You know, AI is kind of the ultimate calcification of tradition. Thinking is too hard, developing your own perspective and consciousness is not something that's really tested for or graded, so aggregate all the existing writing on a topic and tweak it a bit. Regurgitate, recycle, retrench, reify. - ThreadSky

taliabhatt.itch.io • 1 day ago

You know, AI is kind of the ultimate calcification of tradition. Thinking is too hard, developing your own perspective and consciousness is not something that's really tested for or graded, so aggregate all the existing writing on a topic and tweak it a bit. Regurgitate, recycle, retrench, reify.

Reposted from Nathan Kalman-Lamb

the technodystopia is here

nymag.com/intelligence...

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alephblackram.bsky.social•1 day ago

There's a good case to be made for that. But I think a lot of the conversations currently being had about AI are conversations that are meant to be had instead of abolishing the current education system as we know it in which cheating is an emergent incentive of a repressive environment.

overkoalafried.bsky.social•14 minutes ago

if you think about it, that's what most people did for most of their lives. Having opinions means having to defend them, why not instead get your worldview from some third party? Then you can defer anyone asking questions to that party instead. Thinking for yourself is hard. AI just helps streamline

edivimo.bsky.social•20 hours ago

Worse than that, at least "a tradition" have a big enough group of people behind making sure that is preserved in a certain way.
People using Gen AI in that way are only folding to authority of the AI without even questioning it.

edivimo.bsky.social•19 hours ago

And that Gen AI authority is ALWAYS hallucinating.

taliabhatt.itch.io•1 day ago

Admittedly, some of this is because the structure of education itself is gameable. We don't hire or pay educators enough, the way workloads and testing rubrics are designed don't really value deep comprehension, so aggregated slopchurn passes muster. Education for industry, not learning.

crushedbywalls.bsky.social•1 day ago

yeah , a lot of this is just that degrees are now just means to an end of getting a job, no one actually wants to learn because we've been taught that every aspect of life we don't min max to get money is worthless

taliabhatt.itch.io•1 day ago

Honestly, if college wasn't simply a class-gating of professional networks and certain jobs, if it was actually geared towards producing a more learned and discerning society, it'd look a lot different.

Maybe AI isn't so much a "death knell" as it is exposing the fundamental structural issue.

stmsystem.bsky.social•22 hours ago

if people want to solve this, the AI isn't the problem, this thing is a brainstorming toy at most, the fact it passes tessts says more about tests. it's like blaming drawing on your ruler instead of multiple choice being bad.

osakanone.bsky.social•3 hours ago

I came to the same conclusion: Accreditation is a measure and thus is subject to Goodhart's "any measure is a target", meaning it will inevitably become gamed.

You can't game actually learning skills: Its a failure of how the accreditation system works by way of how the learning education failed.

osakanone.bsky.social•3 hours ago

This is also being deflected btw into blaming EM-dashes.

mdaigual.bsky.social•18 hours ago

This is the key to me. All teachers that I know tell me I am dumb but I can't see it other way. When I was in school I didn't care about learning, I cared about my grade, if I was a kid right know, I would use chat GPT always.

gullizzy.bsky.social•20 hours ago

well the problem is that it's always been both. It lends rich kids an air of legitimacy because their networking happens alongside actual scholarship and education, and it's not easily disaggregable whether a rich kid's degree means he actually learned something, or if he was just networking.

gullizzy.bsky.social•20 hours ago

rich people will always find ways to gatekeep and network, but those ways won't necessarily include the positive side effect of educating others and funding scholarship.

cyanlol.bsky.social•23 hours ago

For starters, “worthless degrees” would not be a thing if academia (and society) was actually geared towards learning rather than money.

fomovaries.bsky.social•18 hours ago

I think one of the main things taught in schools isnt necessarily useful knowledge but a Huge set of boundaries. Being forced to wear a very policed uniform, being conditioned to fit life around tight weeks, not questioning why a certain thing has to be done as long as the tasks keep coming.

antifa-operator.bsky.social•1 day ago

Great point. I've seen other discussion on this in the other direction, but you're right, it's more of a late stage manifestation of the base profit seeking and greed of the system. Academic ideals and ethics were sacrificed on the altar of capitalism long ago.

donkerspuppygirl.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Have em do a video essay rather than a text essay, the zoomer yearns for the video

taliabhatt.itch.io•21 hours ago

"Alright class, be sure to turn in your weekly short-form TikTok before showing that you've hit the video essay editing milestones"

taliabhatt.itch.io•1 day ago

Let me ask ChatGPT what it thinks of all this ;P

the-lori.bsky.social•1 day ago

(It doesn't)

cyanlol.bsky.social•1 day ago

who even needs to write “theory” anymore, just ask ChatGPT what it thinks of capitalism

gengarro.bsky.social•23 hours ago

ChatGPT: meandering answer about markets and capital with hallucinated references

Grok: 2 page manifesto about how billionaires, and especially Elon Musk, should not be allowed to exist in a free and egalitarian society

de-snoot.bsky.social•23 hours ago

Hit the nail on the head.

Universities have never been about learning. That's a myth. They've always been about keeping the poor in poverty and destroying class mobility.

They're all a bunch of fucking paper mills.

mschemistrymd.bsky.social•18 hours ago

Ok I get why one might have this sentiment, and sure that is what a non-insignificant number of Unis (especially in the US) have become, but to say that is what they were always about is... well simply false. Like, just false on a fundamental level. Unis are ooooold, from before "class mobility".

mschemistrymd.bsky.social•18 hours ago

Not only are there multiple even older examples from India (I am not confident in my knowledge on them hence why I'm not focusing on them), but if we look only at europe and their earliest Unis, are you really going to tell me they needed them in the 11th century to suppress class? They had swords!!

gengarro.bsky.social•23 hours ago

I have a lot of sympathy for overworked academics dealing with funding issues, but if a student can consistently score distinctions (or better) with essays written by GenAI, that sets off alarm klaxons in my head - and not about the writing capabilities of ChatGPT.

cyanlol.bsky.social•23 hours ago

My thoughts exactly, it’s not just the fact that students are cheating AI that concerns me (students have been cheating since the beginning of school) but also the fact that essay-writing is so formulaic to the point where an AI program can pass a class

darkoverlordofdata.com•23 hours ago

it could be argued that the person using AI to write their paper is more authentic than the person who buys their paper

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