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Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

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Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#51

Post by nirui »

Pity. I recently started a fun activity to rebrush my math my where I tries to solve problems while asking Gemini Live mode for confirmation and suggestions, sometimes step by step.

It kinda was fun, like a very patient professor stand right besides you. It was the one of the best math learning experience I've ever had, and you don't even need to send bribe/gift to Gemini to keep you in it's favor.

On the other hand, if you ask a LLM to completely finish the work without thinking it through by yourself, then it sounded like cheating, to yourself.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#52

Post by lelanthran »

HanayamaTriplet wrote: post #42
somenameforme wrote: post #39

The likely 'real' reason is hidden in one paragraph within the article and has nothing to do with the implication of the eye-catching title: "Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system. The petition and its accompanying open letter detail similar concerns with students…

If the removal of standardized testing in 2021 was the real reason, then why is there a sudden spike of failure rates happening right now?

There's always a lag between cause and effect in education.

Works the other way too - if you introduce something positive in grade 1, you'll only see the results a few years later.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#53

Post by sublinear »

com2kid wrote: post #12

At this point I would support a ban on generative AI by anyone under 18, or even perhaps 21 years of age. A bunch of science fiction stories had "first connection to cyberspace" as a coming of age event, maybe those authors were on to something.

I can't agree. That's similar to past arguments for banning books and the internet.

Plagiarism isn't new, and those things enabled it too.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#54

Post by userbinator »

loneboat wrote: post #2

What a terribly ambiguous title. "Failing grades soar after xyz" makes it sound like xyz has helped what were previously terrible, failing grades become good ones.

I suspect the ambiguity might be part of making it "clickbaity", as it naturally causes you to wonder which meaning it's about and become more interested in reading.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#55

Post by thedevilslawyer »

adi_kurian wrote: post #45
camelmel wrote: post #35

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

Do any of said PhDs gain anything positive from LLM usage? Or does it only lead to declining thinking skills in your view?

They're incredibly more productive. LLMs are amplifiers, so where they'd have branched and tried out N things, they can easily try 5N pathways of RnD. LLMs are extending the frontiers of science fast -- math -> phy -> chem -> bio in that order.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#56

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

altmanaltman wrote: post #50
camelmel wrote: post #35

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

> Many of them can no longer sit quietly for even 30 minutes just thinking on their own Sorry, but I highly doubt that. Has a very "old man yells at clouds" vibe.

I doubt that you doubt that. I think you actually believe they're speaking truthfully and in good faith.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#57

Post by lern_too_spel »

thraway3837 wrote: post #32

Sorry, but I don't think AI is entirely to blame here. When I graduated from a CS program at a top-10 school, I felt frustrated that the professors didn't ever teach. They had slides. They read off slides, verbatim. They explained things sometimes if you asked them, but most often in a very elitist and condescending tone. Like in the movie Good Will Hunting, you could have learned nearly all of it and more by borrowi…

Garcia and Ranade are Teaching Professors. Their primary responsibility is to teach, develop curriculum, and do pedagogical research. This job posting explains: https://saberbio.wildapricot.org/Job-board/12919068

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#59

Post by Animats »

thraway3837 wrote: post #32

Sorry, but I don't think AI is entirely to blame here. When I graduated from a CS program at a top-10 school, I felt frustrated that the professors didn't ever teach. They had slides. They read off slides, verbatim. They explained things sometimes if you asked them, but most often in a very elitist and condescending tone. Like in the movie Good Will Hunting, you could have learned nearly all of it and more by borrowi…

I really wonder if it's important to learn all that low-level stuff at this point. Most programmers today will never write a binary tree or a hash table. Modern high-performance ones are generic components you get from libraries. Even MIT gave up on teaching from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs.

I got all that stuff. I've wired up a 4-bit adder on a solderless breadboard for an architecture class. I used to have a well-thumbed copy of Knuth handy. I've designed and built a switching power supply. But I'm not up to date on using Claude Code, and should be.

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