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Machine Learning Introducing Large Language Models Introducing Large Language Models Introducing Large Language Models (LLMs)

Shame on you treehouse, I pay all this money to learn from a real human being not a robot from reading a script

Shame on you treehouse, I pay all this money to learn from a real human being, not a robot from synthesia reading a script written by chatgpt.

Jeremiah Donahue
Jeremiah Donahue
3,970 Points

yikes, i guess you completed all the human made courses and must of had absolutely no choice but to watch this one. I'm sorry this is happening to you. so tragic

6 Answers

Ravi Batra
Ravi Batra
2,486 Points

I love the irony of this microcourse

Kari Brooks
STAFF
Kari Brooks
Treehouse Staff

Thanks for sharing your feedback! There are a lot of really interesting opinions and conversations happening right now about ChatGPT and AI-generated content, for sure. We've been getting student requests for more learning materials centered on AI and ChatGPT specifically. The fact that an AI is explaining AI in our video is an angle we chose on purpose! (And the fact that an AI is reading a script is no different from what our human instructors do when they film their videos - our human instructors write and read from scripts, too.)

Don't worry, we aren’t handing over the keys to robots. In fact, this short course took many human hours to concept, organize, edit, and design. There are still humans at the wheel here at Treehouse, and we'll continue to educate - and sometimes challenge - our students with thought-provoking content.

Alex Hort-Francis
Alex Hort-Francis
17,074 Points

Kari Brooks I agree this is a good idea to explore the topic as an intro.

I would really like to learn more about setting up continuous semantic/contextual environments with AI to help me as a developer. I'm going to be looking at Azure AI next. Any chance of Treehouse looking into this immediately so we can stay ahead of the curve?

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,268 Points

I'm surprised that a long-time student such as yourself would post such a comment, since you've already had the benefit of many courses all created by human instructors. This tiny microcourse is specifically about the technology used to generate the script, so that makes perfect sense in this case.   :see_no_evil:

Plus, they talk about this being a bit of an experiment, and they even invite you to send feedback; but they specifically ask you to send it to a special email address created for the purpose instead of posting it to the forum.

Craig Dennis
STAFF
Craig Dennis
Treehouse Teacher

As a former non-robot Treehouser, I enjoyed this course and am excited to see it get better. I want her to add some humor and a little more personality, but this is pretty cool in just showing it off.

Nice work y'all!

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
231,268 Points

You were always the most humorous instructor. :smile:

Craig Dennis
Craig Dennis
Treehouse Teacher

Thanks Steven! Nice to see you still hanging out and helping learners achieve their goals! Thank you for being you!

Alex Hort-Francis
Alex Hort-Francis
17,074 Points

Craig Dennis you absolute legend! Your Java tutorials got me through my masters. Best wishes :)

I agree with OP to some extent, it is a disappointment largely due to the expectations set by team treehouse through prior courses.

Back in 2014, I had used Treehouse's library of courses to build my baseline skills in software development. I resubscribed to Treehouse just because I saw this course in the library and recalled how great the quality of Treehouse courses used to be - fantastic animations, use of physical props, and a good balance of depth & concision.

This micro-course had none of that, rather, it felt like a monotonous monologue which lacked depth and enthusiasm. The explanation of how LLMs work was a bit too generic and basic for a 'technical' audience. It would have been okay had it been released under the 'Digital Literacy' tag as opposed to 'Machine Learning'.

I don't think that the idea of using an LLM to co-author the course was a problem per say, although it may have contributed to some degree of complacency in the extent of thought put in for the script/content for the course.

That said, the TTS audio was very robotic and difficult to sit through. The AI generated video of the human being was decent-enough to accompany a human instructor along side, not so sure about a solo appearance though (might be okay with a human voiceover? Can't judge).

Chris Komaroff
PLUS
Chris Komaroff
Courses Plus Student 14,198 Points

Darn, I read this question before watching the video, so I was not able to see if I could tell this was a bot. Looks fairly convincing. My eyesight is not so good anymore, I may have not seen the obvious uncanny valley.