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AI Homework

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Re: AI Homework

#21

Post by appletrotter »

soco wrote: post #15
fellerts wrote: post #7

There has been a lot of "well, we had a good run" comments on ChatGPT threads from engineers lately. I get where this sentiment is coming from, but I also think that the article paints a good picture of how we must "pivot" as a species to avoid faceplanting completely. Zero Trust Homework sounds like a strategy we will be forced to implement: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident…

I can imagine somebody knowing the answer being able to properly verify the output. But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

> But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

They have to learn to verify it. I think you missed point of OPs idea.

Re: AI Homework

#22

Post by mavhc »

soco wrote: post #15
fellerts wrote: post #7

There has been a lot of "well, we had a good run" comments on ChatGPT threads from engineers lately. I get where this sentiment is coming from, but I also think that the article paints a good picture of how we must "pivot" as a species to avoid faceplanting completely. Zero Trust Homework sounds like a strategy we will be forced to implement: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident…

I can imagine somebody knowing the answer being able to properly verify the output. But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

The homework is originally: research this topic, write an essay about what you found. Now it's: here's an essay, research this topic to critique it

Re: AI Homework

#23

Post by 314 »

soco wrote: post #15
fellerts wrote: post #7

There has been a lot of "well, we had a good run" comments on ChatGPT threads from engineers lately. I get where this sentiment is coming from, but I also think that the article paints a good picture of how we must "pivot" as a species to avoid faceplanting completely. Zero Trust Homework sounds like a strategy we will be forced to implement: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident…

I can imagine somebody knowing the answer being able to properly verify the output. But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

Well, they would need to know something about the topic. The easiest way for them to do this would be to read about it. When picking what to read they would need to be able to estimate if it contained valid information. The meta-skills that would be developed would be:

* Understanding the quality of sources

* Understanding the different between primary and secondary sources.

* Establishing chains of evidence and tracing them through large datasets.

* Integrating information from different sources and using correlation to establish validity.

Basically, it would be a crash course in how to do research, and the best possible preparation for living in a world where we drown in uncertain information and still have to make the best choices that we can.

For bonus points, at the end of the process they would have a better understanding of the subject matter than somebody who had only read about it.

Re: AI Homework

#25

Post by appletrotter »

jcranmer wrote: post #9
ahelwer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could easily imagine an ordinary person giving this exact same wrong answer (confusing Hobbes and Locke) - we're talking about value-over-replacement here! In the process of learning things we take in wrong information all the time. A lot of it is even intentionally wrong, in the sense of being simplified. These are rarely large obstacles to true understanding. Sometimes they're even beneficial, as correcting prior…

If this were a test question, the response given would be marked wrong, likely with no partial credit awarded. It's that egregiously wrong, even if the attribution is perhaps understandable.

You can correct the bot.

If you tell it that a fact it has wrong is wrong, you can get it to change its answer.

Also, you can just make tweaks manually.

Seems super useful to me as long as you understand the limitations.

Trust it the right it amount - don't trust it too much, and you're golden.

Re: AI Homework

#26

Post by dragonwriter »

jcranmer wrote: post #9
ahelwer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could easily imagine an ordinary person giving this exact same wrong answer (confusing Hobbes and Locke) - we're talking about value-over-replacement here! In the process of learning things we take in wrong information all the time. A lot of it is even intentionally wrong, in the sense of being simplified. These are rarely large obstacles to true understanding. Sometimes they're even beneficial, as correcting prior…

If this were a test question, the response given would be marked wrong, likely with no partial credit awarded. It's that egregiously wrong, even if the attribution is perhaps understandable.

> If this were a test question, the response given would be marked wrong, likely with no partial credit awarded.

Probably. So, don't use ChatGPT unsupervised to take tests.

Re: AI Homework

#27

Post by HammadB »

soco wrote: post #15
fellerts wrote: post #7

There has been a lot of "well, we had a good run" comments on ChatGPT threads from engineers lately. I get where this sentiment is coming from, but I also think that the article paints a good picture of how we must "pivot" as a species to avoid faceplanting completely. Zero Trust Homework sounds like a strategy we will be forced to implement: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident…

I can imagine somebody knowing the answer being able to properly verify the output. But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

I think what’s worth mentioning is that for people who grew up with google, schools already were having a bit of a panic with resources like wolfram alpha and Wikipedia. For this cohort of users, myself included, the idea of fact checking ”found” material and weaving it into a proper answer is very familiar.

With this view, I think chatGPT is less of a novel UX shift than an accelerant on an existing one.

I think it proves the age old belief that as technology reaches maturity it loses its fancy monikers and we will probably just look at this as “very good, very specific, google” one day

Re: AI Homework

#28

Post by constantcrying »

soco wrote: post #15
fellerts wrote: post #7

There has been a lot of "well, we had a good run" comments on ChatGPT threads from engineers lately. I get where this sentiment is coming from, but I also think that the article paints a good picture of how we must "pivot" as a species to avoid faceplanting completely. Zero Trust Homework sounds like a strategy we will be forced to implement: the system will frequently give the wrong answers (and not just on accident…

I can imagine somebody knowing the answer being able to properly verify the output. But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework? We're missing the entire point of homework here.

>But a student which is supposed to learn something form that homework?

The student still had access to primary sources, textbooks, google and AI answers.

In general I am a fan of homework which forces critical thinking. Rephrasing someone elses work is a far less valuable skill than the critical thinking which is demanded for that type of work. Unrelated of any AI, students should learn how to read a text and be able to investigate its contents.

Re: AI Homework

#29

Post by cromwellian »

ahelwer wrote: post #4

I finally went ahead and tried ChatGPT this morning (along with everyone else seemingly - it is now heavily rate-limited!) and I am truly blown away. I ask questions about various things (in my case, embedded systems development on the PineNote) and it gives the same quality of answers I would expect from a median coworker. Sure they're maybe not 100% correct, but most coworker answers aren't 100% correct either. The…

If you ask it about things which require deduction like Math, even simple Math questions like multiply binomials or solve a quadratic it gets it totally wrong, confidently, and even if you correct it, it often still gets it wrong.

It’s not even close to something like Wolfram Alpha.

I think we’re blown away more by its command of language and prose than by its reasoning ability. It’s fantastic at generation, but like stable diffusion, things can fit together and look beautiful yet still be not what you asked.

Re: AI Homework

#30

Post by qsort »

pdonis wrote: post #16

"The solution will be to start with Internet assumptions, which means abundance, and choosing Locke and Montesquieu over Hobbes: instead of insisting on top-down control of information, embrace abundance, and entrust individuals to figure it out." While this sounds good, it depends on a crucial assumption: that there are places on the Internet where people can go to find content that is not generated by an AI, but by…

> what happens when all of the content on the Internet (or at least the vast majority of it) is generated by AI?

I don't find it credible that all content on the Internet is ever going to be generated by AI, and the two scenarios are wildly different.

What happens is you pick and choose, in the same way the fact that 99% of the books in any bookstore aren't worth the paper they're printed on doesn't make reading worthless.

To make an example many developers are painfully familiar with, if you google something about the C++ standard library, chances are the top results are pure and utter w3cschools-style garbage. What happens is I go on cppreference.com.

How do you figure out what are the good sources of information? You study. For real. With books.

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