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Study mode

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Re: Study mode

#351

Post by Julien_r2 »

CJefferson wrote: post #102
scarmig wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These things are moving so quickly, but I teach a 2nd year combinatorics course, and about 3 months ago I tried th latest chatGPT and Deepseek -- they could answer very standard questions, but were wrong for more advanced questions, but often in quite subtle ways. I actually set a piece of homework "marking" chatGPT, which went well and students seemed to enjoy!

Super good idea!!

Luc Julia (one of the main Siri's creators) describe a very similar exercice in this interview [0](It's in french, although the au translation isn't too bad)

The gist of it, is that he describes this exercice he does with his students, where they ask chatgpt about Victor Hugo's biography, and then proceed to spot the errors made by Chatgtp.

This setup is simple, but there are very interesting mechanisms in place. The student get to learn about challenging facts, do fact checking, cross reference, etc. While also asserting the reference figure of the teacher, with the knowledge to take down chat gpt.

Well done :)

Edit: adding link

[0] https://youtube.com/shorts/SlyUvvbzRPc?si=2Fv-KIgls-uxr_3z

Re: Study mode

#352

Post by andrepd »

SLWW wrote: post #89
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.

My core problem with LLMs is as you say; it's good for some simpler concepts, tasks, etc. but when you need to dive into more complex topics it will oversimplify, give you what you didn't ask for, or straight up lie by omission. History is a great example, if you ask an LLM about a vaguely difficult period in history it will just give you one side and act like the other doesn't exist, or if there is another side, it…

> History is a great example, if you ask an LLM about a vaguely difficult period in history it will just give you one side and act like the other doesn't exist, or if there is another side, it will paint them in a very negative light which often is poorly substantiated

Which is why it's so terribly irresponsible to paint these """AI""" systems as impartial or neutral or anything of the sort, as has been done by hypesters and marketers for the past 3 years.

Re: Study mode

#353

Post by m11a »

potatolicious wrote: post #168
thimabi wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what’s the future in terms of profitability of LLM providers? As long as features like Study Mode are little more than creative prompting, any provider will eventually be able to offer them and offer token-based charging.

I think a few points worth making here: - From what I can see many products are rapidly getting past "just prompt engineering the base API". So even though a lot of these things were/are primitive, I don't think it's necessarily a good bet that they will remain so. Though agree in principle - thin API wrappers will be out-competed both by cheaper thin wrappers, or products that are more sophisticated/better than thin…

Email is pretty difficult to reliably self-host though, and typically a PITA to manage. And you really don’t ever want to lose your email address or the associated data. Fewer people could say they properly secure, manage and administer a VPS on which they can host the email server they eventually setup, over say a 10yr period.

Most people I saw offer self-hosted emails for groups (student groups etc), it ended up a mess. Compare all that to say ollama, which makes self-hosting LLMs trivial, and they’re stateless.

So I’m not sure email is a good example of commodity not bringing price to the floor.

Re: Study mode

#355

Post by andrepd »

neutronicus wrote: post #323
SLWW wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My core problem with LLMs is as you say; it's good for some simpler concepts, tasks, etc. but when you need to dive into more complex topics it will oversimplify, give you what you didn't ask for, or straight up lie by omission. History is a great example, if you ask an LLM about a vaguely difficult period in history it will just give you one side and act like the other doesn't exist, or if there is another side, it…

History in particular is rapidly approaching post-truth as a knowledge domain anyway. There's no short-term incentive to ever be right about it (and it's easy to convince yourself of both short-term and long-term incentives, both self-interested and altruistic, to actively lie about it). Like, given the training corpus, could I do a better job? Not sure.

What are you talking about? In what sense is history done by professional historians degrading in recent times? And what short/long term incentives are you talking about? They are the same as any social science.

Re: Study mode

#356

Post by djeastm »

I tried out the quiz function asking me about the Aeneid and despite my answering questions incorrectly, it kept saying things like "Very close!" and "you're on the right track!".

For example, the answer to a question was "Laocoön" (the guy who said 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts') and I put "Solon" (who was a Greek politician) and I got "You’re really close!"

Is it close, though?

Re: Study mode

#357

Post by andrepd »

drc500free wrote: post #350
kenjackson wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“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.” These things also apply to humans. A year or so ago I thought I’d finally learn more about the Israeli/Palestinians conflict. Turns out literally every source that was recommended to me by…

Israel / Palestine is a collision between two internally valid and mutually exclusive worldviews. It's kind of a given that there will be two camps who consider the other non-reputable. FWIW, the /r/AskHistorians booklist is pretty helpful. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/books/middleeast...

A human-curated list of human-written books? How delightfully old fashioned!

Re: Study mode

#358

Post by thorum »

poemxo wrote: post #119

As a lifelong learner, experientially it feels like a big chunk of time spent studying is actually just searching. AI seems like a good tool to search through a large body of study material and make that part more efficient. The other chunk of time, to me anyway, seems to be creating a mental model of the subject matter, and when you study something well you have a strong grasp on the forces influencing cause and eff…

Isn’t the goal of Study Mode exactly that, though? Instead of handing you the answers, it tries to guide you through answering it on your own; to teach the process.

Most people don’t know how to do this.

Re: Study mode

#359

Post by sen »

lbrito wrote: post #220
poemxo wrote: post #119

As a lifelong learner, experientially it feels like a big chunk of time spent studying is actually just searching. AI seems like a good tool to search through a large body of study material and make that part more efficient. The other chunk of time, to me anyway, seems to be creating a mental model of the subject matter, and when you study something well you have a strong grasp on the forces influencing cause and eff…

>big chunk of time spent studying is actually just searching. This is a good thing in many levels. Learning how to search is (was) a good skill to have. The process of searching itself also often leads to learning tangentially related but important things. I'm sorry for the next generations that won't have (much of) these skills.

That was relevant when you were learning to search through “information” for the answer to your question, eg the digital version of going through the library or digging through a reference book.

I don’t think it’s so valuable now that you’re searching through piles of spam and junk just to try find anything relevant. That’s a uniquely modern-web thing created by Google in their focus of profit over user.

Unless Google takes over libraries/books next and sells spots to advertisers on the shelves and in the books.

Re: Study mode

#360

Post by resize2996 »

Julien_r2 wrote: post #351
CJefferson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These things are moving so quickly, but I teach a 2nd year combinatorics course, and about 3 months ago I tried th latest chatGPT and Deepseek -- they could answer very standard questions, but were wrong for more advanced questions, but often in quite subtle ways. I actually set a piece of homework "marking" chatGPT, which went well and students seemed to enjoy!

Super good idea!! Luc Julia (one of the main Siri's creators) describe a very similar exercice in this interview [0](It's in french, although the au translation isn't too bad) The gist of it, is that he describes this exercice he does with his students, where they ask chatgpt about Victor Hugo's biography, and then proceed to spot the errors made by Chatgtp. This setup is simple, but there are very interesting mechan…

forgot the link :)
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