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Dawn Ahukanna (dahukanna@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 23:48:13 JST Dawn Ahukanna

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2025 is my year of communal, autodidactic learning & education. Been thinking, reading, listening, watching, musing & discussing material on this topic for a while. It’s time for #CarefulCactusHugging

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  Dawn Ahukanna (dahukanna@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 23:48:12 JST Dawn Ahukanna
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  Related-“More I work in edu & read history, I’m less convinced it's possible to break free from LLMs.
  At least in USA, incentives to get an education are all wrong. Rarely anyone ever concerns themselves with actually learning. Rather they're just trying to get through process as quickly & efficiently as they can to move on to a job.
  Unless we sort this out & make people actually interested in the learning process, we definitely won't be able to reckon with this tech.
  https://hackers.town/@mav/113564900420941301
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    mav :happy_blob: (@mav@hackers.town)
    
    from mav :happy_blob:
    
    @jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz The more I work in edu, and the more I read history, the less I am convinced it's possible to break free from LLMs. At least here in the US, the incentives for getting an education are all wrong. Rarely does anyone ever concern themselves with actually learning, but rather they're just trying to get through the process as quickly and efficiently as they can so they can move on to a job. Unless we sort this out, and make people actually interested in the learning process, we definitely won't be able to reckon with this tech.
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  Dawn Ahukanna (dahukanna@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 23:48:13 JST Dawn Ahukanna
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  1/7
  Interesting thread on formal teaching, specifically mathematics & students who, by design, are ignorant of the subject/topic. Students are resorting to commercial Large Language Model(LLM) for explanation, self-study & producing content for completing assignments - https://mathstodon.xyz/@jonmsterling/113555911887640230
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    Jon Sterling (@jonmsterling@mathstodon.xyz)
    
    from Jon Sterling
    
    The era of ChatGPT is kind of horrifying for me as an instructor of mathematics... Not because I am worried students will use it to cheat (I don't care! All the worse for them!), but rather because many students may try to use it to *learn*. For example, imagine that I give a proof in lecture and it is just a bit too breezy for a student (or, similarly, they find such a proof in a textbook). They don't understand it, so they ask ChatGPT to reproduce it for them, and they ask followup questions to the LLM as they go. I experimented with this today, on a basic result in elementary number theory, and the results were disastrous... ChatGPT sent me on five different wild goose-chases with subtle and plausible-sounding intermediate claims that were just false. Every time I responded with "Hmm, but I don't think it is true that [XXX]", the LLM responded with something like "You are right to point out this error, thank you. It is indeed not true that [XXX], but nonetheless the overall proof strategy remains valid, because we can [...further gish-gallop containing subtle and plausible-sounding claims that happen to be false]." I know enough to be able to pinpoint these false claims relatively quickly, but my students will probably not. They'll instead see them as valid steps that they can perform in their own proofs.
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  Dawn Ahukanna (dahukanna@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 23:48:13 JST Dawn Ahukanna
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  2/7
  Current “formal teaching” system:
  1. You attend a lecture where syllabus, maybe lecture material and hardly ever the exam questions are shared.
  2. You’re expected to sit, listen & take notes for 30-45 minutes, maybe answer a few questions & rarely ask any.
  3. Content delivery completed.
  
  In conversation about 5 months ago permalink
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  Dawn Ahukanna (dahukanna@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Jan-2025 23:48:13 JST Dawn Ahukanna
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  3/7
  Now, after the lecture, really understanding & creating your individual, applied reference mental model for the topic is up to you, ignorant student, to figure out on your own. Formal tool used are assignments & homework that provide evidence you can “confidently” repeat (parrot) the material, at will, not that you understood or can apply the material. Basically a Human LLM.
  So I’m not surprised that formal students are resorting in droves to LLM to complete assignments and homework.
  
  In conversation about 5 months ago permalink
  
  Rich Felker repeated this.

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