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Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

academa.ai

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#21
post #20
post #13

To me, the main advantage of the lecture format is the possibility to have me or others grill the lecturer for questions, benefiting the whole group. From this point of view, a video of a lecture is already a compromise. In both cases, it's always kind of a tedium unless the lecturer is a good and entertaining communicator. I'm not sure listening to a robot reading me a transcript and chatting with it really gives me…

> To me, the main advantage of the lecture format is the possibility to have me or others grill the lecturer for questions, benefiting the whole group. I've rarely, if ever, seen this. And if I had, I think most of the class would have just been annoyed, which you probably didn't notice.

I have a hard time believing you've genuinely never had a lecturer take questions. I also genuinely have a hard time believing that last sentence is not, at best, a not-so-subtle attempt at putting my social awareness into question, or at worst, just being insulting for the sake of it.

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#23
post #22

Great idea, but buggy. My lecture started mid-sentence and ended abruptly (Kalman filter). Looking forward to when you guys get it working well. Also, I'm curious if the lecture description language is public.

Thank you very much! That’s strange, we’ll look into it. Really appreciate you reporting it.

The lecture description language isn’t public at the moment. It’s a core part of the technology we’re building the company around.

Also, if you’d like, you can share the video as a public link by clicking the share button!

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#24
i find the writing style a bit peculiar at times. Take this lecture on bloom filters for example: https://academa.ai/lectures/bloom-filters

It suddenly starts talking about URLs, but it never really sets up the idea that we're using some kind of URL lookup service as an example. The way it introduces the memory limit feels similarly strange. At some point, it just says that we have 8GB of memory, but it does that halfway through the explanation, not as part of the setup of the problem we're actually solving.

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#25
I watched the linear regression video. I can see the value behind the idea, but there's a number of flaws that make the videos difficult to watch compared to something like a 3blue1brown video. The flat voice and even word spacing lull you into zoning out, right until a mispronunciation jolts you back.

The idea of using LLMs to write out a script and storyboard for the video is interesting, but I think it needs intermediary work to better instruct the speech and graphics on how to perform.

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#26
post #7

> On correctness: LLMs may make mistakes. But these videos are code sitting in our repository, and we can maintain them. Every report and review becomes a fix in the source, and everyone who watches after that gets the corrected lecture. Every recorded lecture on the internet is stuck with its mistakes. Ours will continuously improve. Models change. Models are unpredictable. The assumption that we can constrain them…

> Wrapping others’ knowledge in a black box that may or may not accurately represent that knowledge...

You wrote it well. This aspect irks me, too.

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#29
post #13

To me, the main advantage of the lecture format is the possibility to have me or others grill the lecturer for questions, benefiting the whole group. From this point of view, a video of a lecture is already a compromise. In both cases, it's always kind of a tedium unless the lecturer is a good and entertaining communicator. I'm not sure listening to a robot reading me a transcript and chatting with it really gives me…

I briefly worked as a Uni lecturer, and I completely agree.

Universities have made the mistake of competing with YouTube (video lectures), whereas what they can actually offer is direct access to domain experts.

I am skeptical that any other solution has much of a moat. So if the creators of this are after any feedback, I would offer that their best bet is to be competitive on User Experience, rather than underlying technology.

Re: Show HN: Academa – Long-form STEM lecture videos generated by LLMs

#30
post #7

> On correctness: LLMs may make mistakes. But these videos are code sitting in our repository, and we can maintain them. Every report and review becomes a fix in the source, and everyone who watches after that gets the corrected lecture. Every recorded lecture on the internet is stuck with its mistakes. Ours will continuously improve. Models change. Models are unpredictable. The assumption that we can constrain them…

> Humans change. Humans are unpredictable. The assumption that we can constrain them between syllabus and tenure review has not been proven and seems unlikely to be provable given how these humans work.

That's such an excellent argument against letting humans teach other humans! Especially unpredictable ones like Feynman. You should start a petition.

Sarcasm off. Now let me stick up for the guy I just made fun of you for arguing with, because his reply to you got flagged to death and most people here can't even see it.

Here's what he said, since it's the only place they actually engage your objection. They're not claiming the LLM is the authority on what's correct. Sina used to make these videos by hand on YouTube and it was slow, so now the LLM drafts and they review: "watch it, review it, correct it, improve the explanation, and put our name behind the result." A user report is a signal to go look at something, not truth. Weeks of production become hours of review. And STEM is a good target because linear algebra isn't going obsolete, so a fix stays fixed, and a lecture can accumulate improvements instead of freezing one teaching performance forever. (Item 49504080, if you have showdead on.)

That last part is the best thing anybody has said for this project, including them. But it doesn't answer what you asked. Who audits the audit? Who writes the bug reports they plan to inspect, now that publishing knowledge for a living is, as you put it, a dead end? "Put our name behind the result" is exactly right and it's the entire argument, and there's no way to check it while the sources and the lecture language are private -- especially with one lecture in this thread starting mid-sentence and ending abruptly, another springing an 8GB memory budget on you halfway through Bloom filters, and the emphasis landing on the wrong words at the crucial moments. Publish the repo and "we reviewed it" stops being a promise.

Somebody with showdead should vouch that comment back. It didn't deserve to die.

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