Latest / Azadeh and Guy on AI / From Grammarly to GitHub
Transcript
- 0:01SPEAKER_00: Hi and welcome to Azadeh and Gai on AI.
- 0:04This is episode 11 and today we're talking about Grammarly and
- 0:07the new things that
- 0:08SPEAKER_00: we can see on Grammarly because I'm really excited about that.
- 0:12SPEAKER_02: But before that, let's introduce ourselves.
- 0:15SPEAKER_02: Hello everyone, my name is Azadeh.
- 0:18I'm a PhD student here at UNL and my major is Innovative
- 0:22Learning Technologies.
- 0:24SPEAKER_00: And I'm Guy Training, and I obviously got this wrong.
- 0:26And the second thing that we're going to talk about today is
- 0:30the novice problem,
- 0:32SPEAKER_00: and we're exploring it through a few papers on programming.
- 0:36SPEAKER_00: So let's go to Grammarly.
- 0:37SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 0:38SPEAKER_00: I've been using Grammarly a long time.
- 0:40SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I've been using Grammarly for a year.
- 0:44I think that many people whose first language is not English
- 0:48started using
- 0:49Grammarly because it was a very good way to get the writing
- 0:55assistance that you
- 0:56SPEAKER_00: need.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: while you're writing in your second language.
- 1:00SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of people use it when their first language is English.
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: So I'm not saying this has to be your second language.
- 1:07SPEAKER_00: But I actually found it really useful to pay for it very,
- 1:10SPEAKER_00: very early on because it was helping me.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: And really what it does is reduce a lot of anxiety.
- 1:17SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's interesting.
- 1:18SPEAKER_02: With all of those AI tools that currently exist, it is still popular.
- 1:23SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 1:23SPEAKER_00: They've been able to,
- 1:25SPEAKER_00: I think because they had a large user base,
- 1:29SPEAKER_00: they were able to say,
- 1:30SPEAKER_01: hey,
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: we've got an AI that we've been using on you for a long time.
- 1:34We just didn't tell you it was AI,
- 1:36at least not in the way that we've always done.
- 1:38SPEAKER_00: And that really worked interestingly.
- 1:41SPEAKER_00: And what's new about Grammarly is I opened it about a week ago.
- 1:44SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
- 1:46and it's it opens up automatically and suddenly it looked
- 1:49different and i was
- 1:50wondering if it is different and not just looking different and
- 1:54it definitely is
- 1:55you showed me some of those features if i correctly remember
- 1:58they added features
- 1:59one of the most interesting features was uh they added an
- 2:04option that helps you to
- 2:06SPEAKER_02: look at your text from the perspective of readers that was my favorite
- 2:11SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
- 2:11So really what they've done more conceptually is they've
- 2:15stopped thinking about
- 2:16this as a platform that has certain services and they divided
- 2:21them up into agents
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: that can do different things.
- 2:24SPEAKER_00: So you can activate or deactivate agents.
- 2:27SPEAKER_00: So they've always had the proofreader.
- 2:32SPEAKER_00: Right?
- 2:33SPEAKER_00: And so you can have that.
- 2:35SPEAKER_00: And you can have an expert review and the AI detector.
- 2:40SPEAKER_00: They've had that for a while and the plagiarism check.
- 2:44SPEAKER_00: All of those were there.
- 2:46But now they have a host of other agents that can connect you
- 2:51in multiple ways.
- 2:52SPEAKER_00: And as you said,
- 2:53SPEAKER_00: one of the interesting ones is that ability to ask,
- 2:58SPEAKER_00: what is my audience going to think?
- 3:00SPEAKER_00: So in that one,
- 3:02SPEAKER_00: It's called reader reactions.
- 3:04SPEAKER_00: And if you click on it, you can choose.
- 3:09SPEAKER_00: to see what their reactions might be by different audiences.
- 3:13SPEAKER_00: So you get an outside view of what your writing does and doesn't do,
- 3:18SPEAKER_00: which is a different kind of critique that is usually really hard to get.
- 3:23SPEAKER_00: You can do that on a normal LLM, but not at one press of a button.
- 3:27SPEAKER_02: You actually have to write a prompt and think about it.
- 3:31SPEAKER_02: And is it possible to customize those agents?
- 3:34SPEAKER_02: Yes.
- 3:35It is possible to customize them to a certain degree,
- 3:38and it depends on the agent.
- 3:40So,
- 3:41for example,
- 3:41if you're using the AI detector,
- 3:43there's no customization that I know.
- 3:45SPEAKER_00: No, obviously.
- 3:46SPEAKER_00: But if you want something else, yes, you can customize it.
- 3:51SPEAKER_00: You can give it specific directions about how to go about it.
- 3:57SPEAKER_00: doing these kind of things.
- 3:59And what I love is they've created a whole plethora of agents
- 4:03so you can start
- 4:04SPEAKER_00: thinking about what makes sense to you and what doesn't.
- 4:08SPEAKER_00: For example,
- 4:10there's a Wikipedia agent that can tell you what Wikipedia says
- 4:13about what you're
- 4:14SPEAKER_00: saying.
- 4:14SPEAKER_02: That's interesting.
- 4:16SPEAKER_00: There's a trigonometry agent.
- 4:19SPEAKER_00: I'm pretty sure I'm never going to use that one.
- 4:21SPEAKER_00: Okay.
- 4:23SPEAKER_00: But it's the last one.
- 4:24SPEAKER_00: There's a latex agent.
- 4:26SPEAKER_00: Now, that sounds fantastic for anybody who's battled with latex.
- 4:31SPEAKER_00: That's an add-on for publication,
- 4:33SPEAKER_00: and it's a specific format,
- 4:35SPEAKER_00: and it usually gives me a lot of trouble.
- 4:38SPEAKER_00: So all of these things are fantastic as agents you can add to your...
- 4:43SPEAKER_00: to your workspace through Grammarly.
- 4:46SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited about this.
- 4:48SPEAKER_00: There's another project that I was excited about early on,
- 4:53and that is they promised to build the platform that registers
- 4:57everything you do so
- 4:58SPEAKER_00: you know where it came from.
- 5:00So quick question,
- 5:01are they charging their clients for those added features or...
- 5:05SPEAKER_00: I have no clue.
- 5:07SPEAKER_00: They're not charging extra, but I'm on a paid account.
- 5:09SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 5:10SPEAKER_00: So I'm using my paid account, and that seems to work.
- 5:14SPEAKER_00: I am pretty sure that just like what happened with Claude last night,
- 5:18SPEAKER_00: I mean,
- 5:18SPEAKER_00: I'm still burning about that.
- 5:19SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 5:21and it had told me i was out of tokens and i need to wait till
- 5:242 a.m i was not
- 5:26gonna wait till 2 a.m so i did go to chat gpt claude is usually
- 5:30when i'm writing or
- 5:31trying to figure things out claude is my go-to but obviously
- 5:35last night it was not
- 5:37talking to me and so i'm pretty sure that at one point or
- 5:41another they'll ask for
- 5:43SPEAKER_00: more money and
- 5:45SPEAKER_00: That's the great thing about checking it out right now.
- 5:48SPEAKER_00: You want to check that this is worth paying extra for,
- 5:52whereas my basic Grammarly subscription is worth it for me
- 5:55because I'm using it
- 5:57SPEAKER_00: constantly for punctuation,
- 6:01SPEAKER_00: for checking,
- 6:03SPEAKER_00: for plagiarism,
- 6:04SPEAKER_00: all of those things.
- 6:05SPEAKER_00: It's really nice add-on that at the click of a button,
- 6:08SPEAKER_00: I get some answers,
- 6:10SPEAKER_00: and I can decide what I want and don't want.
- 6:13SPEAKER_00: I do like that they've added a humanizer, for example.
- 6:17SPEAKER_00: So they have four voices that they've created.
- 6:21So you've got the everyday voice,
- 6:23the precisionist,
- 6:24the executive,
- 6:25and the scholar.
- 6:26SPEAKER_00: But you can create a voice.
- 6:28So you can use a prompt to create a voice,
- 6:31and then it rewrites it in that voice.
- 6:34So can you create that new voice using a prompt or should you
- 6:40train grammarly based
- 6:41SPEAKER_02: on the text that you already have?
- 6:43SPEAKER_00: So you create a prompt and...
- 6:48SPEAKER_00: they ask you for a few examples of what that would look like.
- 6:52SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
- 6:52SPEAKER_00: So you can just create a description,
- 6:56SPEAKER_00: but what they're saying is,
- 6:58SPEAKER_00: they're saying paste 200 words or more,
- 7:01so there's robustness enough there that has a style that then
- 7:07they can borrow from.
- 7:08SPEAKER_01: Okay.
- 7:09SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
- 7:11Which is very much what I try to do when I'm writing
- 7:15recommendation letters.
- 7:17SPEAKER_00: Yes, many of them are at least starting with AI.
- 7:21SPEAKER_00: Because AI is better than me at writing these letters.
- 7:24SPEAKER_00: This is something,
- 7:24SPEAKER_00: by the way,
- 7:25I noticed Ethan Oleg wrote about recommendation letters and
- 7:29about the fact that
- 7:29SPEAKER_00: he's trying to write them by hand.
- 7:32SPEAKER_00: Or not by hand, but himself without AI.
- 7:36SPEAKER_00: And he...
- 7:37SPEAKER_00: admitted that he thinks it might even hurt his students.
- 7:40I don't think so because his name,
- 7:42his signature at the end of the page will indicate something.
- 7:46But as somebody who's always struggled to write very good
- 7:50recommendation letters
- 7:51SPEAKER_00: and would agonize for days,
- 7:52SPEAKER_00: the ability to do that quickly,
- 7:55SPEAKER_00: and I'll be honest,
- 7:57it's often better than me at drawing at the main details and
- 8:00connecting the
- 8:01SPEAKER_00: paragraphs and all of that.
- 8:03SPEAKER_00: that I think it's a great tool.
- 8:06I always check it,
- 8:07and I always add to it,
- 8:08and I'm very careful to even direct it.
- 8:10SPEAKER_00: So this is something very similar.
- 8:12SPEAKER_00: And I have a very strong voice.
- 8:14I created a very strong voice inside Cloud for recommendations
- 8:18because I've written
- 8:19SPEAKER_00: over 400 of them.
- 8:20So I could give all of them to Cloud and say,
- 8:22create something similar to this.
- 8:24SPEAKER_00: So there is my voice in there.
- 8:27That is very different,
- 8:28though,
- 8:28from people who are starting to use it before...
- 8:32SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
- 8:46SPEAKER_02: Sounds interesting.
- 8:48SPEAKER_00: All right.
- 8:48SPEAKER_00: Are we off to the novice program?
- 8:51SPEAKER_02: I think so, yeah.
- 8:52So the topic of the second part of this episode is on effects
- 8:57of AI on novice programmers.
- 8:59SPEAKER_02: The first paper that we went through is the widening gap,
- 9:02SPEAKER_02: the benefits and harms of generative AI for novice programmers.
- 9:07SPEAKER_02: The authors come from the U.S.,
- 9:09SPEAKER_02: Finland,
- 9:09SPEAKER_02: and also Ireland,
- 9:10SPEAKER_02: and the paper has been published in 2024.
- 9:12SPEAKER_02: Okay.
- 9:14SPEAKER_02: So this paper tackles a huge question,
- 9:17SPEAKER_02: and they are asking,
- 9:18are tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT helping or hurting
- 9:23students who are just
- 9:25SPEAKER_02: learning to code?
- 9:27So before we talked about the details of this paper,
- 9:31what do you think,
- 9:31Kai,
- 9:32personally?
- 9:34SPEAKER_00: I am really intrigued.
- 9:35SPEAKER_00: This is why we chose this.
- 9:36SPEAKER_00: I'm intrigued by the novice problem.
- 9:38It's very clear to me that people that have some knowledge can
- 9:43really benefit from
- 9:44SPEAKER_00: the use of AI.
- 9:44SPEAKER_00: It accelerates what you can do.
- 9:46SPEAKER_00: It fine-tunes it sometimes.
- 9:49And as I said just before,
- 9:51if you have a lot that you've done,
- 9:52you can create a voice.
- 9:54SPEAKER_00: You can use it in multiple ways.
- 9:55SPEAKER_00: But if you're just entering into a topic, it's going to be really hard.
- 10:00SPEAKER_00: And AI gives you...
- 10:03SPEAKER_00: potentially a false sense of confidence of I can do this or dependence,
- 10:08SPEAKER_00: I can't do this without AI.
- 10:11SPEAKER_00: And so when you're building basic skills,
- 10:14SPEAKER_00: it is a real challenge because AI can do it so much better.
- 10:18It will always be when you're entering any new field,
- 10:21it can do it better than you.
- 10:22Yeah,
- 10:23so their results are also completely aligned with what you just
- 10:27said.
- 10:29SPEAKER_02: Talking about their methodology,
- 10:30SPEAKER_02: and I won't go long,
- 10:31SPEAKER_02: they kind of brought 21 novice programming students into the lab,
- 10:38and they use participant observation interviews and also eye
- 10:42tracking to see how
- 10:42SPEAKER_02: they are doing.
- 10:44SPEAKER_02: So jumping to their findings,
- 10:46SPEAKER_02: for students who were already on the right track and not struggling,
- 10:50SPEAKER_02: the AI tools were like an accelerant.
- 10:52They used them to quick generate code they already understood
- 10:57and intended to write.
- 10:59So they were also better at spotting and ignoring bad
- 11:03suggestions from AI.
- 11:05SPEAKER_02: But it was not the same thing for students who were struggling,
- 11:09SPEAKER_02: because the AI tools often made things worse.
- 11:13And the researchers found that Gen AI can compound the classic
- 11:16difficulties novices have.
- 11:18SPEAKER_02: For example,
- 11:19SPEAKER_02: a student might have a flawed mental model of the problem,
- 11:23SPEAKER_02: and the AI just helps them build on that flawed idea faster.
- 11:29SPEAKER_02: Yeah,
- 11:30and they also said that using AI from that perspective creates
- 11:35a kind of illusion
- 11:36SPEAKER_02: of competence for novice programmers.
- 11:39SPEAKER_02: And I think it's not limited to novice programmers.
- 11:42SPEAKER_02: It could be true about any novices in any other field.
- 11:46Yeah,
- 11:47definitely for me,
- 11:48the reason I use programmers is for really two reasons.
- 11:53SPEAKER_00: One is we have quite a bit of literature.
- 11:56SPEAKER_00: On programmers and what they need.
- 11:59SPEAKER_00: And programming was also and still is one of the best ways to use AI.
- 12:05SPEAKER_00: It's the most accelerating use of AI.
- 12:08SPEAKER_00: It's where people are making the most money.
- 12:10SPEAKER_00: So we know in that area it's helpful to use AI.
- 12:14You know,
- 12:14Google says between a third and half of all of their code is
- 12:18written by AI.
- 12:19SPEAKER_00: Obviously, it's working.
- 12:20Google does not do something that doesn't work,
- 12:22at least not for an extended period of time.
- 12:26SPEAKER_00: So obviously, it's working.
- 12:27SPEAKER_00: But the question is how it's impacting.
- 12:29SPEAKER_00: So it's a way to examine the novice problem.
- 12:32SPEAKER_00: But it's definitely not the only way.
- 12:34SPEAKER_00: And if we go to the second paper, it's got a few advantages.
- 12:38SPEAKER_00: One of the advantages is the sample is a little bit better,
- 12:41SPEAKER_00: but the second,
- 12:42SPEAKER_00: and they're measuring a lot more.
- 12:44SPEAKER_02: 69 young learners with an age range of 10 to 17.
- 12:52SPEAKER_02: So the topic of the paper,
- 12:54actually the title of the paper is Studying the Effect of AI
- 12:57Code Generators on
- 12:58SPEAKER_02: Supporting Novice Learners in Introductory Programming.
- 13:02SPEAKER_02: And the others come from Canada and the US.
- 13:06SPEAKER_02: Let me see.
- 13:07So the question that they are trying to answer was if we give
- 13:11AI code generators
- 13:13like OpenAI's codecs to young novices who have never written
- 13:18text-based code
- 13:19SPEAKER_02: before,
- 13:19SPEAKER_02: what happens?
- 13:20SPEAKER_02: Does it help them learn?
- 13:22SPEAKER_02: Does it make them independent?
- 13:24SPEAKER_02: Or does it hurt their ability to retain information?
- 13:27SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 13:28SPEAKER_02: Their methodology was interesting.
- 13:30SPEAKER_02: They had a kind of multi-phase study.
- 13:34They had an introduction phase,
- 13:36training phase,
- 13:37and also evaluation phase.
- 13:39SPEAKER_02: So they figured out that during the training phase,
- 13:44a group of students who had access to the AI performed
- 13:48significantly better than
- 13:49SPEAKER_02: the group without it.
- 13:51SPEAKER_02: And even during the training,
- 13:54SPEAKER_02: after an AI-assisted authoring task,
- 13:56SPEAKER_02: students had to do a modifying task without the AI.
- 14:00And on those manual tasks,
- 14:02the AI group performed just as well as the group that never had
- 14:06AI.
- 14:08But the most important finding is that the benefit wasn't the
- 14:13same for everyone.
- 14:14The researchers had given all the students a pretest to measure
- 14:19their prior
- 14:20SPEAKER_02: programming knowledge.
- 14:21For students who already had higher programming competency,
- 14:24the AI was a massive benefit.
- 14:27SPEAKER_02: They performed significantly better on the retention test a week later,
- 14:32SPEAKER_02: but it was not the same for students with lower competency levels.
- 14:37SPEAKER_02: The AI helped them get through the training tasks,
- 14:40SPEAKER_02: but did not lead to better long-term retention.
- 14:44And we are talking eventually about long-term retention because
- 14:48if there is no
- 14:49SPEAKER_00: long-term retention,
- 14:50SPEAKER_00: you can still use AI.
- 14:51SPEAKER_00: In a world where AI is everywhere,
- 14:53SPEAKER_00: you can still use AI to do everything,
- 14:55but you're starting from scratch with each problem because
- 14:59there's no learning that
- 15:00SPEAKER_00: generalizes.
- 15:01SPEAKER_00: Now, generalizing learning...
- 15:03SPEAKER_00: is incredibly hard.
- 15:04That's the holy grail of any kind of learning is if I teach you
- 15:09in a literature
- 15:09SPEAKER_00: class,
- 15:10will you be able to read another novel and be able to analyze
- 15:13it and understand it
- 15:14SPEAKER_00: in the same way?
- 15:15SPEAKER_00: That's a hard problem anyway.
- 15:16SPEAKER_00: But what we're saying again is what we call the Matthew effect,
- 15:21SPEAKER_00: and that is the richer getting richer.
- 15:22SPEAKER_00: Yep.
- 15:23SPEAKER_00: And the people at the bottom are not getting as much.
- 15:26SPEAKER_00: They're not being hurt.
- 15:27SPEAKER_00: But by the fact that others are getting richer,
- 15:30SPEAKER_00: it's going to be harder and harder for them to catch up.
- 15:34So that's another manifestation with younger learners of what
- 15:38the differences are.
- 15:39SPEAKER_02: Yep.
- 15:41SPEAKER_00: And do we want to talk about that?
- 15:44The third paper is more specific because they try to understand
- 15:50performance,
- 15:51SPEAKER_02: workload,
- 15:51SPEAKER_02: emotion,
- 15:52SPEAKER_02: and self-efficacy for novice programmers using AI code generation.
- 15:57And they wanted to know what happens when you give a novice
- 16:00programmer GitHub
- 16:02SPEAKER_02: Copilot,
- 16:02SPEAKER_02: but specifically when they are under time pressure.
- 16:05SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 16:06SPEAKER_02: So let me go to their findings.
- 16:10SPEAKER_02: So they had four highlights.
- 16:13SPEAKER_02: Using GitHub Copilot significantly increased programming efficiency.
- 16:18SPEAKER_02: Students simply got more done in the allotted time.
- 16:23SPEAKER_02: which is not kind of surprising.
- 16:25SPEAKER_02: But it also significantly reduced their mental workload and effort.
- 16:31This is a huge deal for preventing burnout in students who are
- 16:34already struggling with coding.
- 16:37And at first,
- 16:39using the AI did not significantly impact their emotion or
- 16:42their self-efficacy.
- 16:45The researchers suggest this is because the students attributed
- 16:48their improved
- 16:49SPEAKER_02: performance performance
- 16:50SPEAKER_02: to the AI, not to themselves.
- 16:52SPEAKER_02: So this part is also interesting for me.
- 16:55People are doing things and are accomplishing things,
- 16:57but they know that it's not them,
- 17:01it's AI.
- 17:02SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and...
- 17:04Having a reasonable growth or no growth in your self-efficacy
- 17:10is really important
- 17:11SPEAKER_00: because if you're starting to have self-efficacy that is irrational,
- 17:14SPEAKER_00: it wasn't you that translated this paper into Chinese.
- 17:18SPEAKER_00: It was the machine.
- 17:19SPEAKER_00: You actually did nothing.
- 17:21Then you don't have to have increased self-efficacy as far as
- 17:26Chinese is concerned.
- 17:27SPEAKER_00: And that's where our brains are very good to lying to us.
- 17:31SPEAKER_00: And it feels like we have competencies we actually don't have.
- 17:36SPEAKER_00: That's why in the first study,
- 17:38SPEAKER_00: when they checked an assignment that wasn't using AI,
- 17:43SPEAKER_00: it's a really important check to see how much transfer.
- 17:46SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
- 17:47SPEAKER_02: Right?
- 17:48happens but again this much like the first study has 17
- 17:53participants so and i wish
- 17:56we would have larger studies that would be able to stabilize
- 17:59for us the results and
- 18:01not rely on these small highly selective samples that somebody
- 18:07in their head in
- 18:07their classroom it always happens when we start research but
- 18:10i'm kind of eager to
- 18:12SPEAKER_00: get to research
- 18:13where we're doing this with samples varied enough and large
- 18:16enough that we can
- 18:16start generalizing the results and not just noting that this is
- 18:20really interesting.
- 18:21SPEAKER_02: Interesting, yes.
- 18:24SPEAKER_02: So that's it.
- 18:25SPEAKER_00: That's it for this episode.
- 18:26SPEAKER_00: So we talked about Grammarly.
- 18:29SPEAKER_02: And also the effect of AI on novice programmers.
- 18:32And the question that we're all left with is,
- 18:35why is Guy talking to Claude before 2 a.m.?
- 18:38SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
- 18:39SPEAKER_00: Go to sleep.
- 18:40SPEAKER_00: Which is what I did.
- 18:43SPEAKER_00: All right.
- 18:43SPEAKER_00: We'll see you next time on Azadeh and Guy.
- 18:45SPEAKER_00: On AI.