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The abacus and calculator analogy is a good one. I've been thinking about ChatGPT in terms of standard language libraries. So far, I think that is what ChatGPT

The abacus and calculator analogy is a good one. I've been thinking about ChatGPT in terms of standard language libraries. So far, I think that is what ChatGPT is good for - solving small, self contained problems that are building blocks of larger apps. I'm glad that they are there, and I'm sure ChatGPT will provide a lot of code of this nature. So I shouldn't be concerned, because I love standard library functions. But for education, I fear that students will be discouraged (or tempted to cheat) when they are learning to code with exercises that can be solved with a simple online query.

localhost 4y ago
I like your extension of the argument towards standard libraries. I guess one way of thinking about this is that the standard library hasn't made programmers obsolete. Charlie ends his post with an intriguing question - what is the abacus for programming? Some way of reasoning about programming that isn't a black box. Perhaps raising the abstraction level even higher? Assignments that are like "design an app that makes it really easy to share photos" and then "reason about how you would test that app" and "what countermeasures would you create to prevent abuse" and then have the student(s) come up with specific pieces of implementation of parts of that solution that would fit the allotment of time?
- csmeyer 4y ago
  I love those ideas for assignments. Humans will get boxed out of most programming tasks, but the questions that you raise will (probably?) be the last to go
zamfi 4y ago
> But for education, I fear that students will be discouraged (or tempted to cheat) when they are learning to code with exercises that can be solved with a simple online query. Is it cheating when kids learning to read have books read to them? Is it cheating when teens learning guitar watch YouTube videos of people playing guitar? ...or use Spotify to play music? Personally, I'm much more excited for how "learning to code" will change given these tools, than I am worried about cheating.
- Chabsff 4y ago
  Learning to code is ultimately not about learning a pile of information. It's about learning how to react when faced with a wall. There is definitely something to be said in favour of presenting students with small walls to face before presenting them with large-scale and cognitively overwhelming problems. The concern here is that most of what we've been using as "small walls to conquer" are trivially solvable without having to go through the problem solving process. But I think this is excessive hand-wringing. StackOverflow is already as disruptive as can be on that regard, but that doesn't prevent a plurality of students from going through the motions for the sake of learning the "craft".
- mwigdahl 4y ago
  No, those are not cheating. However, it's cheating when your kid types his math problems into Google and just enters them into an autovalidating document. If coding exercises are simple and working code can be acquired brainlessly by typing the problem statement into ChatGPTNext, then yes I'd consider that cheating (both in the direct sense of violating the rules of the course and in the sense of the learner cheating him/herself out of the value of the exercise). As a side note, the type of math "education" I describe above is worse than useless, as the autovalidator rejects correct answers that aren't entered exactly as the form expects, and has no facility for or requirement to show one's work. It's literally just teaching kids to Google and answer and then shotgun it into the form with random permutations until they get a green checkmark.
- gibspaulding 4y ago
  Educator here. AI has really quickly been changing how assignments have to be crafted. In the last couple of years apps like photomath have made the old school approach of teaching math with a lecture on how to do something followed by practice homework problems pretty much useless since students can so easily just have the computer do the problems (complete with showing work for them). From messing around with ChatGPT a bit, it looks like things like writing essays/book reports/poems for English classes will be going the same way as soon as someone packages it up nicely. It's going to be a rough transition, but I hope one for the better. I'm not sure about what that will look like for gen-ed classes, but in my CS class, I try to embrace tools like this. Instead of worrying about getting students to memorize boilerplate and algorithms, I try to teach them to research and how to glue things together. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1988/ https://xkcd.com/1988/

localhost 4y ago

I like your extension of the argument towards standard libraries. I guess one way of thinking about this is that the standard library hasn't made programmers obsolete. Charlie ends his post with an intriguing question - what is the abacus for programming? Some way of reasoning about programming that isn't a black box. Perhaps raising the abstraction level even higher? Assignments that are like "design an app that makes it really easy to share photos" and then "reason about how you would test that app" and "what countermeasures would you create to prevent abuse" and then have the student(s) come up with specific pieces of implementation of parts of that solution that would fit the allotment of time?

csmeyer 4y ago
I love those ideas for assignments. Humans will get boxed out of most programming tasks, but the questions that you raise will (probably?) be the last to go

zamfi 4y ago

> But for education, I fear that students will be discouraged (or tempted to cheat) when they are learning to code with exercises that can be solved with a simple online query. Is it cheating when kids learning to read have books read to them? Is it cheating when teens learning guitar watch YouTube videos of people playing guitar? ...or use Spotify to play music? Personally, I'm much more excited for how "learning to code" will change given these tools, than I am worried about cheating.

Chabsff 4y ago
Learning to code is ultimately not about learning a pile of information. It's about learning how to react when faced with a wall. There is definitely something to be said in favour of presenting students with small walls to face before presenting them with large-scale and cognitively overwhelming problems. The concern here is that most of what we've been using as "small walls to conquer" are trivially solvable without having to go through the problem solving process. But I think this is excessive hand-wringing. StackOverflow is already as disruptive as can be on that regard, but that doesn't prevent a plurality of students from going through the motions for the sake of learning the "craft".
mwigdahl 4y ago
No, those are not cheating. However, it's cheating when your kid types his math problems into Google and just enters them into an autovalidating document. If coding exercises are simple and working code can be acquired brainlessly by typing the problem statement into ChatGPTNext, then yes I'd consider that cheating (both in the direct sense of violating the rules of the course and in the sense of the learner cheating him/herself out of the value of the exercise). As a side note, the type of math "education" I describe above is worse than useless, as the autovalidator rejects correct answers that aren't entered exactly as the form expects, and has no facility for or requirement to show one's work. It's literally just teaching kids to Google and answer and then shotgun it into the form with random permutations until they get a green checkmark.
gibspaulding 4y ago
Educator here. AI has really quickly been changing how assignments have to be crafted. In the last couple of years apps like photomath have made the old school approach of teaching math with a lecture on how to do something followed by practice homework problems pretty much useless since students can so easily just have the computer do the problems (complete with showing work for them). From messing around with ChatGPT a bit, it looks like things like writing essays/book reports/poems for English classes will be going the same way as soon as someone packages it up nicely. It's going to be a rough transition, but I hope one for the better. I'm not sure about what that will look like for gen-ed classes, but in my CS class, I try to embrace tools like this. Instead of worrying about getting students to memorize boilerplate and algorithms, I try to teach them to research and how to glue things together. Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1988/ https://xkcd.com/1988/