00:00:00I think AI and especially how students use AI is very telling of those motivations.
00:00:03You know, there are some students who are using it to complete work for them, you know, to do it on
00:00:08their behalf. And there are some students who, you know, are staying away from AI or using it
00:00:12proactively. They're using it in ways that reinforce their learning. It's our responsibility
00:00:16now as students to, you know, use this tool to, you know, achieve your own individual outcomes.
00:00:22Everyone is talking about how AI is changing education, but we figured what better way to
00:00:27learn about these changes than by asking actual students. My name is Greg, I'm from Anthropic,
00:00:32and today I'm joined by four university students who are here to give us the inside scoop. So why
00:00:37don't you all introduce yourselves? Hey, my name is Zain. I'm a final year student at the London
00:00:41School of Economics and I study Accounting and Finance. Hi, my name is Chloe. I'm a junior at
00:00:47Princeton studying Psychology and Computer Science. Hi, I'm Marcus. I'm a senior at UC Berkeley studying
00:00:52Econ and Data Science. I'm Tino. I'm a second year grad student at the Thunderbird School of Global
00:00:58Management at Arizona State University and I'm studying a master's in Digital Transformation.
00:01:03Amazing. Thank you for being here. Thank you. So let's start by setting the scene. What are the
00:01:08vibes like on campus these days with AI? How are people thinking about it? Yeah, so I did a survey
00:01:15not too long ago on how students are using AI and I saw that, you know, 90% of students are using AI
00:01:22in their day-to-day workflows, using it to summarize lectures, using it to answer problem sets
00:01:27to help give feedback on assignments that they had written. And so really a diverse sort of a use
00:01:34case for AI within students. It's having an impact. Universities are having to manage that. We're
00:01:40seeing changes in rules and regulations. We're seeing, you know, some courses ban it, other courses
00:01:45encourage it. And so students are in a bit of a gray zone right now where they may not know how to use AI.
00:01:52Yeah, I also concur. There is a lot of chaos in understanding AI and what role it will play in
00:01:58universities, but at the same time there's a lot of energy surrounding it, especially being at Berkeley
00:02:04and being so close to AI hype in the Bay Area. I also agree that like over 90%, if not basically
00:02:12everyone, uses AI in some way or form, mostly in the form of chatbots. Yeah, like summarizing
00:02:20lectures, doing assignments, answering questions where or when teachers, TAs, like can't answer them
00:02:28for you. I will say there is also a lot of confusion on like administrations or like a professor's end on
00:02:36how AI can play a role in the classroom. I mean we're slowly seeing some changes around that.
00:02:43As business students I see even myself and my colleagues like we use AI for a lot of different things.
00:02:50We use AI to understand and analyze business cases, do market research, just come up with financial
00:02:58research as well. So people use that for that as well. People also use AI as well to complete
00:03:05quizzes, you know, like when you don't have time because when you're a grad student sometimes you've
00:03:09got multiple jobs that you're working and you don't always have time. So sometimes you can see
00:03:15someone who just, you know, quickly submit answers and everything. So that's the bad side of it that
00:03:20when you're in grad school, you know, it's supposed to be like a time for you to expand
00:03:25your critical thinking. A time for you to be someone who is like more decisive, someone who has like
00:03:32substance in how you make decisions. And so that's I think that's the bad side of it. Yeah, I would say
00:03:38definitely the vibes are like really chaotic right now. Both I guess in a good and bad way. I think the
00:03:43good obviously like Zain said there's a lot of exploration and cool projects and stuff popping up.
00:03:48The bad is because everything is such a gray area it can be very difficult to stay resilient and hold
00:03:54yourself accountable. It's very easy to just be like I'm just going to give up and feed this all to AI
00:03:59and not do any of the thinking. I've noticed that there's a lot of tension as well between I guess
00:04:04like the line of how much is over relying on AI or how much is it good to actually have like an
00:04:09actual cooperation between those two. And I have also noticed that some people are really into it.
00:04:15So they use it a lot in terms of like all of their different workflows while others like my humanities
00:04:19and maybe some social science friends are a bit more hesitant and have a bit more concern. So there seems
00:04:25to be a growing like identity polarization effect that I think is will be really interesting to see
00:04:30how it goes. I'm curious you say that they're hesitant are they hesitant but still using it
00:04:37pretty regularly or is it a mix of some are using it a lot some are not using it at all? Yeah great
00:04:41question. I think there's a spectrum. A lot of especially like the pure humanities students have
00:04:46just completely opted out. I think because often in their classes and research there's a lot more of
00:04:51just close reading. While other I think like for social science I have noticed a slow trend where
00:04:57they're trying it out more and just seeing AI being applied beyond just like pure computational
00:05:02or like machine learning like context which has been cool. In a lot of computer science and also
00:05:08like other engineering classes it's still kind of a taboo to use AI. I mean in application these days
00:05:16we're using a lot of like AI coding assistance to build actual projects outside the classroom but in
00:05:22the classroom we're still using like vs code and blocking out these AI features because professors
00:05:29at least at the moment are still kind of discouraging it but we might see a shift
00:05:32in the next few years. I mean I know Stanford is beginning to have a course about learning to use
00:05:39AI tools in like software development and engineering. I think that's the number one
00:05:47I guess breakthrough with these AI tools is that the accessibility and barrier into building
00:05:53something like a project or software in general has gone down a lot especially with a lot of courses
00:05:59like with like Claude and like the developer docs for example it's been really helpful in teaching
00:06:05folks who don't come from like computer science background like in political science or in like
00:06:10psychology or even something like math be able to build their own projects on the side from like
00:06:19ideation to like a working prototype that's on a website or some kind of app deployment within
00:06:26the span of like a few days. Yeah I've seen that a lot at my university where students who you know
00:06:33don't typically have the confidence to go and build with you know raw code have now you know started
00:06:40using the terminal for example which is which is incredible to see and you know Claude code for
00:06:45example makes that so much more accessible so much friendlier which I think has been one of like the
00:06:51most crazy changes so far like myself even I don't have a computer science background but I'm
00:06:57comfortable in the terminal now which is crazy and I've seen it within societies as well so we have a
00:07:03number of societies at LSE and they each have like an Instagram page pretty basic easy to put together
00:07:10but now we're seeing societies have websites and these websites have a load more information
00:07:15and they're building them with Claude code because it's just so much easier now. So it seems like the
00:07:19AI transformation for students has already happened and we have mixed feelings about it. One thing that
00:07:25you all share is that you all are Claude campus ambassadors and you are each leading a student
00:07:30organization called the Claude Builder Club on your campus. So first of all maybe can one of you like
00:07:35give a quick summary of what it means to be a Claude campus ambassador and then the club that you're
00:07:40leading? Yeah I mean as Claude campus ambassadors our number one job slash role is to be the point of
00:07:50contact of engagement between what Infropic and Claude is offering and between that and students
00:07:57basically being a facilitator for that on campuses. Cool and since it's a club about builders what
00:08:05are people building? What are you seeing happen at your clubs? A lot of cool things have been built.
00:08:09I'll reference an example from a recent vibe-a-thon I did. I think a lot of the most fun ideas is not
00:08:14the most technically savvy ones but the ones that really start with human emotion. So one that was
00:08:19really cool was there's called the Princeton Prospect there's like kind of a bucket list of
00:08:24people that things people would like to do before they graduate and kind of gamifying that through
00:08:29a leaderboard and the best part of it actually was the winning team they were just a bunch of freshmen
00:08:35and they were all roommates so they just came into this for fun and with that human insight we're able
00:08:40to build out something that resonated with everyone and that was something really cool that I enjoyed
00:08:44seeing them build. I think one cool tool that my friend and I built was this place where you could
00:08:51basically put in your lecture slides and it gives you sort of like professor annotations down the
00:08:55side of each slide so it's it's so cool I've been using it so much for you know just revising through
00:09:00content in preparation for end of term exams and it's so good because it kind of preempts my
00:09:07questions and so I've prompted it such that it knows that I want to know the definitions of certain
00:09:12things on the slides. The slides can sometimes be a bit abstract and missing context so adding
00:09:16in the context on the side. Did you get a good grade in the class? I don't know we'll see.
00:09:20I think one one of my favorite things that someone has built with AI is this it's an app called
00:09:30course here and we have this challenge where like the most like amazing fun classes like when it's
00:09:36time to register for classes they just run out so quickly and you can like wait weeks and weeks to
00:09:42get like a seat in that class so um what they did is they built this AI and you can like just input
00:09:48the course that you want and then it's gonna alert you the moment a seat is open in that class so you
00:09:54can register for it. Oh we get that at our school. Instead of you like going back and checking every
00:09:58day class search. You get a notification that you jump on. Jump on and you get a seat yeah.
00:10:03I love that your next project idea. No exactly it's actually funny we have we have like a shortage of
00:10:10seats at university at my university. I'm talking about like actual seats like in the library for
00:10:15example um and so again my friend built this amazing tool that basically scans um all of all
00:10:21of the data that you can get the data on you know which classrooms are free and so it basically
00:10:26points all the free classrooms and tells you you know if there are no seats in the library then go
00:10:30to these ones and again like non-technical student building this which is insane unheard of but you
00:10:34know this is these are the possibilities. I've seen in the past few um hackathons or entrepreneurship
00:10:43classes where a lot of students have been looking into like health care use cases mixing computer
00:10:50vision with a cloud API to interpret a person's like emotions for like a mental health use case
00:10:59um like signs of stroke via like a camera on like someone's phone or like a separate like medical
00:11:05device or even signs of like dementia for example and all of them has been really interesting. It's
00:11:14so cool that people are spending their time doing that in school because that is kind of the magic
00:11:17of being a student is you do have time to just work on ideas and try new things and come up with
00:11:22projects that are just for fun they're just a side project absolutely yeah cool. So let's talk about
00:11:28learning with AI. I think one of the more tricky parts of this is that you know AI can be a tool
00:11:35to help you learn about anything you want to learn but it can also be used as a crutch to maybe
00:11:40prevent learning if you lean on it so I'm curious how you each personally balance that and how you
00:11:46see students balancing it and if you see students at your university balancing well. I think initially
00:11:52what we noticed was that even like amongst all classmates at first it was just like whatever
00:11:57the AI gives you that's what you put and then it's over time attitudes have started to change
00:12:03for like let's just put a little more effort and not even just let's just put effort in what we're
00:12:08putting together because let's say you have a group project and they're like four or five people on
00:12:12that group project everyone gets a different part and if everyone just does the first thing that AI
00:12:17gives them that's not going to produce a very good project at all. I think one thing about AI and
00:12:22education is that it's very telling of students motivations like why you're at university. I think
00:12:28students you know you can typically group three objectives for university. The first I would say
00:12:34is to learn to you know to deepen your understanding in your chosen topic. I would say a second
00:12:39objective is to you know position yourself for a career you know get a good job and I think the
00:12:45third is the social element of university where students are coming to to network to have fun
00:12:49enjoy themselves. I think like those are the three broad objectives for students and every student
00:12:55waits those differently like some students prefer you know they're coming to learn and they don't
00:12:59really care about the social aspect of uni and there are other students who you know they're
00:13:03coming because they want to get a good job and they want to enjoy university and they don't really care
00:13:07about the learning really and I think AI and especially how students use AI is very telling of
00:13:12those motivations. You know there are some students who are using it to complete work for them you know
00:13:17to do it on their behalf and those are typically the students who want to save time and want to
00:13:22you know put their efforts and motivations towards other things which is fine and there are some
00:13:26students who you know are staying away from AI or using it proactively they're using it in ways that
00:13:31reinforce their learning that make them better make them stronger and those are typically students that
00:13:35want to they want to learn themselves they want to depth you know have some depth to that to their
00:13:39knowledge and so I think that's what AI is revealing like why you're really at university because we have
00:13:44the tools now to be honest to get through university without actually learning much it's our
00:13:49responsibility now as students to you know use this tool to you know achieve your own individual outcome
00:13:55if you want to learn you can and if you want to bypass you know a lot of the exams and assignments
00:14:00you can pretty much do that and I don't think there's going to be any sort of like rules or
00:14:04regulations that come in place that can change how students use AI because like fundamentally I don't
00:14:10see how that would be possible and so I think the responsibility is in the student's hands it's like
00:14:15you're in control yeah definitely I actually agree and I think a lot of for how I use and approach AI
00:14:21is like intention I think even before I actually start prompting or asking it to do stuff I like to
00:14:26think about am I asking it to for example directly complete a task for me or is it more of like
00:14:31something that I'm brainstorming and I'd like to think about it from different perspectives
00:14:34and I think that piece is like I'm starting to see a lot more happen because I think AI is very good
00:14:40as like a catalyst for especially implementing and building things but the intention I think
00:14:45really comes from the students themselves I really resonate with that I think when these AI chatbots
00:14:50start coming out a few years ago either because of the technical limitations back then or just
00:14:57how little we understood about AI at the time the typical workflow was just you ask the chatbot
00:15:05question you get an answer and you do that maybe like 50 to 100 times across different
00:15:10conversations now I think people are becoming smarter and like you said are becoming more
00:15:15intentional with how they're using AI we're starting to have like more extended conversations
00:15:20across talking about one specific topic I've started like when I'm studying I'll have
00:15:26projects on Claude where I would have one for each class upload like the syllabus and a bunch of
00:15:34different course content I take in for each project and have a bunch of conversations acting as like
00:15:41individual files in like a folder for example and with these chatbots being able to in recent years
00:15:48manage context better manage memory better be a much more helpful assistant and I guess
00:15:53conversationalist when like working with me on a specific task you wonder how long it'll take before
00:16:01the societal aspect of things are going to catch up to how fast the technology
00:16:05is evolving right now like one example is that in like CS classes I know a few professors who do say
00:16:15like hey if you do use AI like you can put a disclaimer in like your assignment and also
00:16:22describe like how you use it and like each like homework or or a lab assignment but there isn't
00:16:27really like a integrated like framework thinking about like using AI in the class as part of the
00:16:34curriculum and I think we're still kind of waiting on integrations like that into like
00:16:39education that we may see in the next like five years so you feel like in general your professors
00:16:47and the administration might be a little bit behind the students in terms of AI literacy and adoption
00:16:51yeah I think there's still there's still adapting to it and I think naturally students are more like
00:16:57the fastest adopters because we're just reacting to like what's out there and we access information
00:17:05a lot quicker because we're like native to the internet yeah yeah I have to say I've seen some
00:17:10like pretty cool advancements in some of the courses at my university so we have a course
00:17:16called LSE 100 and every first year student has to take it and when I did it two years ago now
00:17:22there was no I mean we had AI but there was no guidance on how it should be used for this course
00:17:28my brother now actually is in first gen he's doing the course at LSE and he's told me it's completely
00:17:34changed so they basically give you guidance on how to use Claude so they say you should have a
00:17:39conversation with Claude give it a persona so they're giving guidance on students on how to
00:17:45actually use these and and use Claude for ways that aren't just direct outputs you know like getting
00:17:50the answers for your problems but actually a conversation with it and then they ask for the
00:17:54the conversation log because they want to see you know how are you interacting with it are you asking
00:17:59you know good questions back and is it a good conversation and then they film a video instead
00:18:04of putting an essay together so now it's a video of yourself and so you're encouraged to use AI
00:18:10but now in terms of like the marking you know you can't use it irresponsibly I have also noted that
00:18:16for some of my classes like the machine learning class I was taking this semester they have their
00:18:20own chatbot actually they built to specifically answer student questions and if they want to refer
00:18:25to lecture notes specifically it's pretty helpful for it I do think however that this is more of a
00:18:30band-aid approach because it doesn't really prevent students from just going to other types of AI tools
00:18:35that is not the school one to just ask for answers and advice yeah yeah university is is a one size
00:18:42fits all right at the moment where you know you have one lecturer for potentially two three hundred
00:18:46students in a class and those students all learn you know in different ways and so AI is acting
00:18:54more as a personalized tutor if you prompt it in the right way and if you you know encourage it to
00:18:59do so and and I've seen the learning mode from Claude where you know it's asking questions back
00:19:05to you it's it's more of a like a progressive development of of understanding which is good
00:19:10and there are students that are using it but I think you know it's about finding the students
00:19:16that that you know want to learn and want to progress because there are many students that
00:19:21you know if one AI tool goes away from like giving direct output or giving direct answers
00:19:27we're going to see just a shift of students to to the other. Tina were you going to say something
00:19:31about this by the way? Yeah I think I was going to piggyback on what Zain said because at my school
00:19:37Arizona State University we're super pro AI our career management center they built like a prompt
00:19:44bank for us for prompts that we can use to you know work through different scenarios and roles
00:19:51they also built like for our sustainability class as well the professor built her own bot
00:19:56as well and we actually there's a new class that they introduced called artificial intelligence
00:20:01chip strategy in the future of work and it was taught like for one semester but people were like
00:20:07yo we need this class and now it's taught like the whole fall and spring. This is all very positive
00:20:14which is great but I know that it's not all positive it's not all roses so I'm curious what
00:20:20are things that you are seeing that are not on the right track or things that you're afraid of or
00:20:25things that scare you? I mean cheating is like the top three use case if not like top one in
00:20:30universities but without a doubt it just comes from like what we discussed you put in a prompt or some
00:20:38input and chat gives out an output and a lot of students what they started off doing and a lot of
00:20:45them are still doing it's just taking that output and you know submitting it in an assignment. I
00:20:50think I mean if you look at the interface it's waiting for a question we're given the questions
00:20:55from the university it's never been easier to take that question and put it into the chatbot
00:21:00and get the mark scheme pretty much and so it's just so easy to get the answer and you really have
00:21:06to be strong as a student to go and work on that problem by yourself and do it yourself. Yeah I
00:21:12think a bit more of a nuanced take I have also noticed that for even students who are using AI
00:21:18to build their own projects and for example to try out different types of I guess technical
00:21:22implementations there's been a really strong sense of ownership shame that I've noticed whenever AI
00:21:28even gets mentioned that oh when I was building this project I used AI a little bit just because
00:21:32like I said I think the line between of how much the human is using the AI versus how much is the
00:21:38AI actually just controlling the whole project is very blurry right now so especially at the
00:21:43vibe-a-thon when I was for example asking the winners like how did you use Claude in your
00:21:47projects I had seen a lot of them build out brainstorm think through and like really iterate
00:21:53with Claude but when I asked him that question a lot of them just defaulted to oh Claude just like
00:21:58was very helpful and they did everything which I think right now like there's a lack of vocabulary
00:22:02and frameworks to like regard these types of AI usages which I also think is what's causing a lot
00:22:08of this polarization effect where schools are just either completely banning it but students are still
00:22:13using it regardless hence a lot of the cheating and just like not really being intentional or using
00:22:18their brains when they're interacting with AI which I'm a bit skeptical about the direction of this
00:22:24just because I think students are now required to be the resilient ones in the age of AI
00:22:29where they really need to be skeptical of every single time they use it without guidance from
00:22:33schools and institutions so I feel like if institutions or school can't really adapt to
00:22:38this quick enough there is a danger in it just kind of skewing and going into a more polarized
00:22:43direction I will say though the sensement and like how we interact with AI among students is changing
00:22:51I think like as university students we naturally do want to use our brains and and use it for something
00:22:57that's interesting to us in the past couple years yes people have just been pasting in questions
00:23:05as like prompts and taking the outputs to submit as like deliverables or assignments but people
00:23:12are beginning to be more interested in like doing something more with that like taking more ownership
00:23:17of their maybe their assignments but even more importantly like I guess projects on the side are
00:23:23things they want to make or or explore and I think a lot of students just kind of need that little push
00:23:29to see what's available and what's out there and back to the point about cheating I think a lot of
00:23:34students are also realizing that AI is pretty bad at cheating in context because there's all these
00:23:39patterns that started to come up like oh there's like a lot of m dashes or AI has a specific voice
00:23:44or tone or it doesn't actually understand to the level of what you know about the class which could
00:23:53be a whole conversation about how students actually know more than they think they do
00:23:58yeah I agree and I think students are evolving you know with AI I think when it first came out
00:24:04everyone's very excited students you know we're using the outputs directly but now like Mark has
00:24:09said you know people students are being more intentional with their prompts so potentially
00:24:15you know writing a little bit longer prompts you know directing Claude a little bit better
00:24:19than before them and I think that's just because we're getting more used to it like myself as a
00:24:24student I must have spent like thousand plus hours like talking to Claude now like I know what it you
00:24:29know how it responds and I'm learning more about the tool and as a result my interactions with it
00:24:34are getting better and like you said we're students and we want to use our brains the majority of us
00:24:40you know want to be intellectually stimulated and and so I think we're moving to to a time where
00:24:47students do genuinely use AI tools to benefit themselves and to actually you know go further
00:24:53rather than kind of limit themselves I guess by just relying on its output yeah I think when it
00:25:02comes to like cheating for example you know you've got that first level of you you ask you ask a
00:25:08question you get your output but in my instance the the final bosses can you present to us what
00:25:15you think you got to put together a presentation 10 minutes 15 minutes different your position
00:25:20and the AI is not going to be there you know at that time to speak for you or to give your
00:25:25ideas so in that way I feel that there's that like first level of like using it like you mentioned
00:25:32like maybe but then you get to a level where you need to in our case explain what what do you mean
00:25:40and everything so it's not so much a case of like yes there's that level of like people are cheating
00:25:46like doing just like small quizzes but then in our instance as well you actually have to always
00:25:51defend your position so you have to know what you're talking about let's talk about after
00:25:56college entering the job market first of all maybe we can do like a thumbs up down middle
00:26:03how does everyone feel about getting a job after graduation like constantly just like okay okay
00:26:12okay um tell me more okay well I guess like the good ones I think is like just having AI to be
00:26:20like a better like companion for like practicing for interviews brainstorming tailoring the resumes
00:26:26etc unfortunately the downside is that also companies are obviously using AI a lot more
00:26:32which involves a lot of higher views I've basically been talking to a like a screen this entire
00:26:37recruiting cycle um which is great but also can feel a little less human because I don't feel like
00:26:43there's like no chemistry like talking to a screen um are you doing are you doing interviews with like
00:26:49uh like you're talking to a robot not where it's explicitly but it's just like kind of a question
00:26:54on a screen for me and then I'm just like talking to myself um and I have also heard just a lot of
00:27:00anxiety about companies also using AI just to screen candidates and I think this also has just not been
00:27:07great for I guess like both my self-worth and also just like trying to figure out what the best like
00:27:12interviewing strategy or even like what jobs to apply to because now it just feels so much more
00:27:17random than before um I'm curious what do you guys think I agree with you especially like the
00:27:23screening job candidates um it's so painful because you can realize like from the entire
00:27:29hi I would like to invite you to apply for this job right up until you submit your CV you've put
00:27:34time together tailored your application everything and then 15 minutes later sorry regret to inform
00:27:39you when did you have time you know the AI generated email the AI generated email so that's like I think
00:27:48the really like big downside of that the upsides really are that um AI fluency has become a major
00:27:56like for example consulting firms now I know the top four consulting firms they used to hire
00:28:01generalist MBAs but now they are looking for MBAs who've got AI fluency so if you understand like how
00:28:08do you apply AI to different industries then you're like their number one candidate actually back to
00:28:13like Chloe's point I have had an AI like interview me before really and it was it was so nice it would
00:28:19give responses like like your response was super invigorating and informative and exciting and then
00:28:27let's move on to the next question did you get the job no but it was because um I didn't qualify
00:28:35I think they were looking for like rising juniors and I was a rising senior okay so I still got auto
00:28:40screen but um it wasn't as bad as I thought I guess um traditionally like Chloe said like there's higher
00:28:48views right now where like they take a recording rather than like an interactive conversation
00:28:53I actually kind of enjoyed um having a nice interview yeah as an AI I agree I agree okay uh
00:29:00speaking of um you know uh interesting uses of AI um Merriam-Webster named slop a word of the year
00:29:09um so I'm curious what AI slop means to you all and how do you see it impacting the people around
00:29:15you on campus I think it's like AI slope for me is when I receive an output from Claude or any
00:29:22other AI tool that I know that if I had just used my own brain like I could have come up with
00:29:26something better than that like that's kind of slop for me when so I think just going back to job
00:29:31applications when I'm asking it to you know help me write a cover letter for example which is a major
00:29:35use case for a lot of students and it gives me a cover letter which is so generic like every other
00:29:40student is applying with this and it's like this is not going to get me the job like that's you know
00:29:44the AI slop I think it's really funny that like AI responses can be so generic that it's its own voice
00:29:50at this point it's like a common like meme I guess for AI to have a lot of em dashes and um certain
00:29:57sound bites like you're absolutely right or like like let me think about that or or it has this
00:30:02like two sentence structure that it keeps giving me whenever I try to write like letters or um scripts
00:30:09for example where it's like you're not reinventing the wheel like you're building the next tesla
00:30:14yeah yeah um honestly it's everything you guys have said yeah um and then like you get you get
00:30:22the feedback you get the output and then it's up to you you know some people if you work with them
00:30:27in a group sadly they'll just paste that and you could see that at the end uh would you like claud
00:30:32to keep oh yeah that's claud can make mistakes retry retry yeah yeah that's my definition of AI slop so
00:30:41you mentioned group projects and I think this is a big thing right when you have a group of four or
00:30:45five at university and you have maybe a five thousand word report you how do you guys go about
00:30:51it because at my university there is there is sometimes some students who like don't want to use
00:30:56it I remember what like one student was saying like I'm gonna do this project before you guys get your
00:31:01your grubby AI hands on it and I was like okay um but like some students did he use that term
00:31:10like some students feel really strongly against it and when you're working in a group you know
00:31:13you have to take into consideration other people's thoughts um yeah what are your guys thoughts on
00:31:18that I can go first because we do a lot of those five thousand words uh kind of projects like maybe
00:31:25uh create a business case out of this business dilemma and how we do it like how we've recently
00:31:30started working on it is we'll take the paper or the question and we'll like create an outline
00:31:35or maybe ask AI can you create an outline for this paper for me like what should be in this paper and
00:31:40stuff and then we divide it amongst ourselves one thing I like doing a lot um is yes using that
00:31:46outline for like this example of like a five thousand word report amongst like four people
00:31:51like split it into different sections and then for each person covering um each section it's up to you
00:31:57and how you want to use AI whether you use it or not at all um what I like to do personally is have
00:32:06a lot of like bullet points or just like thought dumping into cloud and working with it to kind of
00:32:12structure my thoughts of going from random like bullet points or one-off phrases into more of an
00:32:20outline and then into paragraphs that I can kind of manually edit the wording of so it's more like
00:32:26my voice and tone and then one thing I really like asking Claude actually um is to give the
00:32:34context of who is usually reviewing my work for a job application for example it's like um this
00:32:40VP or like recruiter and then like in a class it's like a professor or a TA and ask like hey
00:32:47here are some criteria rate my work uh score out of 10 and I would do that maybe like two to three
00:32:56times um and it would always give me reasons about like why I graded like gave me a score
00:33:02a certain score yeah and what I could work and improve on a lot of times I like the feedback
00:33:08sometimes I think some of the feedback is a bit overzealous or ridiculous and in newer models like
00:33:16sauna and opus 4.5 there's they're starting to give like a bit of urgency whenever I ask it to evaluate
00:33:26my work too much almost like they're calling me out for overthinking um after maybe like the third
00:33:31try of like this like evaluation they'll be like it's ready to ship like yeah nice nice are there
00:33:37AI slackers and group projects like people who you can tell are not turning on their brains for the
00:33:42project with their grubby AI I mean definitely I think something that is most helpful for me
00:33:48is like obviously besides alignment and just like being very intentional when you're using AI a lot
00:33:53of face-to-face time actually yeah so what I like to do when I work on a group project is just block
00:33:58out a time chunk sit down with my group and we just talk about it as we work through it I think very
00:34:04often it's easy to feel like you're alone when you're just working on a group project on yourself
00:34:08which is what makes AI so tempting because you're just like oh what if I just had someone write it
00:34:12for me but if we were all forced to let's say sit down and talk together like if someone had a
00:34:17problem and work through it I think that definitely helps a lot with the more human piece of working
00:34:22together nice agreed okay I'm going to shift us to some rapid fire questions um so each should be like
00:34:28one to two sentences maximum so uh my first question is uh what is the tip that you have for students
00:34:35right now who are navigating this whole world of AI in education learn it learn it learn how to use it
00:34:41it's only to your advantage if you understand how it can optimize your career or if you decide to be
00:34:48an entrepreneur how it can optimize your business if you're trying to learn new concepts or revising
00:34:54for exam start a new project for every class you're taking in university try and paste in all the
00:35:02relevant files and perhaps you already have existing conversations where you've worked with claud to go
00:35:09through certain assignments and set the writing style to concise mode that's been most helpful for
00:35:16me to get a quick rundown in an efficient manner of like every concept I need to cover for an exam
00:35:24sub stack and open source materials there are so many cool people out there who know the best or
00:35:30newest ways to use different types of AI tools and what I've found most helpful is just soaking that
00:35:35up like a sponge and then applying it to my own projects Nate Jones on sub stack he's pretty good
00:35:40um my tip would be uh use the styles so uh you've mentioned it briefly the concise mode the learning
00:35:47mode is fantastic if you want to augment your own brain and augment your your own skills use the
00:35:53learning mode it will ask you questions back be confident in your replies back and you genuinely
00:35:58will get a better output than just leaning on on claud by itself all right next question um how do
00:36:04you in one sentence personally draw the line how do you draw the line between using AI as a tool
00:36:11and using AI as a crutch how do you where do you find that balance if I was in a room like this and
00:36:18I can't explain or defend what I've built even if someone asks like a super critical or specific
00:36:25question I think that's the line where you kind of don't really understand what's going on that's
00:36:30good I totally resonate with that it's a mix of like the ownership and intentionality if you can't
00:36:36really explain what you've done along with also including what AI's role was in your work or what
00:36:44you're doing then that's a line for me yeah that's another line for me as well like I should be able
00:36:49to explain it like I'm explaining to someone in fifth grade um whatever the output is and I should
00:36:55be able to present it as well even at a graduate level anything that I prepared so that's my line
00:37:01anything I create with AI I should be able to give that lower level and that upper level explanation
00:37:09yeah I agree with all of you I think if you're not comfortable with with the content that you've
00:37:13produced at the end of the day like is that really yours or are you just stealing that content from
00:37:19from Claude and so just feeling comfortable having some sort of like feeling of ownership that I've
00:37:25produced this work that's the line for me you know there are there have been times where I've submitted
00:37:31pieces which are like fully AI and it's just like this is not going to take me anywhere at the end
00:37:37of the day but you learn that and I think that's the biggest thing with students is that it takes
00:37:41time to learn those feelings and you kind of have to give it that time like a student might have to
00:37:47submit something 100 AI to realize that actually this was not beneficial for me and I think
00:37:52universities need to be conscious of the fact that students will learn and you've got to trust the
00:37:56students right at the end of the day they will they want to you know they they live their own lives and
00:38:01you know you want to set yourself up you have that equality between students and we'll figure it out
00:38:07like we'll figure out what works where it's good where it's not yeah like holding space I feel like
00:38:13that's a fantastic place to end I just wanted to say you know the we'll figure it out mentality
00:38:17this whole time I kind of expected this conversation to to shift into doomerism
00:38:22and it never quite did I think like all of you are you know thoughtfully positive about the
00:38:28future in a way that I I think is really exciting and really encouraging so thank you all for for
00:38:34being here for being honest and uh yeah I really appreciated this conversation thank you thank you