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Oof, this hits hard.

"AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself"

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-is-destroying-the-university-and-learning-itself

Choice quotes:

"The result isn’t augmented intelligence but simulated learning: a paint-by-numbers approach to thought."

"Universities are being retrofitted as fulfillment centers of cognitive convenience. Students aren’t being taught to think more deeply but to prompt more effectively."

So many more spot-on observations. It's long. Actually read it, don't have AI summarize it for you.

AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself

Students use AI to write papers, professors use AI to grade them, degrees become meaningless, and tech companies make fortunes. Welcome to the death of higher education.

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 3 days ago

@jschauma

The UC system like so many other higher education systems are facing a double whammy. There’s been the long-term erosion of public financing for higher education and the resulting conversion of administrative staff to a commercial orientation, but the second problem is a consequence of Covid.

People stopped having kids during the pandemic, and this is coupled with a long-term decline in fertility in the United States.

47’s policies shut out foreign students who pay full tuition

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 3 days ago

@jschauma

In its blunt form, the super rich have privatized and killed higher education all in the belief that higher education became the purview of woke revolutionaries.

In their gilded little silos they think they are the only thing that matters for civilization and have been on the warpath crush those uppity unwashed masses.

The difference will likely be in those nations that stick to continue to invest in the education of the human mind

the roamer

@the_roamer@mastodonapp.uk replied · 4 days ago

@jschauma

Yup, very much my experience too, in a leading research-oriented university in the UK.

Enthusiastic adoption by university management, but also by academic colleagues, to an extent I could not have foreseen even a year. One of the greatest moral & professional disappointments in my life as a university teacher.

Glad the article can report on some student pushback. A sign of hope. Fee-bringing students demanding actual education, that will be a voice management will listen to.

#StopTheAICorruption #noAI #HigherEducation

chariscodes

@chariscodes@hachyderm.io replied · 5 days ago

@jschauma as a parent of middle schoolers, I wonder what will be left once they finish secondary schooling... One could hope that the whole ship gains self awareness and course corrects but that does not seem likely at this point.

GhostOnTheHalfShell

@GhostOnTheHalfShell@masto.ai replied · 3 days ago

@chariscodes @jschauma

I would plan for any higher education abroad. I can only imagine what this is going to be like in a few years because science in America has been obliterated for the most part.

It will be hard to imagine America having any kind of technical leadership or competence at all

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