11 ms·

My class required AI

185 points by alvis 4y ago

tedajax 4y ago
I can't properly formulate why but something about this seems like it'd be my most hated class ever.
- elil17 4y ago
  He teaches at a business school - probably loved by the people who take the classes but not something that would appeal to anyone else
- ihatepython 4y ago
  It does sound like a horrible class. I think the issue with AI is that the average person doesn't understand how it works, and the problem is when somebody in a position of power becomes infatuated with it. I don't fear AI, but I fear bad-AI, or misused-AI. Those who understand how it works know that its mostly Garbage In-Garbage Out
  - lambdaba 4y ago
    Indeed but it's also gold-in gold-out, something like that... But on a more subtle note because conversational AI has this short feedback loop, much shorter than even regular search, I feel that it's something where people can level up quickly. I think there's going to be great value there.
- jmount 4y ago
  My guess is, it sounds like a lot of unpleasant empirical tinkering exercises.
- samvher 4y ago
  Interesting - if you do manage to formulate it I'd be curious to read that. I like how they're taking a proactive approach in trying out what role ChatGPT and the like can play in generation and exploration of knowledge. I like the breakdown of the different ways of interacting with the tool, and the callout of how collaborative editing seems like the best out of the approaches they've witnessed. I also feel somewhat comforted by the remarks about how students engage with the output of the tools critically and fact checking can actually be a valuable way to interact with the material. Personally I think I would enjoy this class - I like the openness to experimentation. I can imagine that _getting graded for it_ could be a frustrating experience though, I think with experimental classes that's a kind of thing for which there tends to be little standardization and it can be unpredictable how you'll be judged.
- dandellion 4y ago
  You could try chatgpt to help you formulate it properly. I'm not native so I've used it a few times to come up with a first draft. More often than not the result is pretty bad, but it's much easier to work with than a blank page. I remove 2/3 of what was generated and I write the rest myself, then ask the AI to point out spelling or grammatical mistakes. It's a bit tedious, but less so than having to translate or writing in a foreign language by myself.
simonw 4y ago
Something I've been exploring for a while is that tools like ChatGPT are actually deceptively hard to use - or at least hard to use well. This piece explores that idea in quite some depth when it talks about the different approaches to working with ChatGPT to generate an essay. I see a lot of people try ChatGPT once, get disappointing results (maybe they gave it a logic puzzle or asked it to do some math!) and write it off as useless hype. I think that's a mistake.
kenjackson 4y ago
There was a time when people used to come to me create search queries. This was during the Alta Vista era. Constructing queries to find what you’re looking for was a skill. I feel like we’re in that era with AI. I suspect soon this will all feel like a distant memory.
- warner25 4y ago
  I was just thinking that we're about to have people going around claiming to be "experts in AI" because they know how to use ChatGPT, despite the fact that they can't even produce "hello world" in Python (without asking ChatGPT to do it for them, I guess?). Like some people seem to think that kids these days are all like Steve Wozniak because they grew up with access to an iPad. Anyway, yeah, maybe there is actually some valuable skill required for this? But I agree that skill in operating new technology probably doesn't hold its value for very long.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
    Yes, but it does not stop various hype sellers on LinkedIn selling 100 websites to do X, where X is just a custom prompt. I will admit it is tempting to ride the same wave ( I actually have a useful common issue for my industry ).
  - lambdaba 4y ago
    What's the upper bound for this particular skill though? I don't see any - there's no limit to how good you can get with designing search vectors for information in latent space...
  - simonw 4y ago
    Skill in operating a new technology sounds like a career to me!
  - BlueTemplar 4y ago
    Sounds a great way to filter out fake "experts in AI", since real "experts in AI" are not particularly comfortable with the "AI" term to start with ! https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/comment-page-1/#comment-50247 https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/comment...
pixl97 4y ago
AI prompts remind me if making a wish to a genie. The thought going into the input wish drastically effects the output, and we quite often don't get what we expect.
- lambdaba 4y ago
  I call it "searching for things that don't exist".
VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago
Fascinating. My dad is a professor and over Christmas break I showed him ChatGPT and he became obsessed. So much so, in fact, that he used it to generate a syllabus that prohibits the use of AI-assisted writing! The cognitive dissonance is wild to me, and I think approaching AI as a tool to be embraced is much healthier.
- jrockway 4y ago
  > The cognitive dissonance is wild to me I guess writing for class has always been about the process and not the result. Nobody has ever wanted to read an essay written by a student. But, the process of writing the essay is useful; collect sources, read them, distill down the important points, join the points with sentences. ChatGPT is all about the end result. Assignments are about the process.
  - waynesonfire 4y ago
    sure, then why would chatGPT hinder that process? ChatGPT, will just assemble the words. You can still create a better document working along side chatGPT by critically thinking about the output it's spewing and correcting it. There is probably nuance there but I that chatGPT creating a generation of zombies is over stated. chatGPT is like a calculator used in mathematics.
    - dorchadas 4y ago
      And, as a former secondary math teacher, I would argue that the use of a calculator has absolutely created a generation of zombies who can't do, or understand, basic math. We're talking simple things like multiply, or figure out how many Monsters they can buy for $5, or calculate change. If they can't do basic arithmetic, there's no way they can understand the actual concepts underlying math, or have any type of number sense (and they don't; though, granted, neither do most of their elementary school teachers). It'll be absolutely horrible if they have no idea of how to craft a coherent argument, or deeply think because ChatGPT just spews out something (and who knows if it even gives factual answers; they'll never know to check). Couple this with other issues arising from over reliance and overuse of smart phones and we're setting ourselves, and them, up for a grim future facing serious existential problems (.i. climate change)
isaacfrond 4y ago
Excellent article. I was helping my son with his homework. He had to write an essay about why the gender of the protagonist might be female (although this is never mentioned in the short story). Fortunately for him, ChatGPT knew the story and was happy to write an essay with arguments. [Btw, according to him pretty much everyone in class routinely has the AI do their essays] He was about to send this essay in. But as we were admiring the prose of the computer (which is much better than either of can), we found out that some of the arguments actually didn't make much sense. So we went to through a rewrite exercise like in the article, improving the essay and our understanding of the issues. Next time I see her, I'll urge the teacher to adopt a similar approach as in the article.
- kzrdude 4y ago
  Is this a situation where it's not cheating to use a chatbot for the output? I understand it becomes nuanced if you edit the output, but still.
  - eertami 4y ago
    This is cheating and while it might not be picked up in a high school essay, it will certainly be flagged for plagiarism at almost all Universities. It's very dangerous to do this unless your course specifically asks you to answer using AI tools, like the course in the OP.
    - ghostpepper 4y ago
      When you say "it will be flagged" do you mean that it would be considered cheating under existing academic dishonesty policies? or do you mean that the plagiarism-detection tools currently in use at universities can reliably detect the output of ChatGPT, new Bing, etc. that were only released publicly in the last few months
      - swatcoder 4y ago
        If you're just worried about the pragmatics of being caught, I'd keep in mind that ChatGPT doesn't actually have a very high "dynamic range" given some specific set of inputs. If you use it enough, or explore the same topics and prompts enough, you'll quickly start to see structures, words, phrases, presentations that its output gravitates towards. These may not be enough of a watermark to generally detect what was written by an AI and what wasn't yet, but it does suggest that the proliferation of AI-written assignment essays will quickly produce a catalog of plagiarism sources that works with existing tools. In other words, once people submit enough AI-written essays about popular assignment A, existing plagiarism detection tools will easily start to notice the phrases/sequences/structures that it statistically gravitates towards (because that's what it does by design!) and start detecting these in later work. That software won't know what's AI written or not, but it will think that your submission may be plagiarized because a lot of it looks pretty specifically familiar.
MarbleFangs098 4y ago
Will be interesting to see where the needle lands on the Crutch <-> Tool scale for AI.
swlkr 4y ago
This article is a great intro to prompt engineering. It helped me with my own prompts!
modeless 4y ago
It seems premature to teach the limitations of ChatGPT in a course. Five years from now its capabilities and limitations may be very different. But I guess if you realistically believe that students are going to use it anyway, you have to do something.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Aunche 4y ago
I think that using allowing students to AI to write school essays is like allowing students athletes to use a hoverboard when they're told to run a mile. It's the act of running that's the point, not the end result of running in a circle Likewise, nobody is going to give a damn about your school essays except your teacher. It's the practice of synthesizing information on your own that important.
- javier123454321 4y ago
  I agree that students using LLMs to do work for them is akin to your example. However, what is described in the article shows thoughtful exercises on engaging the same critical thinking skills you mention, so I see no problem with this approach. Might not want to do that for every assignment, but it seems the author had a pretty skillful approach to developing well rounded students in the context that students will be dealing with outside the classroom.
  - 93po 4y ago
    It's engaging critical thinking around the use of AI tools. Which is not a super valuable place to be applying that critical thinking. I feel like this is the equivalent of asking students in the 60s and 70s to learn to use a complicated machine that made punch cards for programming, and to apply critical thinking to the operation of the punch machine. They should be focusing on the the end product itself (writing, or software development in my example) instead of AI tools (punch machines) that will be obsolete very soon.
    - javier123454321 4y ago
      I took it as the focus being on using LLMs to enhance critical thinking (like using calculators in higher math classes). That would be taking the output of these systems and use critical thinking in order to examine the material, feeding it rewrites, as well as using editorial skills to see what goes in the final assignment. I see no problem in that. However, upon rereading the article, it does seem to say that the focus was on using the tool and prompt engineering rather than using it as a tool for extending students' own cognition.
dncornholio 4y ago
Yikes.. In my professional teaching career I always tried to not teach the tools, but the concepts. Tools are things that develop. Students can find the right tools just fine. Teaching how to use ChatGPT is exactly what I would advice against. There's no science behind it, except some knowledge that's based on personal experiments. It doesn't provide much educational progress. I mean, one class for this would be OK. But basing all your classes on a tool?! Not in my class!
JadoJodo 4y ago
One of the comments on the article stated, "What a pleasurable read.". I have no idea if this article was generated using the method described, but this gave me pause in the era of ChatGPT/AI. Can something be pleasurable to read/view/listen to/etc., knowing the author of the work doesn't, for lack of a better term, have a soul? I don't know. Perhaps this drifts too far into philosophy, but I myself find it adds something... more, knowing that a human being put their thoughts/feeling/heart into a piece of work. This is certainly, in part, informed by my theistic beliefs, but I recognize that others (like Sam Harris) wouldn't delineate at all between human thought processes and something like ChatGPT. That being said, I would have to imagine some portion of people also feel something "other" about human connection that brings works of art/literature/music/film/etc. an undeniable beauty BECAUSE of their human-origin.
- coffeefirst 4y ago
  Yes. I keep going back to Stephen King's definition of writing as telepathy. The machine does not think. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it meaningless. I was able to use it to identify an obscure 90s B movie and that's pretty cool. But in terms of actual meaning, you might as well be talking to a tree. There's a long and storied history of humans who talk to trees and project deep meaning on their answers, so we're probably doomed to fall for the delusion anyway.
- qu4z-2 4y ago
  I for one am completely uninterested in AI-generated "art" (including writing, music, etc) because of the lack of a human who is communicating something. I'm concerned it will be increasingly difficult to tell what is worth my while.
- blep_ 4y ago
  To me, what matters most about the media I consume is my personal emotional response to it. Whether a sentence is generated by an AI or a human, it has an equivalent impact on my feelings. -- For me, at least, the important part of media I consume is how I feel about it. If an AI writes a sentence and a human later writes the same sentence, they have the same effect on me. -- To me, what matters most about the media I consume is how it makes me feel. Whether a sentence is written by an AI or a human, it has the same impact on my emotions. -- I wrote one of these. The other two are ChatGPT's rewording of the same idea, and a second rewording with "try to sound as human as possible". They are in an arbitrary order. Does one of them make you feel different than the other?
garrisonj 4y ago
Switching to a system where students watch lectures at home and do homework in class was overdue anyway. I think that’s the real way to stop AI from writing everything.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I don't think college students will like paying for that kind of arrangement. Apply that model to high school and you'll just have teachers desperately trying to cram lessons into the beginning of class, to make up for the fact that 80% of the kids didn't watch the lectures.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  The concept exists already and is known by the term flipped classroom [0]. One well known example is the Khan Academy [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
  - garrisonj 4y ago
    Yeah, there are a lot of positives. It's not just about stopping kids from cheating. It's a better system, in my opinion.
coffeefirst 4y ago
In college I used to help friends fix their essays. We'd go through line by line and examine if the actual words on the page were clear and said what they intended. All of them wound up getting As on the second draft and every essay thereafter. It was just about learning how to look at the problem. We live in a world of emails and slacks and documents and text messaging. Literacy matters. Writing clearly matters. What I would actually do with this is not use GPT to write your essay, but have GPT write a flawed essay and ask the students to rewrite it. Fix the logical fallacies, tighten the language, check the facts, etc.
- jacobr1 4y ago
  > but have GPT write a flawed essay and ask the students to rewrite it. There is also benefit in the opposite - automating your editorial role. Have the student write an ok essay, then rerun in through the AI to clarify, or to raise questions about ambiguity, word choices, general background knowledge assumptions, etc ... In practice I expect both styles will be be used to produce superior human-augmented writing.
linuxftw 4y ago
I started cheating on book reports in the 3rd grade when I realized there's no way the teacher can know about every children's book, and as long as I picked something relatively new and obscure, I'd be safe. In later years, we had to write reports on books everyone read, this strategy broke down. Cliff notes were a thing back then, but mostly I just skipped around through some chapters, talked with other students, and wrote the reports based off very superficial knowledge of the story with a few examples sprinkled in. 10/10 would use this to not have to suffer reading Shakespear or whatever the book du jour is, or whatever other topic I don't care about.
jaredcwhite 4y ago
I think it's irresponsible and unethical to "require" students to use generative AI tools. These tools are highly controversial and pose severe cultural, moral, and increasingly legal dilemmas. It's like requiring students to take certain types of drugs to participate in a class, or learn how to use certain types of firearms. Unless the class is literally "how to take drugs" or "how to use guns" everyone would understandably flip a lid, yet this certainly wasn't a "how to use ChatGPT" class but another topic entirely (entrepreneurship if I'm not mistaken). If I discovered a class I was planning to attend in academia was going to require the use of AI, I would launch a protest immediately. This is a violation of my human rights. If you're OK with using generative AI tools, that's your prerogative, but forcing me to use them is like forcing me to eat food grown with pesticides if I'm a staunch organic foods consumer…or possibly even worse, forcing a vegetarian to eat meat. Way-ay-ay out of line.
- marvel_boy 4y ago
  Not sure if you are joking.
- jcutrell 4y ago
  I understand this clearly is something you feel strongly about, but do you think this is somehow drastically different from using other tools for doing secondary research? As in, using an index tool (like the Dewey decimal system, or Google) to surface previously performed work, so you can then summarize it? There is always a line to draw, why is this the point where you think it is important to draw a line?
  - jaredcwhite 4y ago
    I'd feel the same way about a job that requires the use of generative AI, nothing to do per se with a classroom setting or even education.
    - jcutrell 4y ago
      Well, jobs vs classes are very different. I'd also probably leave a job that gave me arbitrary assignments and tests and made me pay to be there, too, but that's generally fine in a classroom setting.
PeterWhittaker 4y ago
The author teaches entrepreneurism, among other things. Perhaps I am simply jaded, but, if this "becomes a thing" how long before VC investments become mostly robotic, with decks generated by AI, reviewed by AI, recommended by AI, etc? I understand the importance of knowing how AI is being used in one's field, of being aware of it, knowing its limits, and, where applicable, knowing how to detect and counter it, but I'm not sure that simply considering it a tool in one's chest without first having some level of expertise in its limits is wise. (I'm fortunate enough to work in a space where artisanal hand crafting is still the norm. The writing may be on the wall, but the wall is distant yet.)
titzer 4y ago
Replace "Using AI" with "Asking your parents" and behold the breathtaking vacuousness and stupidity of this idea and how little students will actually learn from it. The wasteland that is students' utter lack of skills is troubling. "Prompt engineering" and all that. What utter tripe.
jgmedr 4y ago
I believe the intent behind implementing such a policy is admirable. By teaching students practical use of A.I. tools, their current limitations and biases, and how to refine the prompts and results will be a necessary skill. However, I also find it problematic. > As a result, the projects this semester are much better than previous pre-AI classes. The use of the term "better" is concerning. According the blog, the subject of the class is "innovation". He is essentially praising the A.I. ability to innovate and not his students. If the object of school is to learn, what did his students learn about innovation and how was that measured despite ChatGPT? It reads as if his students learned about using and optimizing a tool and not the subject at hand. The common argument for A.I. is that it will free humans to pursue more interesting and creative activities. The pervasive theme among many of these articles suggests creativity and thought to become a commodity, where the role of the human is to simply intervene and edit. Many architects are beginning to forfeit design to Midjourney, and editing the results. We need to ask ourselves: is authoring or editing more worthwhile?
asow92 4y ago
I love that we're already seeing some professors being intellectually honest about the future of AI. Knowing how to use AI, and knowing its limitations will be a needed skill in years ahead. The analogy I like is that it's sort of like calculators: they were academically shunned at first, and are now an integral part of learning advanced maths. Sorry, Mrs. Kelly, but we did end up having calculators with us always after all.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
A more practical AI skill to teach would be to install face and voice recognition devices in the class and let them spy on one another. Catch those that have uttered disallowed words and punish them.

185 points by alvis 4y ago

tedajax 4y ago

I can't properly formulate why but something about this seems like it'd be my most hated class ever.

elil17 4y ago
He teaches at a business school - probably loved by the people who take the classes but not something that would appeal to anyone else
ihatepython 4y ago
It does sound like a horrible class. I think the issue with AI is that the average person doesn't understand how it works, and the problem is when somebody in a position of power becomes infatuated with it. I don't fear AI, but I fear bad-AI, or misused-AI. Those who understand how it works know that its mostly Garbage In-Garbage Out
- lambdaba 4y ago
  Indeed but it's also gold-in gold-out, something like that... But on a more subtle note because conversational AI has this short feedback loop, much shorter than even regular search, I feel that it's something where people can level up quickly. I think there's going to be great value there.
jmount 4y ago
My guess is, it sounds like a lot of unpleasant empirical tinkering exercises.
samvher 4y ago
Interesting - if you do manage to formulate it I'd be curious to read that. I like how they're taking a proactive approach in trying out what role ChatGPT and the like can play in generation and exploration of knowledge. I like the breakdown of the different ways of interacting with the tool, and the callout of how collaborative editing seems like the best out of the approaches they've witnessed. I also feel somewhat comforted by the remarks about how students engage with the output of the tools critically and fact checking can actually be a valuable way to interact with the material. Personally I think I would enjoy this class - I like the openness to experimentation. I can imagine that _getting graded for it_ could be a frustrating experience though, I think with experimental classes that's a kind of thing for which there tends to be little standardization and it can be unpredictable how you'll be judged.
dandellion 4y ago
You could try chatgpt to help you formulate it properly. I'm not native so I've used it a few times to come up with a first draft. More often than not the result is pretty bad, but it's much easier to work with than a blank page. I remove 2/3 of what was generated and I write the rest myself, then ask the AI to point out spelling or grammatical mistakes. It's a bit tedious, but less so than having to translate or writing in a foreign language by myself.

simonw 4y ago

Something I've been exploring for a while is that tools like ChatGPT are actually deceptively hard to use - or at least hard to use well. This piece explores that idea in quite some depth when it talks about the different approaches to working with ChatGPT to generate an essay. I see a lot of people try ChatGPT once, get disappointing results (maybe they gave it a logic puzzle or asked it to do some math!) and write it off as useless hype. I think that's a mistake.

kenjackson 4y ago

There was a time when people used to come to me create search queries. This was during the Alta Vista era. Constructing queries to find what you’re looking for was a skill. I feel like we’re in that era with AI. I suspect soon this will all feel like a distant memory.

warner25 4y ago
I was just thinking that we're about to have people going around claiming to be "experts in AI" because they know how to use ChatGPT, despite the fact that they can't even produce "hello world" in Python (without asking ChatGPT to do it for them, I guess?). Like some people seem to think that kids these days are all like Steve Wozniak because they grew up with access to an iPad. Anyway, yeah, maybe there is actually some valuable skill required for this? But I agree that skill in operating new technology probably doesn't hold its value for very long.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  Yes, but it does not stop various hype sellers on LinkedIn selling 100 websites to do X, where X is just a custom prompt. I will admit it is tempting to ride the same wave ( I actually have a useful common issue for my industry ).
- lambdaba 4y ago
  What's the upper bound for this particular skill though? I don't see any - there's no limit to how good you can get with designing search vectors for information in latent space...
- simonw 4y ago
  Skill in operating a new technology sounds like a career to me!
- BlueTemplar 4y ago
  Sounds a great way to filter out fake "experts in AI", since real "experts in AI" are not particularly comfortable with the "AI" term to start with ! https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/comment-page-1/#comment-50247 https://acoup.blog/2023/02/17/collections-on-chatgpt/comment...

pixl97 4y ago

AI prompts remind me if making a wish to a genie. The thought going into the input wish drastically effects the output, and we quite often don't get what we expect.

lambdaba 4y ago
I call it "searching for things that don't exist".

VeninVidiaVicii 4y ago

Fascinating. My dad is a professor and over Christmas break I showed him ChatGPT and he became obsessed. So much so, in fact, that he used it to generate a syllabus that prohibits the use of AI-assisted writing! The cognitive dissonance is wild to me, and I think approaching AI as a tool to be embraced is much healthier.

jrockway 4y ago
> The cognitive dissonance is wild to me I guess writing for class has always been about the process and not the result. Nobody has ever wanted to read an essay written by a student. But, the process of writing the essay is useful; collect sources, read them, distill down the important points, join the points with sentences. ChatGPT is all about the end result. Assignments are about the process.
- waynesonfire 4y ago
  sure, then why would chatGPT hinder that process? ChatGPT, will just assemble the words. You can still create a better document working along side chatGPT by critically thinking about the output it's spewing and correcting it. There is probably nuance there but I that chatGPT creating a generation of zombies is over stated. chatGPT is like a calculator used in mathematics.
  - dorchadas 4y ago
    And, as a former secondary math teacher, I would argue that the use of a calculator has absolutely created a generation of zombies who can't do, or understand, basic math. We're talking simple things like multiply, or figure out how many Monsters they can buy for $5, or calculate change. If they can't do basic arithmetic, there's no way they can understand the actual concepts underlying math, or have any type of number sense (and they don't; though, granted, neither do most of their elementary school teachers). It'll be absolutely horrible if they have no idea of how to craft a coherent argument, or deeply think because ChatGPT just spews out something (and who knows if it even gives factual answers; they'll never know to check). Couple this with other issues arising from over reliance and overuse of smart phones and we're setting ourselves, and them, up for a grim future facing serious existential problems (.i. climate change)

isaacfrond 4y ago

Excellent article. I was helping my son with his homework. He had to write an essay about why the gender of the protagonist might be female (although this is never mentioned in the short story). Fortunately for him, ChatGPT knew the story and was happy to write an essay with arguments. [Btw, according to him pretty much everyone in class routinely has the AI do their essays] He was about to send this essay in. But as we were admiring the prose of the computer (which is much better than either of can), we found out that some of the arguments actually didn't make much sense. So we went to through a rewrite exercise like in the article, improving the essay and our understanding of the issues. Next time I see her, I'll urge the teacher to adopt a similar approach as in the article.

kzrdude 4y ago
Is this a situation where it's not cheating to use a chatbot for the output? I understand it becomes nuanced if you edit the output, but still.
- eertami 4y ago
  This is cheating and while it might not be picked up in a high school essay, it will certainly be flagged for plagiarism at almost all Universities. It's very dangerous to do this unless your course specifically asks you to answer using AI tools, like the course in the OP.
  - ghostpepper 4y ago
    When you say "it will be flagged" do you mean that it would be considered cheating under existing academic dishonesty policies? or do you mean that the plagiarism-detection tools currently in use at universities can reliably detect the output of ChatGPT, new Bing, etc. that were only released publicly in the last few months
    - swatcoder 4y ago
      If you're just worried about the pragmatics of being caught, I'd keep in mind that ChatGPT doesn't actually have a very high "dynamic range" given some specific set of inputs. If you use it enough, or explore the same topics and prompts enough, you'll quickly start to see structures, words, phrases, presentations that its output gravitates towards. These may not be enough of a watermark to generally detect what was written by an AI and what wasn't yet, but it does suggest that the proliferation of AI-written assignment essays will quickly produce a catalog of plagiarism sources that works with existing tools. In other words, once people submit enough AI-written essays about popular assignment A, existing plagiarism detection tools will easily start to notice the phrases/sequences/structures that it statistically gravitates towards (because that's what it does by design!) and start detecting these in later work. That software won't know what's AI written or not, but it will think that your submission may be plagiarized because a lot of it looks pretty specifically familiar.

MarbleFangs098 4y ago

Will be interesting to see where the needle lands on the Crutch <-> Tool scale for AI.

swlkr 4y ago

This article is a great intro to prompt engineering. It helped me with my own prompts!

modeless 4y ago

It seems premature to teach the limitations of ChatGPT in a course. Five years from now its capabilities and limitations may be very different. But I guess if you realistically believe that students are going to use it anyway, you have to do something.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Aunche 4y ago

I think that using allowing students to AI to write school essays is like allowing students athletes to use a hoverboard when they're told to run a mile. It's the act of running that's the point, not the end result of running in a circle Likewise, nobody is going to give a damn about your school essays except your teacher. It's the practice of synthesizing information on your own that important.

javier123454321 4y ago
I agree that students using LLMs to do work for them is akin to your example. However, what is described in the article shows thoughtful exercises on engaging the same critical thinking skills you mention, so I see no problem with this approach. Might not want to do that for every assignment, but it seems the author had a pretty skillful approach to developing well rounded students in the context that students will be dealing with outside the classroom.
- 93po 4y ago
  It's engaging critical thinking around the use of AI tools. Which is not a super valuable place to be applying that critical thinking. I feel like this is the equivalent of asking students in the 60s and 70s to learn to use a complicated machine that made punch cards for programming, and to apply critical thinking to the operation of the punch machine. They should be focusing on the the end product itself (writing, or software development in my example) instead of AI tools (punch machines) that will be obsolete very soon.
  - javier123454321 4y ago
    I took it as the focus being on using LLMs to enhance critical thinking (like using calculators in higher math classes). That would be taking the output of these systems and use critical thinking in order to examine the material, feeding it rewrites, as well as using editorial skills to see what goes in the final assignment. I see no problem in that. However, upon rereading the article, it does seem to say that the focus was on using the tool and prompt engineering rather than using it as a tool for extending students' own cognition.

dncornholio 4y ago

Yikes.. In my professional teaching career I always tried to not teach the tools, but the concepts. Tools are things that develop. Students can find the right tools just fine. Teaching how to use ChatGPT is exactly what I would advice against. There's no science behind it, except some knowledge that's based on personal experiments. It doesn't provide much educational progress. I mean, one class for this would be OK. But basing all your classes on a tool?! Not in my class!

JadoJodo 4y ago

One of the comments on the article stated, "What a pleasurable read.". I have no idea if this article was generated using the method described, but this gave me pause in the era of ChatGPT/AI. Can something be pleasurable to read/view/listen to/etc., knowing the author of the work doesn't, for lack of a better term, have a soul? I don't know. Perhaps this drifts too far into philosophy, but I myself find it adds something... more, knowing that a human being put their thoughts/feeling/heart into a piece of work. This is certainly, in part, informed by my theistic beliefs, but I recognize that others (like Sam Harris) wouldn't delineate at all between human thought processes and something like ChatGPT. That being said, I would have to imagine some portion of people also feel something "other" about human connection that brings works of art/literature/music/film/etc. an undeniable beauty BECAUSE of their human-origin.

coffeefirst 4y ago
Yes. I keep going back to Stephen King's definition of writing as telepathy. The machine does not think. That doesn't make it bad, it just makes it meaningless. I was able to use it to identify an obscure 90s B movie and that's pretty cool. But in terms of actual meaning, you might as well be talking to a tree. There's a long and storied history of humans who talk to trees and project deep meaning on their answers, so we're probably doomed to fall for the delusion anyway.
qu4z-2 4y ago
I for one am completely uninterested in AI-generated "art" (including writing, music, etc) because of the lack of a human who is communicating something. I'm concerned it will be increasingly difficult to tell what is worth my while.
blep_ 4y ago
To me, what matters most about the media I consume is my personal emotional response to it. Whether a sentence is generated by an AI or a human, it has an equivalent impact on my feelings. -- For me, at least, the important part of media I consume is how I feel about it. If an AI writes a sentence and a human later writes the same sentence, they have the same effect on me. -- To me, what matters most about the media I consume is how it makes me feel. Whether a sentence is written by an AI or a human, it has the same impact on my emotions. -- I wrote one of these. The other two are ChatGPT's rewording of the same idea, and a second rewording with "try to sound as human as possible". They are in an arbitrary order. Does one of them make you feel different than the other?

garrisonj 4y ago

Switching to a system where students watch lectures at home and do homework in class was overdue anyway. I think that’s the real way to stop AI from writing everything.

yamtaddle 4y ago
I don't think college students will like paying for that kind of arrangement. Apply that model to high school and you'll just have teachers desperately trying to cram lessons into the beginning of class, to make up for the fact that 80% of the kids didn't watch the lectures.
KineticLensman 4y ago
The concept exists already and is known by the term flipped classroom [0]. One well known example is the Khan Academy [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom
- garrisonj 4y ago
  Yeah, there are a lot of positives. It's not just about stopping kids from cheating. It's a better system, in my opinion.

coffeefirst 4y ago

In college I used to help friends fix their essays. We'd go through line by line and examine if the actual words on the page were clear and said what they intended. All of them wound up getting As on the second draft and every essay thereafter. It was just about learning how to look at the problem. We live in a world of emails and slacks and documents and text messaging. Literacy matters. Writing clearly matters. What I would actually do with this is not use GPT to write your essay, but have GPT write a flawed essay and ask the students to rewrite it. Fix the logical fallacies, tighten the language, check the facts, etc.

jacobr1 4y ago
> but have GPT write a flawed essay and ask the students to rewrite it. There is also benefit in the opposite - automating your editorial role. Have the student write an ok essay, then rerun in through the AI to clarify, or to raise questions about ambiguity, word choices, general background knowledge assumptions, etc ... In practice I expect both styles will be be used to produce superior human-augmented writing.

linuxftw 4y ago

I started cheating on book reports in the 3rd grade when I realized there's no way the teacher can know about every children's book, and as long as I picked something relatively new and obscure, I'd be safe. In later years, we had to write reports on books everyone read, this strategy broke down. Cliff notes were a thing back then, but mostly I just skipped around through some chapters, talked with other students, and wrote the reports based off very superficial knowledge of the story with a few examples sprinkled in. 10/10 would use this to not have to suffer reading Shakespear or whatever the book du jour is, or whatever other topic I don't care about.

jaredcwhite 4y ago

I think it's irresponsible and unethical to "require" students to use generative AI tools. These tools are highly controversial and pose severe cultural, moral, and increasingly legal dilemmas. It's like requiring students to take certain types of drugs to participate in a class, or learn how to use certain types of firearms. Unless the class is literally "how to take drugs" or "how to use guns" everyone would understandably flip a lid, yet this certainly wasn't a "how to use ChatGPT" class but another topic entirely (entrepreneurship if I'm not mistaken). If I discovered a class I was planning to attend in academia was going to require the use of AI, I would launch a protest immediately. This is a violation of my human rights. If you're OK with using generative AI tools, that's your prerogative, but forcing me to use them is like forcing me to eat food grown with pesticides if I'm a staunch organic foods consumer…or possibly even worse, forcing a vegetarian to eat meat. Way-ay-ay out of line.

marvel_boy 4y ago
Not sure if you are joking.
jcutrell 4y ago
I understand this clearly is something you feel strongly about, but do you think this is somehow drastically different from using other tools for doing secondary research? As in, using an index tool (like the Dewey decimal system, or Google) to surface previously performed work, so you can then summarize it? There is always a line to draw, why is this the point where you think it is important to draw a line?
- jaredcwhite 4y ago
  I'd feel the same way about a job that requires the use of generative AI, nothing to do per se with a classroom setting or even education.
  - jcutrell 4y ago
    Well, jobs vs classes are very different. I'd also probably leave a job that gave me arbitrary assignments and tests and made me pay to be there, too, but that's generally fine in a classroom setting.

PeterWhittaker 4y ago

The author teaches entrepreneurism, among other things. Perhaps I am simply jaded, but, if this "becomes a thing" how long before VC investments become mostly robotic, with decks generated by AI, reviewed by AI, recommended by AI, etc? I understand the importance of knowing how AI is being used in one's field, of being aware of it, knowing its limits, and, where applicable, knowing how to detect and counter it, but I'm not sure that simply considering it a tool in one's chest without first having some level of expertise in its limits is wise. (I'm fortunate enough to work in a space where artisanal hand crafting is still the norm. The writing may be on the wall, but the wall is distant yet.)

titzer 4y ago

Replace "Using AI" with "Asking your parents" and behold the breathtaking vacuousness and stupidity of this idea and how little students will actually learn from it. The wasteland that is students' utter lack of skills is troubling. "Prompt engineering" and all that. What utter tripe.

jgmedr 4y ago

I believe the intent behind implementing such a policy is admirable. By teaching students practical use of A.I. tools, their current limitations and biases, and how to refine the prompts and results will be a necessary skill. However, I also find it problematic. > As a result, the projects this semester are much better than previous pre-AI classes. The use of the term "better" is concerning. According the blog, the subject of the class is "innovation". He is essentially praising the A.I. ability to innovate and not his students. If the object of school is to learn, what did his students learn about innovation and how was that measured despite ChatGPT? It reads as if his students learned about using and optimizing a tool and not the subject at hand. The common argument for A.I. is that it will free humans to pursue more interesting and creative activities. The pervasive theme among many of these articles suggests creativity and thought to become a commodity, where the role of the human is to simply intervene and edit. Many architects are beginning to forfeit design to Midjourney, and editing the results. We need to ask ourselves: is authoring or editing more worthwhile?

asow92 4y ago

I love that we're already seeing some professors being intellectually honest about the future of AI. Knowing how to use AI, and knowing its limitations will be a needed skill in years ahead. The analogy I like is that it's sort of like calculators: they were academically shunned at first, and are now an integral part of learning advanced maths. Sorry, Mrs. Kelly, but we did end up having calculators with us always after all.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

A more practical AI skill to teach would be to install face and voice recognition devices in the class and let them spy on one another. Catch those that have uttered disallowed words and punish them.