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Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

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Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#61

Post by operatingthetan »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #50
operatingthetan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All generalizations are fragile at the edge cases, that doesn't make them pointless, especially if you know they are generalizations.

This just isn't a good generalization though. It would be easier to enumerate the few things it does apply to than the manifold that it doesn't. It fails in every direction, not just stepping on legos and murder. It's in no way better to be moderately happy or healthy than extremely happy or healthy.

Explain what a "good generalization" would be to you?

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#62

Post by FloorEgg »

operatingthetan wrote: post #61
marginalia_nu wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just isn't a good generalization though. It would be easier to enumerate the few things it does apply to than the manifold that it doesn't. It fails in every direction, not just stepping on legos and murder. It's in no way better to be moderately happy or healthy than extremely happy or healthy.

Explain what a "good generalization" would be to you?

I'm not who you asked, but here are what good generalizations are to me:

1) days contain more photons than nights

2) water boils at 100 degrees Celsius

3) eating excessive sugar will lead to obesity

They seem like good generalizations because they are true most of the time from the perspective of the speaker and listener, even thought there may be some exceptions, they are materially more rare:

1) except in multi-solar systems, where this can get complicated

2) except when under pressures different than approximately sea level atmosphere

3) except when ___ I'm not sure but I bet there is some medical exception, maybe excessive exercise?

Bad generalizations will have many many exceptions such that the generalizations is materially lossy and even dangerous (e.g. "everything in moderation" -> murder in moderation, meth in moderation, punching grandmas in the face in moderation, etc.)

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#63

Post by operatingthetan »

FloorEgg wrote: post #62
operatingthetan wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain what a "good generalization" would be to you?

I'm not who you asked, but here are what good generalizations are to me: 1) days contain more photons than nights 2) water boils at 100 degrees Celsius 3) eating excessive sugar will lead to obesity They seem like good generalizations because they are true most of the time from the perspective of the speaker and listener, even thought there may be some exceptions, they are materially more rare: 1) except in multi-sol…

> murder in moderation, meth in moderation, punching grandmas in the face in moderation

I know these are your extreme examples but this is literally how society functions in each one.

Meth in moderation = prescription stimulants for ADHD or narcolepsy.

Murder in moderation = war, capital punishment.

Punching grandmas in the face in moderation = arrests of shoplifters or intoxicated grandmas apparently require physical restraint, lots of possible examples of violence for purported good on youtube.

Each of your hard lines are things that literally happen daily around the world, in moderation.

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#64

Post by mrtksn »

atoav wrote: post #60
mrtksn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about moderation but optimization is the mother of all evil. All extremists are actually optimization agents. Let one run for too long and you greatly loose on everything. So I don’t think that we should meet a middle ground necessarily but wary of people that are trying to maxxx something.

Just be wary that you might not like the middle ground between a serial killer and someone wbo insists all human life is sacred.

There’s no middle ground, just that the serial killers and the people who insist that all human life is sacred are both destructive assuming that the sacred lifers take it to the extreme(i.e. try to force all resources and politics into saving all life whatever it takes).

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#65

Post by mikgp »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #23
Aurornis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument has been beaten to death before AI: Ever since calculators were able to do math, students have been wondering why they need to learn how to do all of this math manually when they could get the same answer from a calculator. The reasons become more obvious only when you get deeper into a field where the math gets too complex to get a simple answer out of a calculator. If you never learned the basic conce…

Analogies with calculators have a big problem. The calculator has no intelligence of its own. A model does. (Yes, it does. You have to be either delusional or willfully ignorant to argue otherwise at this point. Take a calculator to the IMO and see how far you get.) So there are, or at least there will be, cases where it's actually a good idea to delegate your thinking to an AI model. Students who aren't taught to ac…

I don’t understand the analogy you’re making, or maybe I think it’s wrong. This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation.

No one thinks you shouldn’t do 8 digit multiplication with a calculator, But you should understand what it’s doing under thr hood so if you say typo something you can catch when the answer is off by an order of magnitude.

But the same argument applies to AI. If you don’t understand the basics of an argument or the nature of the subject you’re investigating, you can’t tell - not even an if it’s working correctly but if it’s responding to the question you asked. If it applied the right context for your particular situation.

And I think it’s the exact same thing - whether AI is really thinking is irrelevant, students need to understand the nature of how to make arguments and validate information, before they can trust their own usage of AI.

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#66

Post by ckemere »

I found this article frustrating. In my experience, the students who participate in the “co-creation of a contract” would likely also have done their best to comply with Professor induced rules. The challenge is the 10-20% who, stressed and overworked, will be just as likely to ignore this contract as any other. I would have liked to understand how the situation is changed compared to no rules at all…

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#67

Post by CamperBob2 »

mikgp wrote: post #65
CamperBob2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Analogies with calculators have a big problem. The calculator has no intelligence of its own. A model does. (Yes, it does. You have to be either delusional or willfully ignorant to argue otherwise at this point. Take a calculator to the IMO and see how far you get.) So there are, or at least there will be, cases where it's actually a good idea to delegate your thinking to an AI model. Students who aren't taught to ac…

I don’t understand the analogy you’re making, or maybe I think it’s wrong. This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. No one thinks you shouldn’t do 8 digit multiplication with a calculator, But you should understand what it’s doing under thr hood so if you say typo something you can catch when the answer is off by an order of magnit…

This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation.

You could think of this story[1] as an example of why it's not useful to compare AI models with pocket calculators. Here, some professional mathematicians successfully farmed out part of their thought process to an AI model.

It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are suggesting that students do so, only that they allowed for the possibility that the model might be able to see something they didn't see themselves, or make a connection that no one had considered before.

1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an...

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#68

Post by Avshalom »

FloorEgg wrote: post #35
Aurornis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument has been beaten to death before AI: Ever since calculators were able to do math, students have been wondering why they need to learn how to do all of this math manually when they could get the same answer from a calculator. The reasons become more obvious only when you get deeper into a field where the math gets too complex to get a simple answer out of a calculator. If you never learned the basic conce…

What is your opinion on using an LLM to provide immediate feedback/grading at scale such that students have to muster their own answers but can check them quickly, compressing the feedback loop and allowing for more iterations? Students still have to muster their own answers, but the LLM is used to minimize the confusion or uncertainty about the quality of the answer and the time to wait for that clarity. My understa…

Because LLMS don't provide access to timely constructive feedback.

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#69

Post by Avshalom »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #67
mikgp wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the analogy you’re making, or maybe I think it’s wrong. This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. No one thinks you shouldn’t do 8 digit multiplication with a calculator, But you should understand what it’s doing under thr hood so if you say typo something you can catch when the answer is off by an order of magnit…

This is the first time ive ever seen someone say you should outsource your thinking to an LLM, rather than say idea generation. You could think of this story[1] as an example of why it's not useful to compare AI models with pocket calculators. Here, some professional mathematicians successfully farmed out part of their thought process to an AI model. It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are s…

>>It doesn't mean they shut their own brains down, or that they are suggesting that students do so

It doesn't not mean that either.

Re: Instead of banning AI, I made a classroom contract with my students

#70

Post by breezybottom »

busymom0 wrote: post #59
breezybottom wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what that means. Building muscle involves incredibly complicated biological processes, there's nothing "simple" about it. In the parent comment the "simple" advice is also fallacious.

We don't need to know all the intricacies of how something happens behind the scenes. The actual task of how to do to it is very simple.

You keep redefining "simple" to make it work.
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