Comment by waffletower
Comment by waffletower a day ago
This is such a naive, simplistic, distrusting and ultimately monastic perspective. An assumption here is that university students are uncritical and incapable of learning while utilizing AI as an instrument of mind. I think a much more prescient assessment would be that presence of AI demands a transformation and evolution of university curricula and assessment - and the author details early attempts at this -- but declares them failures and uncritical acquiescence. AI is literally built from staggeringly large subsets of human knowledge -- university cultures that refuse to critically participate and evolve with this development, and react by attempting to deny student access, do not deserve the title "university" -- perhaps "college", or the more fitting "monastery", would suffice. The obsession with "cheating", the fallacy that every individual needs to be assessed hermetically, has denied the reality (for centuries) that we are a collective and, now more than ever, embody a rich mass mind. Successful students will grow and flourish with these developments, and institutions of higher learning ought to as well.
> This is such a naive, simplistic, distrusting and ultimately monastic perspective
This is such a disingenuous take on the article, there's nothing naive or simplistic about it, it's literally full of critical thought linking to more critical thought of other academic observers to what's happening at the educational level. The context in your reply implies you read at most the first 10% of the article.
The article flagged numerous issues with LLM application in the educational setting including
1) critical thinking skills, brain connectivity and memory recall are falling as usage rises, students are turning into operators and are not getting the cognitive development they would thru self-learning 2) Employment pressures have turned universities into credentialing institutions vs learning institutions, LLMs have accelerated these pressures significantly 3) Cognitive development is being sacrificed with long term implications on students 4) School admins are pushing LLM programs without consultation, as experiments instead of in partnership with faculty. Private industry style disruption.
The article does not oppose LLM as learning assistant, it does oppose it as the central tool to cognitive development, which is the opposite of what it accomplishes. The author argues universities should be primarily for cognitive development.
> Successful students will grow and flourish with these developments, and institutions of higher learning ought to as well.
Might as well work at OpenAI marketing with bold statements like that.