Comment by majeedkazemi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by majeedkazemi | Hacker News Reader

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LLMs are tools. They're not everything. Yes, they can't sympathize or empathize. But if they can help a student to be more productive and learn at the same time, then I'm all in for designing them properly to be used in such educational contexts... "as an additional tool."

We need both humans and AI. But there are problems with both, so that's why they can hopefully complement each other. Humans might have limited patience, availability, etc. and AI lacks empathy, and can be over-confident.

> Why are we doing this to academia when the better approach would be giving TAs better training in actual teaching?

Sure, that is a fantastic idea and some researchers have explored it.

But, what's wrong with doing exploratory research, in a real-world deployment? In the paper we describe both where CodeAid failed and where students and educators found it useful, in a very honest way.

> We need both humans and AI.

Genuine question: Why do we need both humans and AI? What's the evidence base for this statement?

I feel this is another thing that proponents state as if it's unchallengeable fact, an all-progress-is-good thing.

I question this assertion. People have become all too comfortable with it.

(Personal opinion: I don't think teaching needs AI at all, and if it does, a traditional simple expert system with crafted answers would still be better. I think there's a staggering range of opportunities for improving teaching materials that don't involve LLMs, and they are all being ignored because of where the hot money goes.)

I think my stance is pretty clear about "utilizing" AI in educational settings. We absolutely don't need AI the same way we need air to breathe. But AI could potentially provide some solutions (and create new problems or have adverse effects as well), so why not explore it properly to find out where it works and where it doesn't?

The statement is a false statement to begin with. We don't have AI yet. Maybe when we have software that is truly intelligent, we can let it teach us. Until then I see this more as a buggy interactive textbook and agree with the author's description of it as a tool and disagree with the idea of it as a teacher.

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