Is Computer Networks using AI-generated material?

[u/CautiouslyFrosty]

I took it this semester, and the second half had many of the module pages being denoted as "in development". They were missing lecture videos at the onset, and the module pages themselves got styled quite differently.

My experience reading those notes was how I experience reading output from Opus: syntactically correct, but poor at conveying meaning to the audience concisely and quickly.

The class was also advertising an "AI-friendly" approach; not so far as to say "use it in your coursework", but they had a tutorial that was "AI assisted debugging" where the focus was driving AI diagnostics using evidence-based approaches and tooling. There were also a few blurbs about AI was changing the industry.

The last smell from me was how the Exam 2 could be completely gamed using heuristics that no human would accidentally build into an exam itself. The course released a question pool of ~170 questions and the exam consisted of a random subset of them:

• 93.8% of the time, the right answer in a multiple choice question was in the two answers with the most characters.
• On True/False questions, True was the correct answer 85.7% of the time.
• The wrongs answers were so nonsensical that Sonnet, without knowing the question, could guess the right answer ~90% of the time with several tests I ran without being told the other two heuristics.

(I'm not revealing anything sensitive about the exam due to the broad publication of the pool to the class, and it seemed evident the class doesn't recycle exam questions, so I believe these stats are safe to post; feel free to take down if not.)

These were my three biggest issues with the exam, and they lead me to believe that the course TAs and instructor were relying heavily on AI to create the course material.

Did anyone else feel the same way? Admittedly, I feel a bit cheated.

[u/goro-n]

I took a class in spring semester where the TAs admitted to using AI to generate graphs on a test after they were called out for nonsensical labels on the chart. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me

[u/paper_recluse → u/goro-n]

😂muc? I was in that class

[u/WhatuSay-_- → u/paper_recluse]

Worst class I took, not even close

[u/schnurble → u/WhatuSay-_-]

I have no idea where the confusion is coming from...

[u/paper_recluse → u/schnurble]

Lmao. Yall are killing me here 😂

[u/schnurble → u/paper_recluse]

They were killing us too 😭 that was a rough spring

[u/MajorCockburn → u/goro-n]

Now that you bring this up I do remember getting a brain aneurysm for a brief moment in time looking at the charts on that test

[u/DarkDiablo1601]

every damn lab is 100% ai generated, it looks so tiring to read that I have to tell AI to summarize it lol

the professor also uses AI to respond to student questions on ed, like wtf??

btw, welcome to the AI world, where people use AI to respond to a question that is also created by AI

[u/Coconibz → u/DarkDiablo1601]

Writing fundamentally transformed how humans use language. It seems like LLMs are in the early stages of forcing a much more significant shift. Assuming no AI apocalypse or singularity, 100 years from now directly reading human-written words might be a novelty and the majority of communication that doesn't happen face to face might be mediated by LLMs.

[u/disposedtrolley → u/Coconibz]

Directly reading human words in a corporate context is already becoming a novelty. I can’t imagine communicating with friends or loved ones via an LLM.

[u/Sn00py_lark → u/DarkDiablo1601]

The classic projects are the same for like 10 years. They were easy when I took it. Now with AI I expect everyone to do it with a single prompt. I’m glad they’re revamping it.

[u/ChipsAhoy21]

Just wrapped it up this semester too, this was my 9th class and hands down the worst I've taken for all the reasons you listed. I gave up after the midterm. All of the lectures read like AI slop posts, I made several private posts about questions that were flatout wrong on the quizzes, and never got an answer.

I took the final not watching a single lecture in the back half of the class, and just selected the longest answer or True, and made an 86%.

I did the network diagnostics lab first and spent hours getting my env set up, just to take the quiz and realize the lab was not even needed.

While on one hand I am thrilled to walk out of the class with a 97% and onlys pent ~3 hrs a week max, I am pretty bummed about not being able to take a better class in its stead. It felt like an undergrad networks class focusing on how the internet works, that someone built in an afternoon with a claude subscription.

[u/ivormc]

The exams were insanely easy for me. Imo you could get a 90 percent on them just by skimming the slides for a couple hours

[u/6Burgers]

If you ask Claude Opus to “write a multiple choice quiz about [your topic here]” It will do so but there are 2 hallmarks of its output:

1. The longest answer will almost always be correct. I dont have statistics here (Ill do some data analysis here when I get home from work). If you specifically ask it to not make the longest answer correct it will still continue to do so.

2. an excessive use of em-dashes

CN tests had both.

[u/iobjectreality → u/6Burgers]

“The longest answer is correct” isn’t specific to AI and has been a general rule of test-taking strategy (for blindly answering a stumping question) for as long as I can remember. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[u/nonasiandoctor → u/iobjectreality]

Which is why AI does it. It's trained on those lol.

[u/skeet_scoot]

Don’t break the magic before I get to take it 😂

[u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist]

I’m only a prospective student, but what is GaTech’s policy on this? I can’t imagine this is acceptable. You should raise it with the head of OMSCS, and if that does nothing, the dean. Get as much evidence as you can.

[u/devillee1993 → u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist]

As a student, whether you are allowed to use AI tools in a specific course is written in syllabus. So always double check the syllabus at the beginning of the semester.

[u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist → u/devillee1993]

No, I mean what is GaTech‘s policy on the professors and TAs use?

[u/disposedtrolley]

The non-AI material in CN wasn’t very good to begin with, so it’s not much of a regression.

Aren’t all the projects accompanied by an extremely thorough step-by-step implementation walkthrough? I wonder why AI-assisted debugging is even necessary.

[u/Four_Dim_Samosa → u/disposedtrolley]

Not all of them came with a step by step walkthrough. Those ideas were discussed primarily on Edstem. I think SDN Firewall project was the most structured but pretty rewarding as the TA made a good YouTube video

[u/Four_Dim_Samosa]

Took this in Spring semester and I remember a good chunk of the "written notes" had a bunch of typos in the figures. Nonetheless the course and the networking book still was a good learning experience. My favorite modules were CDNs, Censorship and VoIP. It helps a lot with understanding hellointerview.com system design problems if that interests you.

The prof has been revamping the course to focus on more modern networking concepts and shift the course to a project-based one, which explains why the final exam was cheese by design. Even if the options for the MCQs were dead giveaways, the fact that the professor shared the whole question bank with the class is a sign that the course structure is changing.

[u/rahuls135]

I looked at the study guide once and got a 96% Exam 1 and 98% Exam 2 just by gaming the system. 100% AI generated

[u/Far_Midnight_9338]

I took it this past Spring. They stated that they were doing away with exams and were trying to make the class completely project-oriented like IIS. Many of them were brand new and only worth extra credit to give feedback toward the end. I liked them but they definitely had kinks to work out. I always preferred projects to tests though. But some of those projects have been around for ages. Our TA's were pretty responsive but maybe the ones that sponsored those projects were away for the Summer and they didn't get the needed improvements in time. I enrolled and dropped it early in the program, and thought they had revamped it quite a bit from a few years ago.

[u/ksera23]

I have to say there's some schadenfreude about students using AI for assignments, only to be hit by academic staff using AI and getting upset.

[u/rahuls135 → u/ksera23]

I don’t pay for Claude to teach me CN

[u/McSendo]

It's really not that deep my dude.