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Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

nytimes.com

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Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#71

Post by p1necone »

wyager wrote: post #9
vondur wrote: post #7

Yeah, I work at a CSU and the Teacher's union is against AI. However, the layoffs happened at some of the CSU's where enrollment numbers are drastically down. I think Sonoma State is having a really bad time getting students and CSU Dominguez Hills has always had issues with attracting students compared to nearby CSU Long Beach. I'd imagine at some point these campuses may end up on the chopping block.

> Yeah, I work at a CSU and the Teacher's union is against AI. Is this a political coalition thing or is there a real teacher-related reason they don't like it?

Dismissing opinions you don't like by arbitrarily classifying them as "political" vs "not political" is lazy and dishonest.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#72

Post by beej71 »

warkdarrior wrote: post #15
dkarl wrote: post #3

> Some have chosen to link their fate to the technology, dedicating themselves to learning prompt engineering, while others are staging a revolt against it. I don't understand why these are seen as mutually exclusive choices. I think I would be in both of these camps if I were a student.

How does this work? Are you embracing AI and also against it? Are you protesting against your own use of AI?

You need to be clear on the usage. It's like how we're all pro-knife and anti-knife at the same time.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#73

Post by AlotOfReading »

charcircuit wrote: post #64
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amusingly, education is free and I’ll die on this hill. There is nothing you learn at a university that you cannot learn, for free, at a library and online. There exist parts or even degree courses in university education that cannot really be learned this way. Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to lea…

>Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Why do you need equipment to learn something? You can learn the information outside of a lab. >Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to learn by yourself than others. Free AI like ChatGPT can assist with offering many different explanations personalized for someone to make it easier to learn.

Another example is history. It's theoretically possible to become an academic historian through private study and there are certainly no legal barriers to it, yet amateurs almost never make the transition except through higher education.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#74

Post by snapetom »

vondur wrote: post #7

Yeah, I work at a CSU and the Teacher's union is against AI. However, the layoffs happened at some of the CSU's where enrollment numbers are drastically down. I think Sonoma State is having a really bad time getting students and CSU Dominguez Hills has always had issues with attracting students compared to nearby CSU Long Beach. I'd imagine at some point these campuses may end up on the chopping block.

I briefly attended a CSU in the 90's and this was well discussed even back then with predicted population declines. There's just too many CSUs. You'll always need the ones like Stanislaus and Bakersfield to serve their communities and it turns out, they're the ones doing ok. However, there's too many in LA and SF, and the situation is not helped by housing costs in those cities. SFSU itself has had -30% enrollment in the past 10 years.

The CSU system is going to have to to make tough consolidation decisions soon because you can't have declining urban and suburban campuses at the same time.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#75

Post by aleph_minus_one »

charcircuit wrote: post #64
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amusingly, education is free and I’ll die on this hill. There is nothing you learn at a university that you cannot learn, for free, at a library and online. There exist parts or even degree courses in university education that cannot really be learned this way. Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to lea…

>Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Why do you need equipment to learn something? You can learn the information outside of a lab. >Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to learn by yourself than others. Free AI like ChatGPT can assist with offering many different explanations personalized for someone to make it easier to learn.

> Free AI like ChatGPT can assist with offering many different explanations personalized for someone to make it easier to learn.

What I can tell you is the following: a lot of academic topics are quite subtle - to get to more than a basic level, you have to learn things that are very subtle, and where you only can judge the correctness of the information years later (basically when you have finished your degree or even PhD).

Because of this, I would rather read the most renowned (and ideally hardest) textbooks in the respective area (if you really need to cheap out, download them at some shadow library) instead of trusting some AI.

I can tell you that for quite a lot of questions in my area of expertise, the answers that AIs gave were far from being sufficiently reliable for learners who want to get a deep knowledge about the topic, and the errors were often quite subtle.

In mathematics, for example, it is not uncommon to hang for hours over a page or even a paragraph, trying to understand why the statement holds - and this in a situation where the proof is for sure correct. Now imagine the situation of hanging over a page of text that you will need hours for understanding when you cannot even rely on the prior that the information in the text is correct ...

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#76

Post by usefulcat »

charcircuit wrote: post #64
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Amusingly, education is free and I’ll die on this hill. There is nothing you learn at a university that you cannot learn, for free, at a library and online. There exist parts or even degree courses in university education that cannot really be learned this way. Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to lea…

>Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Why do you need equipment to learn something? You can learn the information outside of a lab. >Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to learn by yourself than others. Free AI like ChatGPT can assist with offering many different explanations personalized for someone to make it easier to learn.

Surprisingly, reading about something is very often not at all equivalent to actually doing it.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#77

Post by falcor84 »

donohoe wrote: post #67
reactordev wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s all AI now

At the NYT? I don’t doubt AI is used in figuring out headlines but ultimately a human makes the decision.

Quite funny to think that we might have AI models meticulously nudging newspaper editors in order to carefully control the public's Overton Window about AI, playing some 5d chess.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#78

Post by jimbokun »

snapetom wrote: post #74
vondur wrote: post #7

Yeah, I work at a CSU and the Teacher's union is against AI. However, the layoffs happened at some of the CSU's where enrollment numbers are drastically down. I think Sonoma State is having a really bad time getting students and CSU Dominguez Hills has always had issues with attracting students compared to nearby CSU Long Beach. I'd imagine at some point these campuses may end up on the chopping block.

I briefly attended a CSU in the 90's and this was well discussed even back then with predicted population declines. There's just too many CSUs. You'll always need the ones like Stanislaus and Bakersfield to serve their communities and it turns out, they're the ones doing ok. However, there's too many in LA and SF, and the situation is not helped by housing costs in those cities. SFSU itself has had -30% enrollment in…

Maybe they can open a campus in Texas where all their residents are moving to.

Re: Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system

#79

Post by jatora »

js2 wrote: post #35
kibwen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the NYT is the same as British newspapers, the person who wrote the article doesn't write the headline. This has been the case for essentially all newspapers since time immemorial. Reporters write the articles, editors write the headlines.

While true, NYT took a clear turn towards clickbait headlines in the last 5-10 years. It used to have more self-respect.

You're fooling yourself if you think newspapers and news media in general haven't always been about attention-baiting.
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