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Universities would prefer no AI

hollisrobbinsanecdotal.substack.com

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Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#71

Post by ang_cire »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #68
ang_cire wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the real answer to this is actually an older paradigm: apprenticeship. Companies should be doing their own training for their jobs, and university can be freed up to actually be about intellectual pursuit rather than economic pursuit. It was companies themselves who created this issue anyways, by demanding degrees for every damn job, regardless of whether a degree could prepare you in the first place, an…

> Companies should be doing their own training for their jobs, and university can be freed up to actually be about intellectual pursuit rather than economic pursuit. This would be great of course, but the reason that 'what actually happens' is so different than 'what should happen' are the usual economic incentives. How can we change the financial calculations to separate formal education from job training in a way t…

We (meaning the US) won't ever fix this ourselves, because we systematically refuse to hold businesses to any kind of standards.

Make it illegal to discriminate based on degree status in hiring (it's not like anyone is hiring an SWE without doing technical interviews anyways, so if you prove out their skills why does the paper matter?), and you remove both the backdoor socioeconomic discrimination route (which is itself a backdoor route to discriminate against protected attributes), and solve the degree 'inflation' incentive.

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#72

Post by logicchains »

jmaw wrote: post #56
black_knight wrote: post #37

Lots of people talk about cheating here. That is not the framing I put in my mind. Or rather, if the students are cheating anyone it's themselves. LLMs exist and are extremely useful in academia. I am currently riding a productivity wave, where I can spit out formalised proofs – not quite at the pace at which I can think of the theorems to prove, but almost. The thing braking my progress is that I have to build all t…

Yes, totally agree that they are primarily directly cheating themselves. But it also indirectly cheats their peers who are being surpassed by the cheating students (at least in school). Similarly for cheating in interviews. Unfortunately the cheating students can cause a race to the bottom where the non-cheating students are pressured to cheat in order to keep up. This pressure to cheat to keep up can become an even…

>But it also indirectly cheats their peers who are being surpassed by the cheating students (at least in school). Similarly for cheating in interviews.

This doesn't happen if they're only assessed based on well-invigilated on-paper exams.

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#73

Post by summarybot »

goda90 wrote: post #62
summarybot wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how many aqueducts lead to your dwelling today?

I live someplace with abundant groundwater so my water comes from a well less than a mile away. But millions of people have aqueducts leading to their city providing a significant portion of their water supply.

And when you need water for drinking or showering do you go to the well to get it?

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#75

Post by tgv »

alephnerd wrote: post #5
tgv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, sure, they train enough people to serve all needs. What a load of poppy cock.

They do. The top 20 CS/EE/CE/ECE/EE degree programs (MIT, CMU, Stanford, Cal, UIUC, GT, UT Austin, Purdue, UW, UCLA, UCSD, Ivies, UChicago, NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, USC, UMinn, UMich) graduate around 15k-20k undergrads a year . Throw in the next rung of well respected universities (eg. the rest of the state flagships like ASU or IU, the respected regional public programs like CalPoly, NCSU, or SUNY Buffalo, and th…

50k/year is not enough for a country the size of the US. Belgium produces about that number of graduates yearly.

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#76

Post by alephnerd »

tgv wrote: post #75
alephnerd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do. The top 20 CS/EE/CE/ECE/EE degree programs (MIT, CMU, Stanford, Cal, UIUC, GT, UT Austin, Purdue, UW, UCLA, UCSD, Ivies, UChicago, NYU, UNC Chapel Hill, Duke, USC, UMinn, UMich) graduate around 15k-20k undergrads a year . Throw in the next rung of well respected universities (eg. the rest of the state flagships like ASU or IU, the respected regional public programs like CalPoly, NCSU, or SUNY Buffalo, and th…

50k/year is not enough for a country the size of the US. Belgium produces about that number of graduates yearly.

Those 40-60 universities graduate around 50k undergraduate CS, EE, CE, ECE, and EE majors a year.

Overall, the US graduates around 125k-150k CS/EE/CE/ECE/EE/EECS majors a year.

Overall we graduated a little under 5 milllion college graduates in 2025 compared to a little under 4 million in 2015.

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#77

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

d_silin wrote: post #7

And for the good reason. I have yet to see 1 (one) reason how giving infinite cheat machine to students is of any benefit to them. The secret to mastery remained unchanged for a thousand years: books, lectures and homework. All of this can be done with pen and paper level of technology.

"All of this can be done with pen and paper level technology."

If pens and paper are technology then why aren't pen and paper manufacturing companies referred to as "tech" companies

NB. I am not asking what is a "tech" company or how they are different from other companies. I'm asking why call it a "tech" company given that technology is a broad term used to describe far more than computers

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#79

Post by ang_cire »

summarybot wrote: post #70
ang_cire wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly certain that you do in fact have a duct that moves aqua (water) into your house, bro. And gravity-feed systems are the best way to move large amounts of water. That's even how nature works, and nature moves much more water than humans do.

You miss the point entirely little bro. Modern water-moving infrastructure is qualitatively different than two thousand years ago. Why would modern education be exempt from a similar transformation?

This is a false dichotomy.

University impact on careers in the 1980s was materially different than now, and that is still "modern education".

Opposing the AI impact on universities is not equivalent to opposing modern water infrastructure, it's more akin to being opposed to a new water pipe material that is shown to improve flow but have adverse health effects.

Re: Universities would prefer no AI

#80

Post by tgv »

alephnerd wrote: post #76
tgv wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50k/year is not enough for a country the size of the US. Belgium produces about that number of graduates yearly.

Those 40-60 universities graduate around 50k undergraduate CS, EE, CE, ECE, and EE majors a year . Overall, the US graduates around 125k-150k CS/EE/CE/ECE/EE/EECS majors a year . Overall we graduated a little under 5 milllion college graduates in 2025 compared to a little under 4 million in 2015.

5M? On a population of 340M? 3.6M children are born yearly. Do they all graduate at a university? The web says 864,457.
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