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AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

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Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#21

Post by itopaloglu83 »

sgirard wrote: post #12

This is interesting. I don't know how the AI agent guidelines will be enforced because there will always be a model outside the curriculum that a student can use to bypass the guidelines. Encouraging academic integrity is useful but requires the student to buy into the idea that they are paying for an education, not a diploma. This is a tough problem and I have been wondering how CS departments are incorporating AI i…

Well, no amount of instructions would work if the student has no intention to learn anything.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#22

Post by gchamonlive »

sgirard wrote: post #12

This is interesting. I don't know how the AI agent guidelines will be enforced because there will always be a model outside the curriculum that a student can use to bypass the guidelines. Encouraging academic integrity is useful but requires the student to buy into the idea that they are paying for an education, not a diploma. This is a tough problem and I have been wondering how CS departments are incorporating AI i…

In an ideal world guidelines should be suggestions for those willing to make the best of the course and improve as a person and professional. However a degree has real world value and repercussions, so enabling someone incompetent to do a dangerous job can put innocent lives in jeopardy. It's tough, but I hope in time we learn how to live with this new tech.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#23

Post by artificialLimbs »

harikb wrote: post #17
ritzaco wrote: post #13

yeah I don't think that's going to work - it would be kind of like "we're releasing model answers to all assignments but please only use them as a teaching aid and don't copy from them" best to a) adapt assignments so that agents are bad at producing solutions b) have more scenarios where students have to do things in controlled environments. Universities managed to adapt to 'any solution you need is readily availabl…

Laptop without internet access, sure. Pencil and paper? that is brutal :)

I did most of my CS class tests this way within the last year. It’s not that bad because prof doesn’t care about syntax so much (unless that’s what we’re testing on of course) and details, but wanting instead to make sure we understand broader concepts.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#24

Post by JohnMakin »

ohmahjong wrote: post #5

This seems somewhat sensible to me - the genie _is_ out of the bottle, and students absolutely will use AI agents to finish assignments without learning a thing, but there is some value to showing how agents can be used as teaching tools and what healthy use _can_ look like

They're only cheating themselves in a world that increasingly cares about knowledge (market trend of seniors being preferable hires to fresh out of school juniors) and not the piece of paper that "proved" you had such knowledge.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#25

Post by earthnail »

sgirard wrote: post #12

This is interesting. I don't know how the AI agent guidelines will be enforced because there will always be a model outside the curriculum that a student can use to bypass the guidelines. Encouraging academic integrity is useful but requires the student to buy into the idea that they are paying for an education, not a diploma. This is a tough problem and I have been wondering how CS departments are incorporating AI i…

Stanford has an honour code. Meant no oversight even during exams. Worked surprisingly well when I was there. The flipside is, if you’re ever caught cheating, there are no second chances.

I imagine this applies here, too, if they want to enforce it strictly.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#26

Post by bakugo »

simonw wrote: post #10

Hah, I like that these are presented as a CLAUDE.md. (They have the same content duplicated in an AGENTS.md as well - I really wish Anthropic would hurry up and teach Claude Code to check for that file too.)

They won't, because forcing the file to be named after their product is an intentional marketing choice. Free advertising on every repo that has it.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#28

Post by farmeroy »

I really like this. I'm currently doing a part time BSc and my current module explicitly allows AI usage as long as you 'cite it'. The guidelines are out of date in that they assume you are using a chatbot and not a coding harness. The temptation to have claude write all my pandas code has become too difficult for my self control, but at the same time I actively feel my education is suffering from using it. As I write my final paper I am thankful that I at least despise AI writing too much to use it for the actual marked assessment, but I still feel that I have cheated myself out of part of my education and probably wasted a lot of time going fast in the wrong direction because generating data frames, graphs, statistics, etc. is just so easy with claude

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#29

Post by gaiagraphia »

Is this all an elite educational institution with about $50bil in assets could muster, lol? This is completely and utterly unenforceable, and such, worthless.

There really needs to be diversity in delivery styles for different modules of courses according to their aims, with 'ai access' as a key variable.

If AI is allowed, it should be based on $x of usage/student, with an audit trail to prove no external funding was used, and module aims based on using AI to the max while conserving token use. Like actually creating wild, ambitious shit which takes cutting edge services to the max.

If AI is not allowed for a module, then it really needs to go back to the old skool, with handwritten exams, or coding using old machines and textbooks. Some skills, techniques, etc, really do need drilling.

Straddling the middle will help nobody, result in accusations, increase the burden on teaching staff, and result in a course without a realistic focus.

Though I guess if you're a big brand university, you don't really need to care about innovating. The money will keep pouring in. The whole further education sector is in dire need of a shake up.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#30

Post by cpeterso »

israrkhan wrote: post #20
simonw wrote: post #10

Hah, I like that these are presented as a CLAUDE.md. (They have the same content duplicated in an AGENTS.md as well - I really wish Anthropic would hurry up and teach Claude Code to check for that file too.)

We symlink AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md to a single file in our repo

You can also include other md files like AGENTS.md in CLAUDE.md:

  @AGENTS.md
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