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I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

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Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#341

Post by kouru225 »

Ever since AI came out I’ve been talking about the prompt to output ratio. We naturally assume that the prompt will be smaller than the output just because of the particulars of the systems we use, but as you get more and more particular of what you want, the prompt grows while the output stays the same size. This is logical. If instead of writing an essay, I just describe what I want the essay to say, the description is necessarily gonna be a larger amount of text than the essay itself. It’s more text to describe what’s said, than to just say it. The fact that we expect to do less effort and get back more effort indicates exactly what we’re getting here: a bunch of filler.

In that way, the prompt is more interesting, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone to go write a prompt because I dunno how to write what I wanna say, and then suddenly writing the prompt makes that shit clear to me.

In general, I’d say that AI is way more useful to compress complex ideas into simple ones than to expand simplistic ideas in to complex ones.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#342

Post by alpinisme »

zamadatix wrote: post #324
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The onus should be on the educators to reframe how they teach and how they test. It's strange how the author can't see this. > Universities and schools must change how they do things with respect to AI, otherwise they are failing the students. Hard disagree. Students need to answer a fundamental question of themselves; Am I here to learn or to get a passing grade? If it is the former, the latter doesn't really matt…

Why isn't both a valid option, can't one be at a university to both learn and get a degree+GPA showing they did well at doing so? In any case, why does a student selecting that they are there to learn negate the responsibility of the university to provide the best curricula for students to do so with?

The assumption you are making is that students consistently using llms is required by the best curriculum. That’s a big assumption. There may be value educationally in forcing students to learn how to do things on their own that an llm could do for them. And in that case, it’s the student failing their education if they circumvent it with an llm, not the institution’s.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#343

Post by roxolotl »

kouru225 wrote: post #341

Ever since AI came out I’ve been talking about the prompt to output ratio. We naturally assume that the prompt will be smaller than the output just because of the particulars of the systems we use, but as you get more and more particular of what you want, the prompt grows while the output stays the same size. This is logical. If instead of writing an essay, I just describe what I want the essay to say, the descriptio…

This is why it’s unlikely these systems will effectively replace software development. By the time you’ve specified the novel system you want to build well enough in English such that you get exactly the system you want you might as well have written the code.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#344

Post by mlsu »

jameshart wrote: post #329
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

I’ve come across this analogy that I think works well: Using an LLM to do schoolwork is like taking a forklift to the gym. If all we were interested in was moving the weights around, you’d be right to use a tool to help you. But we’re doing this work for the effect it will have on you . The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer.

The point of education isn't to actually learn though. It's to receive the credential.

This is much larger than a cultural problem with the students of today. They believe, rightfully and accurately, that the university degree is yet another part of the machine that they will become a cog in.

What should be alarming to everyone is that these students will graduate without having learned anything and then go into the workplace where they will continue to not use their atrophied critical thinking skills, to simply do yet more, as a cog in the machine.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#345

Post by jjmarr »

jameshart wrote: post #329
sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

I’ve come across this analogy that I think works well: Using an LLM to do schoolwork is like taking a forklift to the gym. If all we were interested in was moving the weights around, you’d be right to use a tool to help you. But we’re doing this work for the effect it will have on you . The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer.

> The reason a teacher asks you a question is not because they don’t know the answer.

A decent amount of my professors don't know the answers because they bought the course, test questions, and lectures from Cengage. During exam review, they just regurgitate the answer justification that Cengage provided. During the lectures, they struggle to explain certain concepts since they didn't make the slides.

Professors automate themselves out of the teaching process and are upset when students automate themselves out of the learning process.

I can tell when the faculty views teaching as a checkbox that they officially have to devote 40% of their time to. I can tell when we are given busywork to waste our time instead of something challenging.

To use your analogy, I'm being told to move 1000 plush reproductions of barbells from Point A to B by hand because accreditation wants to see students "working out" and the school doesn't want high failure rates.

We are all pulling out the forklift. Some of us are happy because we don't have to work as hard. Others are using the forklift so we can get in a real workout at home, as school is not a good use of our time. Either way, none of us see value moving paperweights all day.

edit:

My favourite course during my Computer Engineering degree was Science Fiction because that professor graded us on substance instead of form. It was considered a hard class because one would get good marks on the essays by focusing on building substantive points instead of strict adherence to the form of a five-paragraph hamburger essay.

The call to action is to make courses harder and stop giving students plush barbells.

For example, University of Toronto Engineering Science (hardest program in Canada) gives first-year students a "vibe coding" lab in which students learn how to solve a problem that AI cannot.

https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~guerzhoy/vibecoding/vibecoding.h...

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#346

Post by gwervc »

sn9 wrote: post #221

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think; a language model produces the former, not the latter. It's been incredibly blackpilling seeing how many intelligent professionals and academics don't understand this, especially in education and academia. They see work as the mere production of output, without ever thinking about how that…

I avree with starting from the third paragraph. However I disagree about what you said on academics. The few I interrogated on the topic already adapted their practice, notably changing the kind of homework they give, and changing exam format.

My students however don't understand that the importance is on the process, not the result. My colleagues do.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#347

Post by alpinisme »

ebiester wrote: post #276
efavdb wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this attitude prevails I would think the value of degrees will quickly diminish.

This seems to be the general feeling of students right now. Academia put itself as a gateway and barrier to the middle class. Why would we be surprised when people with no interest in anything but the goal are not enthralled by the process?

> Academia put itself as a gateway

How did academia do that? It doesn’t seem like universities would have the power to do that. More likely, either employers put academia as a gateway. Or even: the culture at large misunderstood what pathways existed to middle class life. Or even: pathways to middle class life became scarcer and more insecure, and the real gatekeepers (hiring managers) had no good ways to select which of the many people at the door to let through.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#348

Post by grakasja »

johnea wrote: post #273
soerxpso wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I should hope that the purpose of a class writing exercise is not to create an artifact of text but force the student to think I'm there for the degree. If I wanted to learn and engage with material, I could save $60,000 and do that online for free, probably more efficiently. The purpose of a class writing exercise is to get the university to give me the degree, which I cannot do by actually learning the material (…

[flagged]

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Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#349

Post by zamadatix »

alpinisme wrote: post #342
zamadatix wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't both a valid option, can't one be at a university to both learn and get a degree+GPA showing they did well at doing so? In any case, why does a student selecting that they are there to learn negate the responsibility of the university to provide the best curricula for students to do so with?

The assumption you are making is that students consistently using llms is required by the best curriculum. That’s a big assumption. There may be value educationally in forcing students to learn how to do things on their own that an llm could do for them. And in that case, it’s the student failing their education if they circumvent it with an llm, not the institution’s.

At times there is value in that kind of approach, especially when the learning is specifically about those kinds of lower layers instead of higher concepts. As such, it's not that certain tools should be used in every assignment or never ever used, just whether they should be used commonly.

For most continued learning it's better if the university uses calculators, compilers, prepared learning materials, and other things that do stuff on behalf of the students instead of setting the bar permanently to "the student should want to engage everything at a base level or they must not be here to learn". It allows much more advanced learning to be done in the long run.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#350

Post by EvgeniyZh »

fallinditch wrote: post #334
EvgeniyZh wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they would be stupid not to if their classmates are using it. Why would they be stupid? Were people before LLMs stupid for not asking smarter classmate/parent/paid contractor to solve the homework for them? Large part of education is learning about things that can be easily automated, because you can't learn hard things without learning easy things. Nothing conceptually changed in this regard, like Wolfram Alpha di…

Agreed, my bad choice of words. I really meant 'stupid' from a slightly ironic, competitive point of view. It's like the pressure to cheat in professional sport is obviously so intense, I'm sure a lot of a cheat's motivation is to remain competitive because their colleagues are cheating so they feel they have to as well, otherwise they lose.

YMMV, in my uni there is more or less zero impact of cheating in your homeworks in most classes: the homework has low weight in final grade and are graded very generously.

I agree that making assignments not designed with external sources in mind significantly impact the final grade is not ideal. I think this is minor and easily fixable point rather than some failure of the whole education system.

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