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How long is it going to take universities and companies to face the reality that we should not be assessing people's capabilities in a vacuum where they can't a

How long is it going to take universities and companies to face the reality that we should not be assessing people's capabilities in a vacuum where they can't access the tools that they will be using in the real world. If knowledge can be easily acquired in 5 seconds, why are you testing people on whether or not they have memorized it? What good is 5 seconds? If the difference between an accredited engineer and a regular person is supposed to be a 5 second Google, then what the hell is the point? We need to modernize assessment. We should have done it decades ago when cheating became rampant. Problem is that universities have zero incentive to fix this problem. Human resource teams don't either. The only people that really care are the people that have to work with everyone who gets hired despite having zero actual skills. Unfortunately, they have one of the quietest voices in this chain.

yamtaddle 4y ago
> If knowledge can be easily acquired in 5 seconds, why are you testing people on whether or not they have memorized it? If you don't know much, you don't even know the right questions to ask your AI assistant, or the right tasks to have it perform. You'll also be less-able to check, and to apply, its output. The more you know, the more you can get out of your assistant. At least so far, these tools are more like a bicycle than an internal combustion engine: they help almost anyone go faster and farther, but the people who are fit will still be able to go the fastest and farthest. Substitute "knowing stuff" for "fitness" and that's what we're looking at with "AI" (again, so far—if we achieve actual AGI so a huge set of complex tasks don't need a human involved at all, that may be another matter) That's why people still need to know stuff they could find out in five seconds.
- adverbly 4y ago
  > If you don't know much, you don't even know the right questions to ask your AI assistant, or the right tasks to have it perform It sounds like you are agreeing with me here. We should not be making life-changing assessments of people's skills in unrealistic situations. In the real world, nobody gives you the question. Nobody gives you a breakdown of the tasks needed. And yet that is exactly how we assess people in these sorts of exams. I agree with you on the AI part though. I like the bicycle analogy.
akasakahakada 4y ago
I think one of the important aspect of intelligence is how fast you can comprehend raw data / unseen information. In my observation in university lab, being able to google for answers and fix bugs is the rarest perk in computer science department. I see people just stuck in the search result page althought looking exactly at the answer. This aspect can only be assessed when the target is interacting with the environment (search engine).

yamtaddle 4y ago

> If knowledge can be easily acquired in 5 seconds, why are you testing people on whether or not they have memorized it? If you don't know much, you don't even know the right questions to ask your AI assistant, or the right tasks to have it perform. You'll also be less-able to check, and to apply, its output. The more you know, the more you can get out of your assistant. At least so far, these tools are more like a bicycle than an internal combustion engine: they help almost anyone go faster and farther, but the people who are fit will still be able to go the fastest and farthest. Substitute "knowing stuff" for "fitness" and that's what we're looking at with "AI" (again, so far—if we achieve actual AGI so a huge set of complex tasks don't need a human involved at all, that may be another matter) That's why people still need to know stuff they could find out in five seconds.

adverbly 4y ago
> If you don't know much, you don't even know the right questions to ask your AI assistant, or the right tasks to have it perform It sounds like you are agreeing with me here. We should not be making life-changing assessments of people's skills in unrealistic situations. In the real world, nobody gives you the question. Nobody gives you a breakdown of the tasks needed. And yet that is exactly how we assess people in these sorts of exams. I agree with you on the AI part though. I like the bicycle analogy.

akasakahakada 4y ago

I think one of the important aspect of intelligence is how fast you can comprehend raw data / unseen information. In my observation in university lab, being able to google for answers and fix bugs is the rarest perk in computer science department. I see people just stuck in the search result page althought looking exactly at the answer. This aspect can only be assessed when the target is interacting with the environment (search engine).