Sarah and all just one more quick sunday morning reflection from me, following my last post
Based on what I am experiencing humans must figure out how to learn faster than machines to maintain some level of control and understanding over what is going on I am finding it quite challenging, while trying to hang onto my own mental faculties Great weekend all :-) On Sat, Mar 29, 2025 at 11:38 AM Paola Di Maio <[email protected]> wrote: > 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. 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