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AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

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Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#51

Post by gaiagraphia »

xyzal wrote: post #44

I am really baffled by the comments in the spirit of "this is unenforceable, and therefore worthless". I bet most people would not steal even if they knew they could get away with it.

Students are struggling to get work after graduating because they're dropped into a competitive environment. Ideals aren't enough to get jobs in the current environment.

Universities should be places which are at the bleeding edge of development and providing society with the best new ideas/tech, etc has to offer. Junior workers should be hotbeds of exciting talent which have the ability to revolutionise industries.

By creating such milquetoast environments to study in, which are seemingly scared or unable to prepare people for the future, students are being done a disservice.

Far too many people are far too comfortable with their cushty positions, and it's not doing the youth any favours.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#52

Post by walrusted »

xiaoyu2006 wrote: post #3

I always wonder why there is such course. Using agent ai coding tool is trivial.

using a coding tool is trivial, correct. so is using a microwave oven or its larger counter-parts. you need a certain level of person to know if what came out of it was Michelin-star or not and I do not think Stanford is going for Hot Pockets here.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#53

Post by datakan »

LVB wrote: post #15
mi_lk wrote: post #4

good intention but useless let's be real

Seeing my own kids (teens) go through some of this, I'm becoming slightly less pessimistic as it all shakes out. Among their peer groups there does seem to be an opinion forming that sure, anyone can just ask ChatGPT for quick answers on assignments, but actually knowing stuff is a bit of a "flex" that's respected.

300 years ago when I was in high school I had a friend choose to go the HVAC trade school route instead of college. He chose the hardest school in the country where they did most things manually so that students understood how things work. It removed the "magic" some tools provide. I was pretty impressed he was wise enough to do that. He's exceptional at his job by the way.

I think we have a tendency to think the worst of your people. They frequently surprise me though.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#55

Post by abahgat »

NickNaraghi wrote: post #7

This would be an interesting approach if the course supplied a custom Harness (perhaps in place of a textbook) and this was part of the instruction set inside of it. As a standalone thing you ask students to import into their agent, seems unlikely to work.

To be fair, shipping these guidelines as AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md in the repo that contains the assignments will make it so that agents will pick this up without needing students to opt in explicitly. Seems like a reasonable first step to me

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#56

Post by MengerSponge »

asdff wrote: post #37
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

Same issue as with cliffnotes. Easy way out means the easy way will be taken. Unless, you actually design a decent assignment or exam. In person essays or exams, heavily weighted, you are simply screwed if you didn't study the old fashioned way. A couple of my more serious classes were like this: no homework, no projects, entire grade based on 3 exams. That put the fear of whatever diety you subscribe to into you lik…

The insidious thing here is that students can think they're studying and practicing by chatting with an AI "tutor", which shifts them into a passive observation role that's no better than watching YouTube videos.

It turns out that it's much less memorable if you're too "clear and helpful", so nothing helpful sticks for students. A good teacher (tutor, educator, pick a word) challenges students and makes them the right amount of uncomfortable.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#58

Post by neutronicus »

bdangubic wrote: post #50
neutronicus wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teens also fucking hate AI, on a cultural-ideological level.

I think they may hate what it may be doing to their future outlooks but they use it as much as they do social media

Yeah, that's exactly why I added the second clause.

Nevertheless. The peer pressure is to be anti-AI.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#59

Post by philipportner »

andersmurphy wrote: post #41

Seems like a pretty close copy of Carson's (of HTMX fame) agent.md from 5 months ago https://gist.github.com/1cg/a6c6f2276a1fe5ee172282580a44a7ac

They reference the gist of 1cg in the honor code section of CS336.

https://cs336.stanford.edu/

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#60

Post by aaaronic »

I'm trying something similar this semester with my course via AGENTS.md. I think this one is overly verbose and probably falls out of context windows pretty quickly, based on my experience (for me, a very terse but clear set of 30 lines performed better than providing examples and more nuanced explanations during my testing with a few models).

I have included the basic "I am a student -- help me learn, don't just do everything for me," but I also am trying out telling it to generate a .history folder with a markdown history of every prompt and a summary of the action take in response.

I _know_ there are some tools that offer the prompt history automatically, but I've told students they can use _whatever_ tool they want, but should let me know if the folder isn't showing up as they work.

The .history folder is required if they used AI and I intend to review it and try to give specific feedback to the students using it as too much of a crutch.

I just started this last Friday, so wish me luck!

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