I couldn't think of a worse teacher than a pathological liar. Just use an online textbook search or talk to a suitably qualified human.
Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
21–30 of 175 posts
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#22CS50 was a gigantic intro class designed to whet non-comp-sci students appetite for coding and computer science, generally. (I took it when it was C/PHP, so they may have changed things.) While the lectures are very straightforward, the smaller 'sections' lectures with the dozen-or-so teaching fellows were more intensive, and p-sets were pretty challenging for newbies. The weekly help sessions ended up being a millio…
I find it hard to reconcile "The weekly help sessions ended up being a million lost students in a giant hall waiting to see one of a few dozen TAs offering uneven pedagogical quality." with "very, very well-funded class".
Why didn't the funding go to hiring more staff?
My experience in a state school had far more access to education staff than what you describe, and for less funding.
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#23Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.
That's because authority figures don't actually mean it when they tell people to "always think critically". What they really mean is "think critically when others tell you something, but accept as gospel everything I am telling you ".
On my experience most lecturers and professors welcome challenge because it allows them to expand on what they are teaching.
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's because authority figures don't actually mean it when they tell people to "always think critically". What they really mean is "think critically when others tell you something, but accept as gospel everything I am telling you ".
On my experience most lecturers and professors welcome challenge because it allows them to expand on what they are teaching.
They welcome shallow challenges that allow them to demonstrate their intellectual superiority by correcting them.
They most certainly don't welcome challenges to the basic assumptions on which their teachings rest.
Not that professors are in any way unique in that regard; it is a trait shared by all people with power and authority.
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#25"Our own hope is that, through AI, we can eventually approximate a 1:1 teacher:student ratio for every student in CS50" Would this not be a 0:1 ratio? Not against LLM's for some coding assistance, I use it daily. , but equating a teacher with an LLM solution feels like calling a youtube video a 1 on 1 tutoring session. Well at least a semester at Harvard isn't costing you much ...
An LLM is a million times better than a YouTube video because it can stop and re-explain anything specific that is confusing you, or have discussions about tangential but off-curriculum topics, ask you questions based on its own appraisal of your understanding and gaps, etc.
Might not be a full teacher but its definitely an excellent teaching tool
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#26Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.
My experience with LLMs so far is that they very confidently give you an answer and very convincingly explain that answer but for certain portion of the time that answer is very wrong.
You can even get it to break its reasoning down into little convincing but, none the less, incorrect steps.
If I was running this course I would make that "artefact" part of the process.
i.e. I would tell students that the chatbot will occasionally very convincing lead them in the wrong direction but that they can fact check its answers in the course material.
I would set traps to ensure that they are doing that. ;)
Use LLMs but never trust them, they're the Cliff Clavin of information tools.
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#27CS50 was a gigantic intro class designed to whet non-comp-sci students appetite for coding and computer science, generally. (I took it when it was C/PHP, so they may have changed things.) While the lectures are very straightforward, the smaller 'sections' lectures with the dozen-or-so teaching fellows were more intensive, and p-sets were pretty challenging for newbies. The weekly help sessions ended up being a millio…
I find it hard to reconcile "The weekly help sessions ended up being a million lost students in a giant hall waiting to see one of a few dozen TAs offering uneven pedagogical quality." with "very, very well-funded class". Why didn't the funding go to hiring more staff? My experience in a state school had far more access to education staff than what you describe, and for less funding.
My reading is that this class just has a huge number of students, each bringing in a bit of funding. This allows for relatively large investments in the quality of the teaching materials, but teacher/student ratios will probably not be great. Hiring capable teachers is hard, especially at scale.
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#28Professor Malan said students would be warned of the pitfalls of the AI, saying they should “always think critically” when presented with information. I want to believe that this will actually happen, but my experience with people blindly trusting what a tool (not even an AI-based one) says, including but not limited to students, suggests that's not going to happen.
“Always think critically” is poised to become the “drink responsibly” of AI. A convenient and counterproductive way to push responsibility onto the users.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_advertising#Drink_resp...
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#29I assume that the savings will be passed on to students?
We're considering doing something similar in my department. Based on some back-of-a-napkin math, it won't (yet) be cheap though, at about $0.40 per query.
This is assuming the use of gpt-4 (chatgpt would be a lot cheaper, but it doesn't follow system level instructions very consistently, often spilling answers instead of replying with feedback, hints and leading questions).
Also, projected costs per query are high because we want to feed it quite a lot of input tokens. The assignment text, the student's code as well as the reference solution code.
Re: Harvard’s new computer science teacher is a chatbot
#30I will say one thing for this experiment: it is good to put this out in the open. I believe that if educators attempt to suppress LLM usage, or deride it in front of their students, or persecute students when they believe they have detected LLM usage in homework, then students will not stop using LLMs, but instead the students will internalize this illicit perspective, and they will conceal their usage of LLMs, and t…
The preconditions for your vision simply cannot exist under capitalism.
Your comment is currently gray, but I would like to hear why you think this.