Relentless advancement to produce new gen of 
seppos
I asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in, and when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic: critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. The philosophy examines the influence of social and political forces on learning and classroom dynamics. Her opening line: “To what extent is schooling hindering students’ cognitive ability to think critically?” Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what “makes us truly human.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. “I use AI a lot. Like, every day,” she said. “And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”
This sounds like they made up a young person to get mad at tbh. I don't think most students use AI to that extent.
In all honesty though, the whole way we teach needs to be overhauled. So much of these classes amounts to busywork and teaching stuff that isn't relevant. But the biggest problem of all are these classes are rushed and that results in students being dumped with a continuous stream of too much information, all of which they can't realistically remember in a short amount of time. That, and due to pressure on teachers to teach the entirety of a subject in a stupidly short amount of time, we are increasingly seeing teachers basically tell students to teach themselves.
If students do resort to chatgpt, which I think is rare, it's because the quality of teaching has gone down the tubes. Not the teachers fault, just the stupid way the whole thing is structured.
you clearly haven't been in a school recently. they absolutely do lol.
source: my sister teaches science to 10 year olds in an elementary school and has spent the last 3-4 years getting into arguments with parents about their child's clear use of ChatGPT for their science fair projects. One kid submitted a classic 'will the same amount of mentos & coke erupt higher than a baking soda & vinegar volcano?' project (mind you, this was one of the suggestions my sister gave to the class as a 'if you can't think of anything else, you can do something like this') and his hypothesis/conclusion/etc he'd printed out onto his poster board was literally shit like "The mixture of Baking Soda (NaHCO₃) + Vinegar (CH₃COOH) turns into CO₂ (gas) + Water + Sodium Acetate." and "Further testing could introduce a motorized volcano using a servo"
What 10 year old knows what a servo is? What 10 year old is going to bother to look up the chemical formulas for shit like Baking Soda and then type it out like that? Maybe a very smart one - but my sister would give all of them the benefit of the doubt and let them get all the way to the actual science fair demonstrations & inevitably every time they'd be like "um...uh..." when asked any questions about their project/presentation that weren't already answered via their print outs glued to their boards.
And what's sad is that half the parents she's confronted over the last few years about this have been like "oh, yeah I told Jimmy to just use ChatGPT to help them with their project what's the issue?"
I have a few friends who are middle/high school teachers as well and they've all reported the same shit in the last 3-4 years. Students submitting homework that still has the "Okay, here's a better version of what you're asking" prompt responses pasted in the middle of a paragraph, etc etc.
There is no way that it isn't a rampant issue in colleges/universities, especially given how much graded classwork outside of tests are usually submitted online.
Oh, that sucks.
Maybe it's a problem with younger people, I'm a mature student at University and most of my peers express disgust towards AI for the environmental toll. Mind you I am doing an ecology degree so that might be why.
I have had professors encourage us to use AI though, which is weird.
It is sad that parents are encouraging it too. No one has the time to parent their children, so no wonder.
yep, that's probably it
Not only because of the impact on the environment, but also because its a degree path that's less likely to attract a lot of "I just need to get through this and get a profitable degree that will let me get a good job" types. I'm still surprised you aren't seeing it a little bit though. I guess you might not know? idk
Yeah you're probably right about that.
I do see small amount of AI stans, but very minor and strangely from 2 professors I've had lol
That's so frustrating jfc
I have coworkers who constantly trip over themselves to use it and don't seem to realize that it leads them astray more often than it helps them.
I refuse to use AI for anything other than maybe helping my ADHD ass understand instructions if they are very vague or flowery. Even then I take it with a lot of skepticism and double check with other sources.
I once asked a professor to explain how to do something and they said "I'm not going to do it for you"
I... I just wanted you to teach me? That's what I'm going into 100k debt for?
most people i know (undergrad linguistics) seem pretty anti-AI, but that might just be the people i know, and those are also largely the people who seem to have more of an interest in linguistics. it's also possible there's some effect of it just being kind of bad for a fair amount of the sorts of things we need to do (at least when i played around with it maybe a year ago it was pretty bad at dealing with sound changes for example)
In med school most people are AI stans even though it's often useless because it can't fetch the newest info or doesn't have anything detailed on the topic. People will ask questions about a certain topic and inevitably no matter how much actual explanation has been done someone will send a screenshot of ChatGPT. Sometimes people will insist exam questions are incorrect because ChatGPT says a different, obviously incorrect thing. I've seen a dude not listen to the teacher in class and ask ChatGPT in real time when the teacher was giving a very clear explanation.
Worst, we've had our school give conferences on "Using AI to boost productivity" to med students.
My experience as a mature student has been similar, I've had a couple of people in group projects try to use AI and get resoundingly mocked for it by the rest of the group. Which was kinda vindicating.
Watching the uni policy on it evolve over the last couple years has been interesting. For a while individual unit heads would just have their own policies so it ranged from "AI = insta-fail" to "you can use AI to help with phrasing in your writing but provide examples of how".
Now the uni seems to have settled on a cohesive policy of not allowing it for writing, but encouraging its use for summarising articles before reading them to determine relevancy, or rubber ducking your own work.
I'm a professor. They do
Wait how can I post a sticker like that !
It's one of Hexbears emojis : desolate : without the spaces
my sister said every single person in her undergrad is using it and you're just falling behind on doing menial assignments as efficiently if you don't
That's why I tend to see this as a problem with how our system handles education. Either the tests are assignments are in fact menial or the professors aren't communicating their importance.
i agree it's clearly a symptom of a greater problem. education as a commodity & visa to the corporate world rather than being something beautiful and fundamental that instils a love of learning and knowledge. the rot has been there in the academy (and high school, etc.) for decades or longer this stuff just reveals it.