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The AI zombification of universities

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Re: The AI zombification of universities

#51

Post by Lerc »

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 even worse.

These problems are all because of a culture that favours the measurement over what is being measured.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#52

Post by StableAlkyne »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #38
0xkvyb wrote: post #5

I think that universities just have to adapt to deal with slop, or think of new ways to challenge people to learn the essence of their studies. I wouldn’t want to be a uni teacher in these times though.

It's not hard, just unpopular. End credentialism, stop giving out grades or administering exams.

The (Western) educational system still does this for PhDs. Grades barely matter, and in most places you have two oral exams in your entire 5 years: your qualifying exam, and your final defense.

The reason it doesn't happen for the rest of the system is scaling. The US awards about 60k PhDs per year, compared to about 2M bachelors. There simply are not enough faculty and it is not realistic to hire enough (if there are even enough qualified people in existence)

And that's ignoring all of the problems with "not giving out grades" or "ending credentialism" - I guess people are supposed to just get hired on vibes?

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#53

Post by simoncion »

Morromist wrote: post #31
jsoaoxhd wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution is obvious. Teaching must be no-tech—just go back to 1950s. The other problem of course is attention span due to social-media erosion. The big tech has really done a number on society already and they’re just getting started.

I agree with you that no-tech parts of universities would work - obviously you can't avoid tech when teaching some things like coding, but mostly I think it would be a good idea. There are problems: Having students attend lectures is great but they have to work with the material and prove they understand it - how to do that without homework? I'm sure there are ways. Have them work in a building full of computers cut-…

> ...how to do that without homework?

Tests. Many of my university courses only graded on tests. They strongly encouraged you to do the homework to better understand the material, but didn't consider homework completion when calculating your grade.

Consider that universities are educating adults who are -often- paying to be there. If we assume competent course design and instruction, if an adult chooses to not work on the material until they understand it, then the only person they're harming is themselves... which -as an adult- is a thing that they're usually fully entitled to do.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#54

Post by underlipton »

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

Right. I got my bachelors degree more than a decade ago, and they did a good enough job of it without AI. College was the first time in my life that I'd ever heard, "You cannot aspire to [ambition]," and I heard it there quite a few times.

Higher education needs reform more intensive than a simple defense against LLMs (as does the legal system and profession, as does the software engineering field, as does the field of psychology/psychiatry, as does-).

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#55

Post by kranke155 »

XorNot wrote: post #50
chung8123 wrote: post #44

The college system is creating the zombie underclass with AI or without it. The amount of money colleges charge combined with the text book thinking shapes people into thinking there are steps to success, there are right answers, and "getting a job" is the right way to go. Colleges don't teach independent thinking and that is the exact thinking we need in the era of Youtube and AI. You don't need college to teach you…

Ok but I need a job to live. And if I want to do something interesting I need the skills and knowledge which are learned at a college level.

You need a job to live - under the current economic system. a lot of the critiques of capitalism lead you straight into ai, and most economic critiques of AI are critiques of capitalism as it exists now.

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#57

Post by taude »

drmanhat wrote: post #46

Oddly enough my reaction to this is that it's a broader societal problem as opposed to an A.I. problem. Why shouldn't universities switch to examinations where no technology (apart from say calculators) are allowed; and this is strictly enforced? This was certainly the norm when I went to university. I agree that A.I. trivializes (or changes how you approach) a lot of take home work; but people who wanted to cheat co…

i always found it funny when people complaied about white board coding tests. Back in school, I had to write C code in those little blue books. :)

EDIT: I meant writing in blue books before this era of copying words out of the claude app on your phone

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#58

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

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…

> These problems are all because of a culture that favours the measurement over what is being measured.

Spot on. I am teenager going to college soon and I feel like the same way about the education system (and in extension, the job market but I suppose that the job market might be more understanding probably over all of it), part of my comment was as follows.

I do feel a bit like coding/a lot of fun-ness out of life is also like this, quantified, measured, transactional (posting for social-media?) [as I wonder if I am writing this comment for hackernews karma or relevant discussion talking points..]

This feels to me the most irreversible consequence because it might be hard for the generation (myself included) to see value in non-measurable things as everything has to be measured and transactional-ized.

(...) I would like for humanity to be more nuanced and less measured but more varied (grey rather than black or white) but I feel like that there is enough noise on the internet that maybe even this ends up becoming noise and I am not sure if anyone who might benefit from reading this actually does end up reading it.

From one of my comments that I had written sometime ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47559013

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#59

Post by colechristensen »

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…

>These problems are all because of a culture that favours the measurement over what is being measured.

Hear, hear!

Re: The AI zombification of universities

#60

Post by spicyusername »

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…

> These problems are all because of a culture that favours the measurement over what is being measured.

What other kind of culture is there? A culture of not measuring?

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