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Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
391–400 of 672 posts
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#392I've always though that the education system was broken and next to worthless. I've never felt that teachers ever tried to _teach_ me anything, certainly not how to think. In fact I saw most attempts at thought squashed because they didn't fit neatly into the syllabus (and so couldn't be graded). The fact that AI can do your homework should tell you how much your homework is worth. Teaching and learning are collabora…
> The fact that AI can do your homework should tell you how much your homework is worth. A lot of people who say this kind of thing have, frankly, a very shallow view of what homework is. A lot of homework can be easily done by AI, or by a calculator, or by Wikipedia, or by looking up the textbook. That doesn't invalidate it as homework at all. We're trying to scaffold skills in your brain. It also didn't invalidate…
Completely agree - I always thought the framing of "exercises" is the right one, the point is that your brain grows by doing. It's been possible for a long time to e.g. google a similar algebra problem and find a very relevant math stackexchange post, doesn't mean the exercises were useless.
"The fact that forklift truck can lift over 500kg should tell you how worthwhile it is for me to go to a gym and lift 100kg." - complete non-sequitur.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Some thesises had hallucinated sources, some had AI slop blogs as sources, the texts are robotic and boring. But should I fail them, out of principle on what the ideal University should be? No, you should fail them for turning in bad theses, just like you would before AI.
That's probably what should happen, but it's not what happens in reality. In grading I have to follow a very detailed grading matrix (made by some higher-ups) and the requirements for passing and getting the lowest grade are so incredibly low that it's almost impossible to fail, if the text even somewhat resembles a thesis. The only way I could fail a student, is if they cheated, plagiarised or fabricated stuff. The…
Yeah, our information and training systems are kinda failing at dealing with the reality of our actual information environment.
Take law for example and free speech - a central tenet to a functional democracy is effective ways to trade ideas.
A core response in our structure to falsehoods and rhetoric is counter speech.
But I can show you that counter speech fails. We have realms upon realms of data inside tech firms and online communities that shows us the mechanics of how our information economies actually work, and counter speech does diddly squat.
Education is also stuck in a bind. People need degrees to be employable today, but the idea of education is tied up with the idea of being a good educated thinking human being.
Meaning you are someone who is engaged with the ideas and concepts of your field, and have a mental model in your head, that takes calories, training and effort to use to do complex reasoning about the world.
This is often overkill for many jobs - the issue isn’t doing high level stats in a day science role, it’s doing boring data munging and actually getting the data in the first place. (Just an example).
High quality work is hard, and demanding, and in a market with unclear signals, people game the few systems that used to be signals.
Which eventually deteriorated signal till you get this mess.
We need jobs that give a living wage, or provide a pathway to achieving mastery while working, so that the pressure on the education lever can be reduced and spread elsewhere.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#394I am kinda shocked that the thing which would be shared on HN, unironically, is an essay of the attraction to the idea of the butlerian Jihad. Interesting times.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#395Maybe just stop giving homework and instead give the kids some time to live. Fixed it for you.
The author teaches a college-level writing class. Are you suggesting that, if you voluntarily take a writing class, it's unreasonable if the professor expects you to do some writing outside of class?
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#396Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#397I teach computer science / programming, and I don't know what a good AI policy is. On the one hand, I use AI extensively for my own learning, and it's helping me a lot. On the other hand, it gets work done quickly and poorly. Students mistake mandatory assignments for something they have to overcome as effortlessly as possible. Once they're past this hurdle, they can mind their own business again. To them, AI is not…
I'm not that old, and yet my university CS courses evaluated people with group projects, and in-person paper exams. We weren't allowed to bring computers or calculators into the exam room (or at least, not any calculators with programming or memory). It was fine. I don't see why this is so hard, other than the usual intergenerational whining / a heaping pile of student entitlement. If anything, the classes that requi…
Thing is, this hits the scaling problem in education and fucking hard.
There’s such a shortfall of teachers globally, and the role is a public good, so it’s constantly underpaid.
And if you are good - why would you teach ? You’d get paid to just take advantage of your skills.
And now we have a tool that makes it impossible to know if you have taught anyone because they can pass your exams.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Since when did universities care almost solely about renevnue and growth? Since endowments got huge.
Could you explain this more? At first glace, a large endowment should either free you from worrying about revenue or move your focus to managing an endowment with a school as a side hustle.
> a large endowment should either free you
A large endowment attracts greedy people who then want to make it larger, that is true regardless where you go.
Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#399Re: Trying to teach in the age of the AI homework machine
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Many of them are neurodivergent who do miserably in exam conditions Isn't this part of life? Learning to excel anyway?
Life doesn't tend to take place under exam conditions, either.
It's more about the meta-skill of learning to adapt. Learning to be uncomfortable sometimes.