If a student is passing your classes while using AI, I'm sorry your class is a joke.
Every class I sophomore on was open everything (except internet) and it still had a >50% failure rate.
How University Students Use Claude
251–260 of 601 posts
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#252> 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…
The counter argument is that now you can skip boilerplate code and focus on the overall design and the few points that brainpower is really needed. The amount of visualizations that i have made after chat gpt was released has increased exponentially. I loath looking the documentation again and again to make a slightly non standard graph. Now all of the friction is gone! Graphs and visuals are everywhere in my code!
> focus on [...] the few points that brainpower is really needed
The person you're responding to is talking about it from an educational perspective though. If your fundamentals aren't solid, you won't know that exponentially smoothed reservoir sampling backed by a splay tree is optimal for your problem, and ChatGPT has no clue either. Trying things, struggling, and failing is crucial to efficient learning.
Not to mention, you need enough brain power or expertise to know when it's bullshitting you. Just today it was telling me that a packed array was better than my proposed solution, confidently explaining why, and not once saying anything correct. No prompt changes could fix it (whether restarting or replying), and anyone who tried to use less brainpower there would be up a creek when their solution sucked.
Mind you, I use LLMs a lot, including for code-adjacent tasks and occasionally for code itself. It's a neat tool. It has its place though, and it must be used correctly.
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't get this reasoning. Without LLMs I would learn how to write sub-optimal code that is somewhat functional. With LLMs instantly see "how it's done" for my exact problem case which makes me learn way faster. On top of that it always makes dumb mistakes which forces you to actually understand what it's spitting out to get it to work properly. Again: that helps with learning. The fact that you can ask it for a sol…
> With LLMs instantly see "how it's done" for my exact problem case which makes me learn way faster. No, you see a plausible set of tokens that appear similar to how it's done, and as a beginner, you're not able to tell the difference between a good example and something that is subtly wrong. So you learn something, but it's wrong. You internalize it. Later, it comes back to bite you. But OpenAI keeps the money for t…
> So you learn something, [...] You internalize it.
Or they don't.
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I think the biggest issue with LLMs is basically just the fact that we're finally coming to the end of the long tail of human intellectual capability. With previous technological advancements, humans had places to intellectually "flee", and in fact, previous advancements were often made for the express purpose of freeing up time for higher level pursuits. The invention of computers, for example, let mathematicians fo…
> coming to the end of the long tail of human intellectual capability
Really? We invent LLMs, continue to improve them, and that's the end of our intellectual capability?
> a Casio, which would never be able to replace a social worker no matter how hard you tried
And LLMs can't replace a social worker no matter how hard you try today.
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reply brings to mind the well-known Heinlein quote: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallan…
That's a quote that sounds great until, say, that self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect at best turns out to have some intractible design flaw and at worst collapses and kills people. It's also a quote from a character who's literally immortal and so has all the time in the world to learn things, which really undermines the premise.
> self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect
That is exactly how our ancestors built houses. Also a traditional wooden house doesn't look complicated.
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#256> 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…
>>>For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibly (most writing is done on computers), spell very well (spell check keeps us professional), reading a map to get around (GPS), etc
Not that these aren't noble things or worth doing, but they won't impact your life too much if you're not interest in penmanship, spelling, or cartography. For me it is the second order benefits, notably the idea of "attention to detail" and "a feel for the principles". The principles of each activity being different: writing -> fine motor control, spelling -> word choice/connotation, map -> sense of direction, (my own insert here) money handling -> cost of things
All of them involve "attention to detail" because that's what any activity is - paying attention to it.
But having built up the experience in paying attention to [xyz], you can now be capable when things go wrong.
IE catch disputable transaction on the credit card, or note being told by the shop clerk "No Returns" when their policy says otherwise, un-losting yourself when the phone runs out of battery in the city.
Notably, you don't have to be trained for the details in traditional ways like writing the same sentence 100 times on a piece of paper. Learning can be fun and interesting.
Children can write letters to their friends well before they get their own phone. Geocaching/treasure hunts(hand drawn mud maps!)/orienteering for map use.
As for LLM ... well currently "attention to detail" is vital to spot the (handwave number) 10% of when it goes wrong. In the future LLMs may be better.
But if you want to be better than your peers at any given thing - you will need an edge somewhere outside of using an LLM. Yet still, spelling/word choice/connotations are especially linked to using an LLM currently.
Knowing how to "pay attention to detail" when it counts - counts.
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a quote that sounds great until, say, that self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect at best turns out to have some intractible design flaw and at worst collapses and kills people. It's also a quote from a character who's literally immortal and so has all the time in the world to learn things, which really undermines the premise.
> self-built building by somebody who's neither engineer nor architect That is exactly how our ancestors built houses. Also a traditional wooden house doesn't look complicated.
And what happened to them, I wonder?
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#258> 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…
> For instance, I'm not too concerned about my child's ability to write very legibly (most writing is done on computers), spell very well (spell check keeps us professional), reading a map to get around (GPS), etc
However, I am going to hazard a guess that you still care about your child's ability to do arithmetic, even though calculators make that trivial.
And if I'm right, I think it's for a good reason—learning to perform more basic math operations helps build the foundation for more advanced math, the type which computers can't do trivially.
I think this applies to AI. The AI can do the basic writing for you, but you will eventually hit a wall, and if all you've ever learned is how to type a prompt into ChatGPT, you won't ever get past that wall.
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Put another way:
> So how do I answer my child when he asks "Why should I learn to do X if I can just ask an LLM and it will do it better than me"
"Because eventually, you will be able to do X better than any LLM, but it will take practice, and you have to practice now."
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#259> 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…
> Why should I learn to do X if I can just ask an LLM and it will do it better than me
The same way you answer - "Why should I memorise this if I can always just look it up"
Because your perceptual experience is built upon your knowledge and experiences. The entire way you see the universe is altered based on these things, including what you see through your eyes, what you decide is important and what you decide to do.
The goal of life is not always "simply to do as little as possible", or "offload as much work as possible" but lots of the time includes struggling through the fundimentals so that you become a greater version of yourself, it is not the complete task that we desire, it is who you became while you did the work that we desire.
Re: How University Students Use Claude
#260> 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…
you will benefit from the beauty of appreciation, lad, just hang on a little bit longer. It is beautifully explained in this essay https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/the-colors-of-her-coat