Comment by JumpCrisscross
6 hours ago
> a Junior (in ANY subject) has the ability to LEARN so much faster with an AI research assistant
I’m not seeing this. And based on what we’re seeing at the university level, I’m not expecting to.
6 hours ago
> a Junior (in ANY subject) has the ability to LEARN so much faster with an AI research assistant
I’m not seeing this. And based on what we’re seeing at the university level, I’m not expecting to.
I think the key word is ability, and I fully agree with that. Using GenAI as a teaching aid can supercharge learning, especially as it makes it very easy to learn by doing. The problem is that people use GenAI to do and hence don't learn.
(The preliminary research so far supports this: using AI to do the hard assignments produces poor learning outcomes, but using AI as a tutor, or even just for help with the hard assignments, produces slightly better learning outcomes.)
I think what you're seeing is the effect of the incentives of the system. The system uses simplistic numbers like grades as proxies for actual learning, and these grades heavily influence students' job prospects, and so you're simply seeing Goodhart's Law in action. Given how easy current methods of skill assessment are to game with AI, my guess is the entire system has to be overhauled.
> using AI as a tutor, or even just for help with the hard assignments, produces slightly better learning outcomes
Source? The few people I’ve seen try to do this wind up with a terrible understanding of the material, with large knowledge gaps and one or two fundamental fuckups. In every case, an introductory textbook would have been better. (It would also have been harder.)
Yes, I agree, the skills are orthogonal. Digital typesetting is vastly quicker than manually putting down metal type, and since you’re exposed to more type you have the opportunity to learn faster. But getting good at typography with digital tools will help you very little if you need to lay out type manually.
> getting good at typography with digital tools will help you very little if you need to lay out type manually
The analogy is unlimited typing in Gmail won’t make you a better writer or typesetter on its own.
I wonder how much of this is due to poor incentives at the university level?
I've seen this work well at a job when there's a feedback loop for juniors that incentivized them to learn with more scope and compensation
How did that business evaluate that the juniors were actually mastering concepts they had not known before?