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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

#141

Post by dotancohen »

vineyardmike wrote: post #87
threatripper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that this is an adjustment period that society has to go through. The way we are using electronic devices today, in some years it will probably be looked at like smoking cigarettes. And I'd argue that a lot of the "decline" is due to a shift of skills away from things that mattered more in the past toward other things that are not measured/perceived by the older generation.

Eh, I think it's less like a cigarette and more like the car. We're not going back. Americans are famously less healthy the more car dependent they are, and now people walk/run as an explicit task to be healthy. People will start going to a "thinking" gym, or engaging in additional manual mental activities for sport, like we do with chess today.

Funny that you mention that. A month ago I started the Duolingo chess course, and just yesterday I noticed that my brain is clearer, more capable of deep thought than it has been in years. It's like stepping out of a fog. I also started CPAP recently, so it's hard to attribute the change to either, but I feel certain that the chess helped.

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

#143

Post by WalterBright »

vineyardmike wrote: post #87
threatripper wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that this is an adjustment period that society has to go through. The way we are using electronic devices today, in some years it will probably be looked at like smoking cigarettes. And I'd argue that a lot of the "decline" is due to a shift of skills away from things that mattered more in the past toward other things that are not measured/perceived by the older generation.

Eh, I think it's less like a cigarette and more like the car. We're not going back. Americans are famously less healthy the more car dependent they are, and now people walk/run as an explicit task to be healthy. People will start going to a "thinking" gym, or engaging in additional manual mental activities for sport, like we do with chess today.

The interesting thing about jogging is I do my best thinking while jogging. I've found it impossible to do deep thinking while driving, as driving evidently requires higher functions of the brain. Jogging doesn't require any of that, I can jog deep in thought and have no recollection of the previous mile.

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

#144

Post by antihipocrat »

trismus wrote: post #136
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…

On the contrary, with the amount of times I went to ask for help and was failed pedagogically, plus not being able to afford tutoring like my peers had, I think access to an LLM would have genuinely boosted my grades. I still did well, but I had gaps for which there was no help outside of the internet available.

You're using it to help you study and think, which is great, but the original post was about how many people are bypassing that step entirely.

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

#145

Post by cultofmetatron »

GoblinSlayer wrote: post #115
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…

At this rate humans will become avatars remotely controlled by LLMs. Ironic conclusion of the consciousness debate.

obligatory https://smbc-wiki.com/index.php/2014-12-17

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

#146

Post by Otterly99 »

Maths skills have been slowly falling even before the advent of LLMs. I have a story but this is anecdotical so take it with a grain of salt.

I was in my 3rd bachelor's year studying physics (France) and overheard a conversation between two of my teachers. They were discussing how they should modify the 1st year program to now include math, because he had been noticing how more and more students were failing the more math-heavy subjects like body and newtonian mechanics. He said that they should now teach (or re-teach) calculus to 1st year students, which was not taught when I entered college (it was assumed that you learned it in high school and we would only cover linear algebra in 1st year).

I can imagine things are only getting worse with students that can now get under the illusion that they know math because they have a tool that can do it for them. Which raises the question: should programs adapt to this, like we adapted to having calculators?

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

#147

Post by adamcharnock »

wesleywt wrote: post #137
adamcharnock wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been wondering if there would be a benefit to inverting how we teach subjects now. Previously we would teach from the bottom, and build up. Semi-colon goes here, curly brace goes there, and then build up to architecture, systems, etc. But this doesn't seem to make sense when someone comes to a topic with an LLM in-hand. They need to know high-level techniques, architecture, best practice, etc. As they pursue the…

I don't think you can learn high level techniques or architectures without first understanding the basics first. This means boring boiler plate coding.

I’m not sure. We’ve always had to pick the level of abstraction we start teaching at. Voltages, transistors, registers, assembly, C, etc. This feels like it could just be a progression of that.

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

#148

Post by frollogaston »

thraway3837 wrote: post #32

Sorry, but I don't think AI is entirely to blame here. When I graduated from a CS program at a top-10 school, I felt frustrated that the professors didn't ever teach. They had slides. They read off slides, verbatim. They explained things sometimes if you asked them, but most often in a very elitist and condescending tone. Like in the movie Good Will Hunting, you could have learned nearly all of it and more by borrowi…

Berkeley CS does teach for real

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

#149

Post by rustystump »

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 see this too. There is this theme where people are more and more going only as far as the ai does.

Asking suggesting or arguing to go deeper is impossible. There is a new path of least resistance and it saddens me.

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

#150

Post by kmac_ »

adamcharnock wrote: post #112
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've been wondering if there would be a benefit to inverting how we teach subjects now. Previously we would teach from the bottom, and build up. Semi-colon goes here, curly brace goes there, and then build up to architecture, systems, etc. But this doesn't seem to make sense when someone comes to a topic with an LLM in-hand. They need to know high-level techniques, architecture, best practice, etc. As they pursue the…

This idea sounds good at first, but if you look closer, it would just make workers, not experts who really understand. What we could do, and already do, is tweak the learned abstractions. In our field, it's easy to see: most of us first learned about computing abstractions, not how processors actually work, or started with Java, not assembler. Plus, you can't teach math from top to bottom.
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