Now we can know who is really talented anymore

I remember learning the quadratic equation in highschool, and I memorized it like I did everything, still have no idea what it is or what I would use it for.

The same thing happened in linear algebra in university, I had no idea what I was doing or why it would ever be useful to solve a real world problem.

So I view this as the default state of teaching, and there is no where to go but up. If an AI can teach by dynamically producing videos and answering questions with visualizations I think it could be a great tool.

we all do, m8

If this annoys you, watch the cartoon WALL-E. Sooner or later, humanity will come to something like this, and then they will self-destruct.

I hate that LLMs have fucked my ability to find decent documentation. The Internet is done for. I'm learning to garden and do basic electronics from text books now.

It's not about AI; it's about how people are USING AI.

Take for example this recent video from Language Jones, showing how to use AI to leverage your native intelligence for language learning (Yes, it's from PhD in linguistics and yes, he cites research. "Always bring receipts" is logic 101). He shows how AI works best as a Socratic tutor, forcing you to generate answers rather than replacing thinking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQXiSGDXknA

When used properly, AI is a force magnifier par excellence. When used in the way you're likely encountering (young cohort? poor attention span? no training in formal reasoning, logic?) then yeah... "shit's fucked" (in the Australian vernacular).

I use to teach biomed, just before AI took over (so, circa 2013-2019). Attention spans were already alarmingly low and we'd have to instigate movement breaks, intermissions, break outs etc. I had to fucking tap dance out there - anything to keep "engagement" high and avoid the dreaded attrition KPIs.

The days of students being able to concentrate for 60+ mins in a row are likely gone. Hell, there's an oft repeated meme stat that average attention span on digital devices has dropped from two and a half minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds today. Whether you consider the provenance of that dubious, it does point to "people have trouble paying attention".

But...that's not AI's fault. The "shit was already fucked".

I think there's something (still) to be said about Classical Education Method. We need things like that. We need to teach our young ones about things like "intuition pumps" and "street epistemology", reasoning etc. And we can use ShitGPT to do it.

Take a simple example: a student uses ChatGPT to write an essay on climate policy. The AI generates a claim. Now ask: "What would prove this wrong?" If they can't answer - if they can't articulate what evidence or logic would falsify it - they don't understand it.

They've outsourced the reasoning. That's the difference.

It's not easy out there; it never was. But there's a confluence of factors (popular culture, digital devices, changing demographics, family dynamics, "education" being streamlined as vocational pre-training etc etc ad infinitum) that certainly seem to be actively hostile towards developing thinkers.

Here endth the pro clanker sermon.

Ramen; may we be blessed by his noodly appendage.

PS: I’m actually pretty hostile to AI myself and have been working on an open source engineering approach to mitigate some of these issues. Happy to share it if curious (not selling anything, Open source: just something I'm trying to use to solve this sort of issue for myself)

When I try to do a general search for help on how to solve a problem the top results in most search engines aren’t the old Academy style videos of guides anymore. They are sponsored links, paid tutoring websites, and YouTube videos of people playing at influencer instead of teaching.

Just wait until the AI companies move on from the onboarding phase and into the enshittification one.

I'm a non-traditional student and I have used AI to help with math.

Let me explain something. When I try to do a general search for help on how to solve a problem the top results in most search engines aren't the old Academy style videos of guides anymore. They are sponsored links, paid tutoring websites, and YouTube videos of people playing at influencer instead of teaching.

The same is true for researching most given topics.

I have tried to use AI ethically but I know it's problematic.

When trying to find sources the old academic websites still hold but finding those websites I had to ask AI with a crafted prompt. I couldnt remeber archive names in my freshmen year. At times, I did ask it to suggest papers from academic sources on topics. I then used my own critical analysis to decide the sources biases and value for the topic and explored around further by looking at the the author's source list. The alternative is usually to be given biased and over simple news articles, Often opinion pieces.

I see the problems with AI but a boolean search only works so well these days.

Going back to math, I could watch a video, but it's sitting through precious time when an AI will answer my question directly and explain the reason I was wrong.

Even if I'm trying to use a math website that actually answers the problem, there will be pop-ups (on the phone) useless text (as if it's a damn recipe website) and possibly mathematical syntax that is above my course level.

Using the AI I can have that syntax explained.

I do understand that AI is a problem and I hate HATE getting info from a middle man like this but I complete understand why a student would.

I also see how tempting it is to just skip those extra steps and take an answer, but I know it also is often wrong. My verification steps and further digging ensures that the AI is returning valid info.

But why do students do it? Because the internet today is a slop bog that they have to navigate on their phones. Often with minimal protection from ads and other useless garbage.

You can use AI to learn everything OR to learn nothing. They've made the second choice.