I wish we could say the students will figure it out, but I’ve had interns ask for help and then I’ve watched them try to solve problems by repeatedly asking ChatGPT. It’s the scariest thing - “Ok, let’s try to think about this problem for a moment before we - ok, you’re asking ChatGPT to think for a moment. FFS.”
I had a chat w/ my sibling about the future of various careers, and my argument was basically that I wouldn’t recommend CS to new students. There was a huge need for SW engineers a few years ago, so everyone and their dog seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, and the quality of the applicants I’ve had has been absolutely terrible. It used to be that you could land a decent SW job without having much skill (basically a pulse and a basic understanding of scripting), but I think that time has passed.
I absolutely think SW engineering is going to be a great career long-term, I just can’t encourage everyone to do it because the expectations for ability are going to go up as AI gets better. If you’re passionate about it, you’re going to ignore whatever I say anyway, and you’ll succeed. But if my recommendation changes your mind, then you probably aren’t passionate enough about it to succeed in a world where AI can write somewhat passable code and will keep getting (slowly) better.
I’m not worried at all about my job or anyone on my team, I’m worried for the next batch of CS grads who chatGPT’d their way through their degree. “Cs get degrees” isn’t going to land you a job anymore, passion about the subject matter will.
Altering the prompt will certainly give a different output, though. Ok, maybe “think about this problem for a moment” is a weird prompt; I see how it actually doesn’t make much sense.
However, including something along the lines of “think through the problem step-by-step” in the prompt really makes a difference, in my experience. The LLM will then, to a higher degree, include sections of “reasoning”, thereby arriving at an output that’s more correct or of higher quality.
This, to me, seems like a simple precursor to the way a model like the new o1 from OpenAI (partly) works; It “thinks” about the prompt behind the scenes, presenting only the resulting output and a hidden (by default) generated summary of the secret raw “thinking” to the user.
Of course, it’s unnecessary - maybe even stupid - to include nonsense or smalltalk in LLM prompts (unless it has proven to actually enhance the output you want), but since (some) LLMs happen to be lazy by design, telling them what to do (like reasoning) can definitely make a great difference.
I wish we could say the students will figure it out, but I’ve had interns ask for help and then I’ve watched them try to solve problems by repeatedly asking ChatGPT. It’s the scariest thing - “Ok, let’s try to think about this problem for a moment before we - ok, you’re asking ChatGPT to think for a moment. FFS.”
Critical thinking is not being taught anymore.
I had a chat w/ my sibling about the future of various careers, and my argument was basically that I wouldn’t recommend CS to new students. There was a huge need for SW engineers a few years ago, so everyone and their dog seems to be jumping on the bandwagon, and the quality of the applicants I’ve had has been absolutely terrible. It used to be that you could land a decent SW job without having much skill (basically a pulse and a basic understanding of scripting), but I think that time has passed.
I absolutely think SW engineering is going to be a great career long-term, I just can’t encourage everyone to do it because the expectations for ability are going to go up as AI gets better. If you’re passionate about it, you’re going to ignore whatever I say anyway, and you’ll succeed. But if my recommendation changes your mind, then you probably aren’t passionate enough about it to succeed in a world where AI can write somewhat passable code and will keep getting (slowly) better.
I’m not worried at all about my job or anyone on my team, I’m worried for the next batch of CS grads who chatGPT’d their way through their degree. “Cs get degrees” isn’t going to land you a job anymore, passion about the subject matter will.
Altering the prompt will certainly give a different output, though. Ok, maybe “think about this problem for a moment” is a weird prompt; I see how it actually doesn’t make much sense.
However, including something along the lines of “think through the problem step-by-step” in the prompt really makes a difference, in my experience. The LLM will then, to a higher degree, include sections of “reasoning”, thereby arriving at an output that’s more correct or of higher quality.
This, to me, seems like a simple precursor to the way a model like the new o1 from OpenAI (partly) works; It “thinks” about the prompt behind the scenes, presenting only the resulting output and a hidden (by default) generated summary of the secret raw “thinking” to the user.
Of course, it’s unnecessary - maybe even stupid - to include nonsense or smalltalk in LLM prompts (unless it has proven to actually enhance the output you want), but since (some) LLMs happen to be lazy by design, telling them what to do (like reasoning) can definitely make a great difference.