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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

#771

Post by rowyourboat »

lukan wrote: post #675
svachalek wrote: post #668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ..

> No fluff, just the document in a shape the target audience expects

I see what you did there

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

#772

Post by throwatdem12311 »

logicalmind wrote: post #754
throwatdem12311 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why else does anyone in California get rid of anything? Because it’s racist.

You should probably take a look at the demographics of the top scores of the standardized tests like the SAT. You're not going to find the race you think at the top.

Do you think I wouldn’t know?

Pray tell which race do you think I’m going to expect to find?

Because let me tell you, the demographics are pretty much exactly what I expected. And my response to that is…so what?

If anything you’re telling on yourself with your statement.

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

#773

Post by yubblegum »

yodsanklai wrote: post #289
yubblegum wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI should be a formidable booster for learning if used properly. A premature technology, known to be potentially harmful in its current state of development and established guidelines as to its effective use, is pushed by powerful and wealthy elite down the throat of society. These same forces (and their unwitting helpers in the unmoneyed public) also wish to deflect with useless argumentation over "AI good" "AI ba…

> is pushed by powerful and wealthy elite down the throat of society. Adoption has been exponential. We don't need to be AI to be pushed down the throat. People use it because it works and it's useful to them. > The debate that we should have had: Is this tech actually mature enough for pervasive use in society. It's too late for this debate because this tech is already pervasively used, and there's no coming back. I…

It is no "too late" about AI right now. The only people who stand to 'suffer' in anyway from putting on the breaks and doing a comprehensive review of +/-s are the moneyed classes who have bet the house on this tech.

We know this tech as it is now is harming society. We also know that most of the people who are principally pushing it will be fairly immune to (or certainly are in a position to mitigate) its detrimental effects.

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

#774

Post by desterothx »

hypfer wrote: post #215
Retr0id wrote: post #116

It's interesting that it's specifically math-within-CS being discussed here. I can imagine a lot of students "just want to learn programming" (or similar), and see the math as a tedious distraction. As a naturally curious person, nothing will stop me from learning about the topics that interest me. But school also taught me a lot of things that didn't interest me, and a lot of those things turned out to be useful any…

Personally, I do believe that math as a discipline has this huge issue of being mostly incomprehensible garbage. Not because the actual truth encoded in it would be this complex, but because the encoding scheme just sucks. I see it as a packaging problem that has so far not been painful enough to trigger any meaningful change. With this LLM-driven collapse, that might finally change. Idk I'm hopeful. Math is literall…

If you have a problem with the math notation, you should open a law book, and look at the terminology mess they have going on. I like math notation, because it can be simply converted into natural language, thus removing the notation from the equation and leaving pure logic. Once you have that, thinking about it and working out what the original notation actually meant should be on you, that's how you build an understanding of math.

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

#775

Post by Hugsbox »

brewdad wrote: post #756
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.

No message between friends should ever need “polishing” unless you are trying to deliver really bad news in the softest way possible.

That's even worse. What could be more cold and impersonal than delivering bad news using an LLM?

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

#776

Post by desterothx »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #751
adamtaylor_13 wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The presumption that we're losing "intelligence" is unproven and widely debated. I'd prefer "capability" over raw intellect any day, and my capability is definitely greater than it was a year ago.

There's nothing to debate about "use it or lose it"; the reduction in numeracy after the adoption of pocket calculators is well established. And "capability" is the measure of the mere assembly line worker. "Raw intellect" is the measure of the inventors and creators.

And yet the average intelligence continued to rise through the reduction in numeracy. What job do you have where your performance is graded by your "raw intellect" instead of capability? A student?

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

#777

Post by hypfer »

desterothx wrote: post #774
hypfer wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I do believe that math as a discipline has this huge issue of being mostly incomprehensible garbage. Not because the actual truth encoded in it would be this complex, but because the encoding scheme just sucks. I see it as a packaging problem that has so far not been painful enough to trigger any meaningful change. With this LLM-driven collapse, that might finally change. Idk I'm hopeful. Math is literall…

If you have a problem with the math notation, you should open a law book, and look at the terminology mess they have going on. I like math notation, because it can be simply converted into natural language, thus removing the notation from the equation and leaving pure logic. Once you have that, thinking about it and working out what the original notation actually meant should be on you, that's how you build an unders…

Compelling argument.

Counterpoint: no

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

#778

Post by zchrykng »

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.

I will make use of Apple's AI writing tools to check my grammer and spelling before hitting send on more important messages, but that is about all the "polishing" I let it do. It always wants to change how I write, which isn't that helpful.

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

#779

Post by zchrykng »

WorldMaker wrote: post #765
II2II wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it depend upon context? If it is an emergency, it is a voice call. It is both immediate and conveys urgency. If it is something that you need to talk through, it is a scheduled voice call. Asynchronous communications may demonstrate respect for a person's time since it does not (need to) interrupt them in the moment, but the inefficiency results in a disrespectful waste of time for bidirectional conversation…

If it's an emergency I want it in text first because I read faster than I listen to voicemails, and can do so in more spaces/contexts/environments (say, at a loud concert or eating in a restaurant), and I trust a person to write the message better than the voicemail system will transcribe a call. Certain emergency keywords sent in a text will especially alert me faster than a call would. (I have call notifications as…

Why are we talking about voicemails in the context of emergencies? If it was an emergency, I'm calling every number I have for someone until they pickup or enough time has passed that I write them off as a flake and find the next person on the list who might be able to help with whatever it is.

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

#780

Post by dack »

sounds like the link with AI is tenuous at best given the other comments, but I'll take it as an opportunity to say a few things I believe anyway:

1. AI is really helpful for a lot of things

2. to the extent that AI can do something perfectly for us, we probably shouldn't try to force people to "learn" it the hard way

3. people who don't want to learn won't, and will suffer naturally later

4. if the material didn't need to be learned anyway, then using AI to do it for them is a win. that's how the real world works anyway.

5. if AI makes some knowledge obsolete, we should stop trying to teach it.

i think the only thing for the teachers to do is to properly warn students of the consequences of using AI to skip learning ahead of time (because by the time the natural consequences hit, it's too late), and to do their best to devise tests that incentivize the right knowledge, while also showing how to use AI properly.

the problem is that the education system isn't set up to change this quickly so I don't really know how they are going to properly adjust every semester

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