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395 points pseudolus | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.57s | source
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moojacob ◴[] No.43634527[source]
How can I, as a student, avoid hindering my learning with language models?

I use Claude, a lot. I’ll upload the slides and ask questions. I’ve talked to Claude for hours trying to break down a problem. I think I’m learning more. But what I think might not be what’s happening.

In one of my machine learning classes, cheating is a huge issue. People are using LMs to answer multiple choice questions on quizzes that are on the computer. The professors somehow found out students would close their laptops without submitting, go out into the hallway, and use a LM on their phone to answer the questions. I’ve been doing worse in the class and chalked it up to it being grad level, but now I think it’s the cheating.

I would never do cheat like that, but when I’m stuck and use Claude for a hint on the HW am I loosing neurons? The other day I used Claude to check my work on a graded HW question (breaking down a binary packet) and it caught an error. I did it on my own before and developed some intuition but would I have learned more if I submitted that and felt the pain of losing points?

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1. noisy_boy ◴[] No.43642699[source]
I don't think the pain of losing points is a good learning incentive, powerful sure but not effective.

You would learn more if you tell Claude to not give outright answers but generate more problems where you are weak for you to solve. That reduction in errors as you go along will be the positive reinforcement that will work long term.

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2. neves ◴[] No.43644776[source]
I don't know. I remember much more my failures than my successes. There are errors in important tests that I remember for life the correct answer.