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Maybe employers are just believing the hype from companies like OpenAI. The student responses seemed spot on to me. They need to learn the material and how to d

Maybe employers are just believing the hype from companies like OpenAI. The student responses seemed spot on to me. They need to learn the material and how to do their job, not chat with a bot.

nicce 2y ago
They need to learn the material at first. Then, AI is just a tool and you lose if you don’t use it.
- amelius 2y ago
  The nice thing about OpenAI is that they are so open about their technology. They even have programs that teach students how to build their own LLMs so they never become dependent on something they cannot control.
  - jampekka 2y ago
    OpenAI LLMs are some of the least open.
- eqvinox 2y ago
  No, they need to learn the material at first, and then, if it is beneficial for the situation, they need to learn the shortcomings and pitfalls of AI (both generically and specifically to their use case) before using it. You're right in that AI is a tool that might be necessary to use, but just like with a heavy industry machine tool that can chop your arm off if you use it wrong, there need to be operator training requirements.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    Machine tools are deterministic enough: they have interlocks and if you defeat the interlocks or put your hand in a specific space, you're in trouble. Is AI deterministic enough for this approach to safety?
    - eqvinox 2y ago
      No - the interlocks on heavy machinery don't replace training requirements. They only prevent the worst mistakes when an operator has a bad day or momentary lapse. These environments have rules requiring both the machinery to have these interlocks as well as operator training. As a matter of fact, I'd extend this argument the other way around: AI might be deterministic enough per your argument, but that's not an interlock. An interlock for an AI would be some type of interaction limiting that prevents the worst garbage outputs. We already have some "AI interlocks" like that, in the form of censoring it from generating "socially inappropriate" output. Maybe someone can invent further "AI fuses", for example when the AI itself detects it's being asked to do complex math, and it is known that this AI can't in fact do math. (This could work on either input, internal state, or output. Also note most interlocks aren't "perfect".)
danielbln 2y ago
"They need to learn the material and how to do their job, not muck around with computers." "They need to learn the material and to do their job, not search the Internet."
- lm28469 2y ago
  If my school focused on teaching me how to use stackoverflow instead of teaching me how to think and solve problems I'd be in deep shit now. Same thing for AI, it's a crutch at best, not a way of doing things, and especially not something you need to focus on while teaching
  - danielbln 2y ago
    These are not at odds with one another. Schools should be teaching how to research information and which tools to use and how. That can be literary research, Internet research and yes, ultimately if will have to be how to query language model expert system to solve various problems. You can copy and paste a solution from a book/SO/LLM or you can use it to understand, improve, research and solve various tasks.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Ah, yes, what a good idea, classes in how to search the internet. If I’d had those when I was in school, I would now be an expert user of AskJeeves. What a missed opportunity.
  - danielbln 2y ago
    There is no need to be snide and dismissive. It is absolutely necessary to learn how to find, disseminate and evaluate information. If the tool of choice is a book index,AskJeeves, Google or ChatGPT - all of these require specific knowledge to get the most out of them. Where do you acquire that knowledge?
    - pjc50 2y ago
      From the tool itself? Especially when the tools are so liable to change at zero notice. It's not the responsibility of the public education system to do product training for megacorps. (People who disagree with this: let's see your syllabus for AI 101 with the guarantee that all its contents will still be valid in 5 years time?)
pjc50 2y ago
There's a long history of schools teaching hyper-specific skills, like how to use a particular version of Word. Then the technology changes. Does anybody think that the state of AI is sufficiently stable that things taught to high school students will be valid by the time they enter the workforce? Is there even anything generalizable to teach? The big pitch for AI is that it's supposed to be able to understand natural language. Then there's a long tail of specific hacks that you insert into prompts to get particular results. Any of which could change tomorrow. It's like teaching SEO in school.
- danielbln 2y ago
  The generalizable part is to not just trust blindly any information you come across, but to cross reference, disseminate, validate and evaluate. Students shouldn't be learning how to specifically use ChatGPT, but they should absolutely learn why auto regressive transformer expert systems will confidently lie, and how to avoid pitfalls while making use of the things that LLMs are actually good at. In the same way how we learned that Wikipedia alone is probably not a great source to rely on.
Balgair 2y ago
So, I was just talking about this with a boss in another division (we're in biotech). They said that using the AI tools developed internally were, in about 2 years, going to be mandatory. Now, they are in the customer facing documentation part of the business. Think manuals for all the myriad products we make, in all the many languages, and all the many regulatory systems. The job is exacting, precise, and must make sense to readers at the end of the day. Many manuals go through countless revisions and take months to release under all the requirements. Large parts of the job are pretty boring and automatable though. So, they've been aggressively perusing AI tools for large parts of the boilerplate work and the formatting work. It turns out, that most of the hard parts of the job, the xml formatting and translation, are very easy to automate with AI. As in, what usually took them months of manual editing to preform now takes them seconds, with a day or two of spot checking the language. Regulatory requirements review still take just as long. Here is where all the nerds here on HN can't believe that you're not using LaTeX or something.'How could it have taken them months?!' They're all English majors above 50 years old. They have never coded anything in their lives. All this work was previously being done in MS Word. They at least had some sort of central file repo beforehand, but now they all use git and managed to stand up their own servers. I'm sure all of this is being done poorly, but it's being done in the first place. The alternative was much worse. It's not just that the AI is managing to help them make xml skeletons in the blink of an eye, it's that AI told them and taught them about xml at all. It taught them about git too, and I'm sure a lot of other things they never knew about. AI is a really patient teacher. So, the thing is that there is a lot of internal pushback against AI. From what I was told, there is about half the team that refuses to touch AI. Thinks it's the devil, that they can always do it better, do it faster, etc. So far, the company line is that they are right and that you can elect to use AI or not. But that boss I was talking to said that the internal vibe of the higherups is that in about 2 years, you're going to be forced to use it or let go. Their internal numbers (no idea what those are, this is all third-hand info now, believe me if you want) are pointing out that using AI has just so much better results that it's going to be a job requirement going forward. So, as one piece of anecdata, doing at least a few jobs is going to be, very soon, chatting with a bot too.
- Quothling 2y ago
  I think the astonishing part is that you have "skilled labour" doing data formatting in 2024. These things have been a pretty stable part of digitalisation and automation since the rise of new public management. Don't get me wrong, we still have people who copy paste data from web pages, pdf documents and so on into Excel sheets or web forms. Those are unpaid student workers though, anything that would require a paid worker doing months of work has been automated by various means. From internal software to no-code to RPA. I think the main difference is that AI makes it more accessible. Even with previous no-code or RPA solutions, you'd frankly need a programmer to build and maintain them despite what promises the salespeople might've told you. AI changes that, at least in my experience. A lot of our automated processes are now being made by our more digitally inclined workers, and I think you're absolutely spot on that it'll be something that is required of anyone going forward. Most of these are minor things, and if they need to scale to company wide tools they're probably still going to need an actual programmer, but a lot of them are good enough to be shared within departments. Of course people feeding sensitive data into LLM solutions is an issue we also have to deal with.

Maybe employers are just believing the hype from companies like OpenAI. The student responses seemed spot on to me. They need to learn the material and how to do their job, not chat with a bot.

nicce 2y ago

They need to learn the material at first. Then, AI is just a tool and you lose if you don’t use it.

amelius 2y ago
The nice thing about OpenAI is that they are so open about their technology. They even have programs that teach students how to build their own LLMs so they never become dependent on something they cannot control.
- jampekka 2y ago
  OpenAI LLMs are some of the least open.
eqvinox 2y ago
No, they need to learn the material at first, and then, if it is beneficial for the situation, they need to learn the shortcomings and pitfalls of AI (both generically and specifically to their use case) before using it. You're right in that AI is a tool that might be necessary to use, but just like with a heavy industry machine tool that can chop your arm off if you use it wrong, there need to be operator training requirements.
- pjc50 2y ago
  Machine tools are deterministic enough: they have interlocks and if you defeat the interlocks or put your hand in a specific space, you're in trouble. Is AI deterministic enough for this approach to safety?
  - eqvinox 2y ago
    No - the interlocks on heavy machinery don't replace training requirements. They only prevent the worst mistakes when an operator has a bad day or momentary lapse. These environments have rules requiring both the machinery to have these interlocks as well as operator training. As a matter of fact, I'd extend this argument the other way around: AI might be deterministic enough per your argument, but that's not an interlock. An interlock for an AI would be some type of interaction limiting that prevents the worst garbage outputs. We already have some "AI interlocks" like that, in the form of censoring it from generating "socially inappropriate" output. Maybe someone can invent further "AI fuses", for example when the AI itself detects it's being asked to do complex math, and it is known that this AI can't in fact do math. (This could work on either input, internal state, or output. Also note most interlocks aren't "perfect".)

danielbln 2y ago

"They need to learn the material and how to do their job, not muck around with computers." "They need to learn the material and to do their job, not search the Internet."

lm28469 2y ago
If my school focused on teaching me how to use stackoverflow instead of teaching me how to think and solve problems I'd be in deep shit now. Same thing for AI, it's a crutch at best, not a way of doing things, and especially not something you need to focus on while teaching
- danielbln 2y ago
  These are not at odds with one another. Schools should be teaching how to research information and which tools to use and how. That can be literary research, Internet research and yes, ultimately if will have to be how to query language model expert system to solve various problems. You can copy and paste a solution from a book/SO/LLM or you can use it to understand, improve, research and solve various tasks.
rsynnott 2y ago
Ah, yes, what a good idea, classes in how to search the internet. If I’d had those when I was in school, I would now be an expert user of AskJeeves. What a missed opportunity.
- danielbln 2y ago
  There is no need to be snide and dismissive. It is absolutely necessary to learn how to find, disseminate and evaluate information. If the tool of choice is a book index,AskJeeves, Google or ChatGPT - all of these require specific knowledge to get the most out of them. Where do you acquire that knowledge?
  - pjc50 2y ago
    From the tool itself? Especially when the tools are so liable to change at zero notice. It's not the responsibility of the public education system to do product training for megacorps. (People who disagree with this: let's see your syllabus for AI 101 with the guarantee that all its contents will still be valid in 5 years time?)

pjc50 2y ago

There's a long history of schools teaching hyper-specific skills, like how to use a particular version of Word. Then the technology changes. Does anybody think that the state of AI is sufficiently stable that things taught to high school students will be valid by the time they enter the workforce? Is there even anything generalizable to teach? The big pitch for AI is that it's supposed to be able to understand natural language. Then there's a long tail of specific hacks that you insert into prompts to get particular results. Any of which could change tomorrow. It's like teaching SEO in school.

danielbln 2y ago
The generalizable part is to not just trust blindly any information you come across, but to cross reference, disseminate, validate and evaluate. Students shouldn't be learning how to specifically use ChatGPT, but they should absolutely learn why auto regressive transformer expert systems will confidently lie, and how to avoid pitfalls while making use of the things that LLMs are actually good at. In the same way how we learned that Wikipedia alone is probably not a great source to rely on.

Balgair 2y ago

So, I was just talking about this with a boss in another division (we're in biotech). They said that using the AI tools developed internally were, in about 2 years, going to be mandatory. Now, they are in the customer facing documentation part of the business. Think manuals for all the myriad products we make, in all the many languages, and all the many regulatory systems. The job is exacting, precise, and must make sense to readers at the end of the day. Many manuals go through countless revisions and take months to release under all the requirements. Large parts of the job are pretty boring and automatable though. So, they've been aggressively perusing AI tools for large parts of the boilerplate work and the formatting work. It turns out, that most of the hard parts of the job, the xml formatting and translation, are very easy to automate with AI. As in, what usually took them months of manual editing to preform now takes them seconds, with a day or two of spot checking the language. Regulatory requirements review still take just as long. Here is where all the nerds here on HN can't believe that you're not using LaTeX or something.'How could it have taken them months?!' They're all English majors above 50 years old. They have never coded anything in their lives. All this work was previously being done in MS Word. They at least had some sort of central file repo beforehand, but now they all use git and managed to stand up their own servers. I'm sure all of this is being done poorly, but it's being done in the first place. The alternative was much worse. It's not just that the AI is managing to help them make xml skeletons in the blink of an eye, it's that AI told them and taught them about xml at all. It taught them about git too, and I'm sure a lot of other things they never knew about. AI is a really patient teacher. So, the thing is that there is a lot of internal pushback against AI. From what I was told, there is about half the team that refuses to touch AI. Thinks it's the devil, that they can always do it better, do it faster, etc. So far, the company line is that they are right and that you can elect to use AI or not. But that boss I was talking to said that the internal vibe of the higherups is that in about 2 years, you're going to be forced to use it or let go. Their internal numbers (no idea what those are, this is all third-hand info now, believe me if you want) are pointing out that using AI has just so much better results that it's going to be a job requirement going forward. So, as one piece of anecdata, doing at least a few jobs is going to be, very soon, chatting with a bot too.

Quothling 2y ago
I think the astonishing part is that you have "skilled labour" doing data formatting in 2024. These things have been a pretty stable part of digitalisation and automation since the rise of new public management. Don't get me wrong, we still have people who copy paste data from web pages, pdf documents and so on into Excel sheets or web forms. Those are unpaid student workers though, anything that would require a paid worker doing months of work has been automated by various means. From internal software to no-code to RPA. I think the main difference is that AI makes it more accessible. Even with previous no-code or RPA solutions, you'd frankly need a programmer to build and maintain them despite what promises the salespeople might've told you. AI changes that, at least in my experience. A lot of our automated processes are now being made by our more digitally inclined workers, and I think you're absolutely spot on that it'll be something that is required of anyone going forward. Most of these are minor things, and if they need to scale to company wide tools they're probably still going to need an actual programmer, but a lot of them are good enough to be shared within departments. Of course people feeding sensitive data into LLM solutions is an issue we also have to deal with.