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AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

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91–100 of 176 posts

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#91
post #63

Even though it seems radical, I think the right approach is to simply allow the students to use AI to its full potential, to generate answers, code, whatever. The onus should be on the instructor to make sure that the student ends up actually understanding and being able to code/solve problems that they pose without using coding agents. Why? Because: 1. this is exactly what is going on in the real world. People are a…

My understanding is that research shows more learning happens when the student has to struggle with the material to solve problems and answer questions.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teens also fucking hate AI, on a cultural-ideological level.

I think they may hate what it may be doing to their future outlooks but they use it as much as they do social media

They use it and hate it at the same time.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#93
post #75
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same issue as with cliffnotes. Easy way out means the easy way will be taken. Unless, you actually design a decent assignment or exam. In person essays or exams, heavily weighted, you are simply screwed if you didn't study the old fashioned way. A couple of my more serious classes were like this: no homework, no projects, entire grade based on 3 exams. That put the fear of whatever diety you subscribe to into you lik…

3 tests was already better than the traditional Spanish university class: 1 exam. which is probably written by the department head, not your teacher, and he isn't in any way interested in a high pass rate. Failing 90% of the class might even be positive for them. At that point classes aren't even important: You purchase the tests from the last 10 years, and then you have a prayer of knowing what the bar might be this…

[deleted]

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#94

I'm trying something similar this semester with my course via AGENTS.md. I think this one is overly verbose and probably falls out of context windows pretty quickly, based on my experience (for me, a very terse but clear set of 30 lines performed better than providing examples and more nuanced explanations during my testing with a few models). I have included the basic "I am a student -- help me learn, don't just do…

As a general rule with LLMs, don't just tell it to do something if you actually need to make sure it gets done. Use a hook script to make it do that, or use the history that's already there (transcripts of all sessions are retained in ~/.claude, for example). There are innumerable scripts out there to parse these, or your agent will whip one up for you in 5 minutes.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#95
post #2

This is ridiculous. The genie is not going to go back into the bottle. This is the equivalent of "you wouldn't download a car". (Yes, we would.) The solution is to scale the difficulty of the objective measures. Expect far more from students. Reorient the university around physical laboratories and timesharing resources no single student could afford. It's already like this in many STEM disciplines. More internships,…

> The solution is to scale the difficulty of the objective measures. Expect far more from students.

So now students are _required_ to use agents? That's a bit crazy

Would universities be paying the token cost? Is that you Dario?

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#96
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stanford has an honour code. Meant no oversight even during exams. Worked surprisingly well when I was there. The flipside is, if you’re ever caught cheating, there are no second chances. I imagine this applies here, too, if they want to enforce it strictly.

You mean it worked well for cheaters right? The more I learn about these "honor codes" the more I realize how sheltered these American elites have become.

No, I mean it generally worked well. I can't really say how it worked in undergrad because grad and undergrad school were so separate. I can only talk about grad school. I was really surprised myself how well it worked because I didn't know this coming from my university in Germany, but it really did work, at least in every exam I saw. And I don't consider myself overly naive. I guess it has to do with the fact that people who get admitted to Stanford grad school have already proven a certain work ethic and really want to do the exams to learn more. Your final grade isn't as important when you graduate from Stanford; it only really matters if you want to do a PhD, otherwise it's borderline irrelevant. "I went to Stanford" is all you need for your CV. So I didn't feel a lot of pressure being there of always having to have the best grades, it was more about using your very expensive time there wisely to learn as much as you can, and I felt my peers were the same.

Now, I'm not saying every place can be like that, I'm just trying to explain why at this particular university, the honor code is a reasonable policy that may work perfectly well on policing AI in exams. You can't copy that to other institutions, but it answers how they do it here.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#97
post #2

This is ridiculous. The genie is not going to go back into the bottle. This is the equivalent of "you wouldn't download a car". (Yes, we would.) The solution is to scale the difficulty of the objective measures. Expect far more from students. Reorient the university around physical laboratories and timesharing resources no single student could afford. It's already like this in many STEM disciplines. More internships,…

> The solution is to scale the difficulty of the objective measures. Expect far more from students. So now students are _required_ to use agents? That's a bit crazy Would universities be paying the token cost? Is that you Dario?

I mean you kinda have to own a computer to be in this industry at all. Back in the 90s there was a clear distinction between someone who had a computer and someone who didn't in so far as what they could do. Maybe a subscription might be a requirement soon. Overall it's much less money than what my parents had to spend on my computer in the 90s. In inflation adjusted dollars they spent over 5k on just my tech before I was even 13 years old.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#98

I'm trying something similar this semester with my course via AGENTS.md. I think this one is overly verbose and probably falls out of context windows pretty quickly, based on my experience (for me, a very terse but clear set of 30 lines performed better than providing examples and more nuanced explanations during my testing with a few models). I have included the basic "I am a student -- help me learn, don't just do…

Love it! I think the power of LLMs to acquire new skills and deepen the knowdledge is underestimated.

When used correctly, they offer a huge advantage over those who don't use them and think they understand but remain superficial. I encourage you to ask even the most obvious questions.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they may hate what it may be doing to their future outlooks but they use it as much as they do social media

They use it and hate it at the same time.

I hate it sometimes too. But it's sort of like being mad at math.

Re: AI Agent Guidelines for CS336 at Stanford

#100
post #17
post #13

yeah I don't think that's going to work - it would be kind of like "we're releasing model answers to all assignments but please only use them as a teaching aid and don't copy from them" best to a) adapt assignments so that agents are bad at producing solutions b) have more scenarios where students have to do things in controlled environments. Universities managed to adapt to 'any solution you need is readily availabl…

Laptop without internet access, sure. Pencil and paper? that is brutal :)

Pencil and paper - that's the classical way a lot of developers from western europe were taught to code. Back to the basics
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