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Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

blog.dominikrudnik.pl

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Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#11

Post by e12e »

fragmede wrote: post #4
piokoch wrote: post #2

This is very interesting, I've been using LLM to learn new things that way and it really worked. To some extent, learning with LLM is better than taking any course, even with a tutor, as I am getting something prepared for me, in terms of my experience, progress level, etc. LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong co…

To some extent. I had Claude (Sonnet 4.5) generate some homework problems for students I was teaching to code, and the problem/answers weren't actually right. They were subtlety wrong, which makes me worry about using it for other subjects.

I think that Knoll’s law of media accuracy applies quite well to LLMs as well:

> “everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge”.

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#12

Post by cjbgkagh »

traceroute66 wrote: post #9
piokoch wrote: post #2

This is very interesting, I've been using LLM to learn new things that way and it really worked. To some extent, learning with LLM is better than taking any course, even with a tutor, as I am getting something prepared for me, in terms of my experience, progress level, etc. LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong co…

> LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong competitor with infinite resources and huge knowledge, patient and ready to work with every student in a distinct way, according to student's needs, level, intelligence, etc. No it won't. It really, really wont. You clearly don't have any university professors amongst your f…

I’m an unusually good programmer, I’ve worked in over 25 different programming languages and have been doing it since I was 6. I’ve spent most of my career as an applied researcher in research orgs where my full time job is study.

Finding new relevant things to learn gets progressively more difficult and LLMs have blown that right open. Even if they haze zero new ideas the encoding and searching of existing ideas is nothing live I’ve seen before. If they can teach me things they can definitely teach less experienced people things as well. Sometimes it takes a bit of prodding, like it will insist something is impossible but when presented with evidence to the contrary will resume to give working prototypes. Which means in these very long tail instances it does still help to have some prerequisite knowledge. I wish they were more able to express uncertainty.

I think the primary reason Ed Tech hasn’t been disrupted is that an expensive education is a costly signal and a class demarcator, making it cheaper defeats the primary purpose. Grade creep, reproducibility crisis, plagiarism crisis, cheating scandals fail to undermine this purpose. In fact the worse it gets the more it becomes a costly signal. As inequality increases so does the importance social signals. In many countries Universities are given special privileges to act as a gateway to permanent residency which is extremely profitable. If anything is to replace education it would have to either supplant this role as a social signal or the reward for the social signal will need to be lost and I don’t see either happening anytime soon short of a major calamity.

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#13

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

pandatigox wrote: post #3
piokoch wrote: post #2

This is very interesting, I've been using LLM to learn new things that way and it really worked. To some extent, learning with LLM is better than taking any course, even with a tutor, as I am getting something prepared for me, in terms of my experience, progress level, etc. LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong co…

Sounds interesting, can you share some useful prompts for learning?

I can! What thing have you been learning lately? What is your current knowledge level? What is it your goal to learn about it next?

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#14

Post by pcf »

traceroute66 wrote: post #9
piokoch wrote: post #2

This is very interesting, I've been using LLM to learn new things that way and it really worked. To some extent, learning with LLM is better than taking any course, even with a tutor, as I am getting something prepared for me, in terms of my experience, progress level, etc. LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong co…

> LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong competitor with infinite resources and huge knowledge, patient and ready to work with every student in a distinct way, according to student's needs, level, intelligence, etc. No it won't. It really, really wont. You clearly don't have any university professors amongst your f…

He said: "LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot"

You said: "No it won't. It really, really wont."

With the explosive development of LLMs and their abilities, it seems your point of view is probably the hopeful one while the other poster has the realistic one.

It seems that you simply can't say anything about what LLMs will not be able to do. Especially when you try to use current "AI slop" as your main reason, which is being more and more eradicated.

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#16

Post by pr337h4m »

traceroute66 wrote: post #9
piokoch wrote: post #2

This is very interesting, I've been using LLM to learn new things that way and it really worked. To some extent, learning with LLM is better than taking any course, even with a tutor, as I am getting something prepared for me, in terms of my experience, progress level, etc. LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong co…

> LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong competitor with infinite resources and huge knowledge, patient and ready to work with every student in a distinct way, according to student's needs, level, intelligence, etc. No it won't. It really, really wont. You clearly don't have any university professors amongst your f…

What you call "slop" is a far better education than what 99% of children in the world receive.

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#17

Post by doctorpangloss »

another POV is, it used to be cool to work for Google

it's been so uncool and harrowing for a while now, to deal with their leetcode BS. i mean obviously this guy is well meaning but didn't learn anything, other than for the paycheck and whatever desperate circumstances require that.

the LLM stuff being used to solve their interview process is an inflection point where it really steeply goes down to want to work for Google for any reason other than money

maybe this is why Google deepmind researchers keep leaving to start their own successful companies

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#18

Post by traceroute66 »

pcf wrote: post #14
traceroute66 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong competitor with infinite resources and huge knowledge, patient and ready to work with every student in a distinct way, according to student's needs, level, intelligence, etc. No it won't. It really, really wont. You clearly don't have any university professors amongst your f…

He said: "LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot" You said: "No it won't. It really, really wont." With the explosive development of LLMs and their abilities, it seems your point of view is probably the hopeful one while the other poster has the realistic one. It seems that you simply can't say anything about what LLMs will not be able to do. Especially when you try to use current "AI slop" as your mai…

> "AI slop" as your main reason, which is being more and more eradicated.

The slop is the hard truth.

As I made perfectly clear in my original post. My university professor friends get handed AI slop by their students each and every day.

There is no "eradication of slop" happening. If anything, it is getting worse. Trust me, my friends see the output from all the latest algorithms on their desk.

The students think they are being very clever, the students think the magical LLM is the best thing since sliced bread.

All the professor sees is a wall of slop on their desk and a student that is not learning how to reason and think with their own damn brain.

And when the professors tries politely and patiently to challenge them and test their understanding as you would expect in a university environment, the snowflake students just whine and complain because they know they've been caught out drinking the LLM kool-aid again for the 100th time this week.

Hence the student is wasting their time and money at university, and the professor is wasting their time trying to teach someone who is clearly not interested in learning because they think they can get the answer in 5 seconds from an LLM chatbot.

My professor friends chose the career they did because they enjoy the challenge of helping students along the way through their courses and watching them develop.

They are no longer seeing that same development in their students. And instead of devoting time to helping students, they are wasting time thinking up over-engineered fiendishly-complicated lab-tasks and tests that the students cannot cheat using LLM.

It is honestly a lose-lose situation for everybody.

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#19

Post by traceroute66 »

pr337h4m wrote: post #16
traceroute66 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLM is going to change schools and universities a lot, teachers, tutors will have to find themselves in the new reality, as they have a strong competitor with infinite resources and huge knowledge, patient and ready to work with every student in a distinct way, according to student's needs, level, intelligence, etc. No it won't. It really, really wont. You clearly don't have any university professors amongst your f…

What you call "slop" is a far better education than what 99% of children in the world receive.

> What you call "slop" is a far better education than what 99% of children in the world receive.

I'm talking about university education here. Where the hell does the clutching at straws "99% of children in the world" argument come into it ?

Re: Brute-forcing my algorithmic ignorance

#20

Post by gurachek »

Your "no compiler" rule on day 3 taught you more than the LLM did. The LLM made concepts click. But the binary search vanishing under interview stress proves that understanding something and being able to produce it under pressure are totally different skills. Nobody talks about this enough in the "just use ChatGPT to learn" discourse.
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