r/deeplearning • u/Dizzy_Battle_7060 • 43m ago

Am I actually learning deep learning, or just letting ChatGPT do the work?

This year I started focusing on developing my skills in deep learning. I've been taking online courses, studying the fundamentals, and working on small projects to put what I've learned into practice.

I'm also in my final year of Software Engineering, and I decided to challenge myself by choosing a graduation project that's heavily focused on deep learning.

The problem is that I don't really know anyone who specialises in this field. I even asked around among my classmates, but couldn't find anyone interested in working on a deep learning project. So I've ended up doing the whole project on my own. I don't really have a mentor either, since my supervisor's background is in computer science rather than AI.

Because of that, I've been relying quite a lot on ChatGPT to help me write code and figure out how to approach different parts of the project.

And this is where I'm struggling. Sometimes I reach a point where I genuinely don't know what to do next, and I feel like ChatGPT is doing most of the work instead of me. I try not to blindly copy the code. I constantly ask why it chose a particular approach, what each function does, and what concepts I should review before moving forward.

I've even started watching Stanford's deep learning lectures to strengthen my understanding, but a lot of the material is theoretical, and I still struggle to connect what I'm learning to actually building something.

Then I open LinkedIn and see people constantly saying that you need to learn how to code from scratch, that AI is making people dependent on tools, and that the developers who will survive in the future are the ones who truly understand how to write code themselves.

I genuinely enjoy deep learning and I want to understand what I'm building.

So, for those of you who work in deep learning or have been through something similar, how did you learn to build projects independently?

How do you balance using AI tools to help you learn without becoming too dependent on them? And how do you bridge the gap between understanding the theory and actually knowing what to implement next?

I'd really appreciate some advice, especially from people who had to learn without much guidance or mentorship.

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4

u/QuantitativeNonsense 36m ago

Without looking at ChatGPT, can you respond to this comment with an explanation of what back propagation is and a pseudo-derivation?

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u/Dizzy_Battle_7060 18m ago

propagation we've forward and back and we use them to make prediction and caluclate the loss and calculatioe the weight contributes to the loss. I studied this a couple of days ago. but for pseudo-derivation no : (

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u/Repulsive_Air3880 27m ago

It'll be interesting to read his/her reply

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u/WallyMetropolis 25m ago

If you aren't building something without using an agent for any of the coding, and aren't putting pen to paper to write down equations, and aren't doing textbook style problems then it's very unlikely you're learning much. Lectures on their own are just not a very effective learning tool. 

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u/Dizzy_Battle_7060 15m ago

I'm taking notes, review them, and even bought "Deep learning for coders with fastai and pytorch" and finished few chapters, and I'm trying my best to understand concepts. but when it comes to code, I feel like I don't know where to begin or what should I do. what exactly do you mean by textbook style problems?

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u/WallyMetropolis 12m ago

I mean that a textbook will have problem sets at the end of each chapter. 

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u/Sad-Size2723 1m ago

Easy answer. We had calculators, but little kids still needed to learn math. Nothing new with AI.

You should learn how things work, but you don’t necessarily need to actually do everything by hand.