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How University Students Use Claude

anthropic.com

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Re: How University Students Use Claude

#141

Post by knowaveragejoe »

moojacob wrote: post #86

How can I, as a student, avoid hindering my learning with language models? I use Claude, a lot. I’ll upload the slides and ask questions. I’ve talked to Claude for hours trying to break down a problem. I think I’m learning more. But what I think might not be what’s happening. In one of my machine learning classes, cheating is a huge issue. People are using LMs to answer multiple choice questions on quizzes that are o…

It's a hard question to answer and one I've been mindful of in using LLMs as tutoring aids for my own learning purposes. Like everything else around LLM usage, it probably comes down to careful prompting... I really don't want the answer right away. I want to propose my own thoughts and carefully break them down with the LLM. Claude is pretty good at this.

"productive struggle" is essential, I think, and it's hard to tease that out of models that are designed to be as immediately helpful as possible.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#142

Post by dwaltrip »

Hasu wrote: post #88
bko wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe 40 years ago there were programmers that would not work with anyone that use IDEs or automated memory management. When presented with a programming task that requires these things and you're WITHOUT your IDE or whatever, they will fall apart. Look, I agree with you, I'm just trying to articulate to someone why they should learn X if they believe an LLM could help them and "an LLM won't always be around" isn't a…

> This is the same thing as "you won't walk around all day with a calculator in your pocket so you need to learn math" People who can't do simple addition and multiplication without a calculator (12*30 or 23 + 49) are absolutely at a disadvantage in many circumstances in real life and I don't see how you could think this isn't true. You can't work as a cashier without this skill. You can't play board games. You can't…

You are also likely to be more vulnerable to financial mishaps and scams.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#143

Post by quantumHazer »

bko wrote: post #35
dtnewman wrote: post #14

> A common question is: “how much are students using AI to cheat?” That’s hard to answer, especially as we don’t know the specific educational context where each of Claude’s responses is being used. I built a popular product that helps teachers with this problem. Yes, it's "hard to answer", but let's be honest... it's a very very widespread problem. I've talked to hundreds of teachers about this and it's a ubiquitous…

When modern search became more available, a lot of people said there's no point of rote memorization as you can just do a Google search. That's more or less accepted today. Whenever we have a new technology there's a response "why do I need to learn X if I can always do Y", and more or less, it has proven true, although not immediately. For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibl…

Universities still teach you calculus and real analysis even though Wolfram Alpha exists. It boils down to your willing to learn something. An LLM can't understand things for you. I'm "early genz" and I write code without llm because I find data structure and algorithm very interesting and I want to learn the concepts not because I'm in love with the syntax of C or Rust (I love the syntax of C btw).

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#144

Post by hackyhacky »

tristor wrote: post #104
hackyhacky wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Yes, but that horse has long ago left the barn. I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, bu…

> I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, build a car, build a toaster, design a transistor, make an ASIC, or write an OS. Why not? I mean that, quite literally. I don't know how to make an ASIC, and if I tried to write an OS I'd probably fail miserably many times along the way but might be able to muddle through to something very basic. The rest of that list is certai…

> The peer commenter shared the Heinlein quote, but there's really something to be said for /society/ of being peopled by well-rounded individuals that are able to competently turn themselves to many types of tasks

Being a well-rounded individualist is a great, but that's an orthogonal issue to the question of outsourcing our skills to machinery. When you were growing crops, did you till the land by hand or did you use a tractor? When you were making clothes did you sew by hand or use a sewing machine? Who made your sewing needles?

The (dubious) argument for AI is that using LLMs to write code is the same as using modern construction equipment to build a house: you get the same result for less effort.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#145

Post by jplusequalt »

hackyhacky wrote: post #134
jplusequalt wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>50 years from new the career of a "coder" will evoke the same historical quaintness as does "switchboard operator" or "wainwright." And what happens to those coders? For that matter--what happens to all the other jobs at risk of being replaced by AI? Where are all the high paying jobs these disenfranchised laborers will flock to when their previous careers are made obsolete? We live in a highly specialized society t…

> And what happens to those coders? For that matter--what happens to all the other jobs at risk of being replaced by AI? Some will manage to remain in their field, most won't. > Where are all the high paying jobs these disenfranchised laborers will flock to when their previous careers are made obsolete? They don't exist. Instead they'll take low-paying jobs that can't (yet) be automated. Maybe they'll work in factori…

>They don't exist. Instead they'll take low-paying jobs that can't (yet) be automated. Maybe they'll work in factories

>or maybe we'll revert to a feudal society of property owners and indentured servants.

We as the workers in society have the power to see that this doesn't happen. We just need to organize. Unionize. Boycott. Organize with people in your community to spread worker solidarity.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#146

Post by dwaltrip »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #122
dingnuts wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's more or less accepted today. Bullshit! You cannot do second order reasoning with a set of facts or concepts that you have to look up first. Google Search made intuition and deep understanding and encyclopedic knowledge MORE important, not less. People will think you are a wizard if you read documentation and bother to remember it, because they're still busy asking Google or ChatGPT while you're happily codin…

I am 100% certain people said the same thing about arithmetic and calculators and now mental arithmetic skill is nothing more than a curiosity.

I encourage you to reconsider.

Mental math is essential for having strong numerical fluency, for estimation, and for reasoning about many systems. Those skills are incredibly useful for thinking critically about the world.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#147

Post by jplusequalt »

hackyhacky wrote: post #136
jplusequalt wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the next generation will either surpass us in grand fashion using tools that we couldn't imagine, or will collapse into a puddle of ignorant consumerism, a la Wall-E Seeing how the world is based around consumerism, this future seems more likely. HOWEVER, we can still course correct. We need to organize, and get the hell off social media and the internet.

> HOWEVER, we can still course correct. We need to organize, and get the hell off social media and the internet. Given what I know of human nature, this seems improbable.

I think it's possible. I think the greatest trick our current societal structure ever managed to pull, is the proliferation of the belief that any alternatives are impossible. "Capitalist realism"

People who organize tend to be the people who are most optimistic about change. This is for a reason.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#148

Post by zebomon »

pr337h4m wrote: post #139
zebomon wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be possible that with enough data from the two categories (copied from ChatGPT and not), your keystroke dynamics will differ. This is an open question that my co-founder and I are running experiments on currently. So, I would say that while I wouldn't fully dispute your claim that attributing authorship from text alone is impossible, it isn't yet totally clear one way or the other (to us, at least -- would wel…

At this point, it would be easier to stick to in-person assignments.

It certainly would be! I think for many students though, there's something lost there. I was a student who got a lot more value out of my take-home work than I did out of my in-class work. I don't think that I ever would have taken the interest in writing that I did if it wasn't such a solitary, meditative thing for me.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#149

Post by ryandrake »

fallinditch wrote: post #46
yieldcrv wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it downplays the incidence of students using Claude as an alternative to building foundational skills I think people will get more utility out of education programs that allow them to be productive with AI, at the expense of foundational knowledge Universities have a different purpose and are tone deaf to why their students use universities for the last century: which is that the corporate sector decided un…

Yes, AI tools have shifted the education paradigm and cognition requirements. This is a 'threat' to universities, but I would also argue that it's an opportunity for universities to reinvent the experience of further education.

Yea, the solution here is to embrace the reality that these tools exist and will be used regardless of what the university wants, and use it as an opportunity to level up the education and experience.

The clueless educational institutions will simply try to fight it, like they tried to fight copy/pasting from Google and like they probably fought calculators.

Re: How University Students Use Claude

#150

Post by dTal »

hackyhacky wrote: post #70
kibwen wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Like, Socrates may have been against writing because he thought it made your memory weak, but at least I, an individual, am perfectly capable…

> The irreducible answer to "why should I" is that it makes you ever-more-increasingly reliant on a teetering tower of fragile and interdependent supply chains furnished by for-profit companies who are all too eager to rake you over the coals to fulfill basic cognitive functions. Yes, but that horse has long ago left the barn. I don't know how to grow crops, build a house, tend livestock, make clothes, weld metal, bu…

I dunno, the "tool" that LLMs "replace" is thinking itself. That seems qualitatively different than anything that has come before. It's the "tool" that underlies all the others.
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