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I'd rather read the prompt

claytonwramsey.com

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Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#611

Post by mike_hearn »

lazide wrote: post #556
bumby wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is part of a more general cultural shift. Back in the 1960s, the majority of students said the primary motivation for going to college was to develop a philosophy of life, and a minority said the main goal was to be very financially successful. Somewhere around the 1980s this started to shift and the proportions are now inverted. * according to the UCLA CIRP freshman survey

Notably, the late 70’s and early 80’s is when large scale social changes started to happen due to high inflation and major problems in the US economy. Also a lot of social unrest, and a pretty unhinged president (Tricky Dick).

The same issues are seen in other countries. It's not specific to US presidents or policy. The insistence on maximizing university attendance was a widespread idea coming out of the left, e.g. in Britain it was heavily pushed by Tony Blair. The Blair government also raised tuition fees considerably.

The stated rationale at the time was that degree holders earn more, so if everyone gets a degree, everyone will earn more. I am doubtful that was the true rationale but it's how the policy was sold to people.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#612

Post by tpmoney »

zeroq wrote: post #255
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…

You're missing trees for forest. When I was a kid and got an assignement for writing an essey about "why good forces prevailed in Lords of the Rings" as a gate check to see if I actually read the novel I had three choices: (a) read the novel and write the essey myself (b) find an already written essey - not an easy task in pre-internet era but we had books with esseys on most common topics you could "copy-paste" - an…

> Today I can ask ChatGPT to write me a 4 pages essay about a novel I've never heard of and call it a day. There's no value gained in the process.

If we take the original article at face value, no you can't do that. ChatGPT will apparently produce something that is obviously ChatGPT produced and fail to fool even the most absent minded of instructors that you have read the material. So even with a ChatGPT LLM to help you out, you're largely going to have to do a modified version of C, replacing your class mate with the LLM and adding in the need to do your own reading and validation to ensure that the text matches the actual book contents.

> If I ask google maps to plot me a directions from Prague to Brussels it will yield a list of turns that will guide me to my destinations, but by any means I can't claim I've learned topography of Germany in the process.

I would argue that even if you plotted a route by hand reading maps, you can't claim to have learned the topography of Germany either. "The map isn't the territory" after all.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#613

Post by lucianbr »

godelski wrote: post #502
lmm wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't fix the problem by making better choices as individuals, and exhorting people to do so saps energy and distracts. The system interprets integrity as damage and routes around it.

> We can't fix the problem by making better choices as individuals That's wildly inaccurate. Your logic necessitates that "the system" is not composed of individuals. The problem itself was created through individual actions...

> Ultimately we can't change this behavior if no one is willing to defect from "conventional wisdom"

To me it reads as if you're contradicting yourself. It can be plainly seen that almost nobody is willing to defect. So change is impossible, you claim. Also change is possible, you claim. Which is it? You think people will change their choices as a result of you writing this comment and "winning" the argument?

I agree that people are responsible for the current situation, since their choices brought it about. That does not constitute a solution, though.

One or a thousand individuals changing their choice by themselves will do nothing. For tens of millions to change some external factor is required. If it was not, then it would have already happened. You say no external factor is required, so why do you think it didn't happen already, and why would it happen in the future?

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#614

Post by dsego »

ijidak wrote: post #468

The level of cheating in college, pre-AI, is often overlooked in these articles. Pre-AI, homework was often copied and then individuals just crammed for the tests. AI is not the problem for these students, it's that many students are only in it for the diploma. If it wasn't AI it would just be copying the assignment from a classmate or previous grad. And I imagine the students who really want to learn are still learn…

Because everyone needs to finish university for jobs that 50-100 years ago were done by people with basic literacy and 4 years of primary school. And even some advanced jobs are basically trades, so trade schools to churn out paper pushers and coders, and so on, but leave the universities for scientists and academics.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#615

Post by lukan »

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…

"Anyone who actually struggles to solve problems and learn themselves is going to have massive advantages in the long term."

Looking forward towards is, but I fear that might be wishful thinking in part.

Also pre LLMs I have seen too many deep thinkers fail and pretenders succed. I don't see how LLMs can change that. Unless we all collectivly grow tired if pretenders and fakers amd value deep understanding. I just see not many indication of that.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#616

Post by tpmoney »

scarface_74 wrote: post #408
fallinditch wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the little sister is acting rationally. Yes it's a bit lazy but then: when was the last time you used a calculator for a calculation that you could have done in your head? Do you actually need to be able to do mental arithmetic, do you actually really need to be able to work out what 24 + 7 is in your head? I don't know what the answer is. I'm old school, if it was up to me I'd bring back slide ru…

Even with a calculator and more so with ChatGPT, you still need to know whether an answer passes the sniff test.

One thing missing from the reddit story is how the author knows their sister is using ChatGPT to obtain the answer as opposed to validating work. I'll often punch a calculation I've already done in my head into a calculator to confirm for myself I landed on the right answer. Or come up with a solution to a problem, find myself wondering if there's a better solution or just feel like it doesn't quite look right and search for solutions online to compare and contrast. I'm not using the calculator or search to replace my work, I'm using it as the sniff test. But you couldn't determine that just by knowing my inputs to the calculator and google. You'd have to see the entire process.

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#617

Post by thegeomaster »

nikanj wrote: post #183
jfengel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A LLM can't do that? I'm a little surprised. (I know jack all about robotics but that sounds like a pretty common assignment, the kind an LLM would regurgitate someone else's homework.)

The LLM is very happy to give you an answer with high confidence. The answer might be bogus, but the AI will sound confident all the way through. No wonder sales and upper management love AI

The LLM provides a correct answer to the questions above: https://chatgpt.com/share/68188ed9-e25c-8002-b4f8-460a5d1efe...

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#618

Post by thegeomaster »

jfengel wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #28

That's because the instructor is asking questions that merely require the student to regurgitate the instructor's text. To actually teach this, you do something like this: "Here's a little dummy robot arm made out of Tinkertoys. There are three angular joints, a rotating base, a shoulder, and an elbow. Each one has a protractor so you can see the angle. 1. Figure out where the end of the arm will be based on those th…

A LLM can't do that? I'm a little surprised. (I know jack all about robotics but that sounds like a pretty common assignment, the kind an LLM would regurgitate someone else's homework.)

Tested: https://chatgpt.com/share/68188ed9-e25c-8002-b4f8-460a5d1efe...

Re: I'd rather read the prompt

#619

Post by bonoboTP »

jama211 wrote: post #374
bonoboTP wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how it works in Germany. Usually assignments are either optional or you just have to get 50% of the total assignment marks over the semester to be admitted to the exam (written or often oral, in person). Then your grade is entirely based on the exam. Hand-holding throughout the semester assignment-to-assignment, checking attendance etc. is more an Anglo-specific thing where students are treated as kids instead…

As someone who did CS 15 years ago, assignments show you can actually understand and build programs. Exams show you bothered to re-read the lecture notes the day before and can regurgitate information on command that you could just as easily forget the next day. Not to mention they’re hugely stressful and some students can’t cope with them well even if they’d make excellent programmers. I can’t imagine disincentivisi…

If the exam is made well, it's not just regurgitation. It's not multiple choice, but I agree this doesn't test programming skills. But programming is also a quite small slice of the CS curriculum. It has so many other things like linear algebra, real analysis, formal logic, graph theory, automata, coding theory like Reed Solomon, compression, complexity, operating systems like scheduling and virtual memory, how flip-flops and adders and CPUs work. A self taught web developer who can program well still wouldn't know most of these. Programming knowledge is neither fully necessary nor sufficient for a CS degree. I hear American colleges are more vocational, but in most of Europe it's understood that you gain practical experience either in internships, side jobs, doing hobby projects or simply after graduation at your first job.
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