"Yes, going back to paper and pencil strains our current resources, but is a likely necessity" -- When I reached this sad, arthritic point in the article it was clear that the author has no constructive idea about what happens next in education. There is no critical dialogue regarding assessment and its necessity. There is no critical understanding and projection for what intelligence as a service represents for society. Just a simple monastic shrug and a familiar scent of old world pencil lead.
AI has already killed academia as we know it?
21–30 of 54 posts
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#22Flip the classroom, make students learn the material on their own (Using AI or whatever resources they want to use) and then in-classroom time is divided on working on problems (without AI assistance which can be controlled in this environment) and quizzes/exams (again without AI). We don't need lectures anymore, they are an incredibly ineffective way to learn.
You are right and this is the way, it's just a lot easier said than done, especially the quizzes/exams part.
There is a tension between: - authentic assessments (not multiple choice/ - grading resources - computer lab availability - students using AI in very discreet ways on their own laptop when taking an in-person exam
So overall you are on point, it's just really hard to do honest authentic assessment at scale right now (in person or otherwise).
I see a potential for it to get much better, or much worse... Hard to tell which way it will go right now.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#23And I welcome the change. In my long experience in academia, I've only found two types of practitioners:
1% are the absolutely brilliant minds that academia was originally created for. People that, without a doubt, leave their mark in the vast corpus of human knowledge. I consider myself fortunate for meeting and learning from them, and I thank the academia ecosystem for that.
But the remaining 99% are the maximalists, as described in the article. More papers/students/grants, then repeat. Worse enough, they're absolutely useless outside of academia, as they never did anything at all outside that bubble.
An embarrassing lot of CS professors would stumble around your average production codebase.
I think AI is just the final nail in the coffin for the latter bunch, as they have been dogs eating their own tail for decades already.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#24Flip the classroom, make students learn the material on their own (Using AI or whatever resources they want to use) and then in-classroom time is divided on working on problems (without AI assistance which can be controlled in this environment) and quizzes/exams (again without AI). We don't need lectures anymore, they are an incredibly ineffective way to learn.
Lectures have been an incredibly ineffective way to learn forever. Faculty continue to lecture, and we continue to build lecture-style classrooms, further enshrining this poor approach. Active learning works, and yet both faculty and students dislike it. Faculty like to talk and pretend they're teaching, and students like to listen and pretend they're learning. All to say—I wish it was this easy to change the academy…
15 years later I can still remember parts of my lectures that were interesting. The only thing I remember about studying is those now banned little energy drink shots.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#25Flip the classroom, make students learn the material on their own (Using AI or whatever resources they want to use) and then in-classroom time is divided on working on problems (without AI assistance which can be controlled in this environment) and quizzes/exams (again without AI). We don't need lectures anymore, they are an incredibly ineffective way to learn.
Lectures have been an incredibly ineffective way to learn forever. Faculty continue to lecture, and we continue to build lecture-style classrooms, further enshrining this poor approach. Active learning works, and yet both faculty and students dislike it. Faculty like to talk and pretend they're teaching, and students like to listen and pretend they're learning. All to say—I wish it was this easy to change the academy…
> Lectures have been an incredibly ineffective way to learn forever.
Mainly due to shortage of very good lecturers, no? I can not see a better way to cultivate the professional pride than to attend lectures of truly remarkable professors. The style, the manner, the attitude go much beyond the dry proofs. I'm an applied math major.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#26And I welcome the change. In my long experience in academia, I've only found two types of practitioners: 1% are the absolutely brilliant minds that academia was originally created for. People that, without a doubt, leave their mark in the vast corpus of human knowledge. I consider myself fortunate for meeting and learning from them, and I thank the academia ecosystem for that. But the remaining 99% are the maximalist…
I think it's very field dependant. In maths and biology I've seen very few professors that could reasonably be described as maximialists here; computer science really seems to be the outlier. My impression is that impactful CS professors tend to be more strongly associated with either maths, or the field that their cs research is being used in.
Arts faculty on the other hand seem to basically just be a popularity competition.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#27The grant application process is wild now, half the questions I'm to respond to feel AI generated as well. I feel certain that the reviewers are just taking my responses and feeding them.into another AI to evaluate too.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#28Solving the paper submission is easy. Just hold frontal interview where the submitter defends their paper. They can't create papers every day and still be knowledgeable about them in depth. We are hurling to a reality where the only noteworthy metric is human to human validation.
Paper reviews are traditionally blinded, so the reviewer doesn't know the authorship of the paper they're reading.
You could do a two stage process, a blinded text review and an unblinded review that can only be failed if you have a vigorous lack of knowledge about your work.
I highly doubt anything like that will be implemented though.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#29"Yes, going back to paper and pencil strains our current resources, but is a likely necessity" -- When I reached this sad, arthritic point in the article it was clear that the author has no constructive idea about what happens next in education. There is no critical dialogue regarding assessment and its necessity. There is no critical understanding and projection for what intelligence as a service represents for soci…
It frustrates me that your comment is being down voted, because I agree with your sentiment.
Too many educators don't actually know how to educate, and only focus on what to educate.
LLMs are offering some ways to dramatically improve how people learn (and therefore how well they learn, what they learn,etc - to rapidly accelerate and improve outcomes). However most educators, who are ignorant to the principles of how people learn, have no idea how to harness that potential. The result is in most cases students are just using AI to sabotage their own learning, because no better alternative is being offered.
It's a hard problem... But it's a shame that so few people are working constructively and pragmatically on it.
Re: AI has already killed academia as we know it?
#30On the flip side, the value of new, clever and repeatable experimental results goes up when compared to regurgitated publications.