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The AI zombification of universities

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Re: The AI zombification of universities

#121

Post by nradov »

dgellow wrote: post #63

Overall it’s a very good read, really enjoyed the author voice and style > I don’t think she was laughing two years later when I was TAing the class and we observed a fairly distinct gap of about 40 percentage points between the take-home test and the one administered in-person. 40pp is massive. Take homes are pretty much dead at that point. And not just in schools, but also for interviews. I don’t see how you can ge…

Of course the take home interview assignments will be made using AI. Isn't that the point? For most white collar jobs we should hire candidates who can make effective use of AI.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#122

Post by [deleted] »

arjie wrote: post #114

Universities have the greatest discrepancy to me between how they're described from those who are no longer associated with them or who are weakly associated with them and the reality of those who are dependent on them as employees or as students. To listen to the alumni, every university was an institute of learning where all standards were held to the highest and everyone adhered to every rule to the letter. To the…

[deleted]

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#123

Post by jimbokun »

overgard wrote: post #64

I can't help but wonder if the fundamental problem is just that we spent decades pretending that a university degree was some sort of useful job training in the first place. As a professional software developer, I think my computer science degree is not actually all that important. Sure there are some relevant concepts, but they're ones you'd pick up on the job anyway. I don't regret getting my degree (back in 2009),…

My computer science education has been invaluable for my career.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#124

Post by Esophagus4 »

sheept wrote: post #120
Lerc wrote: post #51

If people attend university for certification instead of education I think the battle is already lost. AI is an easy, but possibly high risk approach to gaining the certification without work, but the tried and tested approach is doing the bare minimum, cramming, then forgetting everything after graduation. If you penalize people who use AI but in the process have learned the required information you make the problem…

For US undergrad, with all the resources available online, going to university just for education doesn't justify the high tuition. Research is mostly limited to graduate school anyways.

The course material isn’t really what your undergrad tuition pays for.

You’re paying to be surrounded by smart kids that will ensmarten you too and for access to the school’s career networks.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#125

Post by nradov »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #35
levocardia wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>As it turned out, the online version of MIT is not a substitute for the actual thing. More precisely, the people motivated enough to actually do the online MIT version were often already on a high-performance trajectory, and for the people who were not, few people took the online credential seriously, despite whatever skills they acquired.

All the courseware, classes, and schooling in the world cannot teach one to think.

Educators absolutely can teach students to think. The scientific method is one example of a key mental tool which provides an organized, disciplined framework for thinking. If you read a lot of stuff written before the scientific revolution it's kind of a mess because the authors literally didn't know how to think. When they occasionally got things right it was mostly by accident.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#126

Post by CBarkleyU »

jimbokun wrote: post #104
Lerc wrote: post #51

If people attend university for certification instead of education I think the battle is already lost. AI is an easy, but possibly high risk approach to gaining the certification without work, but the tried and tested approach is doing the bare minimum, cramming, then forgetting everything after graduation. If you penalize people who use AI but in the process have learned the required information you make the problem…

The purpose of the university has always been certification. “You wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in late fees at the public library." - Will Hunting

Not always [1]

Having gone to university in Germany, there are glimpses of this ideal, but they're mostly faint memories enshrined on faded plaques around the campus. I did have an old geezer prof (90+ years old) that went to the very same university over half a century ago and showed us his diploma: greek, latin, humanities, ... for a technical diploma, no less!

I do still cringe a little when we get newjoiners fresh out of university proudly proclaiming "Yeah, no can do, we didn't learn that at university". Yes, obviously, university is not an apprenticeship. You learn how to learn and then apply that to unknown-to-you problems. Oddly enough ChatGPT seems to have brought a change to that mindset, but Im not sure if it did so for the better.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humboldtian_model_of_higher_ed...

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#128

Post by AlexCoventry »

bawolff wrote: post #92

It does feel like there is an easy solution to this: Have tests. Supervise said tests to make sure people don't cheat. That's how it worked when i was in university. Admittedly maybe that is easier in the sciences than humanities, but still, it seems doable. Cheating isn't a new phenomenon it just got cheaper and easier.

Right? It's exactly how we train AIs, after all. It's not like this is mysterious.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#129

Post by llbbdd »

It's going to be interesting to see where universities are in ten years. Higher education has for a long time been a bad proxy for internships and apprenticeships, because if you aren't teaching what the market is paying for then you don't get funding or students. Watching universities start to defend against this obvious and accelerating association is fascinating. There's an obvious decoupling between "learning how to do a job" and "higher education for fun because I'm rich" that we're only going to see getting crazier.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#130

Post by mold_aid »

nwhnwh wrote: post #33

> The prevalence of AI use on college campuses, particularly at “elite” universities, is a cancer on our culture that threatens to turn a generation of promising young Americans into a class of drooling morons... Modern education is like that, even before AI. Check this https://www.jstor.org/stable/25006902

How exactly is it that you think Enzensberger is arguing against nwhnwh's point. Will an excerpt from Discourse Networks 1800/1900 be far behind, be still my heart
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