9 ms·

AI will slightly drain the swamp of higher ed

79 points by sieste 3y ago

wouldbecouldbe 3y ago
How much better can they get chatgpt? It's super impressive, but it seems like this generative AI step, with accepting of mistakes, was a switch in mindset that made AI suddenly a lot more usefull But it seems like the last 10% that actually makes it take over human tasks almost fully might take another 5-30 years.
- M4v3R 3y ago
  Here's my semi-educated guess based on observing the rate of progress in this field over the last years: I think there is still improvement to be made in base models. The amount of progress between GPT-2 and GPT-4 in just 4 years is astonishing so I would be surprised if GPT-4 is the limit of what we can do with this technology. I expect at least one more major version that will significantly outperform GPT-4. After that I think the major focus will be making these models more performant, expanding the context window, making them less resource-hungry, adding multimodality and composing them into larger architectures using techniques similar to Chain of Thought - building fully fledged general-purpose agents. These agents will be able to outperform humans at most of the tasks we throw at them. If I were to guess I'd say this will happen by the end of this decade.
  - avereveard 3y ago
    It seems to me we'll see large glue model, which will be able to read from model last layer and write directly into model first layer and are trained at composing them. Some is already happening, and it cannot be generalized, but the idea of being able to glue already trained medium sized model together and then do a retrain of the whole thing to improve performances seems already establishing itself in products and will allow much efficient expenditure of training resources.
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  So what if it will take another 30 years? Barely 71 years ago MIT demonstrated one of the first Numerical Control mill for manufacturing [1] that gave us the world as we have it today: from our chairs to our CPUs, nothing could be obtained so fast/cheap/good without automated milling, molding, and so on. It just seems completely unimaginable how by 2094 we won't have synthetic agents being not only great tutors, but also replacing every job that we have today or we will be able to imagine in the interim. The problem is then with our mental models, our economics, our metaphysics, not with the technology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control#MIT's_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control#M...
  - layer8 3y ago
    We don’t know what the limits are, what the difficulties will be. You can’t just extrapolate from the past. We’ll have to wait and see where things go.
    - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
      As far as cognitive capacity and consciousness as self-monitoring agency we have N=1, ourselves. Are there limits above us? Probably, but we have no reason to believe we are anywhere near the pinnacle of cognitive or consciousness load. Sure we can extrapolate from the past, we do it daily when we build something, if we didn't we would get nothing done.
  - palata 3y ago
    Well the world may have burned in 30 years (that doesn't seem unlikely at all). So I can perfectly imagine that by 2094 we don't have those synthetic agents. Maybe we'll just be focused on not starving.
    - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
      I am starving today, being starved by a system which puts me in artificial scarcity loops, me and who knows how many others. Starvation does not hinder the desire for resolution, if anything, it fosters it. But yes, the world might disappear tomorrow; it's just not a workable hypothesis. It's much more workable to think that the complexity of our tools will continue to increase, elevating themselves towards higher and higher abstraction layers.
- FredPret 3y ago
  The definition of what human tasks are is fluid. Every time a machine arrives that does what we used to do, human tasks are pushed up the chain of abstraction. This will only change if an AI arrives that is better at us at the only IQ test that counts - navigating the complexities of real life; and maybe not even then.
saithound 3y ago
Despite his claim in the article, Bryan Caplan is absolutely not known for giving tough exams that test for deep understanding. He's known for the opposite. The fact that GPT-4 can pass his tests says much more about the tests than about the capabilities of GPT-4. Indeed, GPT-4 failed Steven E. Landsburg's exam with a miserable score of 4/90, and the remarkable performance oon Caplan's exam fails to replicate on random economics exams of random universities. (NB this post does not mean that ChatGPT cannot improve, or that it's not impressive as is. It serves to put Caplan's self-aggrandizement in context.)
- PartiallyTyped 3y ago
  Was the model allowed to use chain of thought and so on when it was evaluated?
- p-e-w 3y ago
  > The fact that GPT-4 can pass his tests says much more about the tests than about the capabilities of GPT-4. "Deep Blue beating Kasparov shows that ultimately, chess is just brute force calculation..." "Stable Diffusion 'art' being indistinguishable from human art to most people shows how little most people know about art..." "ChatGPT fooling people into thinking they're talking to another human shows that those people weren't paying attention, so the Turing test is actually useless for determining..." "I mean, I know that everyone used to say that doing X means being intelligent, but now that software has done X, it becomes clear that..." What is the real criterion for a machine to be considered intelligent? What does it have to do for people to not retroactively downplay it by invoking mechanistic pseudo-explanations?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - carschno 3y ago
    > What is the real criterion for a machine to be considered intelligent? This is actually the core of the debate. The answer is that there is no real criterion because we do not understand intelligence. Or, put differently, the one-dimensional understanding of intelligence we typically entertain is a simplification. This is very inconvenient so we just pretend intelligence was a well-defined concept. That in turn leads to all kinds of confusion and pointless arguments as you have pointed out.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
fredgrott 3y ago
Unfortunately, deep learning and the testing for deep learning have some factual evidence that are just the opposite of the author's own practice. To test deep learning we have to get at the meta-objects that humans form of that subject and the only way to do that currently is essay testing. If you graduated in the 1980s and 1990s it was called blue-book testing for the blank blue books sold that just had pages of blank paper for such a purpose. Multiple choice testing was chosen for IQ and SAT not for testing performance but to make grading tests faster as when SAT was originally applied during WWI they used it to separate officers from soldier grunts. Or in short words Teacher interaction with the students meta-objects can at times indicate degree of deep learning. Now hold on, let me give a twist. How would one test deep learning in a grad course in civil engineering? Since the meta-objects are going to be about building specific things we could have a contest to build a bridge that survives having so much weight applied. In fact, there are MIT classes that do exactly this way of deep testing and you can find the videos of it on Youtube(they are fun to watch). Those are creative, are going to turn Higher ED upside down and go the interactive testing of human meta-objects rather than choosing to multiple choice test among other deep learning testing strategies.
LightBug1 3y ago
"Slightly drain the swamp"... Slightly?.... What a dumb title... This is the consequence of electing mediocrity. That mediocrity twists and turns and echoes through time...
sebstefan 3y ago
> I’ve spent much of my career arguing that the main function of education is not to teach useful skills (or even useless skills), but to certify students’ employability. By and large, the reason our customers are on campus is to credibly show, or “signal,” their intelligence, work ethic, and sheer conformity. While we like to picture education as job training, it is largely a passport to the real training that happens on the job. How about just keep your hot takes out of the article if you're not going to substantiate them? Also the "real training that happens on the job", lol. I've learned so many more things in university. I'm struggling to remember the last time I did something challenging at any company.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  He substantiated in this book: The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money https://a.co/d/6R5arD1 https://a.co/d/6R5arD1
  - palata 3y ago
    So he is a professor, but he doesn't believe in teaching? How can that work? Genuinely interested.
    - lordnacho 3y ago
      Isn't it common for professors to be doing research, with teaching being a sort of payment for being allowed to do the research?
      - palata 3y ago
        I get that teaching is part of the contract. I just would hope that a professor is hired based on that fact...
    - BurningFrog 3y ago
      He believes in teaching. He doesn't believe that is the primary purpose of the higher education system.
bambax 3y ago
> The only thing that will really matter will be exams. And unless the exams are in-person, they’ll be a farce, too. How is this not already the case? Even before ChatGPT it was easy to hire people to write essays in your stead. (Some of these people are now complaining AI is taking their jobs.)
- avidphantasm 3y ago
  Because oral exams don’t scale to the number of students in undergraduate programs given the number of faculty/ the resources faculty are given for teaching. This is why oral exams are mostly done as part of graduate education (or undergraduate honors theses), and then only as part of qualifying exams and thesis/dissertation defenses. By and large, regular classes taught in graduate do not use oral exams. I think the underlying issue that no one wants to admit is that probably “too many” people go to university and/or there are “too few” professors to teach them. Modern higher ed has contributed to this problem on probably both the supply side (too few professors, especially tenured professors) and the supply side (advertising prestige, infecting politicians with the notion that a 4 year degree should be a primary goal for all). Ironically, due to how graduate education has been distorted by underfunding of researchers (not providing stable and adequately paid research assistant/scientist positions), we have over-produced PhDs in many fields, given the shrinking number well-paying of faculty jobs universities are willing to fund. For me it’s hard to conclude other than this is due to neoliberal/capitalist/corporatist ideology that has poisoned Western societies over the last 50 years.
  - chongli 3y ago
    I think the underlying issue that no one wants to admit is that probably “too many” people go to university That’s not something the author, Caplan, is afraid to admit. He wrote a whole book arguing that [1]. He also happens to be a libertarian and staunch capitalist economist. His argument (in his book) is that most university degrees (apart from engineering and other hard-core technical programs) are worthless. That everyone knows it but that it’s taboo to admit it. That what people are actually getting a degree for is to signal a level of basic intelligence and diligence/conscientiousness to prospective employers. He calls this the signalling hypothesis. He contrasts this with the human capital hypothesis: a belief that people actually go to university to learn and improve themselves. It’s a fascinating argument he presents! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education
nextlevelwizard 3y ago
God damn. Not only does this website immediately ask me to subscribe for their fucking nonsense then they ask me to pledge money so they can keep writing more fucking nonsense. I have no idea what this is about and I don't care anymore.
- unnouinceput 3y ago
  Huh? What you talking about? Oooo, you browse the web without uBlock Origins. Well, that one is your fault.
  - nextlevelwizard 3y ago
    I have ublock origins. That doesnt block the substack nags. Wanna try again? Also the website owner should make their website usable. I shouldnt have to be running various ad and script blockers just to get a normal - humane - user experience
    - Pigalowda 3y ago
      I’m on ios with Brave and I’m not getting nags. I put ublock on brave on my desktop - kind of redundant i guess.
KaiserPro 3y ago
The strap-line doesn't seem to be answered properly by the essay. The postulation that education isn't about teaching skills, its about teaching employability seems to be rooted in the idea that certification is the only real product of education is wrong. You hire someone with excellent grades in maths for a maths heavy job. You hire someone with previous machinist's experience, because you want to hire someone who can operate a lathe/CNC/mill/other. You don't hire them because they have a certificate. The author seems to think that skills are similar to certificates of authenticity. What they seem to forget is that certificates of education indicates ability where as guarantees of authenticity indicate value.
- extra88 3y ago
  Most employers don't look at grades. Assessing skills is time-consuming and often difficult; a degree, especially from a selective school, is a signal that the student satisfied the school's assessments for entry and continuous assessments to remain enrolled to completion. Previous employment at a known, desirable employer (e.g. FAANGs) serves the same kind of purpose. It is presumed that having the degree correlates to having certain skills. Often the skills they have and also the skills desired never appeared on any syllabus; they're meta-skills useful to thriving in the university, academically and non-academically, that will also be useful in the workplace.
AlexandrB 3y ago
> By and large, the reason our customers are on campus is to credibly show, or “signal,” their intelligence, work ethic, and sheer conformity. Ugh. This sentence stopped me dead in my tracks. The corporatization of education is killing any unique purpose it used to have. In particular, thinking of students as customers gives them a sense of entitlement that they should be able to "talk to the manager" if they don't get the outcome they want. It doesn't help that tuition has reached such heights that it's hard to argue that they're wrong.
- alexvoda 3y ago
  What do you expect from a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist economist who is reactionary enough to find a way in an article about AI to complain about how the left cares about common left talking points the right hates. An actually educated public is a major inconvenience even a danger for capitalism. Capitalism would rather reduce education to a workforce sorting algorithm.
- bluescrn 3y ago
  The mentality of ‘the customer is always right’ also leads to homogenous thinking, with universities of all places now leading efforts to discourage freedom of speech/thought and punish ‘wrongthinkers’. It’s what the ‘customers’ are demanding.
  - extra88 3y ago
    > The mentality of ‘the customer is always right’ also leads to homogenous thinking How? The customers (students) are different so what they see as right is different. > universities of all places now leading efforts to discourage freedom of speech I don't see universities doing to themselves anything different now than they've done for decades. There has been a resurgence of state governments meddling.
- MayeulC 3y ago
  I also came here to quote that part. The author is completely biased, and his views reflect not what I call "higher education", nor my experience. A friend of mine was offered a well-paid teaching assistant position at a private school. Some students completely failed the tests he was grading, but when he gave out failing grades, he got a meeting with the principal, who told him about the importance of not disappointing/losing customers, and that these people were paying good money for their degrees. He didn't renew his contract there. Luckily, this still seems to be the exception around here, with almost-free public education.
xwowsersx 3y ago
This was a good comment on the post: """ With regards to taking over jobs, this time it is different. Humans may "specialize in whatever AI does worst", but this is just treading water. Every year, the Venn diagram of uniquely human skills gets smaller as Al/robotics's footprint grows. Using the examples of transatlantic phone calls or e-commerce are false equivalents because these technologies were not simultaneously available, inexpensive, and with low barriers to use. Today, a smart person can watch a 20 min video on Langchain and create an Al app to automate a task in a day. In a year, I'm guessing we'll be able to just ask the an Al app to create a task automating app. The human may have to critique it for a few rounds to get it right, but dont our bosses already do this? Sure, humans are flexible, but they can't compete with a world of motivated people cranking out apps and posting them to Github for the world to improve upon. We currently have a safe harbor in physical tasks, but that will last 5-10 years at the most. Don't get me wrong - the end of scarcity is a good thing, assuming we can successfully make this transition and we aren't wedded to the idea that sharing the benefits (horror of horrors) socialism. """

79 points by sieste 3y ago

How much better can they get chatgpt? It's super impressive, but it seems like this generative AI step, with accepting of mistakes, was a switch in mindset that made AI suddenly a lot more usefull But it seems like the last 10% that actually makes it take over human tasks almost fully might take another 5-30 years.

M4v3R 3y ago
Here's my semi-educated guess based on observing the rate of progress in this field over the last years: I think there is still improvement to be made in base models. The amount of progress between GPT-2 and GPT-4 in just 4 years is astonishing so I would be surprised if GPT-4 is the limit of what we can do with this technology. I expect at least one more major version that will significantly outperform GPT-4. After that I think the major focus will be making these models more performant, expanding the context window, making them less resource-hungry, adding multimodality and composing them into larger architectures using techniques similar to Chain of Thought - building fully fledged general-purpose agents. These agents will be able to outperform humans at most of the tasks we throw at them. If I were to guess I'd say this will happen by the end of this decade.
- avereveard 3y ago
  It seems to me we'll see large glue model, which will be able to read from model last layer and write directly into model first layer and are trained at composing them. Some is already happening, and it cannot be generalized, but the idea of being able to glue already trained medium sized model together and then do a retrain of the whole thing to improve performances seems already establishing itself in products and will allow much efficient expenditure of training resources.
ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
So what if it will take another 30 years? Barely 71 years ago MIT demonstrated one of the first Numerical Control mill for manufacturing [1] that gave us the world as we have it today: from our chairs to our CPUs, nothing could be obtained so fast/cheap/good without automated milling, molding, and so on. It just seems completely unimaginable how by 2094 we won't have synthetic agents being not only great tutors, but also replacing every job that we have today or we will be able to imagine in the interim. The problem is then with our mental models, our economics, our metaphysics, not with the technology. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control#MIT's_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_numerical_control#M...
- layer8 3y ago
  We don’t know what the limits are, what the difficulties will be. You can’t just extrapolate from the past. We’ll have to wait and see where things go.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
    As far as cognitive capacity and consciousness as self-monitoring agency we have N=1, ourselves. Are there limits above us? Probably, but we have no reason to believe we are anywhere near the pinnacle of cognitive or consciousness load. Sure we can extrapolate from the past, we do it daily when we build something, if we didn't we would get nothing done.
- palata 3y ago
  Well the world may have burned in 30 years (that doesn't seem unlikely at all). So I can perfectly imagine that by 2094 we don't have those synthetic agents. Maybe we'll just be focused on not starving.
  - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
    I am starving today, being starved by a system which puts me in artificial scarcity loops, me and who knows how many others. Starvation does not hinder the desire for resolution, if anything, it fosters it. But yes, the world might disappear tomorrow; it's just not a workable hypothesis. It's much more workable to think that the complexity of our tools will continue to increase, elevating themselves towards higher and higher abstraction layers.
FredPret 3y ago
The definition of what human tasks are is fluid. Every time a machine arrives that does what we used to do, human tasks are pushed up the chain of abstraction. This will only change if an AI arrives that is better at us at the only IQ test that counts - navigating the complexities of real life; and maybe not even then.

saithound 3y ago

Despite his claim in the article, Bryan Caplan is absolutely not known for giving tough exams that test for deep understanding. He's known for the opposite. The fact that GPT-4 can pass his tests says much more about the tests than about the capabilities of GPT-4. Indeed, GPT-4 failed Steven E. Landsburg's exam with a miserable score of 4/90, and the remarkable performance oon Caplan's exam fails to replicate on random economics exams of random universities. (NB this post does not mean that ChatGPT cannot improve, or that it's not impressive as is. It serves to put Caplan's self-aggrandizement in context.)

PartiallyTyped 3y ago
Was the model allowed to use chain of thought and so on when it was evaluated?
p-e-w 3y ago
> The fact that GPT-4 can pass his tests says much more about the tests than about the capabilities of GPT-4. "Deep Blue beating Kasparov shows that ultimately, chess is just brute force calculation..." "Stable Diffusion 'art' being indistinguishable from human art to most people shows how little most people know about art..." "ChatGPT fooling people into thinking they're talking to another human shows that those people weren't paying attention, so the Turing test is actually useless for determining..." "I mean, I know that everyone used to say that doing X means being intelligent, but now that software has done X, it becomes clear that..." What is the real criterion for a machine to be considered intelligent? What does it have to do for people to not retroactively downplay it by invoking mechanistic pseudo-explanations?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- carschno 3y ago
  > What is the real criterion for a machine to be considered intelligent? This is actually the core of the debate. The answer is that there is no real criterion because we do not understand intelligence. Or, put differently, the one-dimensional understanding of intelligence we typically entertain is a simplification. This is very inconvenient so we just pretend intelligence was a well-defined concept. That in turn leads to all kinds of confusion and pointless arguments as you have pointed out.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

fredgrott 3y ago

Unfortunately, deep learning and the testing for deep learning have some factual evidence that are just the opposite of the author's own practice. To test deep learning we have to get at the meta-objects that humans form of that subject and the only way to do that currently is essay testing. If you graduated in the 1980s and 1990s it was called blue-book testing for the blank blue books sold that just had pages of blank paper for such a purpose. Multiple choice testing was chosen for IQ and SAT not for testing performance but to make grading tests faster as when SAT was originally applied during WWI they used it to separate officers from soldier grunts. Or in short words Teacher interaction with the students meta-objects can at times indicate degree of deep learning. Now hold on, let me give a twist. How would one test deep learning in a grad course in civil engineering? Since the meta-objects are going to be about building specific things we could have a contest to build a bridge that survives having so much weight applied. In fact, there are MIT classes that do exactly this way of deep testing and you can find the videos of it on Youtube(they are fun to watch). Those are creative, are going to turn Higher ED upside down and go the interactive testing of human meta-objects rather than choosing to multiple choice test among other deep learning testing strategies.

LightBug1 3y ago

"Slightly drain the swamp"... Slightly?.... What a dumb title... This is the consequence of electing mediocrity. That mediocrity twists and turns and echoes through time...

sebstefan 3y ago

> I’ve spent much of my career arguing that the main function of education is not to teach useful skills (or even useless skills), but to certify students’ employability. By and large, the reason our customers are on campus is to credibly show, or “signal,” their intelligence, work ethic, and sheer conformity. While we like to picture education as job training, it is largely a passport to the real training that happens on the job. How about just keep your hot takes out of the article if you're not going to substantiate them? Also the "real training that happens on the job", lol. I've learned so many more things in university. I'm struggling to remember the last time I did something challenging at any company.

BurningFrog 3y ago
He substantiated in this book: The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money https://a.co/d/6R5arD1 https://a.co/d/6R5arD1
- palata 3y ago
  So he is a professor, but he doesn't believe in teaching? How can that work? Genuinely interested.
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Isn't it common for professors to be doing research, with teaching being a sort of payment for being allowed to do the research?
    - palata 3y ago
      I get that teaching is part of the contract. I just would hope that a professor is hired based on that fact...
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    He believes in teaching. He doesn't believe that is the primary purpose of the higher education system.

bambax 3y ago

> The only thing that will really matter will be exams. And unless the exams are in-person, they’ll be a farce, too. How is this not already the case? Even before ChatGPT it was easy to hire people to write essays in your stead. (Some of these people are now complaining AI is taking their jobs.)

avidphantasm 3y ago
Because oral exams don’t scale to the number of students in undergraduate programs given the number of faculty/ the resources faculty are given for teaching. This is why oral exams are mostly done as part of graduate education (or undergraduate honors theses), and then only as part of qualifying exams and thesis/dissertation defenses. By and large, regular classes taught in graduate do not use oral exams. I think the underlying issue that no one wants to admit is that probably “too many” people go to university and/or there are “too few” professors to teach them. Modern higher ed has contributed to this problem on probably both the supply side (too few professors, especially tenured professors) and the supply side (advertising prestige, infecting politicians with the notion that a 4 year degree should be a primary goal for all). Ironically, due to how graduate education has been distorted by underfunding of researchers (not providing stable and adequately paid research assistant/scientist positions), we have over-produced PhDs in many fields, given the shrinking number well-paying of faculty jobs universities are willing to fund. For me it’s hard to conclude other than this is due to neoliberal/capitalist/corporatist ideology that has poisoned Western societies over the last 50 years.
- chongli 3y ago
  I think the underlying issue that no one wants to admit is that probably “too many” people go to university That’s not something the author, Caplan, is afraid to admit. He wrote a whole book arguing that [1]. He also happens to be a libertarian and staunch capitalist economist. His argument (in his book) is that most university degrees (apart from engineering and other hard-core technical programs) are worthless. That everyone knows it but that it’s taboo to admit it. That what people are actually getting a degree for is to signal a level of basic intelligence and diligence/conscientiousness to prospective employers. He calls this the signalling hypothesis. He contrasts this with the human capital hypothesis: a belief that people actually go to university to learn and improve themselves. It’s a fascinating argument he presents! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education

nextlevelwizard 3y ago

God damn. Not only does this website immediately ask me to subscribe for their fucking nonsense then they ask me to pledge money so they can keep writing more fucking nonsense. I have no idea what this is about and I don't care anymore.

unnouinceput 3y ago
Huh? What you talking about? Oooo, you browse the web without uBlock Origins. Well, that one is your fault.
- nextlevelwizard 3y ago
  I have ublock origins. That doesnt block the substack nags. Wanna try again? Also the website owner should make their website usable. I shouldnt have to be running various ad and script blockers just to get a normal - humane - user experience
  - Pigalowda 3y ago
    I’m on ios with Brave and I’m not getting nags. I put ublock on brave on my desktop - kind of redundant i guess.

KaiserPro 3y ago

The strap-line doesn't seem to be answered properly by the essay. The postulation that education isn't about teaching skills, its about teaching employability seems to be rooted in the idea that certification is the only real product of education is wrong. You hire someone with excellent grades in maths for a maths heavy job. You hire someone with previous machinist's experience, because you want to hire someone who can operate a lathe/CNC/mill/other. You don't hire them because they have a certificate. The author seems to think that skills are similar to certificates of authenticity. What they seem to forget is that certificates of education indicates ability where as guarantees of authenticity indicate value.

extra88 3y ago
Most employers don't look at grades. Assessing skills is time-consuming and often difficult; a degree, especially from a selective school, is a signal that the student satisfied the school's assessments for entry and continuous assessments to remain enrolled to completion. Previous employment at a known, desirable employer (e.g. FAANGs) serves the same kind of purpose. It is presumed that having the degree correlates to having certain skills. Often the skills they have and also the skills desired never appeared on any syllabus; they're meta-skills useful to thriving in the university, academically and non-academically, that will also be useful in the workplace.

AlexandrB 3y ago

> By and large, the reason our customers are on campus is to credibly show, or “signal,” their intelligence, work ethic, and sheer conformity. Ugh. This sentence stopped me dead in my tracks. The corporatization of education is killing any unique purpose it used to have. In particular, thinking of students as customers gives them a sense of entitlement that they should be able to "talk to the manager" if they don't get the outcome they want. It doesn't help that tuition has reached such heights that it's hard to argue that they're wrong.

alexvoda 3y ago
What do you expect from a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist economist who is reactionary enough to find a way in an article about AI to complain about how the left cares about common left talking points the right hates. An actually educated public is a major inconvenience even a danger for capitalism. Capitalism would rather reduce education to a workforce sorting algorithm.
bluescrn 3y ago
The mentality of ‘the customer is always right’ also leads to homogenous thinking, with universities of all places now leading efforts to discourage freedom of speech/thought and punish ‘wrongthinkers’. It’s what the ‘customers’ are demanding.
- extra88 3y ago
  > The mentality of ‘the customer is always right’ also leads to homogenous thinking How? The customers (students) are different so what they see as right is different. > universities of all places now leading efforts to discourage freedom of speech I don't see universities doing to themselves anything different now than they've done for decades. There has been a resurgence of state governments meddling.
MayeulC 3y ago
I also came here to quote that part. The author is completely biased, and his views reflect not what I call "higher education", nor my experience. A friend of mine was offered a well-paid teaching assistant position at a private school. Some students completely failed the tests he was grading, but when he gave out failing grades, he got a meeting with the principal, who told him about the importance of not disappointing/losing customers, and that these people were paying good money for their degrees. He didn't renew his contract there. Luckily, this still seems to be the exception around here, with almost-free public education.

xwowsersx 3y ago

This was a good comment on the post: """ With regards to taking over jobs, this time it is different. Humans may "specialize in whatever AI does worst", but this is just treading water. Every year, the Venn diagram of uniquely human skills gets smaller as Al/robotics's footprint grows. Using the examples of transatlantic phone calls or e-commerce are false equivalents because these technologies were not simultaneously available, inexpensive, and with low barriers to use. Today, a smart person can watch a 20 min video on Langchain and create an Al app to automate a task in a day. In a year, I'm guessing we'll be able to just ask the an Al app to create a task automating app. The human may have to critique it for a few rounds to get it right, but dont our bosses already do this? Sure, humans are flexible, but they can't compete with a world of motivated people cranking out apps and posting them to Github for the world to improve upon. We currently have a safe harbor in physical tasks, but that will last 5-10 years at the most. Don't get me wrong - the end of scarcity is a good thing, assuming we can successfully make this transition and we aren't wedded to the idea that sharing the benefits (horror of horrors) socialism. """