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> What bothers me is that people have told me that I should just allow AI for literally everything because it's the future and you should be teaching them the f
by aaplok 2y ago
> What bothers me is that people have told me that I should just allow AI for literally everything because it's the future and you should be teaching them the future or something,
I wonder what "people" told you that. My personal experience is that such advice usually comes from people who understand neither AI nor what I teach. Most of them are university administrators of sorts, and AI is a problem for them more than for me.
Introductory classes teach skills that can be performed reasonably well by AI. Those skills are the foundation you need to build higher level skills. Just like kids need to know how to read to be functional in society and in their later classes, despite screen readers doing an excellent job.
When I teach a foundations class this is my focus, and I don't fool myself or my students into thinking that they will be using those skills directly, but I try to convey the idea that the skills pervade through much of what they will later learn and do.
However that means that I cannot force students to learn. They can cheat, and it's easy, and I prefer spending my efforts on helping the learners than catching the cheaters.
The university administrators, however, are in the business of selling diplomas, which are only worth what the lowest common deminator is worth. So cheaters are a big problem for them. Typically for such people, they just bury their heads in the sand and prefer to claim that teaching students to use chatGPT (that lowest common denominator) is where the value is.
- tombert 2y agoI'm not sure if you're implying that I'm making shit up by putting "people" in quotes, but here's at least a little evidence. [1] [2] [3] Otherwise it's been with in-person conversations and I didn't record them, there's a spectrum to how completely they suggest I allow AI. Everything else you said I more or less agree with. Obviously if someone wants to cheat they're going to do it, but I feel that until we restructure the job market to not take GPAs as seriously (which I think I'd probably be onboard with), we should at least have cursory efforts to try and minimize cheating. I'm not saying we have to have Fort Knox, just basic deterrence. I'm not an adjunct anymore, partly because I took stuff way too personally and it was kind of depressing me, partly because it was time consuming without much pay, but largely because I realized that most universities are kind of a racket (particularly the textbook corporations are a special kind of evil). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36089826 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36089826 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087840 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087840 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36087501
- aaplok 2y agoI wasn't implying anything. Because your use of the word "people" left the context very vague, I was just cautiously trying to not speak in your name when discussing the people who are pushing me to teach students how to use chatgpt. With respect to deterring teaching I totally agree that we should go for it. There are ways to mitigate the value of cheating and ways to promote the value of learning, both of which are deterrents. Personally I like having lots of small tasks that build and follow on one another. If the student is working and trying to learn it makes sense and we get to reinforce the high level skills that matter. If the student is cheating it should become increasingly harder to keep a consistent story. However if we turn this into a cop and robbers game that's what we're going to get. As for the focus on GPA I think that the tide is turning. Employers need to find an alternative that doesn't eat their time. And yes universities are rackets and aren't good value employers. They don't even offer job security anymore.