AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

> As the AI champion told us: “If you put junk in, you’ll get junk out.”

and if you put gold in, you'll still get junk out

But those students aren't going to be using AI to skip all the learning. The article and just about everyone in higher education right now are saying that a large number of students are doing that. So, there must be a large number of students who are primarily motivated by piece of paper (and the job opportunity it provides).

That doesn't mean that they must be completely disinterested in their subject. They might have some lectures they really like and where they do the coursework properly. However, the epidemic of AI cheating speaks to the inefficiency created by the need for the piece of paper. If someone is essentially skipping 80% of the learning with AI then the job market requiring you to have a piece of paper is causing someone to waste 80% of their time and money. They would be better served by a short course teaching them only that 20% of skills they actually want.

The social side of things isn't something I was really addressing in this context. To me, that's a bonus of university. Given the cost, it doesn't seem worth going to university primarily for a social experience (unless you live somewhere where it's free). I also really hope that AI isn't affecting these social aspects.

This is such a disingenuous take on the article, there's nothing naive or simplistic about it, it's literally full of critical thought linking to more critical thought of other academic observers to what's happening at the educational level. The context in your reply implies you read at most the first 10% of the article.

The article flagged numerous issues with LLM application in the educational setting including

1) critical thinking skills, brain connectivity and memory recall are falling as usage rises, students are turning into operators and are not getting the cognitive development they would thru self-learning 2) Employment pressures have turned universities into credentialing institutions vs learning institutions, LLMs have accelerated these pressures significantly 3) Cognitive development is being sacrificed with long term implications on students 4) School admins are pushing LLM programs without consultation, as experiments instead of in partnership with faculty. Private industry style disruption.

The article does not oppose LLM as learning assistant, it does oppose it as the central tool to cognitive development, which is the opposite of what it accomplishes. The author argues universities should be primarily for cognitive development.

> Successful students will grow and flourish with these developments, and institutions of higher learning ought to as well.

Might as well work at OpenAI marketing with bold statements like that.

Technology is neutral it’s always been neutral it will be neutral I quote Bertrand Russell on this almost every day:

“As long as war exists all new technology will be utilized for war”

You can abstract this away from “war” into anything that’s undesirable in society.

What people are dealing with now is the newest transformational technology that they can watch how utilizing it inside the current structural and economic regime of the world accelerates the already embedded destructive nature of structure and economic system we built.

I’m simply waiting for people to finally realize that, instead of blaming it on “AI” just like they’ve always blamed it on social media, TV, radio, electricity etc…

it’s like literally the oldest trope with respect to technology and humanity some people will always blame the technology when in fact it’s not…it’s the society that’s a problem

Society needs to look inward at how it victimizes itself through structural corrosion, not look for some outside person who is victimizing them