Sarah and everyone I apologise for generalizing and possibly trivializing the discussion
What I think I am trying to say is that: - experts like you and other Carpenters are scarce, the majority of learners may not be able to write good code as efficiently as you do nor to be able to tell what is good code, - an analogy with essay writing: students are using AI to write their essay, thus possibly losing their ability to compose text without AI -Since the printing press became a thing, things have been moving fast - but of course we are still learning how to write by hand using pen and paper, as this is part of our cognitive development, How long do you think children will be taught how to write by hand in schools using pen and paper? *i wonder - AI is learning FAST very FAST. I am not a technocrat, but I am reaping the benefits of this advancement. I embrace what I can of it and try to metabolize it critically. Let s not forget that these ai code generators are just first generation. I expect rapid advances - AI can be useful if we can learn from it *can we learn to write good/better code by using as a starting point the poorly formed output of a code generator? can we learn about code generators as well by doing so? - working with AI may require metacognitive abilities *in coding, in essay writing etc which may be even more important to develop acquire than coding skills in themselves - given the above humans need to continue to develop and use their intelligent faculties and learned skill to keep on top of machine It would be awesome to see examples or even a book/manual from the excellent instructors on this list something like: Given a set of prompts in AI code generator get ai generated code Hold Nose analyze it and evaluate it critically write it better yourself Look forward to continued learning Thank you P - On Fri, Mar 28, 2025 at 9:30 PM Sarah Brown <[email protected]> wrote: > Thanks Paola for your perspective on the goal of the conversation. > Understanding that you had a different scope makes your comments make more > sense to me. Since the original message pointed us to the PR, I still feel > that the current message to go into the curriculum is the top priority. > > A problem I am aware of is that because these things move so fast, most > accessible, nontechnical material that people rely on is corporate > marketing materials, which present a very skewed view. > My examples come from: > > - (mostly) scholarly literature in communities like CHI (top venue in > human computer interaction) and FAccT (a top, albeit new, venue on > fairness, Accountability and transparency in computing) among others and my > department's recent talks by CS PhD candidates and post docs during a round > of hiring > - (less) from my second hand experience of seeing undergraduate > computer science students' learning undermined by them using LLMs when they > are novices and then they are completely unable to learn material in later > courses. Even in supervising research students, students' reliance on LLMs > has made my work of code review much more exhausting because LLMs code > style is not great in general and students on their own gave me code I was > much happier with than what they get with LLM help. > - (minimal) first hand experience using and (more) stress testing > LLMs. I have almost compeltely stopped trying to use them for my own > programming work because after a few tries they gave too much code of such > low quality that they slowed me down, I can get my work done faster without > the LLM in most cases. The exception is when I work in a language I do not > know well, they provide the kind of starting point that I used to get from > stack overflow a little faster than digging through sites like that. > > I do not have a link to a specific recording, but Ruha Benjamin, at > princeton, has been giving a talk lately that groups both utopian and > dystopian views of an AI future as technodeterminism, assuming that the > future of how a technology impacts society is predetermined, and calls for > us to challenge that-- to center people and our collective agency to shape > the world we want to live in, rather than assuming that our future world > will be handed to us by tech firms. That is what is most important to me. I > think the Carpentries community is well positioned to empower people > to take this leap, but I am not sure what it looks like to get there. I > hope we can keep having human-first conversations in this community. > > *Sarah M Brown, PhD* > sarahmbrown.org > Assistant Professor of Computer Science > University of Rhode Island > > > > On Sun, Mar 23, 2025 at 6:42 PM Paul Harrison via discuss < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> On Wednesday, March 19, 2025, at 8:38 PM, Toby Hodges wrote: >> >> If we want to cover this, it needs to be in a separate lesson or as an >> almost total rewrite of existing materials IMO. Delving into this in detail >> would be too time consuming during a workshop otherwise, at the cost of all >> the other important things we want to teach people. >> >> >> Hi Toby. That sounds reasonable, I totally agree, what I was talking >> about is beyond the scope of updates to existing lesson material. I also >> agree with Sarah Brown's comments. >> >> This list is for the purpose of general discussion about The Carpentries > including community activities, upcoming events, and announcements. Some > other lists you may also be interested in include discuss-hpc, discuss-r, > and our local groups. Visit https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/ to > learn more. All activity on this and other Carpentries spaces should abide > by The Carpentries Code of Conduct found here: > https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html > *The Carpentries <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest>* / discuss / > see discussions <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + > participants <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> + > delivery options > <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription> Permalink > <https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tc7ad8d3684017cd0-Mf92d81bef41009e956dfd942> > ------------------------------------------ This list is for the purpose of general discussion about The Carpentries including community activities, upcoming events, and announcements. 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