This is why I’ve railed against AI for years, as I’ve been seeing my students’ abilities to create, critically think, analyze, weigh evidence, write analytically all wither away in this zombification trend. They’re creating the permanent underclass. - ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

farhanasultana.com • 13 days ago

This is why I’ve railed against AI for years, as I’ve been seeing my students’ abilities to create, critically think, analyze, weigh evidence, write analytically all wither away in this zombification trend. They’re creating the permanent underclass.

Reposted from Ketan Joshi

Microsoft's own research confirms something that was already pretty obvious: relying on a text generating machine to come up with answers erodes critical thinking, and is a method favoured by those who never liked doing critical thinking in the first place

advait.org/files/lee_20...

Comments

andyhemming.bsky.social•12 days ago

Yup.

rattenkaefig.bsky.social•12 days ago

Do you feel like other changes in society had the same or similar effects? I remember vividly how opposed professors were to using Wikipedia. And just to clarify, I'm against genAI for multiple reasons.

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

Not to this extent in my experience. Other professors may have other observations

chilkatun.bsky.social•13 days ago

IA. Tendencia a la Zombificacion de estudiantes.

kelis8.bsky.social•12 days ago

The erosion of critical thinking contributes to the erosion of the ability to question authority using reason and logic. The fascist coup now happening in the USA is a result of Americans questioning authority, but for contrived reasons derived from widespread, often hateful disinformation.

conchesodan.bsky.social•11 days ago

tecnofeudalism at it's peak.

acthpa.bsky.social•13 days ago

I align with Nick Cave on this ~ "It could perhaps in time create a song that is, on the surface, indistinguishable from an original, but it will always be a replication, a kind of burlesque."

editr.bsky.social•11 days ago

we have a president who lacks the ability or desire to do critical thinking. keep America Stupid Again

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•13 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/dustinmulvaney.bsky.social/post/3lhersuexss2v

acitrano.bsky.social•13 days ago

Did AI make the meme (ChatGPT misspelled)?

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

I read that news last week & was shocked. And more universities are doing this. They are firing staff and having AI do the work, creating more problems. They’ll replace faculty next. And students wont’ bother to then go to uni as they’ll think they can be the next millionaire influencer. Jesus wept.

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•13 days ago

Totally, and the way they’re selling it is strikingly clueless.
https://bsky.app/profile/dustinmulvaney.bsky.social/post/3lhfhxvkvfk2n

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

I have a jaundiced eye for faculty who promote AI and all the grifters for years who sold courses online to teach people to game the system with AI. Now students don’t want to do the reading, learn, think, sit with ideas, evaluate them, think critically, write analytically, make an argument. Nada.

drtaragoddard.com•13 days ago

this was such disappointing news. The CSUs educate like, what? Half a million students at any one time? It is honestly scary if I let myself think about it too long.

dustinmulvaney.bsky.social•13 days ago

Siri, show me how to weaken a union with 29,000 faculty.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

Asked an AI how to get AI to replace humans. Sound familiar?

drtaragoddard.com•13 days ago

Some people didn't read/watch 2001: A Space Odyssey and get traumatized by Hal 9000 and it shows

dianetober.bsky.social•12 days ago

Teaching has become so much more burdensome since students started relying on (cheating with) Ai. How do we even assign essays and help them improve writing anymore? It disrupts everything.

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

Been saying this since 2020 when all this started to become a problem in classes and it got so much worse in 2022. Now it’s Dante hellscape of garbage

dianetober.bsky.social•12 days ago

So discouraging. And when you try to explain to students that they're giving away their ability to think, and that their voice is their power, they accuse you of taking down to them on evaluations.

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

And university administrators wasting money promoting this garbage in beyond unethical

dianetober.bsky.social•12 days ago

It's horrifying! Did you see the recent decision by CSU in California $17 million dollar AI initiative, and faculty cuts?

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

Yes. I payed about it yesterday

fancydancer.bsky.social•12 days ago

📌

sunsetsuzyp.bsky.social•12 days ago

Thank you for the 📌 worthy post to share with my students!

asifshaikat.bsky.social•10 days ago

I like the term "zombification"

bigsamthompson.bsky.social•11 days ago

This is fully in line with the way my corporate jobs would have liked me to be, though. They do not want critical thinkers; they want people who are like robots and can follow rules and directions, completely ignoring common sense, critical thinking, or problem solving.

farhanasultana.com•11 days ago

This is what I worry about worsening and expanding, esp with ready-made labor who can’t even do critical thinking as they’re not learning to do so in school or university. That’s the future we’re grating into.

bigsamthompson.bsky.social•11 days ago

It's a feature, not a bug. They want people that do not question the systems they are a part of.

farhanasultana.com•11 days ago

They want mindless drones. I’ve made the SkyNet parallel so many times on Twitter before and here for a long time.

elyse42.bsky.social•13 days ago

Authoritarian governments love the uneducated.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

🎯 And those who follow rules. Like the ones AI is training off of everyone to do more of, and then replace the humans in their jobs

elyse42.bsky.social•13 days ago

Still remember a news item about school assigning report on Endangered Pacific northwest tree octopus and only one student found it suspect. Rest just used the ONE site on it to report 'facts'. Critical thinking is dying as well.

elevatedmn.bsky.social•13 days ago

Please keep speaking out. I see the negative effects of this in my industry. My employer is actively encouraging seasoned professionals to use AI for tasks that we normally would have taught more junior people do - these were not time-wasters, they were important learning opportunities now gone.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

I know several people who trained the AI that then replaced their job. They lost their jobs very quickly. This is what Ai is going to do en masse

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

It’s teaching people to not do the work, to abdicate their abilities that then are withered away over time, it is preparing a generation to become the serfs for the billionaires who will find other ways to exploit them. That’s my worry as an educator.

andre-sobolewski.bsky.social•13 days ago

This isn't unique to AI. Whenever I use Google Maps to navigate through a new city, I get to my destination but I do not develop a mental map of the city as I would if I found my way by myself. I disengage my mind and do not learn. I know that there is a price to pay for this new dependence.

mtomasson.bsky.social•13 days ago

Well said. I agree and hope we can communicate this somehow with compassion...i.e. without being banished for inciting class warfare

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

See this thread for what prompted this conversation: https://bsky.app/profile/ashwynne.bsky.social/post/3lhr3duzoq22g

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

Why is it dangerous to rely on AI to do your research or writing even now? I just trialled the infamous chatGPT, asked it to write about a topic I know well & have published in, and asked it to provide a full bibliography of relevant publications it cites. 80% were incorrect! Fake citations. JFC.

nerissaknm.bsky.social•13 days ago

It’s heavily pushed to “correct” dyslexics’ spelling, grammar + speaking. My 10y/o nephew refuses it

It regurges the intuitive expression of a creative, open-minded critical thinker into predictable, soulless copy

I give zero fucks about him summarizing A Wrinkle in Time ‘like everyone else’

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

Exactly, soulless copies and ‘like everyone else’ aka replaceable proletariat in the future

shuchancellor.online•13 days ago

they will inevitably fail, but we must fight against it lest we lose so much along the way

inclusi.us•13 days ago

Our amoral techbro overlords don’t believe in truth. All they care about is data, which they can manipulate to create “evidence” in support of anything they want.

inclusi.us•13 days ago

In their world, morals are for chumps.

il-kwang.bsky.social•13 days ago

Oh dear, the fake sources. I hate how AI isn’t even useful for recalling. “What was that paper that Kliman or Kleinman wrote in 1992 about NATO?”

“The article is Danielle Kleinman, 1992, ‘What Happens in Brussels Next Year?’ Journal of … … 11 (29): 13–23.”

It’s totally made up, but it sounds real.

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

Apparently I wrote books (that i didn’t) but it sounded very plausible since they’re similar ones i did. It’s such an lying machine

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

And more than anything, as a water & climate justice expert, I have warned people for years of the massive water & energy used by server farms that run AI. There’s plenty of research captured in media/news articles now about this. So more water scarcity & climate change while cheerleading SkyNet.🤦🏽‍♀️

shanebrodie.bsky.social•13 days ago

Google basically took over the town of The Dalles, Oregon with one of their data centers because it's at a hydroelectric dam. Google syphons off a lot of that hydroelectric power & do nothing for locals and this probably raises regional electricity rates. They even fly in personnel from Portland.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

Wow. I’ve heard similar stories from the SW

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

If you must use AI, I generally tell my students to Do the work first themselves, do the reading, thinking, drafting, then if they must, use AI to help improve the writing/grammar/find holes in their work, etc. Retain control, don’t use it as a crutch or as an outsourcing of your brain. My 2c.

chasesolidago.bsky.social•12 days ago

Ohohoho let me introduce you to my favorite (LOATHESOME) Reddit post:
“Hi I’m an AI researcher and using ai to read papers about ai isn’t working. What if I used ai in this other way instead? Why isn’t this working???”

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farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

The bullshit generator also wastes time, which I mentioned upthread that it cites so many fake citations/research that it will be harmful to society in the end that relies on such research output. Few people bother to check every single thing, as otherwise, they’ve have done the work themselves.

cgoustin.bsky.social•12 days ago

AI is a plagiarism gimmick. I hate it.

globalecoguy.bsky.social•13 days ago

Absolutely. It should never be used for research or writing…

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

Exactly my point. Too many do, within academic and outside. Researchers are now publishing garbage. It’s embarrassing

globalecoguy.bsky.social•12 days ago

Its basically statistical plagiarism. Universities should forbid it, and include this in their research ethics standards.

We did. Our researchers are not allowed to use AI for data analysis or writing.

jenmhessler.bsky.social•12 days ago

How's is "the garbage" getting through peer review?

sailorbp.bsky.social•13 days ago

My sister recently retired from teaching at the university level, by the time she was done she was checking for plagiarism and catching a case or so every term. Can’t imagine what it would be like now

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

It’s bad but what’s worse is the growing underenrollment in higher education since many think they can just outsource their learning to AI, without realizing that AI will replace them and they’ll become the serfs the billionaires wanted all along.

lorewrites.bsky.social•12 days ago

With falling guardrails, I think most public-facing AI becomes more risky for users.

catname4.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yes, most people don't realize that AI will produce "AI Hallucinations" very easily depending on how the questions/input are worded. It will make up completely fabricated "sources" or citations for studies that don't even exist.

Google's AI at the top of many search results is particularly bad.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

I changed prompts many times, changed wording, gave more specific commands. Still produced basic level work and wrong citations/fabricated information. It’s not about everyone becoming prompt engineers, my concern is what it does to our cognitive functioning & the proletarianization of society

laurakinsale.bsky.social•12 days ago

Same. Fake books, fake articles. It’s like talking to someone who really wants to please you, and will lie to do it.

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

And it lies so ashamedly and doen’t correct itself even when pointed out to go see if that particular scholar had ever written on that topic.

laurakinsale.bsky.social•12 days ago

It apologized to me and told me it was talking about *different* scholar with the exact same (unique) name. 🤯

mathew1927.bsky.social•13 days ago

Why that's a feature not a bug .. it's a bullshit generator, it's relationship with truth is incidental.

rowanwiebe.bsky.social•13 days ago

I have had multiple profs tell us to use AI in a masters program. it feels wildly irresponsible

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

WTF

rowanwiebe.bsky.social•13 days ago

Yeah, one prof had the caveat to proofread it for errors since AI often makes stuff up and, like, that seems like more work than just writing a paper.

ktebailey.bsky.social•13 days ago

I'm doing my third masters and AI use is classed as plagerism and you will be removed from the programme. They don't even like you using grammer checkers!

jjofbc.bsky.social•12 days ago

it's so irresponsible. just utterly fucked.

avaghy.bsky.social•12 days ago

This is crazy. I am doing a lot of work on AI in workforce development and it can have a place for people who are highly knowledgeable about their subject material or automating tasks so workers can do other things. It shouldn’t be replacing anyone and not used in an education setting that way.

petraverdonk.bsky.social•13 days ago

No worries they won’t be able to read their own AI generated pieces

16n471u5.bsky.social•12 days ago

Oh god, that's what's happening, isn't it? Why these companies are pushing AI, it's just another way for them to devalue education and development of critical thinking skills that could lead them to riot against the Trump-Musk regime. Modern-day bread and circuses.

We must fight back.

https://mobilize.us

stephenswan.bsky.social•13 days ago

💯 As a lifelong learner my view has always been read the primary sources in full; read the secondary sources (books, published peer reviewed articles etc) in full, apply critical thinking, and write down (summarise for revision purposes)!

energycheckup.bsky.social•13 days ago

Anyone trying to make the case that generative AI doesn’t undermine critical thinking should be required to take a spelling test and then compare the results to their own performance prior to their use of spellcheck

countdvb.bsky.social•11 days ago

It isn't permanent. AI is pretty much the last gasp of a technology reaching its peak and a potential bubble burst because there's no way to make money off of it, especially with how monstrously expensive it is.

jankyjeffrey.bsky.social•13 days ago

Alternatively, anyone who uses a synthetic text generator never had any capacity for critical thinking in the first place. Correlation is not always causation.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

untrue since children are being trained to not be critical thinkers, en masse. They’re supposed to learn it in school and college but it’s been subverted.

jankyjeffrey.bsky.social•13 days ago

That’s what I just said. The post you shared isn’t about children though. It’s about employees. So my statement is true in both instances.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

No, from my interpretation, you said the people who couldn’t think at all even after having the opportunity to do so tended to rely on AI, I’m saying they’re being denied the opportunity now to develop critical thinking skills, it’s causing cognitive attrition, while many choosing this voluntarily

sweetcammymac.bsky.social•12 days ago

Reminds me of my father, who was an architect for many years before getting into project management, and his ability to know when something was designed with AutoCAD versus pencil and drafting table. The details were never fussed over with the former. Always inferior to the latter.

4legsrgood.bsky.social•12 days ago

Boy howdy. I’d rather eat my cat than use AI to write anything.

justmesee.bsky.social•12 days ago

Ok. But isn’t this why we shld teach that AI is a tool to assist our thinking rather than it do the thinking for us???

There’s always moral outrage with new tech. Socrates was outraged about using books.

How do we get past the moral outrage and consider how to thoughtfully integrate AI?

roanova.bsky.social•11 days ago

AI is purely for the lazy.

bam-pow.bsky.social•12 days ago

Sleeeeep

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cosimofedeli.bsky.social•13 days ago

I understand the frustration and share the concern, but I see this more as a personal failure of individual students than a systemic fault of AI. AI is a tool, and as with all tools, it is up to each of us how to wield it.

farhanasultana.com•13 days ago

Sadly more and more students aren’t using it as a tool, but as a crutch or a complete outsourcing of their work. That has cognitive attrition in critical thinking in my experience. But that’s just me

streamlass.bsky.social•12 days ago

Not just students, full professionals. Too much work to skim the paper? Have AI "summarize" it. (Field specific knowledge? No, it hasn't got that, does that matter?) Don't want to proofread for your coauthor? Run the paper thru AutoCorrupt Jr.! That'll help! (NO IT DID NOT.)

farhanasultana.com•12 days ago

Field specific knowledge or expertise or craftsmanship will all become relevant in the age of stupid AI

streamlass.bsky.social•12 days ago

We'll just have to hold on for the next generation, who will hopefully value care and skill over high speed bullshit output.

thesporkmaster.bsky.social•12 days ago

That's exactly what the people pushing AI want. They want to make people as dumb as possible but still be able to run their machines and not question why they are where they are.

auntsophie.bsky.social•11 days ago

And it's not a bug, it's a feature. This is what authoritarian oligarchs want.

farhanasultana.com•11 days ago

Exactly

curiouslycory.com•11 days ago

It's not AI, it's our education system. I'm not so stubborn as to ignore the research, I'm sure AI doesn't help the problem (unless tasked to) but I've been watching critical thinking skills evaporate for decades. AI is like all other technology, a double edged sword.

jimpipecub.bsky.social•11 days ago

Yes, plus if programmers focus on ethical use as a foundation. It may push for growth instead of doing the work for the inquirer. Should have seen the number of times I pushed for it to do a lot less in efforts to maintain the writers own voice.