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MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

aiandeducation.mit.edu

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Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#71

Post by ghaff »

rawgabbit wrote: post #62
testfoobar wrote: post #3

This is a bunch of fluff. I hope at least the snacks and lunches during the discussions were good. "Guiding principles: Be bold. Be humble. Put humanity front and center. Lean into learning. Teach with intentionality. No one size fits all." "Recommendations: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world. Center people, community, and the residential experience. Build processes, teams and tools for continuous refl…

I thought the recommendations in section 3 were substantiative. That is move away from time-bound exams and move towards semester length project portfolios. >"In the era of AI, some traditional learning goals may merit rethinking; for example, do the majority of our students need to be able to write complex programs by hand?" >"quick, high-stakes evaluations embody the opposite of the signal we want to convey to them…

In general, project/lab courses are pretty useƒul even iƒ they need some lecture/theory tacked on. Certainly, in school, I found hands-on and other project work, both individually and in groups, some of the better course work I did.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#73

Post by jacobolus »

phasefactor wrote: post #67
jacobolus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaced en dashes – like this – are a correct and accepted typographical choice. Whether to use spaced en dashes or (spaced or unspaced) em dashes is a matter of taste or local convention, and varies from one publication to another. Other than a typo or two where the space was left out on one side of a dash, the dashes in this linked document are just fine. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#En_dash_versus_em_dash

I was not claiming they are not correct punctuation/syntax. My claim is just no one uses them that frequently... When you see dozens of them in the first few pages of a document it raises suspicion.

Some authors use a ton of dashes, while others never use dashes.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#74

Post by lazyasciiart »

miltonlost wrote: post #13
us-merul wrote: post #6

I think this has been going on well before AI or LLMs: "A fundamental danger, as we’ve discussed, is that AI can allow students to bypass learning. Equally concerning is that students may internalize a transactional model in which assignments are outputs, teachers are evaluators, peers are optional, and knowledge (or an MIT degree) is an optimizable commodity to be acquired or produced as efficiently as possible."

Ok, but did AI and LLMs make the cheating easier, faster, harder to detect? Whatabout the past doesn't change the problems now. "My leg already had a cut on it. No need to worry about the new stab wound in my chest!"

[dead]

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#75

Post by lazyasciiart »

ghaff wrote: post #52
plasticchris wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will only get harder. From the trenches in tech it’s hard enough to get people who should know better to put in the work to understand the ai output. For education I can’t imagine. You might have to resort to actual discussion in classrooms instead of homework, with the accompanying need for both more educators and higher quality therein. Which isn’t going to be easy when education is fully under regulatory captur…

>actual discussion in classrooms Which works in some contexts; I've taken seminars. Not sure how that works with a multi-hundred person core calculus, physics, or chemistry class.

They did say k-12.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#76

Post by JLO64 »

> In a listening session with instructors, we learned that some were considering using AI agents as research assistants instead of hiring undergraduates as UROPs.

If researchers at a well funded institution like MIT are seriously considering replacing hiring undergrads with LLMs, I can just imagine how researchers at schools with less funding are open to it. I never did research as part of my undergrad (something I regret, but I likely wasn’t in the headspace for it back then) but my friends who did view it as a core part of their education and deeply helpful for future opportunities. I really hope schools come up with a policy to help discourage this.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#77

Post by jaggederest »

phasefactor wrote: post #67
jacobolus wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spaced en dashes – like this – are a correct and accepted typographical choice. Whether to use spaced en dashes or (spaced or unspaced) em dashes is a matter of taste or local convention, and varies from one publication to another. Other than a typo or two where the space was left out on one side of a dash, the dashes in this linked document are just fine. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dash#En_dash_versus_em_dash

I was not claiming they are not correct punctuation/syntax. My claim is just no one uses them that frequently... When you see dozens of them in the first few pages of a document it raises suspicion.

This is likely an artifact of writing standards - not especially suspicious, it's like MIT Tech Review or the New Yorker using diaresis when they need to say reëducate.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#78

Post by Ozzie-D »

JLO64 wrote: post #76

> In a listening session with instructors, we learned that some were considering using AI agents as research assistants instead of hiring undergraduates as UROPs. If researchers at a well funded institution like MIT are seriously considering replacing hiring undergrads with LLMs, I can just imagine how researchers at schools with less funding are open to it. I never did research as part of my undergrad (something I r…

[flagged]

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#79

Post by frognumber »

frognumber wrote: post #26
123h-asdg wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have always dressed it up as concerned humanitarianism. They did it already with large donations in the past: https://www.philanthropy.com/news/can-a-350-million-gift-cha... All concerns, while the real goal is stated right in the article: "With this new approach, he says, experts in many fields can gain a deeper understanding of AI so they can better harness it. Meanwhile, computing experts are gaining greater…

Makes me sick. MIT is so very, very overcapitalized. These things don't lead to anything other than a rich guy getting his name on a building, and more corruption in academia. By far the best thing which could happen to MIT would be for 95% of the endowment to go up in a poof of smoke, bringing it back to nineties levels. That's the end of the period when the Institute did high-integrity research.

FWIW: I see this pattern each time I discuss MIT (drifting from the Institutional Propaganda partyline) on HN:

1. Upvotes

2. Time passes

3. Downvotes

I'm starting to suspect Institutional astroturf.

Re: MIT's Ad Hoc Committee on AI Use in Teaching, Learning, and Research Training

#80

Post by peri-cl »

ghaff wrote: post #51
phasefactor wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess prolific em-dashes is not considered a sign of LLM writing anymore.

I am not an LLM and use em-dashes and they were house style in my last 20+ years of employment. The whole em dashes == AI thing needs to just stop.

Speaking about style choices, I was curious why you sometimes use the 'f' from the Latin Extended-B block, U+0192, in your comments. I've never seen that before! (I'd meant to ignore it but you seem to be soliciting typography discussions...)
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