this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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Relentless advancement to produce new gen of blob-no-thoughts seppos

I asked Wendy if I could read the paper she turned in, and when I opened the document, I was surprised to see the topic: critical pedagogy, the philosophy of education pioneered by Paulo Freire. The philosophy examines the influence of social and political forces on learning and classroom dynamics. Her opening line: “To what extent is schooling hindering students’ cognitive ability to think critically?” Later, I asked Wendy if she recognized the irony in using AI to write not just a paper on critical pedagogy but one that argues learning is what “makes us truly human.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the question. “I use AI a lot. Like, every day,” she said. “And I do believe it could take away that critical-thinking part. But it’s just — now that we rely on it, we can’t really imagine living without it.”

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[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago

Is it bad that I find this somewhat comforting on a personal level?

I'm half-considering continuing my education mostly to get the STEM degree porky wants, but I worry I'm too stupid for it or won't be able to figure everything out before the test so even if I pass I won't be getting the As, the bare minimum to even have my job applications considered. But if so many people are cheating, then I'm not as inferior as I may think.

[–] Carl@hexbear.net 76 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (18 children)

I have a hypothesis that college can solve this problem by "inversing" lectures and homework.

edit: sounds like a lot of places do this already so that's cool.

Have your students watch lectures and do reading on their own time. Hell, they can ask ChatGPT to summarize it for them if "it's just a tool" and they want to use it! But everything that gets a grade should be done in class. You will write the essay by hand, you will do the math with no more powerful a calculator than a TI-83, you will give a presentation to show that you understand the material. Book is open, accommodations for special needs are available, and the teacher is here to help and give guidance and clarification, but internet connections are banned.

Buuuuut ~~American colleges would never do this because~~ ensuring that your graduates actually learn things was never the point.

I've had a few flipped classes and I've preferred the traditional method.

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

My art degree (and AFAIK anywhere else you go) did this. You produce all of your work in class with extra time spent at home to finish (usually 2 hours per hour spent in class). Classes were 3~4 hours each session. It makes it impossible to commission someone else unless you have them also go to your classes for you.

Also made it rough scheduling multiple studio classes each term. Usually 2 studio classes and 1 or 2 lectures. Every once in a while I'd put 3 studios all on the same days, which meant 12 hour "workdays," a day between to do any homework, but I got 4-day weekends each week with no homework. The real killer was finals where it was like 60 hours worth of projects between 3 classes in a single week, which is the main reason I didn't do this very often.

Surprised more degree programs don't use this model. I think some of the performing arts do similar class setups along with medical degrees, but that's it.

[–] T34_69@hexbear.net 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My university does "flipped" lectures/homework for a lot of the engineering courses and yeah it's pretty dope a lot of the time, it's an efficient way to do things... but it also means some students just don't show up, and the professors tend not to like that (for a synchronous course).

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 25 points 1 week ago (3 children)

but it also means some students just don’t show up, and the professors tend not to like that

TBH I hated when attendance was graded in college because I just did the course work instead of going to class most of the time. Engineering schools tend to have the worst teachers.

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[–] AstroStelar@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

As someone who struggles with self-discipline for assignments at home I like this

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[–] boiledfrog@hexbear.net 64 points 1 week ago (1 children)

we can’t really imagine living without it.

It's been like a year or 2 of this shit being this accessible. Like common, Wtf.

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 36 points 1 week ago

20% of aware lifetime

[–] simontherockjohnson@lemmy.ml 58 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

The actual problem every one of these articles is whinging about is that AI completely destroys the economy of scale of education. Which I frankly do not care about, schooling has been first on the austerity plan since the apex of the US empire. Larger class sizes, teaching how to pass standardized testing, lack of support for disability, lack of funding, hollowed out curricula, reliance on adjunct faculty, reliance on TA's, etc. This has all been a race to the bottom to make education as cheap as possible without a real regard for quality. Governments and administrators extracted as much labor as possible out of educators, they've thinned their ranks. Along comes this stupid little statistical parrot box and now these morons who have been making this system as fragile and shitty as possible while directing as much money to the top heavy administrators can reap what they've sown.

I care for the educators who will be squeezed to "do something about this", but as a society it's time to pony up or fail at social reproduction over and over again. Smaller class ratios more individualized instruction and assessment, higher standards of proof of work. If the outcome is more teachers, higher pay, and better students it will be good that AI killed these cheap, impersonal, mechanized forms of education.

Kids don't enjoy learning because we put them to work on themselves in a high stress educational assembly line. They're alienated from their own development. And who wouldn't be in a system where your entire first 18 years of life are just prepping you for a choice of how you're going to gamble in the job market? Statistically most of their parents haven't accumulated enough information to make a half way decent bet in that casino. Of course this is happening. This system rewards gambling and scamming your way through life.

Exactly, good education should create a willingness to learn and further ones education by its own merits. Not by scolding or “torturing” kids/YA into it. No, this does not mean there should be no discipline or “just doing what the kids want”.

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[–] imogen_underscore@hexbear.net 57 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

my friend described it as a logical endpoint of the commodification of education, which i think i agree with. degree being seen as simply a visa to the corporate world has been a problem since long before AI proliferation. of course students don't care and just want the piece of paper. the great failing of contemporary liberal education is that it totally fails to instil a love of learning (and often actually instils a dislike of it). undergrads are treated so poorly by institutions it's no surprise most of them usually end up in the mindset of "do as little work as possible, fuck this awful system".

[–] DragonBallZinn@hexbear.net 8 points 6 days ago

Said it before, but the porks view education as a problem to be solved. Just like how they view abundant housing, walkable, green cities and towns, and even a working class with the ability to do some consumer spending. This is totally alien to this pig-like society and they needed to solve it as fast as humanly possible.

If I ever do a master's I have vowed to apply to foreign universities first and GTFO.

[–] Losurdo_Enjoyer@hexbear.net 28 points 1 week ago (2 children)

the great failing of contemporary liberal education is that it totally fails to instil a love of learning (and often actually instils a dislike of i

important to note this failing starts way before college, i think it would be unreasonable to expect universities to be able to fix this when school from 5-18 sucks so much shit in the vast majority of the country

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[–] kristina@hexbear.net 48 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

A friend of mine had her boyfriend go in and take an important test in her name when she was badly sick. No one cared or even noticed. College has always been fake. Its basically a paper saying you are wealthy and privileged enough to be hired by a Fortune 500. Lie as much as you can, fleece those shithole companies, say you have 50 degrees when you have none shrug-outta-hecks

[–] Belly_Beanis@hexbear.net 30 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yeah cheating was rampant when I was in school. I remember in my physics class there was a group who had access to each midterm and final exam and would cheat. They wouldn't share with anyone else and sure as shit weren't going to say how they got ahold of the tests. Most of us were irritated because A) we actually did the work of learning the material; B) everything was graded on curve.

Professor was trying to figure out who they were, but you can't just accuse people of something that could get them expelled just because they got a 91% on a test.

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[–] homhom9000@hexbear.net 48 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think it was on this machine kills, but they talked about the rise of AI use is correlated to the fall of computer literacy. Specifically with big tech rise causing less visibility in how the products we use work and more reliance on ease of use. I think they talked about kids not even knowing how file systems work since everything is an app.

This can be solved when we bring back torrents

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

oh god the thing where people don't know what files and folders are is so goddamn frustrating. motherfucker you should not need a youtube video showing you how to drag a file from an archive into a folder to mod a videogame.

[–] Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 1 week ago (1 children)

But if you've never done it before it isnt as intuitive. My first computer ran dos. If anything, I think in middle school they should start with a really simple os, something resembling the technology in its bare bones. Year after year, learn the systems increased complexity so the understanding of how a computer works is full to its current standard.

You can't write a dissertation unless you know the alphabet.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

i figured that shit out when i was 6 or 7 years old without explicit instruction. before the obfuscation of phone apps you would have to lack any and all curiosity to not be right-clicking on everything in windows.

interface design should've been educating users instead of making a black box usable by toddlers.

[–] witheyeandclaw@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Something I try to remind myself when I'm helping the tech illiterate is that not everybody had a family PC in the living room growing up. It can be a struggle sometimes.

[–] Le_Wokisme@hexbear.net 1 points 6 days ago

yeah i mean i'm not asking people to edit ini files, just click through a menu and then drag and drop.

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[–] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 45 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Gotta wonder what is gonna happen to these people when ChatGPT shuts down after investors pull out to salvage what's left of their principal

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They still get diploma and connect, they would be just the most boring cogs imaginable

[–] FourteenEyes@hexbear.net 35 points 1 week ago (1 children)

No, I mean they've offloaded so much of their thinking onto this thing I genuinely think they will struggle to function

[–] plinky@hexbear.net 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

but that implies work requires a lot of thought, it really doesn't majority of the time, just being accepted and shown the ropes.

[–] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 22 points 1 week ago (4 children)

that really depends on the job.

where a credential opens a door to a role in an organization requiring a balanced skillset and competency--as in say public/civil service--someone who cannot think through a problem and develop/implement a solution is going to be recognized as a "bad fit" among stakeholders and colleagues.

but yeah, if you're just pushing emails and being a monkey for some loser petite bourgeois heir, then nothing really matters anyway because they will cut you lose to save a buck when they get caught by their uncle buying coke with petty cash. so, by all means, don't waste any energy on personal edification when you can waste it on appearing to personally edify for what is certain to be a very enriching and totally not alienating future.

there are still actual jobs doing actual work that requires one to actually think using the context of their training, formal education and experience to deploy resources in a way that helps people. these roles are real and necessary and the lack of recognition for them in the US, by and large, is not some honest understanding of the deeper material reality. it is a cynical normalization of capitalist ideology, and the more young people with opportunities to learn buy into the frame, the more any potential collaborative future is cannibalized by The Ever Expanding Grift Maelstrom of now.

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[–] curmudgeonthefrog@hexbear.net 39 points 1 week ago

Makes sense, we're an empire in decline. American capital is stripping the copper out of the wires. Child labor is coming back. Slavery is coming back (and never really went away). For what purpose do you need an educated populace as a capitalist. AI being the last possible new market is way more important to them

[–] Dirt_Owl@hexbear.net 37 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

Something that is very annoying is that AI is being blamed for the problems that education under capitalism has been facing for decades. Poor reading comprehension has been an issue for decades. We have a system that not only teaches people to hate learning, but where everyone is too tired and time poor to learn, or even teach.

Fuck AI, but don't use technology as a scapegoat for systemic problems, it only amplifies what is already there.

[–] HATEFISH@midwest.social 10 points 6 days ago

Technology has been ingrained to the system. Largely due to capitalism. School districts were sold on the idea that every kid needed a chromebook to learn, a decade+ later we are seeing the increase in technology in classrooms hasn't helped. Those additional devices and licenses to use their software aren't cheap and impact class sizes and # of staff that can be hired.

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[–] Comrade_Mushroom@hexbear.net 36 points 1 week ago

They really did it. They made the world worse.

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 34 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I then fed a chunk of text from the Book of Genesis into ZeroGPT and it came back as 93.33 percent AI-generated.

Turns out the Bible was the word of God handed down to man, it’s just that God is the AI bot running our simulation.

This says to me that our leadership is only going to get worse and worse. The meritocracy will be full of people with degrees from the right universities but with zero ability to think dynamically. Thus novel situations will be handled with AI slop only further exacerbating the “constantly trying to fight the last war” problem (metaphorically speaking).

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[–] CyborgMarx@hexbear.net 33 points 1 week ago

Wild that Frank Herbert actually nailed the meta commentary of the Butlerian Jihad, the man was actually cooking with that premise

Of course this doesn't actually "unravel the entire academic project" simply unravels the concept of homework and online schooling

[–] Orcocracy@hexbear.net 31 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

Yeah, you can’t give students a done-at-home essay as an assessment any longer, that’s just asking for AI slop and setting the students up for failure. Students can’t be trusted to avoid the temptation of AI, even the good ones from time to time. Over the past couple of years I’ve had to completely rethink every assessment I give. Essays are useless now. In-class tests and exams are ok, but students struggle with these more than they did a few years ago as they are less practiced at thinking through the written word. In-class presentations work pretty well, if you have a few restrictions. Keeping the time limits short so they stay focused and do not use vague and verbose AI writing helps, limiting the amount of text in slides or number or slides or even just banning slides entirely can also help to reduce slop. But most importantly, have a lengthy question and answer period at the end. This is where the students will actually demonstrate their own understanding as they need to actually know the material themselves to get through even very simple questions. If a student only used AI to write a presentation script even “what did you think about the book?” is a tough question for them. Usually one of the students will try using AI but will very visibly crash and burn in front of the whole class during the Q&A. The public shaming that results usually serves as a good warning to the rest.

[–] CrawlMarks@hexbear.net 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

We always bullshit essays. We were no better. Homework was always capitlaist bs.

In the real world of I look up and answer I am an overachiever at my job. While AI doesn't contribute to that skills the standard Prussian education model doesn't either

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[–] CarlMarks@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 1 week ago (13 children)

If your coursework can be solved by a plagiarism markov chain-ish machine that is more of an indictment of your course than the students.

[–] space_comrade@hexbear.net 28 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Eh I dunno about that, the plagiarism machine would probably also be good for, for example, undergrad math or compsci because the work is usually fairly simple but necessary to get into the deeper stuff. This kind of cheating on an industrial scale seems dangerous.

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[–] ksynwa@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 1 week ago

I ain't gonna read all that but some quotes are hilarious

When I asked him why he had gone through so much trouble to get to an Ivy League university only to off-load all of the learning to a robot, he said, “It’s the best place to meet your co-founder and your wife.”

Lee explained to me that by showing the world AI could be used to cheat during a remote job interview, he had pushed the tech industry to evolve the same way AI was forcing higher education to evolve.

AI frontiersman pushing the envelope of technology by building the torment nexus

[–] axont@hexbear.net 24 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I used to work for a company that would write papers for students. A lot of them were like composition 101 level 500 word essays but I also did a few grad school assignments lol. Like I did a master's thesis in health admin, one in art history, and one in nursing education.

I guess I'm out of a job though since now chatgpt will do this for free

[–] Philosoraptor@hexbear.net 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have a very good friend who totally ghostwrote the master's thesis of a Russian oligarch's failson when we were all in grad school. My friend and I were doing PhDs in topics pretty closely related to the failson's master's (my friend's dissertation topic was pretty much bang-on). The guy paid my friend a low four figures amount for him to do it; the topic was an obscure technical field, and the guy was clearly just getting the credential to pad his CV. This kind of thing has always been around--ChatGPT has just sort of democratized it.

I'm honestly more worried about the increasing number of people who are using ChatGPT as a substitute for friends or soft skills. The people who are using it to do their essays probably wouldn't have written particularly scintillating essays even if they didn't have it (or would have found some other way to cheat). Lots and lots of ordinary people are using it as a socialization outlet, though, and we don't know what effect that's having.

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