12 wrote: 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.

> Its too shallow. The deeper I go, the less it seems to be useful. This happens quick for me.

You must be using a free model like GPT-4o (or the equivalent from another provider)?

I find that o3 is consistently able to go deeper than me in anything I'm a nonexpert in, and usually can keep up with me in those areas where I am an expert.

If that's not the case for you I'd be very curious to see a full conversation transcript (in chatgpt you can share these directly from the UI).

Re: Study mode

#245

Post by skybrian »

mkagenius wrote: post #240
simonw wrote: 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.

On ChatGPT at least, you can add "be brief" to the custom prompt in your settings. Probably others, too.

Re: Study mode

#247

Post by rawgabbit »

pyuser583 wrote: post #203
SLWW wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Rhodesia (lock step with the racial-first reasoning, underplays Britain's failures to support that which they helped establish; makes the colonists look hateful when they were dealing with terrorists which the British supported) - Bombing of Dresden, death stats as well as how long the bombing went on for (Arthur Harris is considered a war-criminal to this day for that; LLLMs highlight easily falsifiable claims by…

> Ask it about the Crusades, often if forgets the sacking of St. Peter's in Rome around 846 AD, usually painting the Papacy as a needlessly hateful and violent people during that specific Crusade. Which was horrible, bloody as well as immensely destructive (I don't defend the Crusades), but paints the Islamic forces as victims, which they were eventually, but not at the beginning, at the beginning they were the aggre…

He's referring to the Arab sack of St. Peters. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_raid_against_Rome

Re: Study mode

#248

Post by simonw »

can16358p wrote: post #239
simonw wrote: 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 mig…

That kind of thing is surprisingly hard to implement. To date I've not seen any provider been caught serving up a fake system prompt... which could mean that they are doing it successfully, but I think it's more likely that they determined it's not worth it because there are SO MANY ways someone could get the real one, and it would be embarrassing if they were caught trying to fake it.

Tokens are expensive. How much of your system prompt do you want to waste on dumb tricks trying to stop your system prompt from leaking?

Re: Study mode

#249

Post by vonneumannstan »

no_wizard wrote: post #49
czhu12 wrote: 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.

>Its too shallow. The deeper I go, the less it seems to be useful. This happens quick for me.

If its a subject you are just learning how can you possibly evaluate this?

Re: Study mode

#250

Post by qualeed »

threetonesun wrote: post #37
czhu12 wrote: 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…

> the only thing you can really do is keep paving forward and hope at some point, it'll make sense to you. I find it odd that someone who has been to college would see this as a _bad_ way to learn something.

"Keep paving forward" can sometimes be fruitful, and at other times be an absolutely massive waste of time.

I'm not sold on LLMs being a replacement, but post-secondary was certainly enriched by having other people to ask questions to, people to bounce ideas off of, people that can say "that was done 15 years ago, check out X", etc.

There were times where I thought I had a great idea, but it was based on an incorrect conclusion that I had come to. It was helpful for that to be pointed out to me. I could have spent many months "paving forward", to no benefit, but instead someone saved me from banging my head on a wall.

Post reply on HN