halgir (u/halgir) - Readit News

halgir commented on My phone is an ereader now davepagurek.com/blog/mini... · Posted by u/wonger_

numpad0 · 2 days ago

Is this common behavior with other addictive substances? e.g. mixing bitterants trying to weaken own addiction?

wait a minute, from behavioral science perspectives, does it work as intended, or does it work against the aim?

halgir · 2 days ago

Apropos mixing bitterants, it's quite common to apply a bitter nail varnish to help people stop biting their nails. Not an addictive substance, but an addictive behavior.

halgir commented on Teacher AI use is already out of control and it's not ok reddit.com/r/Teachers/com... · Posted by u/jruohonen

tovej · a month ago

How can you ensure that the exercise actually teaches the students anything in this case? Shouldn't you be building the exercise around the kinds of issues that are likely to come up, or that are difficult/interesting?

If you're teaching ethics in high school (which it sounds like you are), how many minutes does it take to write three or four paragraphs, one per case, highlighting different aspects that the student would need to take into account when making ethical decisions? I would estimate five to ten. A random assortment of cases from an LLM is unlikely to support the ethical themes you've talked about in the rest of the class, and the students are therefore also unlikely to be able to apply anything they've learned in class before then.

This may sound harsh, but to me it sounds like you've created a non-didactic, busywork exercise.

halgir · a month ago

> How can you ensure that the exercise actually teaches the students anything in this case?

By participating in the exercise during class. Introducing the cases, facilitating group discussions, and providing academic input when bringing the class back together for a review. I'm not just saying "hey take a look at this or whatever".

> If you're teaching ethics in high school (which it sounds like you are)

Briefly and temporarily. I have no formal pedagogic background. Input appreciated.

> This may sound harsh, but to me it sounds like you've created a non-didactic, busywork exercise.

I may not have elaborated well enough on the context. I'm not creating slop in order to avoid doing work. I'm using the tools available to do more work faster - and sometimes coming across examples or cases that I realized I wouldn't have thought of myself. And, crucially, strictly supervising any and all work that the LLM produces.

If I had infinite time, then I'd happily spend it on meticulously handcrafting materials. But as this thread makes clear, that's a rare luxury in education.

halgir commented on Teacher AI use is already out of control and it's not ok reddit.com/r/Teachers/com... · Posted by u/jruohonen

exe34 · a month ago

No, if you can type in a prompt, just email me the prompt so I know what you intended. I don't need the slop the AI came up with, thank you.

I already feel disrespected in powerpoint presentations where they clearly haven't practiced it for a long time and seem to be discovering the slides and coming up with the argument they want to make on the spot. I usually get up and leave.

halgir · a month ago

There is a middle ground between artisanal powerpoint craftsmanship and AI slop.

halgir commented on Teacher AI use is already out of control and it's not ok reddit.com/r/Teachers/com... · Posted by u/jruohonen

tovej · a month ago

Using LLMs to produce material is not a good idea, except maybe to polish up grammar and phrasing.

As a former teacher, I know you need to have a good grasp of the material you are using in order to help students understand it. The material should also be in a similarly structured form thoughout a course, which will reinforce the expectations of the students, making their mental load lesser. The only way to do this is to prepare the material yourself.

Material created by LLM will have the issues you mentioned, yes, but it will also be less easy to teach, for the reasons mentioned above. In the US, where teaching is already in a terrible state, I wouldn't be surprised if this is accepted quietly, but it will have a long lasting negative impact on learning outcomes.

If we project this forward, a reliance on AI tools might also create a lower expectation of the quality of the material, which will drag the rest of the material down as well. This mirrors the rise of expendable mass produced products when we moved the knowledge needed to produce goods from workers to factory machines.

Commodities are one thing, you could argue that the decrease in quality is offset by volume (I wouldn't, but you could), but for teaching? Not a good idea. At most, let the students know how to use LLMs to look for information, and warn them of hallucinations and not being able to find the sources.

halgir · a month ago

I agree you shouldn't use LLMs to produce material wholesale, but I think it can be positively useful when used thoughtfully.

I recently taught a high school equivalent philosophy class, and wanted to design an exercise for my students to allocate a limited number of organs to recipients that were not directly comparable. I asked an LLM to generate recipient profiles for the students to choose between. First pass, the recipients all needed different organs, which kind of ruined the point of the dilemma! I told it so, and second pass was great.

Even with the extra handholding, the LLM made good materials faster than if I would have designed them manually. But if I had trusted it blindly, the materials would have been useless.

halgir commented on Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine solarshades.club/p/dispat... · Posted by u/notarobot123

california-og · 3 months ago

That's probably what should happen, but it's not what happens in reality. In grading I have to follow a very detailed grading matrix (made by some higher-ups) and the requirements for passing and getting the lowest grade are so incredibly low that it's almost impossible to fail, if the text even somewhat resembles a thesis. The only way I could fail a student, is if they cheated, plagiarised or fabricated stuff.

The person who used the AI slop blog for sources, we asked them to just remove them and resubmit. The person who hallucinated sources is however getting investigated for fabrication. But this is an incredibly long process to go through, which takes away time and energy from actual teaching / research / course prep. Most of the faculty is already overworked and on the verge of burnout (or are recovering post-burnout), so everybody tries to avoid it if they can. Besides, playing a cop is not what anybody wants to do, and its not what teaching should be about, as the original blog post mentioned. IF the University as an institution had some standards and actually valued education, it could be different. But it's not. The University only cares about some imaginary metrics, like international rankings and money. A few years ago they built a multi-million datacenter just for gathering data from everything that happens in the University, so they could make more convincing presentations for the ministry of education — to get more money and to "prove" that the money had a measurable impact. The University is a student-factory (this is a direct quote by a previous principal).

halgir · 3 months ago

That sounds horrible. Thanks for the insight.

halgir commented on Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine solarshades.club/p/dispat... · Posted by u/notarobot123

california-og · 3 months ago

I totally agree. I think the neo-liberal university model is the real culprit. Where I live, Universities get money for each student who graduates. This is up to 100k euros for a new doctorate. This means that the University and its admin want as many students to graduate as possible. The (BA&MA) students also want to graduate in target time: if they do, they get a huge part of their student loans forgiven.

What has AI done? I teach a BA thesis seminar. Last year, when AI wasn't used as much, around 30% of the students failed to turn in their BA thesises. 30% drop-out rate was normal. This year: only 5% dropped out, while the amount of ChatGPT generated text has skyrocketed. I think there is a correlation: ChatGPT helps students write their thesises, so they're not as likely to drop out.

The University and the admins are probably very happy that so many students are graduating. But also, some colleagues are seeing an upside to this: if more graduate, the University gets more money, which means less cuts to teaching budgets, which means that the teachers can actually do their job and improve their courses, for those students who are actually there to learn. But personally, as a teacher, I'm at loss of what to do. Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? Nobody else seems to care. Or should I pass them, let them graduate, and reserve my energy to teach those who are motivated and are willing to engage?

halgir · 3 months ago

> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be?

No, you should fail them for turning in bad theses, just like you would before AI.

halgir commented on Samsung is paying $350M for audio brands B&W, Denon, Marantz and Polk engadget.com/audio/samsun... · Posted by u/thibautg

hsbauauvhabzb · 4 months ago

are you telling me the reason my tv turns on slowly is because it has internet access?

halgir · 4 months ago

Possibly. I have a Samsung TV with all of the associated bloatware. Did a hard reset, never connected to the internet, use it exclusively as a display for my Apple TV. Turns on and off using the Apple TV remote via HDMI-CEC, so I can stow away the bloated Samsung remote. Startup time is now perfectly tolerable.

halgir commented on Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart space.com/astronomy/solar... · Posted by u/spchampion2

StopDisinfo910 · 4 months ago

> I don't understand how this ties into American pride (nor am I American), what did I miss?

Pluto was the only planet discovered by an American and most of the people who are extremely attached to it tend to feel that removing Pluto as a planet is somehow taking something away from the USA.

As far as I know, the topic barely exists at all in other countries.

halgir · 4 months ago

Thanks for explaining, I've never heard about this. In my social circle, nobody would seriously try to argue that it should still count as a "real" planet, but we still refer to Pluto-as-planet in an affectionate, nostalgic way.

halgir commented on Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart space.com/astronomy/solar... · Posted by u/spchampion2

StopDisinfo910 · 4 months ago

> And we know that Pluto is the furthest away planet (sue me)

I don't need to sue you. It's just entirely incorrect by any sane definitions of a planet. It's not the further if you include similar bodies or not a planet. As I have no interest in saving American misplaced pride (because let's not kid ourself it's about anything else), I don't see the point of spreading misinformation.

> Because more people know about Pluto than Eris or Sedna

Only if you were born before it was retrograded which will be less and less likely as time goes on.

> My cosmological knowledge is above average, but I don't know off the top of my head if 700 AU is super-duper far away or still in the range of the gas giants.

I'm not convinced that giving it in multiple of the distance between Pluto and the sun is in any way more useful than distance between the Earth and the sun or that it helps conceptualise the distance relative to the gas giants.

Anyway, Pluto orbit is highly excentric so you have 20AU of wiggle room here when considering distance.

halgir · 4 months ago

I know it's not a planet, hence my sarcastic "sue me". I suppose the self-irony didn't work too well over text. My point was that many people still know about Pluto as a body that's at the edge of many people's everyday conceptualizations of the solar system, and I argue that makes it a more useful tool for helping people intuitively understand the particular distances involved.

> Only if you were born before it was retrograded which will be less and less likely as time goes on.

I admit my age plays into it. Though I am curious about the role Pluto has in modern primary school, do you know? I understand that it now has the same technical status as Eris et al., but I think it's still a fantastic example of how scientific understanding develops and changes. Not on par with discarding heliocentricity, but a very practical example of ongoing changes still present in our own time.

> As I have no interest in saving American misplaced pride (because let's not kid ourself it's about anything else)

I don't understand how this ties into American pride (nor am I American), what did I miss?

halgir commented on Evidence of controversial Planet 9 uncovered in sky surveys taken 23 years apart space.com/astronomy/solar... · Posted by u/spchampion2

StopDisinfo910 · 4 months ago

But then why Pluto rather than Eris which is considerably further than Pluto or Sedna which is even further?

Pluto is a fairly unremarkable dwarf planet. I don’t think it really helps to compare things to it.

halgir · 4 months ago

Because more people know about Pluto than Eris or Sedna. And we know that Pluto is the furthest away planet (sue me). So 15x Pluto is much easier to visualize in context of the entire solar system than 700x Earth. My cosmological knowledge is above average, but I don't know off the top of my head if 700 AU is super-duper far away or still in the range of the gas giants.