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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

#231

Post by sph »

WalterBright wrote: post #139
fnordpiglet wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMS didn’t invent cheating just made it easier. When you cheat you’re the one who cheats yourself because the point of an education is to learn, not complete the assignments and get high marks on tests alone. No one benefits and no one other than you is materially hurt by cheating, but you are absolutely the one who is hurt. There’s no way to learn than to force the brain into adaptation which it is resistant to do…

You're right. But I like to add artwork to my presentations. My artistic skills have not advanced beyond 2nd grade. So I'll make a line sketch, and give to AI to "fix" it. The results are nice and I use them. I have no interest in learning how to do art well myself, so using AI for it is appropriate. But I still write my code myself.

> But I still write my code myself.

Not for long, if you so easily have caved in to using AI elsewhere. People are lazy. If you see that the 'results are nice', it's game over for your programming/thinking.

Waiting for the day the advice will be to "enjoy AI assistance in moderation"

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

#232

Post by user3939382 »

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…

Memorize trivia and formulas, regurgitate trivia and formulas. This summarizes my experience with our system of education. Yale saying test scores predict performance reads to me as, “students’ history of being able to regurgitate trivia and formulas in high school is the lead predictor of their ability to do so here.”

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

#234

Post by Archer6621 »

citrin_ru wrote: post #208
conductr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not noticing the decline in my own abilities any more than I had before using them. I finished undergrad 20 years ago and my once sharp math skills had been severely diminished within only 5-10 years. Just simple arithmetic and percentages that I could rapidly do in my head became dependent on calculators/spreadsheets. For all other trivia type knowledge, my brain has offloaded it to the internet RAM in my pocket…

I'm noticing some decline of skills I don't practice regularly and LLM is just one of reasons why one stops practicing. Switching to another area of work gives a comparable decline. If you want sharp skills you have to use them.

True. People don't do it though, because keeping skills sharp and using them takes effort, and we have a predisposition to be as efficient as possible with how we spend our effort; if there's an easier way to do it in our awareness, we will naturally gravitate towards that. LLMs are often a universal crutch or swiss-army-knife that significantly take away workload for many abstract tasks, so all kinds of atrophy in abstract thinking is to be expected.

However, when looking at muscle, once you have it you don't need to use it as much in order to maintain it. I wonder if the same is true for skills; in that case, some kind of regiment where you still use the skill you delegate once a week or so could maybe help with avoiding this loss of skill for most part.

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

#235

Post by TrackerFF »

Retr0id wrote: post #116

It's interesting that it's specifically math-within-CS being discussed here. I can imagine a lot of students "just want to learn programming" (or similar), and see the math as a tedious distraction. As a naturally curious person, nothing will stop me from learning about the topics that interest me. But school also taught me a lot of things that didn't interest me, and a lot of those things turned out to be useful any…

I also think that's one reason.

Where I'm from (Norway), the majority of computer science and software engineering studies do not have the same math requirements as, say, engineering or math/physics/etc. - nor do they have the same amount of math as the latter ones.

When I did my CS classes as an engineering student, I did meet a bunch of students that viewed math as some niche subject only relevant to those that wanted to work with computer graphics, computational stuff, or similar.

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

#237

Post by zelos »

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…

I totally agree about school-level homework: it was many years before my pre-frontal cortex developed enough that I could have forced myself to do the work.

That said, though, one thing I don't understand about the heavy users of AI in academia and software development is that the thinking and coding is the fun part. And that's the part so many people seem to be so keen to automate away.

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

#238

Post by ibmmmm »

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…

As much as I hate to admit it, using agents for too long makes me less able to think for myself. I am dedicating 30 mins to 1 hour everyday writing and thinking without LLMs.

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

#239

Post by kh_hk »

fransje26 wrote: post #219
qsort wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dumb as a rock and I don't have a PhD, but since ~1 year ago I started forcing myself to do small bits of coding and math manually. I'm not noticing a "cognitive decline" per se, but I do see I'm a lot "lazier", even stuff that used to be routine when I started coding now feel heavy.

> but I do see I'm a lot "lazier", even stuff that used to be routine when I started coding now feel heavy. Not getting that quick dopamine hit the LLMs give you.. Some say you can re-train your system to get back the dopamine hits you used to get from other things, like the enjoyment of the "old fashioned" manual coding and math. Getting there is hard work. And YMMV.

[dead]

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

#240

Post by d1sxeyes »

coldtea wrote: post #169
qsort wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dumb as a rock and I don't have a PhD, but since ~1 year ago I started forcing myself to do small bits of coding and math manually. I'm not noticing a "cognitive decline" per se, but I do see I'm a lot "lazier", even stuff that used to be routine when I started coding now feel heavy.

> I'm not noticing a "cognitive decline" per se The funny thing is, maybe not noticing one can be the actual sign of it :)

That’s the most important thing. If we keep reading, maybe we can hold our own.
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