Your point about students being moved down an assembly line is so heartbreakingly accurate. For decades, the "No student left behind" practice has needlessly squelched teachers creativity in the classroom and pushed students through the system, ready or not, in order to meet compliance. When I think of all the teachers who were and are burned out, leaving the career they were once passionate about and all the students who aren't allowed to learn in a way that inspires creativity and the discovery of their own talents, what a waste of so many other possibilities.
very chilling. There are fewer and fewer public spaces left where I live. Some of them are small buildings called 'school of arts' or something similar which were places where blue collar workers would get together after work in the late 1800s, early 1900s to educate themselves further. These buildings are empty memorials which haven't been used for education in a long time, and the desire to learn more which they were built to enable seems by and large to have been killed ....
The obvious problem, that the New York article only sorta glosses over, is that universities refuse to fail kids. When using AI is considered cheating, but professors are instructed to ignore it and "grade the paper as of it was written by the student", then it is the university itself that has completely devalued the meaning of education. If everyone passes, even when they're caught cheating, then the degrees are worthless.
Start failing kids. A lot of them. Then things might change. A complete lack of consequences and accountability is 100x more disastrous than the rise of AI.
Universities became diploma mills decades before chat gpt arrived on the scene.
I think the time is fast approaching where we will need to decide if we want to continue under the capitalist philosophy and ethos of “every man for himself” or adopt a socialist philosophy and ethos that “we are all in this together.” War, climate change, AI, and oligarchy will force us to make these collective decisions soon.
It's weird, but I see climate change saving us from this. AI use is environmentally unsustainable. The grid will crash. It may not be a better world, but it won't be a world dominated by the tech bros.
I have a library that includes history, classic literature and many how-to and survival books. These works were saved with the thought that if society collapses, the books may be life saving for someone who stumbles across my collection. It is disheartening to learn that many of those most likely to survive an initial collapse may not have the critical thinking skills necessary to understand and put the information to use.
I'm nodding vigorously but also thinking: Let's not concede in advance. I believe that human intelligence and ingenuity is irreducible. They will only succeed in destroying the means of knowledge production that has benefited mostly the established power circuitry. It's a human problem, this oligarch problem, and it's not even a new problem. We got this.
This is the end-point of forty years of neo-liberal economics. I first recognised the direction of travel in the 1980's as education began to be seen solely in terms of "starting a career" rather than as valuable for its own sake. What the disciples of Friedman wanted was to reduce the "human being" from its inherent dignity to a machine for production only. The revolution to avert this fate is to re-enthrone the imagination as life's supreme principle; for love is the highest force that animates the imagination
I'm finding that gen-z is an alarmingly apathetic generation because so many of their firsts were crushed by fascism or institutions of power. Our first elections were won by Trump or settled for Biden, our first protests lead to little to no institutional changes, our schools were ravaged by shootings with no changes, we inherited an economy and job market that burdened us with debt and little opportunities from the start.
We have been given no indication that we actually have power. So it makes resisting the urge to use AI so difficult especially as more and more employers ask if we are experimenting with it. Using AI will be seen as a requirement just like using email or word processing documents. I feel like I just dodged the bullet on this by graduating in 2021 and finding work not long after, but the walls are certainly closing in.
Much of K12 education already functions as daycare in the eyes of many parents. It would truly take a social revolution to change that, much less higher education.
Two of my students (7th graders) submitted AI-generated essays over the weekend, based on a personal essay prompt of “what is the value of history.” I could spot it instantly because the essays read like they were written by aliens who were giving a yelp review of their trip to Earth.
I will meet with them individually on Monday, explain why they received a zero, and have them spend the week’s recess periods redoing the essay by hand, screen-free.
Idiotic billionaires cutting off their nose to spite their face as usual. They see nothing beyond the dollar signs in front of their faces. Will AI be able to run everything once the educated are no more? What will AI learn from? It will stagnate and in-breed with itself until it is even more worthless than it is now.
Guess we shouldn't expect much better from the same people destroying the very planet they live on.
When I was in school, everything was handwritten. Handwritten. It had to be. This was in order to prevent us from the evil of simply Googling and copy pasting from Wikipedia. We could refer to search engines, of course, but we had to make it evident that we actually *thought* of what we want to say instead of copying it from somewhere. Haha. Our teachers were wary of the copy paste function in MS Word. And now look where the world has arrived lol.
All AI products need a full disclosure ... they are basically mechanical plagiarism. Universities have long had means to deal with that.
So called AIs merely copy and quote (but without quotation marks or citation). They present other people's ideas as their own, without attribution or acknowledgment.
I think schools and pedagogy will adjust to this new reality (although the adjustment will be unevenly distributed, like every other aspect of American schooling). Regardless, the cohort of kids who graduated high school during COVID and entered college alongside the rise of AI will forever lost in some sense.
Certainly feels like AI is no longer being a tool to aid critical thinking but a crutch to critical thinking that is detrimental in the long run, and companies are banking on that no doubt.
Your point about students being moved down an assembly line is so heartbreakingly accurate. For decades, the "No student left behind" practice has needlessly squelched teachers creativity in the classroom and pushed students through the system, ready or not, in order to meet compliance. When I think of all the teachers who were and are burned out, leaving the career they were once passionate about and all the students who aren't allowed to learn in a way that inspires creativity and the discovery of their own talents, what a waste of so many other possibilities.
very chilling. There are fewer and fewer public spaces left where I live. Some of them are small buildings called 'school of arts' or something similar which were places where blue collar workers would get together after work in the late 1800s, early 1900s to educate themselves further. These buildings are empty memorials which haven't been used for education in a long time, and the desire to learn more which they were built to enable seems by and large to have been killed ....
The obvious problem, that the New York article only sorta glosses over, is that universities refuse to fail kids. When using AI is considered cheating, but professors are instructed to ignore it and "grade the paper as of it was written by the student", then it is the university itself that has completely devalued the meaning of education. If everyone passes, even when they're caught cheating, then the degrees are worthless.
Start failing kids. A lot of them. Then things might change. A complete lack of consequences and accountability is 100x more disastrous than the rise of AI.
Universities became diploma mills decades before chat gpt arrived on the scene.
I think the time is fast approaching where we will need to decide if we want to continue under the capitalist philosophy and ethos of “every man for himself” or adopt a socialist philosophy and ethos that “we are all in this together.” War, climate change, AI, and oligarchy will force us to make these collective decisions soon.
It's weird, but I see climate change saving us from this. AI use is environmentally unsustainable. The grid will crash. It may not be a better world, but it won't be a world dominated by the tech bros.
I have a library that includes history, classic literature and many how-to and survival books. These works were saved with the thought that if society collapses, the books may be life saving for someone who stumbles across my collection. It is disheartening to learn that many of those most likely to survive an initial collapse may not have the critical thinking skills necessary to understand and put the information to use.
I have thought the same à la the rise of social media, app dependency, etc. The grid going down is the only thing that will curb these technologies.
I'm nodding vigorously but also thinking: Let's not concede in advance. I believe that human intelligence and ingenuity is irreducible. They will only succeed in destroying the means of knowledge production that has benefited mostly the established power circuitry. It's a human problem, this oligarch problem, and it's not even a new problem. We got this.
This is the end-point of forty years of neo-liberal economics. I first recognised the direction of travel in the 1980's as education began to be seen solely in terms of "starting a career" rather than as valuable for its own sake. What the disciples of Friedman wanted was to reduce the "human being" from its inherent dignity to a machine for production only. The revolution to avert this fate is to re-enthrone the imagination as life's supreme principle; for love is the highest force that animates the imagination
I'm finding that gen-z is an alarmingly apathetic generation because so many of their firsts were crushed by fascism or institutions of power. Our first elections were won by Trump or settled for Biden, our first protests lead to little to no institutional changes, our schools were ravaged by shootings with no changes, we inherited an economy and job market that burdened us with debt and little opportunities from the start.
We have been given no indication that we actually have power. So it makes resisting the urge to use AI so difficult especially as more and more employers ask if we are experimenting with it. Using AI will be seen as a requirement just like using email or word processing documents. I feel like I just dodged the bullet on this by graduating in 2021 and finding work not long after, but the walls are certainly closing in.
Much of K12 education already functions as daycare in the eyes of many parents. It would truly take a social revolution to change that, much less higher education.
Two of my students (7th graders) submitted AI-generated essays over the weekend, based on a personal essay prompt of “what is the value of history.” I could spot it instantly because the essays read like they were written by aliens who were giving a yelp review of their trip to Earth.
I will meet with them individually on Monday, explain why they received a zero, and have them spend the week’s recess periods redoing the essay by hand, screen-free.
Idiotic billionaires cutting off their nose to spite their face as usual. They see nothing beyond the dollar signs in front of their faces. Will AI be able to run everything once the educated are no more? What will AI learn from? It will stagnate and in-breed with itself until it is even more worthless than it is now.
Guess we shouldn't expect much better from the same people destroying the very planet they live on.
When I was in school, everything was handwritten. Handwritten. It had to be. This was in order to prevent us from the evil of simply Googling and copy pasting from Wikipedia. We could refer to search engines, of course, but we had to make it evident that we actually *thought* of what we want to say instead of copying it from somewhere. Haha. Our teachers were wary of the copy paste function in MS Word. And now look where the world has arrived lol.
I left university teaching back in 2012. Not a thing that has happened during any of the subsequent years tells me I made the wrong decision.
All AI products need a full disclosure ... they are basically mechanical plagiarism. Universities have long had means to deal with that.
So called AIs merely copy and quote (but without quotation marks or citation). They present other people's ideas as their own, without attribution or acknowledgment.
I think schools and pedagogy will adjust to this new reality (although the adjustment will be unevenly distributed, like every other aspect of American schooling). Regardless, the cohort of kids who graduated high school during COVID and entered college alongside the rise of AI will forever lost in some sense.
That's a great point about the covid kids. I feel so bad for them.
Certainly feels like AI is no longer being a tool to aid critical thinking but a crutch to critical thinking that is detrimental in the long run, and companies are banking on that no doubt.