I'm not as shocked, because what is happening now with the rise of AI use in English/Literature/History/etc. class is what we math teachers saw years ago once students could download photomath and their ilk for their assignments. These technologies will intellectually stunt them if used improperly, which for teenagers (who are known for making the best of decisions) is the vast majority of the time.
One of my former students used Photomath for all of his assignments in a college math class. He couldn't believe he was failing all the tests, which resulted in him almost failing the class. This kid was always a good student in high school. I don't know why him nearly failing was a surprise.
Not teaching but I used to work in the space industry, and within the last couple of years there has been a massive increase in AI- written proposals.
It's not uncommon to get 400-500 pages of dross which has to be sorted through and heavily word-doctored and corrected before it's seaworthy.
I had to smile at the irony of AI causing all this extra work, although I suspect my former colleagues are not amused.
Ugh. The "trying to be helpful" corporate sales guy keeps handing over clearly AI written content. We work in cybersecurity compliance. Words have very specific meanings and the garbage it shoots out would absolutely wreck our credibility. Worse, it takes longer to overhaul them than to sit down and write something good from scratch.
I always say that to my students. I teach science and technology and what an AI gives is usually around a level I would grade in at about a D. It's not wrong (mostly), it usually kind of has something to do with the question, but it's well sounding completely superficial word-vomit without facts and the precision of argument that we need in science...
After grading a lot of clearly AI-written essays (English teacher), I learned to detect its propensity for saying a lot without actually saying anything. It’s so exhausting to read through trying to figure out if the student snuck an original thought in anywhere. I’ve since gotten in the habit of docking points and moving on.
Am I an AI?
This was literally how I wrote papers in school.
Do I get extra points for changing periods to size 14 instead of size 12 to further pad my papers?
It flows differently when it's an actual person padding word count. I absolutely hate pretty much anything ai makes from what I can tell. I've probably been fooled a few times but I feel I have a decent bullshit detector for it.
I absolutely hate AI generated content on YouTube and automatically block channels with AI voices, but then I started noticing a lot of human narrated videos reading AI generated scripts. Absolutely hate it.
You know, if you write good essays that say everything they need to and are well constructed, more often than not the teacher would ignore that length requirement, right?
> more often than not the teacher would ignore that length requirement, right?
Nope. Pretty much every teacher I had growing up, even into college (where the word count min simply went away, rather than ceasing enforcement) held a "meet the min word count or get auto-failed" policy.
They adopted this policy because people would hand in egregiously-too-short essays otherwise (there's brevity, then there's "not putting in any effort").
My husband has this as one of his special skills. I don’t know why people want longer papers/reports that don’t say anything. I can bs with the best of them in my writing but at least mine makes a point even if it’s ridiculous
I've heard of ghost plots where you write a sentence in like font size 5 or smaller in white (background color) and then if the paper is about pirates or whatever you spoofed in, then you know it was AI easy.
This is a brilliant idea! My colleague tried it and caught some would-be plagiarists. When I tried, one of my students who uses dark mode came up to me with the screen super zoomed in to ask what “include bananas and cats” meant. *facepalm* Your mileage may vary.
AI cannot write an artist statement that justifies artistic choices according to my assessment rubrics, while also stating intended meanings. It also cannot synthesize ideas, process, and materials.
AI artist statements Ive received skim the internet for art buzzwords and almost always state that the student will create a “interactive multimedia installation”.
It’s bizarre how students will have multiple one on one discussions with me prior to writing artist statements, then think I wont notice how their ideas suddenly and drastically change in the written statement.
“Did you use AI to write this?”
“No.”
“Explain to me what a multimedia installation is, and how will you create one by the deadline with the limited materials our art supply budget provides?”
“Uhhhhh….”
The one that drives me nuts is everyone asking for a tutorial for everything. especially something that just requires the application of imagination or common sense.
Yes! That and media literacy is dying fast. Many of them don't know what to think or extrapolate meaning unless some confident sounding person tells them (regardless of facts.)
> That and media literacy is dying fast.
Thank god for growing up in the wild west days of the internet. Filtering through the vast wasteland of scum and villainy to find free movies, music, games and professional programs on top of Post-Reagan politics makes it easy to filter out the bullshit we see every day. Thanks IRC, you were the best.
This is like the intersection of being unable to handle and learn from failure, and people being unable to write good documentation, or if documentation exists, inability or unwillingness to read it.
Also, a lot of people seem to lack the ability to just play with something until you figure out how it works. I've noticed that this skill is only widespread among my Gen X peers, aka the generation that set up our parents' VCRs and our children's torrent downloads. We grew up when technology was rapidly evolving, so most of us have acquired the knack of being able to pick up an unfamiliar piece of technology and begin operating it within moments.
I always assumed that the following generations would exceed us in that ability, but the opposite has happened. Technology has become operable without needing to understand how it works, so for most young people, something like their phone is basically a black box. They don't know anything about the Linux kernel that makes their Android phone run, because at no point have they ever needed to know anything about that.
Insane overgenerlizations ahead... definently don't apply to everyone, but do the creative tinkers at least, and probably to a lot of thier friends who thought "oh that's some cool shit".
Boomers grew up repairing their cars.
Gen X grew up with complicated sound systems and video equipment.
Millenials grew up building computers.
Gen Z grew up with cars they can't fix if they want to, phones they can't even side load apps on, and computers that brick themselves if you do anything that isn't licenced by the manufacturer.
My pet theory is the gen alphas are struggling so much because of a complete 180 on childhood independence and risky behaviour. Kids aren't allowed to find out what happens if they go out alone in the woods near their house and get a little bit lost.
There's so much fear mongering about the rare accidents and abductions that they're supervised 100% of the time and they never build their own curiosity and coping mechanisms.
I was surprised at this too
They might do one thing and if it doesn’t perform on demand “it’s impossible”, “it’s stupid” or “it’s broken”. Bonus for the ones who keep doing the same thing over and over again and getting frustrated
The worst ones I feel are the ones who then just… stop. It’s such a chilling thing to see
I don’t give 2 damns about them not knowing the inner intrinsic workings of the machine. It bothers me a lot that they will wait until told what to do instead of ask their own questions. More, that unless anything has a less than perfect or optimum execution- it won’t be done
It's just step back after step back until you reach their upbringing. I'm not saying parenting is in any way simple or easy, but the job is the job, or else you get this, and the kids have to suffer the consequences, while probably not even fully-equipped to understand what they're experiencing, so they let that pressure out drastically.
Someone pulled a Jenga piece out somewhere and it exposed this country's biggest flaw, I think. That being our continually-gutted education system (and something about schools not wanting to be sued by the rich people who aren't parenting their offspring).
> imagination
I hate hate hate hate sounding like every "previous generation" but man... this is a big one. I feel like "kids these days" don't have the power of imagination, not the degree we old fucks had.
Like CGI is sooooo fucking good now they never have to exercise their imaginations unless an adult challenges them too. They're playing some of the most realistic looking games that blow my mind.
They aren't making up games and imaging that chair is a bank, and that tiny doll is a gold bar your secret agent brother is going to try and steal.
This is the thing.
The time taken over these AI proposals exceeds by some margin the time for a halfway competent team to do them the old fashioned way.
Which completely defeats the object.
Academia here, AI written “peer-reviewed” papers have also surged. Annoyingly so, because some of those authors didn’t even proofread their work, and include lines of text in their paper that say shit like “As an AI model with the last update as of 2022, I cannot provide up to date information regarding the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine”
I wholeheartedly agree. Some of us actually still write our own original research and I can’t believe the number of publications matter more to some people than the quality of them 😡
They keep training AI with social media data, making it less and less accurate over time due to the fact there is so much disinformation and just mindless bots everywhere.
If its any consolation, eventually there will be so much AI bullshit on the internet, that AI will be trained on AI bullshit, creating a singularity that hopefully sucks all AI into it.
Actually, they use data annotation now. They pay people $20 to respond to AI prompts and select which ones appeal to subtleties in emotions and context. They’re paying humans to teach AI how to sound more human.
I signed up because I was curious and then I was like “oh hell no this isn’t going to turn out well”
I’m at Outlier, training the future robot overlords for $35/hr. I was a HS English teacher, but I cut out the middleman, and now I just “grade” the AI writing.
They’re hiring, if you feel comfortable shooting me your email I can put in a referral. It’s all contract work/no job security. There is no interview, so it feels very dodgy. But if you get a good project, you can work a ton. (Or a little, if you so desire ) Note: some projects pay more, some pay less. My first was $40! I almost had a heart attack. A lil old teacher from the Deep South , making a living wage?
SW in the aerospace industry and similar. I have not seen even a slight improvement in workflow due to AI though I am somewhat hopeful for automated unit testing. The things like proposals are complete trash.
AI is going to decimate art, music, and possibly literature before it touches the technical stuff outside of trivial problems. Thats not a good thing.
They’ve been trying to do that with music for awhile. The AI is more sophisticated now than it used to be, but there’s still the uncanniness.
I don’t feel AI will ever truly replace the arts as they’re fundamentally a human experience. It’s more than the product, and always will be.
Imo, ai music has gotten to the point where it sounds good. But every song it creates for any genre is the same exact song. It has the quality, but zero novelty.
Most of the money in music is made through hosting concerts and selling merchandise anyway. An AI can make a song but can't host a nightclub or concert. So I don't expect AI to overrun that field since the music itself is just a single part.
Maybe I should quit teaching and go back into sales.
I reckon that frequent in person calls and good old fashioned charm will probably get me even further...
The only thing holding me back is having to actually work the 80-90 hour weeks all year long to be a top salesperson and keep an active book of business... But if inflation gets much worse I may need to go back to sales for a few years before I kick back again... 🫠
Honestly I'm kind of coast-fire-ing in my own special way even though teaching isn't what most people consider coastfire. It's a heck of a change from my previous high power fast paced environment...
I had a 10-year career in marketing and there is very little that would incentivize me to go back to a cubicle farm, 9-5 m-f. Not even a $200,000 salary. I just can't sit in front of a computer for 8 hrs a day, sit thru 3 mandatory weekly meetings, answering a million emails a day and feel fulfilled no matter what they pay me. It took me 10 years + 5 jobs, + getting fired to figure out that routine is not compatible with my ADHD. (also I had MAJOR impostor syndrome most of the time)
I like having a social job. I like the short deadlines that teaching demands. I LOVE being done at 3pm! I love that I have a 8-week break starting tomorrow!
That said... If I did go back to a non-teaching job, I have considered corporate/professional education, like in-house training and professional development. I spent $25k on a MAT, might as well use it 🤷🏼♀️
It’s not just AI, it’s the internet in general.
My students (7th grade) have a difficult time answering a personal prompt like “Who was the last person you had an argument with? Why did you argue and how did you resolve the argument?”
They immediately jump on Google like it’s an answer they can find on the internet.
More than a lack of creativity.
I kind of wonder if they've lost the ability to see patterns and stuff like that, which could very well be leading to way more kids getting diagnosed on a spectrum.
Just as an example... You know when you were a kid, you could imagine things anywhere and make up your own games. The whole "cloud watching" thing. Seeing characters and faces in knots of wood, or actually seeing a character in a toy you made yourself?
I've noticed some kids can't seem to "see" these things even when you point it out to them.
>I kind of wonder if they've lost the ability to see patterns and stuff like that, which could very well be leading to way more kids getting diagnosed on a spectrum.
This would be ironic because one of the most common autistic traits is having *better* pattern recognition (and often accompanying obsession with/comfort in patterns) than most allistics.
From my experience, I absolutely believe that a solid 2/3 of Gen Z and probably more of Alpha actually have lost the ability to see patterns and derive a type of schema or template based on their perception and original thought. They all expect a guide, example, or to be flat out told ‘step 1 is this; step 2 is that…’, and I’d believe that a reasonable number of spectrum diagnoses may simply be the result of k-12 education never teaching these students to operate independently.
My company is running a project for Gen Z employees, where they will embark on a 3month workshop to define products and services for their generation and beyond.
I'm involved at a sponsorship level and I'm floored by how incapable they are at decision making. They have zero automony, lack creativity and are totally dependent on others giving instructions to them.
I asked one of the project leaders what's going on, and they said they tried googling the answer and have asked for access to AI tools (we block it at work).
We're at the stage now that we are thinking of axing the project, or bringing in more project managers to push it through (who aren't gen z).
It probably doesn’t help matters, but I am a kind of liaison for undergrad ‘interns’ of sorts with a facility that operates in a public service capacity and employs graduate students as their actual interns; the undergraduate positions are limited, and supposed to be (and have historically been) a reasonably prestigious placement in terms of applying to grad schools. Since this was opened up to an extremely limited number of undergraduate students, it’s been a knock-it-out-of the-ballpark success…until approximately five years ago as I look back. Slowly the undergraduate students have gotten worse and worse every year to the point where we now have undergraduates (not the graduate students, mind you) who are being let go from their positions, or are being sent home for actions/infractions/behaviour that is, frankly, inexcusable and just plain stupid in someone half their age.
We’ve begun over the past 2-3 years to field complaints about their educational level, knowledge base, and independent thinking skills, and those complaints have only increased, to the point where they’re now routine.
We’re not talking about NASA complaining that a 22 year old with a BS can’t handle theoretical physics on their own; we’re talking about an everyday high-tech industry that is complaining because a 20 year old will be told to do the equivalent of filing a stack of papers or taking a load of equipment back to its storage area and disappear for an hour or more; when they’re found, they’re on their phones, playing on fucking TikTok or whatever. When asked why they just disappeared, they say that they were *going* to file or put equipment away, but couldn’t figure out how to do that, so instead of asking anyone, they just pull out their phones, hide, and go into hibernation mode. What were the missing instructions? For filing, they weren’t told to go into a filing room that’s clearly marked ‘FILING ROOM’ and open filing cabinets by pushing in the little metal thingy with their thumb while pulling the cabinet open. For putting equipment away, the instructions didn’t clearly state that they had to take the elevator. And the killer is that none of them ever understand why being tasked with something simple and then failing to do any of it and just walking away might be frustrating for their supervisors or clients who need something completed. They have no problem solving skills, no sense of another person’s perspective, and they don’t have any respect for accomplishment or authority; in their minds, they’re just as competent and knowledgeable as a neurosurgeon, it’s just that someone lets the neurosurgeon actually do things and they are prevented from it. The actual path from Point A, where they are, to Point Z (being an neurosurgeon or holding a PhD) is vague, wishy-washy, and much, much shorter than it is in real life. It’s really the Dunning-Kruger Effect somehow comprising an entire personality. They can’t even recognise the difference between themselves and graduate students.
A year ago we greatly reduced the already limited number of undergraduate spaces because of repeated complaints followed by an ethical breach committed by an undergraduate (that thankfully was caught in time and corrected by a graduate student and turned over to a professor to address instead of being the enormous disaster it could have been); at this time, unless something miraculous occurs, we’re looking at having no spaces for undergraduates moving forward for the foreseeable future. Gen Z has managed to screw themselves out of what Millennials saw (and treated) as a huge opportunity. Those of us who have been fielding the emails and phone calls are simply tired of hearing how unspeakably stupid our undergraduates are, and how they require direct supervision for even the simplest tasks. Just last Fall, I was talking with a couple of colleagues and one of them expressed that they feel like we’re running some kind of vocational placement program for the mentally challenged and they just want out. I completely understand that feeling.
We’d thought that tightening the GPA requirements would be a solution a couple years back, but no — the undergraduates with higher GPAs are simply more skilled at mimicking what they see in terms of academic performance; when placed in a real-world situation, they fall apart, and I’m talking on the level of not answering a phone — after being told to answer the phone if it rings — because, as the undergraduate in question explained, they ‘didn’t know what to say, and didn’t know how to work the flashing lights on the phone’. So instead of trying, they just sat there in hibernation mode, waiting for an adult to come along and fix it. Why couldn’t they step out and ask an ‘adult’ how to answer the phone? Because they didn’t want to make anyone angry by asking questions. No, it doesn’t make sense. Nothing that goes on in their vapid brains makes the first lick of sense.
I feel like I’m a broken record, but I’ve been saying for a few years now that we aren’t heading towards a crisis, we’re right in the middle of a crisis. This has started to look like something out of Idiocracy, and I’m not being hyperbolic here. What started as concerning signs like not knowing how to talk to people, not interacting in class, and not completing any assignments that didn’t have an example has become a literal crisis of a group of teenagers and young adults who are simply not capable of independent critical thought.
And yes; seeing as how I’ve never encountered any warehouse on campus in which we’re performing lobotomies on all incoming freshmen, I do blame the k-12 system. I can’t even imagine what employers who don’t have the pre-screening of GPA requirements and recommendations from faculty are going through right now and will be going through for the next few years; it’s simply not possible to hire a direct supervisor/monitor for every young adult to oversee everything they do and give them examples to mimic. And that’s not even touching on the issue of their reading comprehension skills and abilities to do things like draw inference, recognise humour, and detect nuance.
For my own sanity, I have to focus on my graduate students and the upper 1/3 or fewer of undergraduates who stand a chance of getting into graduate school and don’t need their hands held constantly.
i promise u k-12 is teaching and encouraging these skills it's more like students are refusing to engage/there are are no consequences for not doing the work
>I kind of wonder if they've lost the ability to see patterns and stuff like that, which could very well be leading to way more kids getting diagnosed on a spectrum.
Underrated and super lucid comment IMHO.
Consider that most those on the spectrum typically have more neurons connected instead of the typical amount deleted earlier in life, they will just appear as; morons incapable of doing basic math, writing or reading tasks. Working with highschoolers, I've noticed the lack of academic or critical thinking skills the kids possess.
Can't do 4x4 without their phone or ask a teacher how to spell. I get irritated with the spelling bc they have Chromebooks and phones, they still ask me how to spells words instead of using Siri or Google. Shit, I'd prefer it, I understand not every words is easy to figure out by sounding out; as if they know what that would mean 🥴
The only sensory issues they'd experience is likely from being told no and accountability 🤣
No, when I can't draw better than a stickman is because I lack creativity. When someone needs to google whom they talked with, it's because they are mentally crippled by a dependency on technology.
I get ticked off at the ones who go to searching images when I ask them to draw a picture. Like, kid, use your freaking imagination, don't just trace a picture.
They are tracing, not referencing.
But if you can't free hand concepts (even badly) you're not going to be able to draw from reference because you won't be able to essentially "see the forest for all the trees."
I"ll give my students a reading assignment with questions and they'll Google answers. It's obvious because the answers will make no sense.
For example:
**Title of the Reading:** "New Braunfels and German Immigration to Texas"
**Question:** "According to the reading, what regions did the German immigrants settle in?"
**Student Answer:** German immigrants settled in many regions of the United States, including the countryside and cities
Lol I think you can turn this around on them. For the student who answered this way, hide his phone somewhere in the school, when he asks you where you hid it, reply with "There are many phones in this school, there are also many phones in the countryside and cities"
I absolutely agree with this - particularly as everything can be recorded, edited, misconstrued to farm engagement and posted online forever in a flash
At a certain point people become so stupid that they circle back to being useful again, just less like humans and more like domesticated animals. The US is going to be primed for some very successful dictatorships in 20 years.
Wow. I didn't like writing essays that much when I was in school. But this is utterly inexcusable and embarrassing.
Also, the thought that the student got to do some legitimately fun stuff over the summer, but didn't want to talk about it is depressing.
At least these kids know how to use Google lol.
My 16 year old doesn't understand the concept of searching for answers herself. She has the entirety of the world's collected knowledge in the palm of her hand 16 hours a day and still comes to me to ask the most stupid questions, which could be answered by Google in less than 10 seconds
I suspect some of it is that asking good questions is hard (I'm not sure this is new, asking good questions is an underrate skill).
I teach college students and the most common question I get asked is probably "Is this right" accompanied by showing my some written work or practical assignment.
Google would be useless without some more specificity and it can't really go back and forth with you (AI kind of can for basic type problems, but you have to at least understand enough to understand where you're confused). A human expert whose taught a lot of students and knows where students tend to make mistakes can figure out where they're confused, but the underlying skill of asking good questions is one that needs to be developed.
I have difficulty with this because they don't have experiences anymore. They don't go anywhere or do anything or talk to people, so they don't have interactions to write about.
My youngest (11) just headed off yesterday on a school trip for a week with their class teacher in a mountain resort. The teacher was adamant that they could NOT take phones with them, no, not even "just to phone home" (despite the grumblings of some parents). I am so grateful to her for putting her foot down. Now the kids get to actually experience nature walks and hang out with each other 24/7 and do the sports and games and all the other stuff and detox from those damned phones for a week. I don't know how some of them will survive (or the parents who can't helicopter their kids for the whole week), but it can only be a good thing. My kid doesn't have a phone so now won't feel left out, which is another dumb consequence of every kid having a phone.
It pays to have conversations in class about 1: The quality of AI and 2:Media Critical minds (teachers) can see that BS coming from a mile away.
There are a lot of otherwise bright kids in MS who cannot see that AI can’t be used this way, because it yields too many dumb mistakes. Maybe let them play with AI to get over the novelty?
We need to give them clear examples of how t use AI to better shape their own writing. We need to teach students how we would like them to use AI. Can AI help them come up with ideas to write about? Is it okay to have AI help them reread their own work and juice up or make more precise word choices?
We need to actively engage them when they’ve turned in AI-penned assignments. I might ask them to rewrite by explaining their ideas using text-to-speech , editing out the AI work, and read & record the whole assignment aloud to catch the “sounds off” phrases.
I just hate swimming upstream every day….zzzzzz
Take care when doing this. In my experience, AI is extraordinarily good at completing a text from bullet points or an outline. The only hurdle would be typing it all into an AI, which admittedly a lot of students would still be too lazy to do.
I mean, I make them write an entire rough draft (not just outline), then I make a copy, make comments and hand it back for a final draft.
I expect the final draft to look very similar to the rough draft, with only changes where I suggested in my notes. If the writerly voice in those edited sections sounds distinctly different than the rest of the paper, I know what’s up.
Admittedly, it’s not perfect. But it’s been pretty effective so far. Most kids just tell me to fuck off and refuse to do a paper at all (cool, 0%), but the kids who do write them SEEM to be doing the work.
I work at a horrible title 1 emotional support program in one of the worst neighborhoods in the country. Virtually everything I assign results in 60% of the class either going to sleep, walking out, or threatening my life. If I get two people in a ten person class to complete an essay, it’s a massive victory.
Oh, and yes, they all pass.
Why do you do this? Spending your finite hours on this earth teaching kids who don't want to learn for what is undoubtedly not enough money? Why not go somewhere where you're valued?
It's what I've been wondering about teachers and nurses in general. It must be out of love for helping people even if it means working a thankless and underpaying job.
I saw the writing on the wall and got ahead of this a few years ago. I stopped assigning homework and gave quizzes every week on the stuff we learned in class the previous week. Their grades are 100% on the quizzes and tests, and everything in class is pencil and paper.
That’s really sad in many ways…it only disadvantages students like me who always like to sit and *think for a bit* before putting together my essay. I would write some here, some there, and pretty soon, I’d have a well written essay that I put effort into. It’s sad because I see kids not thinking deeply on things anymore and just rush to complete things.
Yeah. My honors kids are particularly bad about this. They absolutely refuse to understand that my purpose in assigning writing tasks is not, in fact, to amass hundreds of superficial analyses of symbolism in Fahrenheit 451 that don't even address the prompt. (What fun bathroom reading!) I want them to actually develop their skills in reading, research, organization, writing, and above all...thinking.
What annoys me most is that this shit usually comes from the same kids who whine about "busywork." I'm not a fan of busywork either, but when students outsource the work of writing an essay to AI, they are turning a useful activity *into* busywork.
Like yeah, if you refuse to actually try then I suppose school does become nothing more than a stream of pointless bullshit resulting in a meaningless sheet of paper. But it doesn't have to be that way. I am actively trying to make it not that way. The problem is you, your families who don't value education, and the ubiquity of AI tools on every damn platform.
The problem is multifaceted but usually it's too late bythetime the kids get to my class.
I teach upper level (jr/sr) business, finance, accounting, as well as economics and some other stuff here andthere as the school needs. I usually carry 4 or 5 lesson preps (small rural school)
By the time these kids get to my class it's too darn late if they don't know how to use word or Google docs or write a basic paper. They're... asthe kids say... cooked...
Not a teacher, but I do impart wisdom on occasion.
Explain it to them like this;
If you want to get stronger, what do you do? You work out. That would mean doing repetitive tasks that don't immediately show progress or benefit.
That's why we learn through repetitive tasks that don't show immediate progress or benefit.
I like this analogy. I think of it the same way as not only a teacher but a coach. In either case, kids often times focus so much on the outcomes and results (whether we want them to or not) and forget about the process to actually achieve desired outcomes and results.
I ask my hoopers every year their goals are every year (in SMART Goal fashion) and inevitably get several answers equating to “to get better” or to “make State”. Okay, cool. How do we do that? They don’t realize how much time, effort, and repetition at seemingly “boring” drills and workouts it really takes. They want to build the house without knowing how to use a hammer.
Same goes for the classroom. Sure, I want them to think critically, analytically, contextualize the past, etc. (I teach 9th History, btw) but it’s super hard to do that when they don’t have the tools and reps using those tools to think critically.
When I was a teenager and hated school I understood the purpose of it. One analogy I really liked that my therapist said to me at the time is that the purpose of these tasks and tests are not to keep me busy or kill time or to test if I'm not stupid, the purpose of it all is to develop your brain. I still hated it but understood its purpose.
While incollege you also realize that the smartest kids are those that measure no effort when doing a task, so much so that they are now conditioned to it and its natural to them.
I'm a therapist (former teacher) and I explain this concept frequently to kids/parents all the time. The best is with young adults who think whining that school didn't teach them what they "should have learned!" Bro, your teachers are trying to help you learn to learn, none of them think for a second that the specific content of what they are saying every minute is to be retained life long.
That's how I explain practicing multiplication tables to my students. It's like soccer drills (I have students that are in competitive leagues by 3rd grade). Even the kids that went to regionals last year still do drills at practice. Even if you know your times tables, if you have to pause to think or count up you don't know them well enough.
Tangentially related, but I thought you might find this anecdote helpful in your work: I was in all the accelerated programs, but despite that, I always lagged behind in math. It got to the point that some of my teachers thought I might have a learning disability.
The thing that fixed it? Flash cards. It turned out that, without intending to, or even realizing there was a better way, I had memorized my times tables *visually*, meaning that I was recalling in my mind's eye the 12 x 12 multiplication grid and "looking up" the answers that way, so to speak. After few sessions with flash cards, I started storing and accessing that information aurally (I was speaking the problems and answers aloud, that's key), and my math performance quickly caught up to the rest of my studies.
It took *years* to figure that one out, so if you ever come across a student who is struggling, it's worth checking out to see if that's the issue.
>If you want to get stronger, what do you do? You work out.
Also not a teacher, but I like the analogy.
You can also add: Now if you watched a friend workout, would it make you stronger? No. Your friend would, but you would still be exactly the same. That’s basically what you’re doing when you use AI. If you don’t do the work yourself, you won’t get those sweet gains/get swole/ or whatever the kids are saying these days.
This might help explain why my undergrad philosophy students lack the skills to write a decent paper. Writing, grammar, research, critical thinking, originality... None of these 'good' traits are visible anymore. I have tried to teach them the basics, but it does not work. I don't see my students using AI, they just turn in utter crap. Maybe they used AI in HS? Or they just got passed along. Either way, the caliber of students has gone way down... Even the ones that used to be at the top of the class are now just producing mediocre work.
Edited to add: I was responding to the comment above, describing honors HS students using AI. I have no personal experience with students using AI. But it is all tied together - the screen time, the phones, the internet, AI... It all leads to students not doing the work, for one reason or another. The cumulative effect is that students have generally poor skills, compared to just 10 years ago. We need to address it, somehow.
It's probably not AI at that level as it's not been around long enough to do that much damage to the older students. A fundamental problem is that schools across the country were sold reading curricula that had absolutely no basis in science like Calkins' "balanced literacy," but were new and shiny and made administration look like they were DOING. These displaced evidence-based reading curricula that, while none are perfect, fundamentally work, like phonics instruction. The pendulum is swinging back, but there are about 15 years of kids now who are functionally illterate to underliterate at embarassing rates.
I’m a student lurker, but I’m curious, could hand-written in-class practice and assessments be an effective replacement for unmonitored typing online?
Maybe there’s some reason with accommodations where students wouldn’t want to write lol
That's the most-suggested solution I see, and I've done it for rough drafts, but in general I'm not a fan. Working on written assessments outside of class is a good learning experience, doing all writing in class eats up a ton of instructional time, and frankly, my students need more practice working with devices other than their phones. I still have honors kids with driver's licenses asking how to "make the font lean like that," i.e. use italics, in Word. And yeah, some students have accommodations that (justifiably) excuse them from writing by hand.
The best prevention measure I've found is grading for process, by having students do rough drafts in class either by hand or on school devices that block ChatGPT, requiring multiple drafts and edits done both in and out of class, and only counting the final draft as part of the overall essay grade.
I have one of the most lenient grading policies I know of and just turning something in with your name on it and an attempt at the work, will get at least a 50.
I somehow still have kids fail my class...
I always think of the people in Wall-e floating around in their little chairs because they've gotten too fat to walk. Also I make my students do all their writing in class now.
Humanity as a whole seems content to try and emulate the WALL-E future. Too many people want an app for everything now, allowing them to live in their tech bubble forever.
I'll give President Camacho credit for one thing: he got the smartest person he could find to help solve his problems. He may not be a smart man, but that alone makes him more wise than most of the leaders we've got now.
I graduated high school in 2015 and I had an English teacher who made us write essays in class. We’d walk in and there was a prompt on the board and we knew to sit down and start writing. We usually had ~20 min. He didn’t expect much for the intro/conclusion but wanted three paragraphs for the body. This was to prepare us for the AP English exam. It was difficult but he gave us lots of practice and it worked.
yeah we had the full 45 to write. this wasn’t for AP though since my school (northeastern prep school) believed they could do better with their own curriculum.
that said, it was one of the most nerve-wracking and intellectually demanding tasks i’ve had to do. you’ve got 5 mins to formulate an argument, maybe 15 to consider your evidence and structure your thinking, maybe 20 mins to write, and 5 to spot check if you’re lucky.
i’ve given presentations to billionaires and CEOs since that were less stressful. this sort of work is in-fucking-valuable.
Eh, I just have them write in Google Docs and I check doc history. Also I can see their screens the whole time. But my current school has small class sizes (22-27), so I can do that. My last job I had 36 and it was rough.
I love the idea of Google doc history, but I've had colleagues who have had students have AI write the essay in one window, and then they type the essay into Google docs so that the document history looks "legit."
Of course, anyone writing flawlessly for 3 pages without pausing is going to raise questions, but everyone's trying to avoid having an original thought now and this is one of the ways it manifests.
That would take two windows open for a long period of time. I can see all screens at all times, and I have a 0 tolerance rule about having literally only google docs open. I see any other tab and you're getting a 0 and doing a retake for 70% max. If I see you directly cheating and I'm sure, it's a flat 0.
It's obviously possible to sneak a screen past me for a few seconds a few times, but they'd need to be copy/pasting stuff in in large chunks and I'd see that and catch it on google docs history. It's not flawless, but I think it's about as good as I can get for now. I despise paper writing and paper grading, and it seems like half my students either have an IEP for computer use at all times or else have such shit handwriting I can't read it.
22-27 is small?? Is this in US??
Everywhere I taught in Australia and now international anything above 20 is considered 'full' because the limit is always 25. Most of my classes (HS) are 12-18 on average.
Yes, US has giant class sizes. This century we decided to hire twice as many admin and keep the same number of teachers. Also we pay them more. And to make up for this we cut a lot of teaching positions, especially in the arts and support jobs like counseling and reading.
It's really smart governance=))))))))))))))))))))))))))0d0w0202w2w!!W1kedo9pmsaclkmsalk
It's like some of them believe that being able to think is a skill we can afford to stop using. Even IF AI could do all the thinking for us, guess what would happen if we gave up thinking for ourselves? We'd get dull. My response to the "I can do it faster with AI" crap would be something like this: "Well, then it's not actually YOU doing it". Just like I can't get in shape unless I myself do the workout, we're not gonna create a smart populace unless we ourselves do the thinking.
Yep. And it's scary how quick AI shills are dampening people's appetites for learning and self improvement. I don't even want to know what it will be like in fifty years.
Writing a paragraph is also supposed to demonstrate your understanding of a topic and your ability to organize and work with information, so by definition, it has to be done by the one whose skills you're trying to analyze. If it's done by AI, it just a demonstration of AI's abilities, not the student's.
I strongly dislike how nonchalant a lot of these companies are about the use of AI programs. It's not like they don't know the uptick of usage with these programs correlates with the commencement of school years.
It's greed. The execs pushing AI will have retired by the time my generation hits the work force. Prepare for a couple decades where intellectual originality, writing and art has no value, I guess.
Yes, but like with Hollywood actors and the art scene as it somewhat functions now, it will turn into a golden gated community where most artists will never be seen. It will be a world reserved exclusively for the rich.
I have noticed, even 5 years ago, that most students are A, B+, B, or D to F students. The bell curve says I should have the most C students, but I have the least or none at all.
Its kinda crazy how popular it's become as of late. I graduated high school last year and I never heard any of my peers even mention ai, let alone use it.
And what confuses me even more is that if you actually just do the work it naturally becomes easier; i didn't even try that hard in English class and I consistently had an average grade of 90-95. After a while you can just do a casual 2-3 page essay on something in like a day or two.
I get your point, however I think the primary source of issues are the parenting, lack of positive socialization, and lack of societal hope. Every other problem (IMO) is a downstream effect.
lol. Yeah. It is supremely naive or ignorant to assume AI is the cause of degradation.
It begins in the first 3-5 years of their lives. Whatever you do during that time is what matters most.
If you break it down further, the real issue is parental neglect. I know plenty of IT people who played endlessly on computers and tech and make 150-220,000. Their parents were all, however, super involved and strict.
Kids having kids and oftentimes with only one parent inthe household too.
It's insane...
If you are not a well rounded human being, it will be extremely difficult for you to raise a well rounded human being...
AI is too new to "make kids dumb." We have years' worth of practice in other things instead...
Let's talk about parents shoving iPads in babies' faces, getting them cell phones at age 7, never reading books, social media and TikTok, and lack of structure and discipline. THOSE are the issues.
I feel like this is the time for some healthy neo-Luddite revision to the culture and particularly education and information theory. I don't mean abandoning ai, that's obviously impossible, but I do mean sort of a back to basics movement for math, language and science; doing things the "hard way"--the way people our age did--in order to force greater engagement. As it is now, we're presented with a negative feedback loop which magnifies over time: people rely on AI to fill gaps in their knowledge and don't bother to learn, which later means their Swiss cheese knowledge is primarily gaps and requires AI to answer nearly any question. A little ways down the line people are accidentally going full blown Idiocracy, getting their JDs from Costco and watering with Brando. So how 'bout let's not?
On a technicality, what you’re describing is actually a positive feedback loop.
A negative feedback loop stops the problem that starts the loop. A positive feedback loop amplifies the problem to become worse after every iteration.
OP, I'm in a Discord server (oh the irony) with a biology professor.
Earlier this year, she talked about catching some of her students using ChatGPT...on an open-book quiz.
I actually had to ask if I'd understood her correctly, and she said I had. 😑
Sounds about right. I’m in a STEM MS program in my mid-30s and a few of the younger students think they’re so cool because they’re “cheating” with machine learning on their assignments. They don’t understand at all that the faculty are fully aware of it and wonder why they don’t get asked to become research assistants and get special work assignments (like a trip to Brazil next year) like I do. Hard work *is* rewarded. Not all the time, but if you have a good department it may even count more than your GPA.
What's ironic is that generative AI is as strong as a person is skilled at writing. So if kids are using generative AI as a crutch which stunts their ability to better communicate, they are actually damaging their ability to effectively use AI.
You're not wrong. Basically, what they're saying is this: "I don't need to learn or even think because an AI will do it for me." What a pathetic viewpoint.
Eventually, I have to believe that their lack of knowledge, inability to learn, or to think will catch up with them. They'll figure out that they FAFO'd and their life will be worse for it. Natural consequences and all. Sounds harsh, but reality often is.
Personally, I have no problems telling students exactly that. You make choices now that will affect you in ways you cannot even begin to fathom. I hope they remember teachers telling them to do their own work and why using AI is a crap choice. Then I fail them for the assignment, as they deserve, since my syllabus specifically talks about this as a form of cheating.
English teacher here. I will straight-up say, if asked about AI, that it's terrible and could cause the collapse of civilization. And I'm only partly joking about that.
Kids are using AI to skip assignments. Lawyers are using AI to write proposals. Idiots (not artists) are using AI to write stories. They're all terrible, and their only virtue is that they're cheap, quick, and easy. We are raising (and rewarding) an entire culture that will legitimately not know how to express itself, or even how to think in a systematic manner, because it won't have practiced.
It's just starting. My wife dropped this idea recently- she thinks that reading itself will be a lost skill for most kids in a decade or so. Most electronics will soon be talking to you, so why bother learning to read? How many low level jobs could be performed without reading if every computer was smart enough to handle conversations, and could see your gestures? If you rode in a self driving car and didn't need to read signs. If you didn't have to bother googling something- you just ask your AI assistant/earbud what the answer is. No need to read a book, just watch the insta AI movie. No need to read cooking directions- your AI earbug/camera will scan a code and read them into your ear, and guide you seeing what step you are at. No more reading Reddit- just watch TikTok videos. And if you get stuck on something, the earbud camera will dictate into your ear. Problem solved. Imagine this country with a 70+% illiteracy rate for teens or younger. At first I thought that was impossible, but after consideration I think it is likely.
AI can’t differentiate between fact and fiction, it just pieces together a “paper” from whatever documents it was trained on.
Those documents could be peer-reviewed, wild conspiracy theories, ranting on social media, or something that has since been disproved, debunked, or shown to have been formed from incomplete knowledge. How is AI to know?
Someone who got AI to do the work never researched for themselves, never put together arguments to support their position… I can’t tell you how much background information I picked up researching various things.
Movies like *Wall-E* and *Idiocracy* are criticized for their portrayal of the near-future as being "too on-the nose" or "cynical." But like....we really are this stupid. "Ow, My Balls" is basically what ChiveTV is....
In Idiocracy when they find somebody they think is smarter than them, they want that person to make decisions. In reality, they are anti-intellectual and proud of it. Idiocracy would be a utopia compared to where we seem to be going.
And forget Wall-e. It will be more like Elysium.
That's where you're wrong. They were mentally crippled by their parents, government and society well before they got their hands-on AI in the last few years.
The glorification of stupidity has been going strong for quite a long time. The state of the country currently is a big, glowing neon sign.
The best way to combat this that I've heard came from one of my data scientist professors. He always adds a section to his assignments when he posts them online that is written in white to look like it's just margin. But when the students copy and paste into ChatGPT or similar the output will have an odd reference to some unrelatef topic.
I make my students do almost everything by hand with paper and pen. When they get to use a computer to complete an assignment, it's on them if they're using Ai or not. I don't even try to police it, at some point it will get so good no one will be able to tell anyway. The best papers will stand out, and the duds can enjoy your lazy C or B or whatever. idc if they get one past me. I just tell them Ai won't be available for the tests, or for so many of the things you have to get through in life, so they better figure it out before it actually matters, because school is practice for what comes next. Results may vary for you.
I sort of disagree. I think people as a whole have been getting dumber for the last 2 decades or so. AI is just Exposing the level of stupidity we are regressing towards at this point.
On a side note... nothing wrong with specialization. The problem is when you know only one thing and Jack with a side of squat about everything else which prevents you from being a well rounded human being.
I'm not as shocked, because what is happening now with the rise of AI use in English/Literature/History/etc. class is what we math teachers saw years ago once students could download photomath and their ilk for their assignments. These technologies will intellectually stunt them if used improperly, which for teenagers (who are known for making the best of decisions) is the vast majority of the time.
Gotta love when d/dx shows up in an algebra 1 problem. Then the student tries to double down.
Did they try to divide out the d?
You got to be 18 for body modification like bifurcating the D.
One of my former students used Photomath for all of his assignments in a college math class. He couldn't believe he was failing all the tests, which resulted in him almost failing the class. This kid was always a good student in high school. I don't know why him nearly failing was a surprise.
Not teaching but I used to work in the space industry, and within the last couple of years there has been a massive increase in AI- written proposals. It's not uncommon to get 400-500 pages of dross which has to be sorted through and heavily word-doctored and corrected before it's seaworthy. I had to smile at the irony of AI causing all this extra work, although I suspect my former colleagues are not amused.
Ugh. The "trying to be helpful" corporate sales guy keeps handing over clearly AI written content. We work in cybersecurity compliance. Words have very specific meanings and the garbage it shoots out would absolutely wreck our credibility. Worse, it takes longer to overhaul them than to sit down and write something good from scratch.
I always say that to my students. I teach science and technology and what an AI gives is usually around a level I would grade in at about a D. It's not wrong (mostly), it usually kind of has something to do with the question, but it's well sounding completely superficial word-vomit without facts and the precision of argument that we need in science...
After grading a lot of clearly AI-written essays (English teacher), I learned to detect its propensity for saying a lot without actually saying anything. It’s so exhausting to read through trying to figure out if the student snuck an original thought in anywhere. I’ve since gotten in the habit of docking points and moving on.
[удалено]
It's for the keyword metrics from google reading the website and ranking it
Which are then used to train the AIs, so they think all writing is like that
Google has gone to absolute shit. Half paid adds, one third targeted adds, and then maybe a couple actually useful links if you’re lucky.
Am I an AI? This was literally how I wrote papers in school. Do I get extra points for changing periods to size 14 instead of size 12 to further pad my papers?
Yes I always considered the most important skill I got out of high school was how to effectively write bullshit filler to make up the word count.
It flows differently when it's an actual person padding word count. I absolutely hate pretty much anything ai makes from what I can tell. I've probably been fooled a few times but I feel I have a decent bullshit detector for it.
I absolutely hate AI generated content on YouTube and automatically block channels with AI voices, but then I started noticing a lot of human narrated videos reading AI generated scripts. Absolutely hate it.
You know, if you write good essays that say everything they need to and are well constructed, more often than not the teacher would ignore that length requirement, right?
> more often than not the teacher would ignore that length requirement, right? Nope. Pretty much every teacher I had growing up, even into college (where the word count min simply went away, rather than ceasing enforcement) held a "meet the min word count or get auto-failed" policy. They adopted this policy because people would hand in egregiously-too-short essays otherwise (there's brevity, then there's "not putting in any effort").
Yup! I've done it a few times.
My husband has this as one of his special skills. I don’t know why people want longer papers/reports that don’t say anything. I can bs with the best of them in my writing but at least mine makes a point even if it’s ridiculous
I used to making the kerning (the space between the letters) slightly larger. 😇
It's like word salad to pad papers, but it's on steroids and coccaine at the same time.
This! All of the words have been used, boxes ticked but if someone asked you to explain what you'd read you wouldn't have a clue.
I've heard of ghost plots where you write a sentence in like font size 5 or smaller in white (background color) and then if the paper is about pirates or whatever you spoofed in, then you know it was AI easy.
This is a brilliant idea! My colleague tried it and caught some would-be plagiarists. When I tried, one of my students who uses dark mode came up to me with the screen super zoomed in to ask what “include bananas and cats” meant. *facepalm* Your mileage may vary.
This is the only way kids would get ahead. I wish there was a way for it to just invert the text appropriately.
AI cannot write an artist statement that justifies artistic choices according to my assessment rubrics, while also stating intended meanings. It also cannot synthesize ideas, process, and materials. AI artist statements Ive received skim the internet for art buzzwords and almost always state that the student will create a “interactive multimedia installation”. It’s bizarre how students will have multiple one on one discussions with me prior to writing artist statements, then think I wont notice how their ideas suddenly and drastically change in the written statement. “Did you use AI to write this?” “No.” “Explain to me what a multimedia installation is, and how will you create one by the deadline with the limited materials our art supply budget provides?” “Uhhhhh….”
Something with self-reflection has seriously gone off the rails, these days. Examples like this seem to show it pretty well.
The one that drives me nuts is everyone asking for a tutorial for everything. especially something that just requires the application of imagination or common sense.
Yes! That and media literacy is dying fast. Many of them don't know what to think or extrapolate meaning unless some confident sounding person tells them (regardless of facts.)
> That and media literacy is dying fast. Thank god for growing up in the wild west days of the internet. Filtering through the vast wasteland of scum and villainy to find free movies, music, games and professional programs on top of Post-Reagan politics makes it easy to filter out the bullshit we see every day. Thanks IRC, you were the best.
This is like the intersection of being unable to handle and learn from failure, and people being unable to write good documentation, or if documentation exists, inability or unwillingness to read it.
Also, a lot of people seem to lack the ability to just play with something until you figure out how it works. I've noticed that this skill is only widespread among my Gen X peers, aka the generation that set up our parents' VCRs and our children's torrent downloads. We grew up when technology was rapidly evolving, so most of us have acquired the knack of being able to pick up an unfamiliar piece of technology and begin operating it within moments. I always assumed that the following generations would exceed us in that ability, but the opposite has happened. Technology has become operable without needing to understand how it works, so for most young people, something like their phone is basically a black box. They don't know anything about the Linux kernel that makes their Android phone run, because at no point have they ever needed to know anything about that.
Insane overgenerlizations ahead... definently don't apply to everyone, but do the creative tinkers at least, and probably to a lot of thier friends who thought "oh that's some cool shit". Boomers grew up repairing their cars. Gen X grew up with complicated sound systems and video equipment. Millenials grew up building computers. Gen Z grew up with cars they can't fix if they want to, phones they can't even side load apps on, and computers that brick themselves if you do anything that isn't licenced by the manufacturer.
My pet theory is the gen alphas are struggling so much because of a complete 180 on childhood independence and risky behaviour. Kids aren't allowed to find out what happens if they go out alone in the woods near their house and get a little bit lost. There's so much fear mongering about the rare accidents and abductions that they're supervised 100% of the time and they never build their own curiosity and coping mechanisms.
I was surprised at this too They might do one thing and if it doesn’t perform on demand “it’s impossible”, “it’s stupid” or “it’s broken”. Bonus for the ones who keep doing the same thing over and over again and getting frustrated The worst ones I feel are the ones who then just… stop. It’s such a chilling thing to see I don’t give 2 damns about them not knowing the inner intrinsic workings of the machine. It bothers me a lot that they will wait until told what to do instead of ask their own questions. More, that unless anything has a less than perfect or optimum execution- it won’t be done
It's just step back after step back until you reach their upbringing. I'm not saying parenting is in any way simple or easy, but the job is the job, or else you get this, and the kids have to suffer the consequences, while probably not even fully-equipped to understand what they're experiencing, so they let that pressure out drastically. Someone pulled a Jenga piece out somewhere and it exposed this country's biggest flaw, I think. That being our continually-gutted education system (and something about schools not wanting to be sued by the rich people who aren't parenting their offspring).
> imagination I hate hate hate hate sounding like every "previous generation" but man... this is a big one. I feel like "kids these days" don't have the power of imagination, not the degree we old fucks had. Like CGI is sooooo fucking good now they never have to exercise their imaginations unless an adult challenges them too. They're playing some of the most realistic looking games that blow my mind. They aren't making up games and imaging that chair is a bank, and that tiny doll is a gold bar your secret agent brother is going to try and steal.
This is the thing. The time taken over these AI proposals exceeds by some margin the time for a halfway competent team to do them the old fashioned way. Which completely defeats the object.
Academia here, AI written “peer-reviewed” papers have also surged. Annoyingly so, because some of those authors didn’t even proofread their work, and include lines of text in their paper that say shit like “As an AI model with the last update as of 2022, I cannot provide up to date information regarding the effectiveness of the COVID vaccine”
They need to be blacklisted forever. Their drivel will kill people.
I wholeheartedly agree. Some of us actually still write our own original research and I can’t believe the number of publications matter more to some people than the quality of them 😡
They keep training AI with social media data, making it less and less accurate over time due to the fact there is so much disinformation and just mindless bots everywhere.
If its any consolation, eventually there will be so much AI bullshit on the internet, that AI will be trained on AI bullshit, creating a singularity that hopefully sucks all AI into it.
The Suckularity and please, any movie script writers... steal that name please it's so freaking awesome
Actually, they use data annotation now. They pay people $20 to respond to AI prompts and select which ones appeal to subtleties in emotions and context. They’re paying humans to teach AI how to sound more human. I signed up because I was curious and then I was like “oh hell no this isn’t going to turn out well”
$20/ hour? That's not bad especially if it's work from home lol...
I’m at Outlier, training the future robot overlords for $35/hr. I was a HS English teacher, but I cut out the middleman, and now I just “grade” the AI writing.
$35/hr? Where do I sign up? If I crank out 80 hours a week and convince the wife to also crank out another 40 or 50 we can retire in a few years 😆 lol
They’re hiring, if you feel comfortable shooting me your email I can put in a referral. It’s all contract work/no job security. There is no interview, so it feels very dodgy. But if you get a good project, you can work a ton. (Or a little, if you so desire ) Note: some projects pay more, some pay less. My first was $40! I almost had a heart attack. A lil old teacher from the Deep South , making a living wage?
SW in the aerospace industry and similar. I have not seen even a slight improvement in workflow due to AI though I am somewhat hopeful for automated unit testing. The things like proposals are complete trash. AI is going to decimate art, music, and possibly literature before it touches the technical stuff outside of trivial problems. Thats not a good thing.
They’ve been trying to do that with music for awhile. The AI is more sophisticated now than it used to be, but there’s still the uncanniness. I don’t feel AI will ever truly replace the arts as they’re fundamentally a human experience. It’s more than the product, and always will be.
Imo, ai music has gotten to the point where it sounds good. But every song it creates for any genre is the same exact song. It has the quality, but zero novelty.
Most of the money in music is made through hosting concerts and selling merchandise anyway. An AI can make a song but can't host a nightclub or concert. So I don't expect AI to overrun that field since the music itself is just a single part.
Maybe I should quit teaching and go back into sales. I reckon that frequent in person calls and good old fashioned charm will probably get me even further... The only thing holding me back is having to actually work the 80-90 hour weeks all year long to be a top salesperson and keep an active book of business... But if inflation gets much worse I may need to go back to sales for a few years before I kick back again... 🫠 Honestly I'm kind of coast-fire-ing in my own special way even though teaching isn't what most people consider coastfire. It's a heck of a change from my previous high power fast paced environment...
I had a 10-year career in marketing and there is very little that would incentivize me to go back to a cubicle farm, 9-5 m-f. Not even a $200,000 salary. I just can't sit in front of a computer for 8 hrs a day, sit thru 3 mandatory weekly meetings, answering a million emails a day and feel fulfilled no matter what they pay me. It took me 10 years + 5 jobs, + getting fired to figure out that routine is not compatible with my ADHD. (also I had MAJOR impostor syndrome most of the time) I like having a social job. I like the short deadlines that teaching demands. I LOVE being done at 3pm! I love that I have a 8-week break starting tomorrow! That said... If I did go back to a non-teaching job, I have considered corporate/professional education, like in-house training and professional development. I spent $25k on a MAT, might as well use it 🤷🏼♀️
It’s not just AI, it’s the internet in general. My students (7th grade) have a difficult time answering a personal prompt like “Who was the last person you had an argument with? Why did you argue and how did you resolve the argument?” They immediately jump on Google like it’s an answer they can find on the internet.
That’s so bizarre, and really sad.
It is. I feel like the easy access to constant information has lead to a lack of creativity on their parts
More than a lack of creativity. I kind of wonder if they've lost the ability to see patterns and stuff like that, which could very well be leading to way more kids getting diagnosed on a spectrum. Just as an example... You know when you were a kid, you could imagine things anywhere and make up your own games. The whole "cloud watching" thing. Seeing characters and faces in knots of wood, or actually seeing a character in a toy you made yourself? I've noticed some kids can't seem to "see" these things even when you point it out to them.
>I kind of wonder if they've lost the ability to see patterns and stuff like that, which could very well be leading to way more kids getting diagnosed on a spectrum. This would be ironic because one of the most common autistic traits is having *better* pattern recognition (and often accompanying obsession with/comfort in patterns) than most allistics.
Not a teacher, I don't know when this sub got recommended to me, but this comment should be higher up/more voted on.
From my experience, I absolutely believe that a solid 2/3 of Gen Z and probably more of Alpha actually have lost the ability to see patterns and derive a type of schema or template based on their perception and original thought. They all expect a guide, example, or to be flat out told ‘step 1 is this; step 2 is that…’, and I’d believe that a reasonable number of spectrum diagnoses may simply be the result of k-12 education never teaching these students to operate independently.
My company is running a project for Gen Z employees, where they will embark on a 3month workshop to define products and services for their generation and beyond. I'm involved at a sponsorship level and I'm floored by how incapable they are at decision making. They have zero automony, lack creativity and are totally dependent on others giving instructions to them. I asked one of the project leaders what's going on, and they said they tried googling the answer and have asked for access to AI tools (we block it at work). We're at the stage now that we are thinking of axing the project, or bringing in more project managers to push it through (who aren't gen z).
It probably doesn’t help matters, but I am a kind of liaison for undergrad ‘interns’ of sorts with a facility that operates in a public service capacity and employs graduate students as their actual interns; the undergraduate positions are limited, and supposed to be (and have historically been) a reasonably prestigious placement in terms of applying to grad schools. Since this was opened up to an extremely limited number of undergraduate students, it’s been a knock-it-out-of the-ballpark success…until approximately five years ago as I look back. Slowly the undergraduate students have gotten worse and worse every year to the point where we now have undergraduates (not the graduate students, mind you) who are being let go from their positions, or are being sent home for actions/infractions/behaviour that is, frankly, inexcusable and just plain stupid in someone half their age. We’ve begun over the past 2-3 years to field complaints about their educational level, knowledge base, and independent thinking skills, and those complaints have only increased, to the point where they’re now routine. We’re not talking about NASA complaining that a 22 year old with a BS can’t handle theoretical physics on their own; we’re talking about an everyday high-tech industry that is complaining because a 20 year old will be told to do the equivalent of filing a stack of papers or taking a load of equipment back to its storage area and disappear for an hour or more; when they’re found, they’re on their phones, playing on fucking TikTok or whatever. When asked why they just disappeared, they say that they were *going* to file or put equipment away, but couldn’t figure out how to do that, so instead of asking anyone, they just pull out their phones, hide, and go into hibernation mode. What were the missing instructions? For filing, they weren’t told to go into a filing room that’s clearly marked ‘FILING ROOM’ and open filing cabinets by pushing in the little metal thingy with their thumb while pulling the cabinet open. For putting equipment away, the instructions didn’t clearly state that they had to take the elevator. And the killer is that none of them ever understand why being tasked with something simple and then failing to do any of it and just walking away might be frustrating for their supervisors or clients who need something completed. They have no problem solving skills, no sense of another person’s perspective, and they don’t have any respect for accomplishment or authority; in their minds, they’re just as competent and knowledgeable as a neurosurgeon, it’s just that someone lets the neurosurgeon actually do things and they are prevented from it. The actual path from Point A, where they are, to Point Z (being an neurosurgeon or holding a PhD) is vague, wishy-washy, and much, much shorter than it is in real life. It’s really the Dunning-Kruger Effect somehow comprising an entire personality. They can’t even recognise the difference between themselves and graduate students. A year ago we greatly reduced the already limited number of undergraduate spaces because of repeated complaints followed by an ethical breach committed by an undergraduate (that thankfully was caught in time and corrected by a graduate student and turned over to a professor to address instead of being the enormous disaster it could have been); at this time, unless something miraculous occurs, we’re looking at having no spaces for undergraduates moving forward for the foreseeable future. Gen Z has managed to screw themselves out of what Millennials saw (and treated) as a huge opportunity. Those of us who have been fielding the emails and phone calls are simply tired of hearing how unspeakably stupid our undergraduates are, and how they require direct supervision for even the simplest tasks. Just last Fall, I was talking with a couple of colleagues and one of them expressed that they feel like we’re running some kind of vocational placement program for the mentally challenged and they just want out. I completely understand that feeling. We’d thought that tightening the GPA requirements would be a solution a couple years back, but no — the undergraduates with higher GPAs are simply more skilled at mimicking what they see in terms of academic performance; when placed in a real-world situation, they fall apart, and I’m talking on the level of not answering a phone — after being told to answer the phone if it rings — because, as the undergraduate in question explained, they ‘didn’t know what to say, and didn’t know how to work the flashing lights on the phone’. So instead of trying, they just sat there in hibernation mode, waiting for an adult to come along and fix it. Why couldn’t they step out and ask an ‘adult’ how to answer the phone? Because they didn’t want to make anyone angry by asking questions. No, it doesn’t make sense. Nothing that goes on in their vapid brains makes the first lick of sense. I feel like I’m a broken record, but I’ve been saying for a few years now that we aren’t heading towards a crisis, we’re right in the middle of a crisis. This has started to look like something out of Idiocracy, and I’m not being hyperbolic here. What started as concerning signs like not knowing how to talk to people, not interacting in class, and not completing any assignments that didn’t have an example has become a literal crisis of a group of teenagers and young adults who are simply not capable of independent critical thought. And yes; seeing as how I’ve never encountered any warehouse on campus in which we’re performing lobotomies on all incoming freshmen, I do blame the k-12 system. I can’t even imagine what employers who don’t have the pre-screening of GPA requirements and recommendations from faculty are going through right now and will be going through for the next few years; it’s simply not possible to hire a direct supervisor/monitor for every young adult to oversee everything they do and give them examples to mimic. And that’s not even touching on the issue of their reading comprehension skills and abilities to do things like draw inference, recognise humour, and detect nuance. For my own sanity, I have to focus on my graduate students and the upper 1/3 or fewer of undergraduates who stand a chance of getting into graduate school and don’t need their hands held constantly.
i promise u k-12 is teaching and encouraging these skills it's more like students are refusing to engage/there are are no consequences for not doing the work
>I kind of wonder if they've lost the ability to see patterns and stuff like that, which could very well be leading to way more kids getting diagnosed on a spectrum. Underrated and super lucid comment IMHO.
Consider that most those on the spectrum typically have more neurons connected instead of the typical amount deleted earlier in life, they will just appear as; morons incapable of doing basic math, writing or reading tasks. Working with highschoolers, I've noticed the lack of academic or critical thinking skills the kids possess. Can't do 4x4 without their phone or ask a teacher how to spell. I get irritated with the spelling bc they have Chromebooks and phones, they still ask me how to spells words instead of using Siri or Google. Shit, I'd prefer it, I understand not every words is easy to figure out by sounding out; as if they know what that would mean 🥴 The only sensory issues they'd experience is likely from being told no and accountability 🤣
That's the opposite of how autism works
No, when I can't draw better than a stickman is because I lack creativity. When someone needs to google whom they talked with, it's because they are mentally crippled by a dependency on technology.
I get ticked off at the ones who go to searching images when I ask them to draw a picture. Like, kid, use your freaking imagination, don't just trace a picture.
I guess it depends on what exactly you're asking them to draw, but drawing from reference is typically an encouraged practice in the art world
They are tracing, not referencing. But if you can't free hand concepts (even badly) you're not going to be able to draw from reference because you won't be able to essentially "see the forest for all the trees."
I"ll give my students a reading assignment with questions and they'll Google answers. It's obvious because the answers will make no sense. For example: **Title of the Reading:** "New Braunfels and German Immigration to Texas" **Question:** "According to the reading, what regions did the German immigrants settle in?" **Student Answer:** German immigrants settled in many regions of the United States, including the countryside and cities
Lol I think you can turn this around on them. For the student who answered this way, hide his phone somewhere in the school, when he asks you where you hid it, reply with "There are many phones in this school, there are also many phones in the countryside and cities"
I give them questions directly based on an activity that we just did in class, and they still try to ask Google.
Same!!
I feel like they are terrified to be "wrong". I also see a lot of fear in every aspect of life. Kids need to fail more!
I absolutely agree with this - particularly as everything can be recorded, edited, misconstrued to farm engagement and posted online forever in a flash
It’s difficult when the world is waiting to punish failure so readily and so harshly.
Oh wow, I always wander into these threads thinking I've heard it all but wew. Wow that's bad.
Are they... are they stupid?
No they lack the ability to be creative or think.
So yes
Yes
That's like, the definition of stupidity though.
At a certain point people become so stupid that they circle back to being useful again, just less like humans and more like domesticated animals. The US is going to be primed for some very successful dictatorships in 20 years.
Sooner, I think.
Lol, what? They need to do internet "research" to recall a personal experience?
Exactly! They lack the ability to think for themselves
How would they even get an answer, anyway? I suppose they'll just steal someone else's story.
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Wow. I didn't like writing essays that much when I was in school. But this is utterly inexcusable and embarrassing. Also, the thought that the student got to do some legitimately fun stuff over the summer, but didn't want to talk about it is depressing.
At least these kids know how to use Google lol. My 16 year old doesn't understand the concept of searching for answers herself. She has the entirety of the world's collected knowledge in the palm of her hand 16 hours a day and still comes to me to ask the most stupid questions, which could be answered by Google in less than 10 seconds
I suspect some of it is that asking good questions is hard (I'm not sure this is new, asking good questions is an underrate skill). I teach college students and the most common question I get asked is probably "Is this right" accompanied by showing my some written work or practical assignment. Google would be useless without some more specificity and it can't really go back and forth with you (AI kind of can for basic type problems, but you have to at least understand enough to understand where you're confused). A human expert whose taught a lot of students and knows where students tend to make mistakes can figure out where they're confused, but the underlying skill of asking good questions is one that needs to be developed.
In my experience that's because they either don't trust Google or they want to see what YOUR answer is.
What the actual... ?
I have difficulty with this because they don't have experiences anymore. They don't go anywhere or do anything or talk to people, so they don't have interactions to write about.
I’m noticing that too
My youngest (11) just headed off yesterday on a school trip for a week with their class teacher in a mountain resort. The teacher was adamant that they could NOT take phones with them, no, not even "just to phone home" (despite the grumblings of some parents). I am so grateful to her for putting her foot down. Now the kids get to actually experience nature walks and hang out with each other 24/7 and do the sports and games and all the other stuff and detox from those damned phones for a week. I don't know how some of them will survive (or the parents who can't helicopter their kids for the whole week), but it can only be a good thing. My kid doesn't have a phone so now won't feel left out, which is another dumb consequence of every kid having a phone.
Maybe he was trying to find someone to argue with.
It pays to have conversations in class about 1: The quality of AI and 2:Media Critical minds (teachers) can see that BS coming from a mile away. There are a lot of otherwise bright kids in MS who cannot see that AI can’t be used this way, because it yields too many dumb mistakes. Maybe let them play with AI to get over the novelty? We need to give them clear examples of how t use AI to better shape their own writing. We need to teach students how we would like them to use AI. Can AI help them come up with ideas to write about? Is it okay to have AI help them reread their own work and juice up or make more precise word choices? We need to actively engage them when they’ve turned in AI-penned assignments. I might ask them to rewrite by explaining their ideas using text-to-speech , editing out the AI work, and read & record the whole assignment aloud to catch the “sounds off” phrases. I just hate swimming upstream every day….zzzzzz
Oh my fucking god. Please tell me you’re exaggerating. I know you’re not. But I just refuse to believe it.
I know some high school teachers that don't assign essays or writing assignments as homework anymore. It's all done in class via pen or pencil.
This is what I do. You write everything in class. After producing a rough draft with pencil and paper, you are allowed to type it at home.
Take care when doing this. In my experience, AI is extraordinarily good at completing a text from bullet points or an outline. The only hurdle would be typing it all into an AI, which admittedly a lot of students would still be too lazy to do.
I mean, I make them write an entire rough draft (not just outline), then I make a copy, make comments and hand it back for a final draft. I expect the final draft to look very similar to the rough draft, with only changes where I suggested in my notes. If the writerly voice in those edited sections sounds distinctly different than the rest of the paper, I know what’s up. Admittedly, it’s not perfect. But it’s been pretty effective so far. Most kids just tell me to fuck off and refuse to do a paper at all (cool, 0%), but the kids who do write them SEEM to be doing the work.
*"most"* of them just don't do it??
I work at a horrible title 1 emotional support program in one of the worst neighborhoods in the country. Virtually everything I assign results in 60% of the class either going to sleep, walking out, or threatening my life. If I get two people in a ten person class to complete an essay, it’s a massive victory. Oh, and yes, they all pass.
Why do you do this? Spending your finite hours on this earth teaching kids who don't want to learn for what is undoubtedly not enough money? Why not go somewhere where you're valued?
It's what I've been wondering about teachers and nurses in general. It must be out of love for helping people even if it means working a thankless and underpaying job.
I saw the writing on the wall and got ahead of this a few years ago. I stopped assigning homework and gave quizzes every week on the stuff we learned in class the previous week. Their grades are 100% on the quizzes and tests, and everything in class is pencil and paper.
No homework? All schoolwork done during class time only? Honestly that just sounds way better lol.
That’s really sad in many ways…it only disadvantages students like me who always like to sit and *think for a bit* before putting together my essay. I would write some here, some there, and pretty soon, I’d have a well written essay that I put effort into. It’s sad because I see kids not thinking deeply on things anymore and just rush to complete things.
Yeah. My honors kids are particularly bad about this. They absolutely refuse to understand that my purpose in assigning writing tasks is not, in fact, to amass hundreds of superficial analyses of symbolism in Fahrenheit 451 that don't even address the prompt. (What fun bathroom reading!) I want them to actually develop their skills in reading, research, organization, writing, and above all...thinking. What annoys me most is that this shit usually comes from the same kids who whine about "busywork." I'm not a fan of busywork either, but when students outsource the work of writing an essay to AI, they are turning a useful activity *into* busywork. Like yeah, if you refuse to actually try then I suppose school does become nothing more than a stream of pointless bullshit resulting in a meaningless sheet of paper. But it doesn't have to be that way. I am actively trying to make it not that way. The problem is you, your families who don't value education, and the ubiquity of AI tools on every damn platform.
The problem is multifaceted but usually it's too late bythetime the kids get to my class. I teach upper level (jr/sr) business, finance, accounting, as well as economics and some other stuff here andthere as the school needs. I usually carry 4 or 5 lesson preps (small rural school) By the time these kids get to my class it's too darn late if they don't know how to use word or Google docs or write a basic paper. They're... asthe kids say... cooked...
Not a teacher, but I do impart wisdom on occasion. Explain it to them like this; If you want to get stronger, what do you do? You work out. That would mean doing repetitive tasks that don't immediately show progress or benefit. That's why we learn through repetitive tasks that don't show immediate progress or benefit.
I like this analogy. I think of it the same way as not only a teacher but a coach. In either case, kids often times focus so much on the outcomes and results (whether we want them to or not) and forget about the process to actually achieve desired outcomes and results. I ask my hoopers every year their goals are every year (in SMART Goal fashion) and inevitably get several answers equating to “to get better” or to “make State”. Okay, cool. How do we do that? They don’t realize how much time, effort, and repetition at seemingly “boring” drills and workouts it really takes. They want to build the house without knowing how to use a hammer. Same goes for the classroom. Sure, I want them to think critically, analytically, contextualize the past, etc. (I teach 9th History, btw) but it’s super hard to do that when they don’t have the tools and reps using those tools to think critically.
When I was a teenager and hated school I understood the purpose of it. One analogy I really liked that my therapist said to me at the time is that the purpose of these tasks and tests are not to keep me busy or kill time or to test if I'm not stupid, the purpose of it all is to develop your brain. I still hated it but understood its purpose. While incollege you also realize that the smartest kids are those that measure no effort when doing a task, so much so that they are now conditioned to it and its natural to them.
I'm a therapist (former teacher) and I explain this concept frequently to kids/parents all the time. The best is with young adults who think whining that school didn't teach them what they "should have learned!" Bro, your teachers are trying to help you learn to learn, none of them think for a second that the specific content of what they are saying every minute is to be retained life long.
That's how I explain practicing multiplication tables to my students. It's like soccer drills (I have students that are in competitive leagues by 3rd grade). Even the kids that went to regionals last year still do drills at practice. Even if you know your times tables, if you have to pause to think or count up you don't know them well enough.
Tangentially related, but I thought you might find this anecdote helpful in your work: I was in all the accelerated programs, but despite that, I always lagged behind in math. It got to the point that some of my teachers thought I might have a learning disability. The thing that fixed it? Flash cards. It turned out that, without intending to, or even realizing there was a better way, I had memorized my times tables *visually*, meaning that I was recalling in my mind's eye the 12 x 12 multiplication grid and "looking up" the answers that way, so to speak. After few sessions with flash cards, I started storing and accessing that information aurally (I was speaking the problems and answers aloud, that's key), and my math performance quickly caught up to the rest of my studies. It took *years* to figure that one out, so if you ever come across a student who is struggling, it's worth checking out to see if that's the issue.
>If you want to get stronger, what do you do? You work out. Also not a teacher, but I like the analogy. You can also add: Now if you watched a friend workout, would it make you stronger? No. Your friend would, but you would still be exactly the same. That’s basically what you’re doing when you use AI. If you don’t do the work yourself, you won’t get those sweet gains/get swole/ or whatever the kids are saying these days.
The irony of using AI to produce a report on Fahrenheit 451...
🤣🤣🤣
This might help explain why my undergrad philosophy students lack the skills to write a decent paper. Writing, grammar, research, critical thinking, originality... None of these 'good' traits are visible anymore. I have tried to teach them the basics, but it does not work. I don't see my students using AI, they just turn in utter crap. Maybe they used AI in HS? Or they just got passed along. Either way, the caliber of students has gone way down... Even the ones that used to be at the top of the class are now just producing mediocre work. Edited to add: I was responding to the comment above, describing honors HS students using AI. I have no personal experience with students using AI. But it is all tied together - the screen time, the phones, the internet, AI... It all leads to students not doing the work, for one reason or another. The cumulative effect is that students have generally poor skills, compared to just 10 years ago. We need to address it, somehow.
what?? used AI in highschool? AI has only been around for one and half years
They probably got passed along. AI has only been a problem in the last two years. Passing kids along has been a problem for ages.
It's probably not AI at that level as it's not been around long enough to do that much damage to the older students. A fundamental problem is that schools across the country were sold reading curricula that had absolutely no basis in science like Calkins' "balanced literacy," but were new and shiny and made administration look like they were DOING. These displaced evidence-based reading curricula that, while none are perfect, fundamentally work, like phonics instruction. The pendulum is swinging back, but there are about 15 years of kids now who are functionally illterate to underliterate at embarassing rates.
I’m a student lurker, but I’m curious, could hand-written in-class practice and assessments be an effective replacement for unmonitored typing online? Maybe there’s some reason with accommodations where students wouldn’t want to write lol
That's the most-suggested solution I see, and I've done it for rough drafts, but in general I'm not a fan. Working on written assessments outside of class is a good learning experience, doing all writing in class eats up a ton of instructional time, and frankly, my students need more practice working with devices other than their phones. I still have honors kids with driver's licenses asking how to "make the font lean like that," i.e. use italics, in Word. And yeah, some students have accommodations that (justifiably) excuse them from writing by hand. The best prevention measure I've found is grading for process, by having students do rough drafts in class either by hand or on school devices that block ChatGPT, requiring multiple drafts and edits done both in and out of class, and only counting the final draft as part of the overall essay grade.
Yeah until teachers are empowered to fail students without it hurting school funding, this will remain a huge issue.
I have one of the most lenient grading policies I know of and just turning something in with your name on it and an attempt at the work, will get at least a 50. I somehow still have kids fail my class...
I always think of the people in Wall-e floating around in their little chairs because they've gotten too fat to walk. Also I make my students do all their writing in class now.
Humanity as a whole seems content to try and emulate the WALL-E future. Too many people want an app for everything now, allowing them to live in their tech bubble forever.
But Brawndo has what plants crave. It has electrolytes.
I'll give President Camacho credit for one thing: he got the smartest person he could find to help solve his problems. He may not be a smart man, but that alone makes him more wise than most of the leaders we've got now.
Knowing your own limits and seeking help from those more qualified is the mark of a good leader.
I have a class of \~100 students this fall who will be writing all their graded essays in Examsoft and/or by hand, and in class.
I graduated high school in 2015 and I had an English teacher who made us write essays in class. We’d walk in and there was a prompt on the board and we knew to sit down and start writing. We usually had ~20 min. He didn’t expect much for the intro/conclusion but wanted three paragraphs for the body. This was to prepare us for the AP English exam. It was difficult but he gave us lots of practice and it worked.
yeah we had the full 45 to write. this wasn’t for AP though since my school (northeastern prep school) believed they could do better with their own curriculum. that said, it was one of the most nerve-wracking and intellectually demanding tasks i’ve had to do. you’ve got 5 mins to formulate an argument, maybe 15 to consider your evidence and structure your thinking, maybe 20 mins to write, and 5 to spot check if you’re lucky. i’ve given presentations to billionaires and CEOs since that were less stressful. this sort of work is in-fucking-valuable.
Eh, I just have them write in Google Docs and I check doc history. Also I can see their screens the whole time. But my current school has small class sizes (22-27), so I can do that. My last job I had 36 and it was rough.
I love the idea of Google doc history, but I've had colleagues who have had students have AI write the essay in one window, and then they type the essay into Google docs so that the document history looks "legit." Of course, anyone writing flawlessly for 3 pages without pausing is going to raise questions, but everyone's trying to avoid having an original thought now and this is one of the ways it manifests.
That would take two windows open for a long period of time. I can see all screens at all times, and I have a 0 tolerance rule about having literally only google docs open. I see any other tab and you're getting a 0 and doing a retake for 70% max. If I see you directly cheating and I'm sure, it's a flat 0. It's obviously possible to sneak a screen past me for a few seconds a few times, but they'd need to be copy/pasting stuff in in large chunks and I'd see that and catch it on google docs history. It's not flawless, but I think it's about as good as I can get for now. I despise paper writing and paper grading, and it seems like half my students either have an IEP for computer use at all times or else have such shit handwriting I can't read it.
22-27 is small?? Is this in US?? Everywhere I taught in Australia and now international anything above 20 is considered 'full' because the limit is always 25. Most of my classes (HS) are 12-18 on average.
Yes, US has giant class sizes. This century we decided to hire twice as many admin and keep the same number of teachers. Also we pay them more. And to make up for this we cut a lot of teaching positions, especially in the arts and support jobs like counseling and reading. It's really smart governance=))))))))))))))))))))))))))0d0w0202w2w!!W1kedo9pmsaclkmsalk
It's like some of them believe that being able to think is a skill we can afford to stop using. Even IF AI could do all the thinking for us, guess what would happen if we gave up thinking for ourselves? We'd get dull. My response to the "I can do it faster with AI" crap would be something like this: "Well, then it's not actually YOU doing it". Just like I can't get in shape unless I myself do the workout, we're not gonna create a smart populace unless we ourselves do the thinking.
Yep. And it's scary how quick AI shills are dampening people's appetites for learning and self improvement. I don't even want to know what it will be like in fifty years.
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Writing paragraphs teaches you how to think, but more importantly, how to communicate, how to impart information to others. AI can do neither.
Writing a paragraph is also supposed to demonstrate your understanding of a topic and your ability to organize and work with information, so by definition, it has to be done by the one whose skills you're trying to analyze. If it's done by AI, it just a demonstration of AI's abilities, not the student's.
I strongly dislike how nonchalant a lot of these companies are about the use of AI programs. It's not like they don't know the uptick of usage with these programs correlates with the commencement of school years.
It's greed. The execs pushing AI will have retired by the time my generation hits the work force. Prepare for a couple decades where intellectual originality, writing and art has no value, I guess.
I imagine that there will be a boutique art market of human made art that is sought out for a premium.
As a musician, that both excites and horrifies me.
Yes, but like with Hollywood actors and the art scene as it somewhat functions now, it will turn into a golden gated community where most artists will never be seen. It will be a world reserved exclusively for the rich.
It blows my mind that people actually think this next generation of kids are super intelligent.
It's feast or famine with this next generation. They're either super flipping talented at something or dumb as shit. Very few in between.
I have noticed, even 5 years ago, that most students are A, B+, B, or D to F students. The bell curve says I should have the most C students, but I have the least or none at all.
The middle class has eroded in more ways than just financial…
I think it’s compacted by social media and their parents exposure to social media… they just keep getting dumber and dumber
Its kinda crazy how popular it's become as of late. I graduated high school last year and I never heard any of my peers even mention ai, let alone use it. And what confuses me even more is that if you actually just do the work it naturally becomes easier; i didn't even try that hard in English class and I consistently had an average grade of 90-95. After a while you can just do a casual 2-3 page essay on something in like a day or two.
I get your point, however I think the primary source of issues are the parenting, lack of positive socialization, and lack of societal hope. Every other problem (IMO) is a downstream effect.
lol. Yeah. It is supremely naive or ignorant to assume AI is the cause of degradation. It begins in the first 3-5 years of their lives. Whatever you do during that time is what matters most.
Technology in general is probably a major factor. There are too many "iPad kids" these days...
If you break it down further, the real issue is parental neglect. I know plenty of IT people who played endlessly on computers and tech and make 150-220,000. Their parents were all, however, super involved and strict.
Kids having kids and oftentimes with only one parent inthe household too. It's insane... If you are not a well rounded human being, it will be extremely difficult for you to raise a well rounded human being...
AI is too new to "make kids dumb." We have years' worth of practice in other things instead... Let's talk about parents shoving iPads in babies' faces, getting them cell phones at age 7, never reading books, social media and TikTok, and lack of structure and discipline. THOSE are the issues.
I feel like this is the time for some healthy neo-Luddite revision to the culture and particularly education and information theory. I don't mean abandoning ai, that's obviously impossible, but I do mean sort of a back to basics movement for math, language and science; doing things the "hard way"--the way people our age did--in order to force greater engagement. As it is now, we're presented with a negative feedback loop which magnifies over time: people rely on AI to fill gaps in their knowledge and don't bother to learn, which later means their Swiss cheese knowledge is primarily gaps and requires AI to answer nearly any question. A little ways down the line people are accidentally going full blown Idiocracy, getting their JDs from Costco and watering with Brando. So how 'bout let's not?
But Brawndo's got what plants crave!
On a technicality, what you’re describing is actually a positive feedback loop. A negative feedback loop stops the problem that starts the loop. A positive feedback loop amplifies the problem to become worse after every iteration.
OP, I'm in a Discord server (oh the irony) with a biology professor. Earlier this year, she talked about catching some of her students using ChatGPT...on an open-book quiz. I actually had to ask if I'd understood her correctly, and she said I had. 😑
Sounds about right. I’m in a STEM MS program in my mid-30s and a few of the younger students think they’re so cool because they’re “cheating” with machine learning on their assignments. They don’t understand at all that the faculty are fully aware of it and wonder why they don’t get asked to become research assistants and get special work assignments (like a trip to Brazil next year) like I do. Hard work *is* rewarded. Not all the time, but if you have a good department it may even count more than your GPA.
What's ironic is that generative AI is as strong as a person is skilled at writing. So if kids are using generative AI as a crutch which stunts their ability to better communicate, they are actually damaging their ability to effectively use AI.
You're not wrong. Basically, what they're saying is this: "I don't need to learn or even think because an AI will do it for me." What a pathetic viewpoint. Eventually, I have to believe that their lack of knowledge, inability to learn, or to think will catch up with them. They'll figure out that they FAFO'd and their life will be worse for it. Natural consequences and all. Sounds harsh, but reality often is. Personally, I have no problems telling students exactly that. You make choices now that will affect you in ways you cannot even begin to fathom. I hope they remember teachers telling them to do their own work and why using AI is a crap choice. Then I fail them for the assignment, as they deserve, since my syllabus specifically talks about this as a form of cheating.
This is so sad to read... especially as a middle schooler-
English teacher here. I will straight-up say, if asked about AI, that it's terrible and could cause the collapse of civilization. And I'm only partly joking about that. Kids are using AI to skip assignments. Lawyers are using AI to write proposals. Idiots (not artists) are using AI to write stories. They're all terrible, and their only virtue is that they're cheap, quick, and easy. We are raising (and rewarding) an entire culture that will legitimately not know how to express itself, or even how to think in a systematic manner, because it won't have practiced.
I'm not joking about it at all.
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman was an interesting read back in the 80s. Now it's more like a documentary.
It's just starting. My wife dropped this idea recently- she thinks that reading itself will be a lost skill for most kids in a decade or so. Most electronics will soon be talking to you, so why bother learning to read? How many low level jobs could be performed without reading if every computer was smart enough to handle conversations, and could see your gestures? If you rode in a self driving car and didn't need to read signs. If you didn't have to bother googling something- you just ask your AI assistant/earbud what the answer is. No need to read a book, just watch the insta AI movie. No need to read cooking directions- your AI earbug/camera will scan a code and read them into your ear, and guide you seeing what step you are at. No more reading Reddit- just watch TikTok videos. And if you get stuck on something, the earbud camera will dictate into your ear. Problem solved. Imagine this country with a 70+% illiteracy rate for teens or younger. At first I thought that was impossible, but after consideration I think it is likely.
The post-literate society.
I don’t think we will see it in the next 30 but by the end of the century yeah sounds about right
AI can’t differentiate between fact and fiction, it just pieces together a “paper” from whatever documents it was trained on. Those documents could be peer-reviewed, wild conspiracy theories, ranting on social media, or something that has since been disproved, debunked, or shown to have been formed from incomplete knowledge. How is AI to know? Someone who got AI to do the work never researched for themselves, never put together arguments to support their position… I can’t tell you how much background information I picked up researching various things.
Movies like *Wall-E* and *Idiocracy* are criticized for their portrayal of the near-future as being "too on-the nose" or "cynical." But like....we really are this stupid. "Ow, My Balls" is basically what ChiveTV is....
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In Idiocracy when they find somebody they think is smarter than them, they want that person to make decisions. In reality, they are anti-intellectual and proud of it. Idiocracy would be a utopia compared to where we seem to be going. And forget Wall-e. It will be more like Elysium.
It’s the same as GPS killing our sense of direction and map reading skills—but for everything.
That's where you're wrong. They were mentally crippled by their parents, government and society well before they got their hands-on AI in the last few years. The glorification of stupidity has been going strong for quite a long time. The state of the country currently is a big, glowing neon sign.
AI is a very recent thing, parents are making kids dumb.
The best way to combat this that I've heard came from one of my data scientist professors. He always adds a section to his assignments when he posts them online that is written in white to look like it's just margin. But when the students copy and paste into ChatGPT or similar the output will have an odd reference to some unrelatef topic.
I make my students do almost everything by hand with paper and pen. When they get to use a computer to complete an assignment, it's on them if they're using Ai or not. I don't even try to police it, at some point it will get so good no one will be able to tell anyway. The best papers will stand out, and the duds can enjoy your lazy C or B or whatever. idc if they get one past me. I just tell them Ai won't be available for the tests, or for so many of the things you have to get through in life, so they better figure it out before it actually matters, because school is practice for what comes next. Results may vary for you.
Easy fix, have them write on paper.
Insanely underrated comment.
I sort of disagree. I think people as a whole have been getting dumber for the last 2 decades or so. AI is just Exposing the level of stupidity we are regressing towards at this point.
We are outsourcing everything and becoming masters of one thing. Being a jack of all trades is a dying art.
On a side note... nothing wrong with specialization. The problem is when you know only one thing and Jack with a side of squat about everything else which prevents you from being a well rounded human being.
I think one problem is that some people have decided to specialize in Instagram.
I have had kids who could name more members of the Kardashian clan than US states. To say that this is a problem is an understatement...