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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

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Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#501

Post by ToucanLoucan »

jacobolus wrote: post #481
Balgair wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you've identified the main issue here: LLMs aren't destroying the University or the essay. LLMs are destroying the cheap University or essay. Cheap can mean a lot of things, like money or time or distance. But, if Universities want to maintain a standard, then they are going to have to work for it again. No more 300+ person freshman lectures (where everyone cheated anyways). No more take-home zoom exams. No m…

There are excellent 1000-student lecture courses and shitty 15-student lecture courses. There are excellent take-home exams and shitty in-class exams. There are excellent grad student teaching assistants and shitty tenured credentialed professors. You can't boil quality down to a checklist.

No but you can observe and react to trends. Remote courses for me have me sitting directly at the Distraction 9000 (my computer) and rely entirely on "self discipline" in order for me to get anything out of it. This is fine for annual training that's utterly braindead and requires nothing from me but completing a basic quiz I get unlimited attempts for so my employer can tell whatever government agency I did the thing. If I want to actually get trained however, I always do in-person, both because my employer covers those expenses and who in the world turns down free travel, and because I retain nothing from remote learning. Full stop.

Of course that's only my experience and I can't speak for all of humanity. I'm sure people exist who can engage in and utilize remote learning to it's full potential. That said I think it's extremely tempting to lean on it to get out of providing classrooms, providing equipment, and colleges have been letting the education part of their school rot for decades now in favor of sports and administrative bloat, so forgive me if I'm not entirely trusting them to make the "right" call here.

Edit: Also on further consideration, remote anything but teaching very much included also requires a level of tech literacy that, at least in my experience, is still extremely optimistic. The number of times we have to walk people through configuring a microphone, aiming a webcam, sharing to the meeting, or the number of missed participants because Teams logged them out, or Zoom bugged out on their machine, or whatever. It just adds a ton of frustration.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#502

Post by thunderfork »

nprateem wrote: post #337
thresher wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I teach computer science / programming, and I know what a good AI policy is: No AI. (Dramatic. AI is fine for upper-division courses, maybe. Absolutely no use for it in introductory courses.) Our school converted a computer lab to a programming lab. Computers in the lab have editors/compilers/interpreters, and whitelist documentation, plus an internal server for grading and submission. No internet access otherwise. W…

Is it in a Faraday cage too or do you just confiscate their phones. Or do you naively believe they aren't just using AI on their phones?

[dead]

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#503

Post by intended »

freezePeach2958 wrote: post #463
intended wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, our information and training systems are kinda failing at dealing with the reality of our actual information environment. Take law for example and free speech - a central tenet to a functional democracy is effective ways to trade ideas. A core response in our structure to falsehoods and rhetoric is counter speech. But I can show you that counter speech fails. We have realms upon realms of data inside tech firms…

> A core response in our structure to falsehoods and rhetoric is counter speech. > But I can show you that counter speech fails Could you show me that? What's your definition of failure?

I get the feeling that you aren’t asking for the short version, because most people wouldn’t latch onto that point and create an account for it.

Hmmm.

An example - the inefficacy of Fact checking efforts. Fact checking is quintessentially counter speech, and we know that it has failed to stop the uptake and popularity of falsehoods. And I say this after speaking to people who work at fact checking orgs.

However, this is in itself too simple an example.

The mechanics of online forums are more interesting to illustrate the point - Truth is too expensive to compete with cheaper content.

Complex articles can be shared on a community, which debunk certain points, but the community doesn’t read it. They do engage heavily on emotional content, which ends up supporting their priors.

I struggle to make this point nicely, but The accuracy of your content is secondary to its value as an emotional and narrative utility for the audience.

People are not coming online to be scientists. They are coming online to be engaged. Counter speech solves the issue of inaccuracy, and is only valuable if inaccuracy is a negative force.

It is too expensive a good to produce, vs alternatives. People will coalesce around wounds and lacunae in their lives, and actively reject information that counters their beliefs. Cognitive dissonance results in mental strife and will result in people simply rejecting information rather than altering their priors.

Do note - this is a point about the efficacy of this intervention in upholding the effectiveness of the market where we exchange ideas. There will be many individual exchanges where counter speech does change minds.

But at a market level, it is ineffective as a guardian and tonic against the competitive advantage of falsehoods against facts.

——

Do forgive the disjointed quality in the response. It’s late here, and I wish I could have just linked you to a bunch of papers, but I dont think that would have been the response you are looking for.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#504

Post by AStonesThrow »

josephcsible wrote: post #499
grogenaut wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can. I did a remote proctored exam for the NREMT last year. They had me walk the camera around the room, under the desk, etc. All devices had to be in my backpack. No earbuds. They made me unplug the conference tv on the wall, lift picture frames etc. I had to keep my hands above the table the whole time, I couldn't look down if I was scratching an itch. They installed rootkit software and closed down all of the…

The remote proctored exam is a major invasion of privacy, but nevertheless, there's at least a dozen ways you could cheat despite all of that.

I fear that remote-proctoring can be liable to more false positives, if they are going to flag actions that "might" indicate a cheating sort of behavior, but they can't reach in and unveil your secret cheat sheet or identify your accomplice. I don't know the whole process after the remote proctor flags something, but it would seem more difficult for the student to defend innocence.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#505

Post by BeFlatXIII »

thatfrenchguy wrote: post #494
aaplok wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Students don’t seem to mind this reversion. Those I ask are unanimously horrified that this is the choice they are given. They are devastated that the degree for which they are working hard is becoming worthless yet they all assert they don't want exams back. Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions and in contrast excel in open tasks that allow them to explore, so my sample is biased but…

> Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions I mean, for every neurodivergent person who does miserably in exam conditions you have one that does miserably in homework essays because of absence of clear time boundaries.

Autism vs. ADHD

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#506

Post by patrickmay »

foxglacier wrote: post #138

Schools need to re-think what the purpose of essays was in the first place and re-invent homework to suit the existance of LLMs. If it's to understand the material, then skip the essay writing part and have them do a traditional test. If it's to be able to write, they probably don't need that skill anymore so skip the essay writing. If it's to get used to researching on their own, find a way to have them do that whic…

"Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is." -- Leslie Lamport

Writing is an essential skill.

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#507

Post by glial »

mathgeek wrote: post #487
danielhep wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m wondering how the undergrad CS course is as an experienced dev and why you decided to do that? I have been a software developer for 5 years with an EE degree, and as I do more software engineering and less EE I feel like I am missing some CS concepts that my colleagues have. Is this your situation too or did you have another reason? And why not a masters?

> And why not a masters? Not GP, but in my experience most MSC programs will require that you have substantial undergrad CS coursework in order to be accepted. There are a few programs designed for those without that background.

Shout out to the fantastic Georgia Tech online masters program in CS:

https://pe.gatech.edu/degrees/computer-science

(not affiliated, just a fan)

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#508

Post by josephcsible »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #504
josephcsible wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The remote proctored exam is a major invasion of privacy, but nevertheless, there's at least a dozen ways you could cheat despite all of that.

I fear that remote-proctoring can be liable to more false positives, if they are going to flag actions that "might" indicate a cheating sort of behavior, but they can't reach in and unveil your secret cheat sheet or identify your accomplice. I don't know the whole process after the remote proctor flags something, but it would seem more difficult for the student to defend innocence.

It's quite unfair of them to basically say "we're not competent enough as proctors to come up with evidence of guilt, so we'll use a guilty-until-proven-innocent system instead."

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#509

Post by california-og »

intended wrote: post #503
freezePeach2958 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A core response in our structure to falsehoods and rhetoric is counter speech. > But I can show you that counter speech fails Could you show me that? What's your definition of failure?

I get the feeling that you aren’t asking for the short version, because most people wouldn’t latch onto that point and create an account for it. Hmmm. An example - the inefficacy of Fact checking efforts. Fact checking is quintessentially counter speech, and we know that it has failed to stop the uptake and popularity of falsehoods. And I say this after speaking to people who work at fact checking orgs. However, this…

I think this 3-part essay might be relevant to your argument: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/147/623330/society-of-the-psy...

Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine

#510

Post by jonfw »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #62
nkrisc wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re hiring humans just to use AI, why even hire humans? Either AI will replace them or employers will realize that they prefer employees who can think. In either case, being a human who specializes in regurgitating AI output seems like a dead end.

“Prompt Engineer” as a serious job title is very strange to me. I don’t have an explanation as to why it would be a learnable skill—there’s a little, but not a lot of insight into why an LLM does what it does.

> there’s a little, but not a lot of insight into why an LLM does what it does.

That's a "black box" problem, and I think they are some of the most interesting problems the world has.

Outside of technology- the most interesting jobs in the world operate on a "black box". Sales people, psychologists are trying to work on the human mind. Politicians and market makers are trying to predict the behavior of large populations. Doctors are operating on the human body.

Technology has been getting more complicated- and I think that distributed systems and high level frameworks are starting to resemble a "black box" problem. LLMs even more so!

I agree that "prompt engineer" is a silly job title- but not because it's not a learnable skill. It's just not accurate to call yourself an engineer when consuming an LLM.

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