181–190 of 368 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As far as I can remember phones were not allowed in class and testing was generally done on paper. College was a lot more lax about this stuff than K-12 was. But colleges could and should proctor their exams more strictly.
No phones in class, at scale and enforced, feels like a last 5 years thing in K-12. And the trend was very much towards increased digital testing, pre-LLM. This is pivoting back to paper-based, but it's going to be as messy and slow of a transition as the no-mobile-device one was. Especially given how much money there is in "AI". And hamfistedly-handed, will likely leave another generation fucked over with regards to…
I attended college in the late 00’s, and I don’t think I took a single digital exam. Quizzes, sure, but for final exams even CS was pencil and paper (or a final project, which admittedly will have issues in the post-LLM era).
Makes you realize how fast this has happened. This is a "get off my lawn" article by a high school senior. It's part of the job of education to instill some common culture. (Which common culture varies, but not all that much outside political topics.) For students, questions about that culture are new issues. LLMs have digested a huge amount of existing material on it. LLMs are thus really good at things students are…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is fundamentally different. It replaces, and thus atrophies, cognitive faculties in a way the other tools you mentioned never aspired to.
No, it isn't. "Spellcheck removes the ability to spell" "Calculators prevent you from doing math." "Computer art will destroy real art" "Typing text will destroy cursive and handwritten". Same idea, that some form of tech will destroy something we should value.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
plenty of straight-A students are in those same classes with miserable explanations or have jobs. plenty of kids who flunk out of expensive private schools and don't work. always have been since long before AI. nobody "needs" these tools. they're conveniences. it sounds more like your issue is with the timing and structure of impersonalized childhood education.
If you are in effect asserting that the quality of the instruction offered in class is considered pretty good, that is a failed assertion right from the get go. AI helps the student to make up for common failures in the quality of education.
The lesson here is adapt or die. The things they thought were important or difficult or impressive are no longer any of those things. Regurgitating information on a test or generating prose from the notes you took in class are tasks which are easy to stereotype, and now readily automated. Rather than framing this as destroying education, it should be interpreted as proof that these tasks were always shallow. AI is st…
We ended it because it checks not for AI but for professional writing, good grammar and spelling, and professional non-conversational word choice. WHICH ARE THE THINGS WE'RE TEACHING THESE STUDENTS IN OUR CLASSES.
I have to look at a room of mostly out of touch faculty and tell them to be better at their jobs. I have to tell them that they simply cannot do what they've done for the last 30 years (which is only being forced because of AI, but should've been a thing the entire time). I have to, in five minutes, explain pedagogy and modern instructional design.
And I have no idea what to say that won't make this situation worse.
I'm thinking of leading with an explanation of what adaptation and evolution are as concepts. That should go well. I'm pretty excited.
Imagine back in the days when calculators were just invented. An 8 year old kid might have the similar complain: “my classmate finished a 4 digits number multiplication problem in 5 seconds which generally took 1mins.” People might say, in the long term, the kid who cheated would be less proficient in arithmetic, which turned out to be true. But when you think about it, it seems not the end of the world when most hig…
The problem is that we’re letting kids go to the gym with a forklift, and we need them fit by the time they join adult life.
The lesson here is adapt or die. The things they thought were important or difficult or impressive are no longer any of those things. Regurgitating information on a test or generating prose from the notes you took in class are tasks which are easy to stereotype, and now readily automated. Rather than framing this as destroying education, it should be interpreted as proof that these tasks were always shallow. AI is st…
I have to present to a group of pissed off college faculty tomorrow. They're pissed because we ended our contract with the AI checking software. We ended it because it checks not for AI but for professional writing, good grammar and spelling, and professional non-conversational word choice. WHICH ARE THE THINGS WE'RE TEACHING THESE STUDENTS IN OUR CLASSES. I have to look at a room of mostly out of touch faculty and t…
Academic prose is just style transfer. Academia filters pretty heavily for humans that can do this particular kind of style transfer well. Everyone on the college faculty will be 2 standard deviations of good at writing academic prose. That skill is no longer valuable. It is now a cheap commodity measured in flops.
The silver lining is that the content of one's writing is now paramount because the field has been leveled as far as style is concerned.
Unfortunately, this kind of story will continue to be a popular one in newspapers and magazines, garnering lots of clicks. It feeds into the "everything is different now" sort of desperate helplessness people seem primed to adopt with respect to AI sometimes. Obviously the answer to testing and grading is to do it in the classroom. If a computer is required, it can't connect to the internet. Caught with a cellphone,…
High school me was a moron and should not be trusted to do the real work and people who know better should force him to practice the skills lol
Once he's grown and has a job he will one day realize and be thankful for the teachers that forced him to do the work.
Obviously not true for all students but I don't think it harms anyone inverting it but please point out if I'm wrong!