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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

#671

Post by antonymoose »

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…

We used to prosecute cheating and plagiarism for the moral failure that it is.

If we allow lying, cheating and stealing - why bother being a schmuck that does the work.

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

#672

Post by cess11 »

Looks to me like the US education system stopped teaching problem solving and let kids pass classes in math and whatnot by querying a database instead of learning how to figure things out.

The fault is with people, some database provided by some company can't carry guilt.

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

#673

Post by hirvi74 »

SecretDreams wrote: post #347
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If, on the other hand, LLMs help you with making much faster progress in understanding the subject that you study My experience is that they uncomfortably do both. You can "understand" something conceptually quicker -- like you have a new brain-muscle-thing that lets you cut through the hard difficult tedious corners to get to the meat of the matter. But then you also can become reliant on it, and have difficulty d…

It's two fold. They're learning and understanding more things, but at a very surface level and without the nuance and ability to actually use the knowledge because they have none of the muscle memory and hard work associated with learning it. You can use AI or the internet to learn the basics of how a gas engine works in a couple of minutes. But you'd be incapable of actually working on a gas engine or designing one.…

Perhaps it was merely my degree or program, but I do not feel like I learned a lot more than surface level knowledge.

I have an accredited degree in computer science. But what does that truly even signify? For example, even with my 10 years of experience coupled with my degree, I could not create a programming language from scratch without some tutorial, nor could I create an OS, a compiler/interpreter, a basic CPU, RAM, any secondary storage, etc.. Sure, I could tell you about basic digital logic, basic OS principals, basic algorithms in a poorer explanation than a Wikipedia article, etc..

To use your gas engine analogy, if you dropped me on deserted island with all the parts I needed to make a basic, simple computer I would unlikely be able to do so with out some sort of in-depth guide. I am not talking about slotting mass produced parts on a motherboard. Rather, something like this:

https://www.instructables.com/Build-a-Computer-W-Basic-Under...

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

#674

Post by [deleted] »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #576
eunos wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gemini is a hard-ban. Sounds like you would hard-ban your son from using Internet if it was only introduced 5 years ago

Or a calculator. Oh wait, I hard ban my 8 and 11 year old kids from using a calculator. I wonder why .

[deleted]

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

#675

Post by lukan »

svachalek wrote: post #668
lukan wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure he is sending automated messages, or used LLM to polish up some writing? Would be a difference to me, but .. still weird.

I'm unconvinced of this "polishing" everyone seems to claim. Whenever someone dumps a load of slop on you, that's always the answer, oh this is totally my own work, but I used AI to "polish" it. Then why is it so clearly crap? What kind of "polishing" makes text bloated and empty? No, they were too lazy to write and let the machine do it.

Well, I like writing. But I have friends who hate it .. but need to for work. So they enjoy LLM's to make professional drafts out of some notes (technical reports) without all their grammar misstakes etc. No fluff, just the document in a shape the target audience expects.

But if they would do this to me .. I would object. I prefer their authentic ramblings ..

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

#676

Post by jventura »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #643
jventura wrote: post #241

CS Professor here: just yesterday I did the discussion of a course projects' (Parallel Computing), and one of the three groups that I did yesterday have clearly gone the ChatGPT way. They couldn't even understand the choices the LLM made regarding the architecture, etc. The way to "catch" these students is similar to what we did in the past when students copied from other students which is "to give them rope to hang"…

So all groups outsourced their thinking to an LLM. Will they have learned anything they can apply to different types of projects in future?

Not in the same level, see my other comments..

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

#677

Post by jancsika »

WalterBright wrote: post #143
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.

The interesting thing about jogging is I do my best thinking while jogging. I've found it impossible to do deep thinking while driving, as driving evidently requires higher functions of the brain. Jogging doesn't require any of that, I can jog deep in thought and have no recollection of the previous mile.

Apparently Petri was driving when he figured out a new fingering for a Chopin Etude he'd use at a concert later that evening[1]. The passenger survived to tell that story, so I think this is more about your correct risk-assessment than physical limitations of the brain. :)

1: Just to unzip: "I don't like this fingering; let me imagine playing with this other fingering; yep, that will feel more comfortable and stronger; I'm now confident enough in the change that I'll do it that way in public, for one of the most difficult piano pieces, without ever having practiced it physically..."

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

#678

Post by fragmede »

timmytokyo wrote: post #647
epgui wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think my actual cognitive skills have declined by using AI I'm not speaking about you but... I know most people would not have much awareness of their cognitive decline. I know this because that awareness gap is there with or without LLMs, across all age groups and cultures.

Especially since attention -- which the parent commenter says has been diminished by LLMs -- is a key part of cognition.

For cognition, sure, but that's a fairly weak claim. A dog that chases its tail for 3 hours might be considered conscious, but maybe not highly intelligent.

The attention deficit part of ADHD hurts some people, but a high intelligence is able to make up for it in other ways. Attention span is a multiplier for intelligence. Someone with a lower IQ but a longer attention span is able to outperform a higher IQ but shorter attention span, traditionally.

What's required though, is the attention span and the memory to really dig deep into a problem, and then go for a run. If AI makes that easier, since it lets you skip the boring parts and get to the meat of the problem, then hey.

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

#679

Post by LiteUser »

pessimizer wrote: post #645
somenameforme wrote: post #39

The likely 'real' reason is hidden in one paragraph within the article and has nothing to do with the implication of the eye-catching title: "Both Garcia and Ranade have joined more than 1,300 UC faculty in signing a petition calling for the reinstatement of ACT and SAT standardized testing scores for STEM admissions in the UC system. The petition and its accompanying open letter detail similar concerns with students…

> Around COVID times many top universities experimented with removing test requirements from admissions, under an argument largely related to equity. It's been a failure everywhere, with many, if not most, universities already reversing it. It's the universities that have failed. They've restricted admissions to a set of people who would learn no matter what the schools did, which is what makes them lazy. When confro…

Can you cite a source for the claim about "most faithful test predictor"? I'm genuinely curious. I would think high school GPA would be more predictive.

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

#680

Post by joshAg »

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…

Why do you think you didn't do similar when you were a student? We've seen this exact issue with other technology before: calculators for math; typewriters and then word processors for writing assignments; audio books for literacy. In those cases we've collectively realized there's a benefit in getting the manual skill and understanding how to use it before shortcutting things with the technology, even if most of the time you'll just end up using the technology. My best guess is that for most people in those classes who failed because of ai use, they don't care about the understanding (usually) required to get a good grade, they just care about the grade itself and the doors that opens for them.
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