AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself • Hacker News Board

Re: AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

#51

Post by defrost » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 7:05 AM UTC

binary132 wrote: post #50

defrost wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what its real purpose was always supposed to be. Catholic education and theology college? * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris#Origins * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Oxford#Founding

sounds good to me. :)

They have their issues ...

Bindoon: * https://kelsolawyers.com/au/paedophile_offenders/brother-kea...

Castledare: * https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-39131761

Clontarf: * https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/entity/clontarf/

St Augustine’s / Marcellin College : * https://kelsolawyers.com/au/paedophile_offenders/father-terr...

Not just Catholic schools, of course - but they certainly swept the boards and came first by a good margin: https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/case-studies

They were very good at keeping it under wraps for decades though.

Re: AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

#52

Post by firmretention » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:38 PM UTC

Pretty certain this article was written with an LLM. I can't tell you how many LLM-critical articles I've seen that are themselves written by an LLM. It's some weird kind of incestuous irony that you'd think the author of such a piece would try to avoid.

Re: AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

#53

Post by red-iron-pine » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 6:24 PM UTC

Der_Einzige wrote: post #37

nzach wrote: post #4

> As philosopher Peter Hershock observes, we don’t merely use technologies; we participate in them. With tools, we retain agency—we can choose when and how to use them. With technologies, the choice is subtler: they remake the conditions of choice itself. A pen extends communication without redefining it; social media transformed what we mean by privacy, friendship, even truth. That doesn't feel right. I thought that…

BTW that line you are quoting is probably itself AI generated :^)

are you saying it's a fake quote, or an AI created article that uses real quotes?

cuz Peter Hershock is a real guy and talks about AI all the time. I don't know if he ever said those exact words, but it's reasonable to think he did.

https://romeoffice.georgetown.edu/people/peter-d-hershock

Re: AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

#54

Post by disqard » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

chistev wrote: post #10

Last month, I was listening to the Joe Rogan Experience episode with guest Avi Loeb, who is a theoretical physicist and professor at Harvard University. He complained about the disturbingly increasing rate at which his students are submitting academic papers referencing non-existent scientific literature that were so clearly hallucinated by Large Language Models (LLMs). They never even bothered to confirm their refer…

From a certain perspective, these students are optimizing their Time, which is not an unwise strategy. If you've saved 3 hours by using an LLM, would it make sense to spend 1 hour checking those references by hand?

Of course, they're also cheating themselves out of an education, but few students have that Big Picture at their age.

Re: AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

#55

Post by chistev » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 10:02 PM UTC

disqard wrote: post #54

chistev wrote: post #10

Last month, I was listening to the Joe Rogan Experience episode with guest Avi Loeb, who is a theoretical physicist and professor at Harvard University. He complained about the disturbingly increasing rate at which his students are submitting academic papers referencing non-existent scientific literature that were so clearly hallucinated by Large Language Models (LLMs). They never even bothered to confirm their refer…

From a certain perspective, these students are optimizing their Time, which is not an unwise strategy. If you've saved 3 hours by using an LLM, would it make sense to spend 1 hour checking those references by hand? Of course, they're also cheating themselves out of an education, but few students have that Big Picture at their age.

You make good points.

Re: AI Is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

#56

Post by awillowingmind » Tue, Dec 09, 2025, 7:17 PM UTC

waffletower wrote: post #43

awillowingmind wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure how you lived through the last decade and came to the conclusion that people aged 17-25 make rational decisions with novel technologies that have short term gain and long term (essentially hidden) negative side effects.

It seems that 10% of college students in the U.S. are younger than 18, or do not have adult status. The other 90% are adults and are trusted with voting, armed services participation and enjoy most other rights that adults have (with several obvious and notable exceptions -- car rental and legal controlled substance purchase etc.) Are you saying that these adults shouldn't be trusted to use AI? In the United States,…

Your argument seems overly reliant on the definition of an adult. What is an adult? Is it a measure of responsibility, mental maturity? Because I would wager the level of responsibility and mental maturity of the average 18 year old has been on the downtrend.

I’m not advocating for completely restricting access to AI for certain age groups. I’m pointing out that historically we have restricted prolonged interactions with certain stimuli that have shown to be damaging to cognitive development, and that we should make the same considerations here.

I think it’s hard to deny that younger generations have been negatively affected by the proliferation of social media engineered around fundamentally predatory algorithms. As have the older generations.