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Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

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Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#551

Post by bigstrat2003 »

qweqwe14 wrote: post #243
zelos wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree about school-level homework: it was many years before my pre-frontal cortex developed enough that I could have forced myself to do the work. That said, though, one thing I don't understand about the heavy users of AI in academia and software development is that the thinking and coding is the fun part . And that's the part so many people seem to be so keen to automate away.

Isn't the fun part having the thing work how you wanted it to? Why shouldn't I be keen to automate the process away?

No. The fun part is the process of getting there. The end result doesn't excite me at all.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#552

Post by Bnjoroge »

duskdozer wrote: post #509
surbas wrote: post #412

IMHO this is clear case of correlation vs causation… This generation of kids were fucked so hard by Covid and all the remote “schooling” and closing of public life. AI rise happens to be happening when the kids who were just entering teens at Covid time are now going to school.

The more likely culprit would be repeated COVID infections themselves, known even in mild cases to cause damage to many body systems, including the neurological, rather than a month or two of remote learning. I'm not surprised at the widespread denial over this, honestly. It's bitter.

Lmao

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#553

Post by maerF0x0 »

camelmel wrote: post #35

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

> many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write

I believe this is the real crux of the issue. We often turn the target to things like "Can johnny Add, Read a book, or recite dates" which are only proxy measures for important things like "Can johnny solve a numerical problem presented to him, can he synthesize information, or can he think critically about what is occurring around him?" .

If students use AI to accomplish goals I do not see it an issue. If they cannot figure out how to use tools, or what their goals are-- that is a major issue!

An analogy of my point is that I don't want to focus on cursive in the age of computers keyboards, and I dont want to focus on abacus skills when a pocket calculator is like $5.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#554

Post by delichon »

jordanb wrote: post #504
camelmel wrote: post #35

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

I used Google Translate to not learn French in collage. Fortunately for me it was bad enough I had to carefully review all its outputs, but that still didn't help and I managed to pass two semesters without ever developing even basic language skills. Something radical needs to be done. When I was in high school there were still a lot of "no calculator" restrictions in my math classes that I chaffed at because I hated…

All that's needed is a tight feedback loop between learning and applying those skills ... the thing that Google Translate helped you evade. AI can be a tool for evading or optimizing that loop, like a knife can cut your sandwich or your throat. Your choice.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#555

Post by bigstrat2003 »

ernst_klim wrote: post #96
vineyardmike wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think it's less like a cigarette and more like the car. We're not going back. Americans are famously less healthy the more car dependent they are, and now people walk/run as an explicit task to be healthy. People will start going to a "thinking" gym, or engaging in additional manual mental activities for sport, like we do with chess today.

Or when the Internet came and made memory kinda obsolete. Why remember facts if you can simply index them and then lookup on demand. But now we delegate thinking itself, so I wonder what is left.

The Internet in no way made memory obsolete. People who know things off the top of their heads are far more capable than people who have to look things up.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#556

Post by o_nate »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #553
camelmel wrote: post #35

I have some sympathy for these kids. If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. Now I work mostly with PhDs who were at the top of every academic environment they've ever been in. And yet I can see their thinking skills rapidly declining as well; many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write without…

> many of them can no longer brainstorm, code, think deeply, or write I believe this is the real crux of the issue. We often turn the target to things like "Can johnny Add, Read a book, or recite dates" which are only proxy measures for important things like "Can johnny solve a numerical problem presented to him, can he synthesize information, or can he think critically about what is occurring around him?" . If stude…

If students are allowed to use AI to accomplish their goals, then I think the real question is why should they go to an expensive university for four years to learn how to ask AI to do something?

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#557

Post by buredoranna »

This is a student problem, not an ai problem... if the student chooses to not learn, to just use ai for answers, that's on them.

And their failing grades reflect the choices they've made.

ai is the single most powerful learning tool ever invented... but only if you choose to use it for learning.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#558

Post by taegee »

figassis wrote: post #379

It's a strange thing that as humans, we sleepwalk into every crisis, never agreeing on anything, and then when we're there, we also never agree on the causes. When we ge too the point where we can no longer "engineer" or "science" anything we will spend the next decade arguing that the issue was not really AI, or that if it was, it was inevitable and no one (or everyone) was to blame. Rinse, repeat. Yet we're here, t…

https://i.imgur.com/fk1aI.jpeg :)

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#559

Post by Applejinx »

fn-mote wrote: post #352
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If LLMs were around when I was a student, I would've also used them to "speed up" my homework assignments then proceed to fail all my tests. I agree - I would have been toast. I wonder if the teachers/colleges need to change the way they teach and assess. Let the students use the AI tools they like (perhaps guide them how they can use them professionally), but test regularly and early on the skills/knowledge they'r…

> Let the students use the AI tools they like […], but test regularly and early on the skills/knowledge they're meant to be gaining offline and in person. I very much doubt there is any agreement on what those skills are. Creating the idea of “what to learn in the new world” is itself IMO an important academic creation, but there’s no reward for doing it and no way to know if you’re on the right track (you just have…

This. The industry is dumping electrical labor at a humongous loss JUST BECAUSE they figure people will immediately atrophy and be unable to do without AI… at any price.

We'll get an idea of the relative cost of the labor, all right. It's just that they are specifically trying to wreck the market, at all costs, to be able to cash in on the upside. It's sensible, if you're a monster.

Re: Failing grades soar with AI usage, dwindling math skills in Berkeley CS classes

#560

Post by conductr »

thewebguyd wrote: post #527
conductr wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming into this little tiff to say I think bulk muscle is a bad analogy in the first place. It’s more akin to a muscle memory/skill. Something like golf is a better analogy. If you took any golfer, at any level, and had them refrain from golfing for 3 years. I feel pretty confident asserting they would all perform worse than they had. Their skill is diminished.

They would also likely get that skill back faster than a brand new golfer. I noticed it myself with cycling. Took 8 years off the bike, when I started up again I was nearly back to my old FTP in about 2 months despite starting from basically zero. Muscle memory is real, where I am now as a returning cyclist would take a pure beginner cyclist at least 4+ months to get to, fitness wise. That said, you do have to work s…

People could also regain some cognitive skill back rather fastr when they worked to regain it. But the issue is, many people just lack the motivation to do so. If you golf or cycle, it's likely a passion or hobby. Most people don't view their cognitive health this way, they view it as work. It's why most people don't read much after their schooling, learning and being smart was only ever an ends to a means (diploma, job, money, etc).
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