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I recently saw this video about how to use AI to enhance your learning instead of letting it do the work for you.[0] "Get AI to force you to think, ask lots of

by andai 2y ago

I recently saw this video about how to use AI to enhance your learning instead of letting it do the work for you.[0] "Get AI to force you to think, ask lots of questions, and test you." It was based on this advice from Oxford University.[1] I've been wondering how the same ideas could be tailored to programming specifically, which is more "active" than the conceptual learning these prompts focus on. Some of the suggested prompts: > Act as a Socratic tutor and help me understand X. Ask me questions to guide my understanding. > Give me a multi-level explanation of X. First at the level of a child, then a high school student, and then an academic explanation. > Can you explain X using everyday analogies and provide some real life examples? > Create a set of practice questions about X, ranging from basic to advanced. Ask AI to summarize a text in bullet points, but only after you've summarized it yourself. Otherwise you fail to develop that skill (or you start to lose it). --- Notice that most of these increase the amount of work the student has to do! And they increase the energy level from passive (reading) to active (coming up with answers to questions). I've been wondering how the same principles could be integrated into an AI-assisted programming workflow. i.e. advice similar to the above, but specifically tailored for programming, which isn't just about conceptual understanding but also an "activity". Maybe before having AI generate the code for you, the AI could ask you for what you think it should be, and give you feedback on that? That sounds good, but I think in practice the current setup (magical code autocomplete, and now complete auto-programmers) is way too convenient/frictionless, so I'm not sure how a "human-in-the-loop" approach could compete for the average person, who isn't unusually serious about developing or maintaining their own cognitive abilities. Any ideas? --- [0] Oxford Researchers Discovered How to Use AI To Learn Like A Genius https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPLPpz6dD3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPLPpz6dD3A [1] Use of generative AI tools to support learning - Oxford University https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/ai-study https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/academic/guidance/skills/ai-st...

andai 2y ago
I think with programming, the same basic tension exists as with the smarter AI-enhanced approaches to conceptual learning: effectiveness is a function of effort, and the whole reason for the "AI epidemic" is that people are avoiding effort like the plague. So the problem seems to boil down to, how can we convince everyone to go against the basic human (animal?) instinct to take the path of least resistance. So it seems to be less about specific techniques and technologies, and more about a basic approach to life itself? In terms of integrating that approach into your actual work (so you can stay sharp through your career), it's even worse, since doing things the human way doubles the time required (according to Microsoft), and adding little AI-tutor-guided coding challenges to enhance your understanding along the way increases that even further. And in the context of "this feature needs to be done by Tuesday and all my colleagues are working 2-3x faster than me (because they're letting AI do all the work)... you see what I mean! It systemically creates the incentive for everyone to let their cognitive abilities rapidly decline. Edit: Reposted this at top-level, since I think it's more important than the "implementation details" I was responding to.
- miningape 2y ago
  It'll happen when these AI companies start trying to make a profit. Models will become unavailable and those remaining will jack up the prices for the most basic features. From there these proompters will have 2 choices, do I learn how to actually code? or do I pay more for the AI to code for me? Also it stops working well after the project grows too large, from there they'd need an actual understanding to be able to direct the AI - but going back and forth with an AI when the costs are insane isn't going to be feasible.
jiehong 2y ago
That’s great advice! A virtual office hours! The brain is not a muscle, but it behaves like one with abilities you no longer use: it drops them. Like speaking another language you once knew but haven’t used in years, or forgetting theorems in maths that once were familiar, or trying to focus/meditate on a single thing for a long time after spending years on infinite short content. If we don’t think, then it’s harder when we have to. Right now, LLMs tend to be like Google before all the ads and SEO cheating that made things hard to find on the web. Ads have been traded by assertive hallucinations.

by andai 2y ago

andai 2y ago

I think with programming, the same basic tension exists as with the smarter AI-enhanced approaches to conceptual learning: effectiveness is a function of effort, and the whole reason for the "AI epidemic" is that people are avoiding effort like the plague. So the problem seems to boil down to, how can we convince everyone to go against the basic human (animal?) instinct to take the path of least resistance. So it seems to be less about specific techniques and technologies, and more about a basic approach to life itself? In terms of integrating that approach into your actual work (so you can stay sharp through your career), it's even worse, since doing things the human way doubles the time required (according to Microsoft), and adding little AI-tutor-guided coding challenges to enhance your understanding along the way increases that even further. And in the context of "this feature needs to be done by Tuesday and all my colleagues are working 2-3x faster than me (because they're letting AI do all the work)... you see what I mean! It systemically creates the incentive for everyone to let their cognitive abilities rapidly decline. Edit: Reposted this at top-level, since I think it's more important than the "implementation details" I was responding to.

miningape 2y ago
It'll happen when these AI companies start trying to make a profit. Models will become unavailable and those remaining will jack up the prices for the most basic features. From there these proompters will have 2 choices, do I learn how to actually code? or do I pay more for the AI to code for me? Also it stops working well after the project grows too large, from there they'd need an actual understanding to be able to direct the AI - but going back and forth with an AI when the costs are insane isn't going to be feasible.

jiehong 2y ago

That’s great advice! A virtual office hours! The brain is not a muscle, but it behaves like one with abilities you no longer use: it drops them. Like speaking another language you once knew but haven’t used in years, or forgetting theorems in maths that once were familiar, or trying to focus/meditate on a single thing for a long time after spending years on infinite short content. If we don’t think, then it’s harder when we have to. Right now, LLMs tend to be like Google before all the ads and SEO cheating that made things hard to find on the web. Ads have been traded by assertive hallucinations.