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Different attitudes towards AI in California's university system
https://archive.ph/TNLUr https://archive.ph/TNLUr
- noosphr 4mo ago>California’s public universities spent $16.9 million on A.I. during a financial crisis, and the result has been chaos. So peanuts. The public universities budget in California is something like 60 billion. This isn't even a rounding error.
- vermilingua 4mo ago[flagged]
- AceJohnny2 4mo agoMoney is fungible. Budgets are not.
- dvt 4mo agoThe idea that AI is somehow at fault for the absolute fiscal disaster the UC and the CSU systems find themselves in is laughable at best and damaging at worst. These systems (and I say this as a graduate of UCLA that was on a full academic scholarship) have been taken over by parasitic administrators and bureaucracies-on-top-of-bureaucracies that have milked not only the students, but also the taxpayers, completely dry. Tuition has consistently gone up since the 70s, while housing, facility, classroom quality have all gone down. It's been literally the biggest grift of the past 50 years[1]. Education should be free. [1] https://eliterate.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Tuition.png https://eliterate.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Tuition.png
- irishcoffee 4mo agoAmusingly, education is free and I’ll die on this hill. There is nothing you learn at a university that you cannot learn, for free, at a library and online. You pay for the rubber stamp.
- aleph_minus_one 4mo ago> Amusingly, education is free and I’ll die on this hill. There is nothing you learn at a university that you cannot learn, for free, at a library and online. There exist parts or even degree courses in university education that cannot really be learned this way. Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to learn by yourself than others. Finally, keep in mind that computer science is "special" in the sense that: - What the university teaches you or should teach you (a degree course at a university rather prepares you for an academic career in the field) makes you quite overqualified (in the academic sense) for many programming jobs. Such topics are possible, but in my opinion far from easy to learn by yourself. - Many employers want very different skills from applicants, which often involve "fashionable" skills with a very short half-life. A university system is likely not the best kind of education system to teach this kind of skills: it rather (ideally) excels at teaching topics that are complicated, but have a much longer "half-life" before becoming outdated.
- charcircuit 4mo ago>Think of laboratory courses or courses where you need access to expensive equipment. Why do you need equipment to learn something? You can learn the information outside of a lab. >Also, there exist topics and degree courses that are much harder to learn by yourself than others. Free AI like ChatGPT can assist with offering many different explanations personalized for someone to make it easier to learn.
- jazzyjackson 4mo agoThe information is how to use a lab, so you can do research, you know, the thing that happens largely on university campuses. (Now why taxpayer funded labs end up patenting things for private corporations, that’s what’s peculiar to me!)
- AlotOfReading 4mo agoAnother example is history. It's theoretically possible to become an academic historian through private study and there are certainly no legal barriers to it, yet amateurs almost never make the transition except through higher education.
- mystraline 4mo ago> These systems (and I say this as a graduate of UCLA) have been taken over by parasitic administrators and bureaucracies-on-top-of-bureaucracies that have milked not only the students, but also the taxpayers, completely dry. There is a single person responsible for this. His name is Reagan.
- noosphr 4mo agoIt's been 40 years, surely someone could have done something to fix it if they wanted to.
- jltsiren 4mo agoIn real terms, tuition fees in public universities peaked in the early 2010s. They have not kept up with inflation since then. That explains a large part of the fiscal disaster.
- dvt 4mo agoCan you source this? My cursory research shows the opposite[1]. Imo, the fiscal disaster is in part due to enrollment declining (which, ironically enough, mainly affects low-income households). [1] https://myelearningworld.com/cost-of-college-vs-inflation/ https://myelearningworld.com/cost-of-college-vs-inflation/
- jltsiren 4mo agoHere is one example: https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-college-by-year Declining enrollment affects universities very unevenly. University of California is still under pressure to increase enrollment, which is mostly constrained by physical capacity. The housing situation is particularly bad on some campuses.
- qsxfthnkp2322 4mo ago16.9M would have helped pay for quite a bit of student aid.
- throwawaypath 4mo agoDefinitely. That amount could pay for 20 students to attend classes for a week!
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4mo agoThey could buy, like, seven books from the bookstore!
- pesus 4mo agoI get the joke, but CSUs are fairly inexpensive as far as universities go. Tuition at SJSU is about $9500 per school year for California residents. That's a year of education for almost 1700 students. It may not seem like a much money to some, but it certainly covers a lot.
- noosphr 4mo agoWhy not ask about the mismanagement of the other 60 billion?
- ryan_n 4mo agoIs all of the other 60 billion mismanaged?
- vermilingua 4mo agoBelieve it or not, that other $60b isn’t one chunk of money, but other similar chunks of ~$20m that’s probably being spent in similarly idiotic ways. If this were an article about those, yes I probably would.
- throwawaytea 4mo agoThe money spent goes to people, that give it to other people. They didn't just burn it.
- vermilingua 4mo ago“People” in this case being Altman and co.
- dang 4mo ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mystraline 4mo ago> spent $16.9 million on A.I. Sooooo... A few days of claude code "thinking", for a few hundred people?
- hparadiz 4mo agoI use it in the field and my usage isn't even $1000 yet. I think I might be just now getting there after 6 months.
- dkarl 4mo ago> Some have chosen to link their fate to the technology, dedicating themselves to learning prompt engineering, while others are staging a revolt against it. I don't understand why these are seen as mutually exclusive choices. I think I would be in both of these camps if I were a student.
- warkdarrior 4mo agoHow does this work? Are you embracing AI and also against it? Are you protesting against your own use of AI?
- dwa3592 4mo agoa very good question. and yes, it's the protest against using AI while knowing if it doens't work out the way the protestor intended then they will fall behind. so the protestor wants everyone to stop and pay attention and think about what students and teachers are being asked to embrace, while they are also going ahead and using it because they know otherwise they'll hurt their chances at success if the tide doesn't subside. it's okay to be in multiple camps when things change fast. its a survival instinct.
- ordersofmag 4mo agoIt's like you're making the best you can of the current situation you find yourself in as an individual while also working toward changing the overall situation.
- epihelix 4mo agoCan't speak for the OP, but I find LLMs extremely useful in some work contexts, while also being horrified and appalled at how my Uni is trying to apply these tools ad nauseum on everything. So yes, both attitudes are simultaneously possible.
- beej71 4mo agoYou need to be clear on the usage. It's like how we're all pro-knife and anti-knife at the same time.
- 4mo ago
- Reubend 4mo ago> A University System Went All In on A.I. Now It’s Tearing Itself Apart. The NYT often has a bias against AI, but the article's contents are actually a pretty reasonable summary of the different attitudes towards AI in academia. Then they went and slapped a terribly sensationalist headline on it, which doesn't seem well supported by the actual article.
- Cyclone_ 4mo agoThere has been quite a few articles in that paper where the headline is really designed to be clickbait.
- donohoe 4mo agoThat was true 29, 40, 80 years ago
- frereubu 4mo agoIf the NYT is the same as British newspapers, the person who wrote the article doesn't write the headline. It happens here too, and its really annoying because often the article has a much more nuanced picture than the headline would have you believe. In an era when people do read the article after reading the headline it's somewhat forgivable - getting someone's attention then they get the nuance, but in the internet era when people just read the headline it's anachronistic.
- kibwen 4mo ago> If the NYT is the same as British newspapers, the person who wrote the article doesn't write the headline. This has been the case for essentially all newspapers since time immemorial. Reporters write the articles, editors write the headlines.
- js2 4mo agoWhile true, NYT took a clear turn towards clickbait headlines in the last 5-10 years. It used to have more self-respect.
- Avicebron 4mo agoI feel like adding more internships with the companies like OpenAI, Oracle, etc would go a long way in improving outcomes and is probably even cheaper than donating licenses and compute.
- pesus 4mo agoThat directly contradicts these companies' goals of eliminating all employees.
- vondur 4mo agoYeah, I work at a CSU and the Teacher's union is against AI. However, the layoffs happened at some of the CSU's where enrollment numbers are drastically down. I think Sonoma State is having a really bad time getting students and CSU Dominguez Hills has always had issues with attracting students compared to nearby CSU Long Beach. I'd imagine at some point these campuses may end up on the chopping block.
- wyager 4mo ago> Yeah, I work at a CSU and the Teacher's union is against AI. Is this a political coalition thing or is there a real teacher-related reason they don't like it?
- b40d-48b2-979e 4mo agoCan one really not imagine a case where the cheating machine being used by students is a bad thing for teachers? Does everything have to be "politically motivated"?
- AnimalMuppet 4mo agoThere are more aspects than "cheating machine" that could be bad for a college. It could be bad for students, and teachers may realize that.
- wyager 4mo agoYes the a priori most likely reason for the TU to be "against AI" is political. If you know much about TUs this is pretty obvious
- throw4847285 4mo agoThat is a grotesque misuse of the phrase "a priori." What you mean is, "It's obvious to me." Ok, good for you.
- mold_aid 4mo ago
- harshreality 4mo ago> The university now has an A.I. librarian Isn't this one of the better uses of AI? Any librarian would have knowledge gaps and bias. Librarian-provided info is best-effort and not considered perfect. They're librarians, not subject matter experts. An AI could give (and cache, since books don't change) summaries of any book, and compare them, far better than a librarian except for niche areas a particular librarian might have read themselves.
- epihelix 4mo agoThe need for physical libraries is fading anyway. I love books, and I spent many happy hours as a student (a long time ago) in the uni library, doing research the only way you could back then. But now ...? For STEM, at least, everything is digital. You don't need to go to the stacks to get an old journal article. And yes, it's sad, and it feels like an era is ending. But that's because it is.
- goatlover 4mo agoPhysical libraries still serve as a place students go to study. It's not about the books, it's having a designated quiet place along with meeting rooms and what not, in addition to computers and printers they can use.
- TFNA 4mo agoWorth noting that some universities are giving up on the "quiet place" idea, perhaps because (like many public libraries) they think atomized society today desperately needs third places to socialize. I travel to many universities for conferences and see firsthand that talking is now allowed in some institutions' libraries, with only a small room made available for readers who need quiet.
- TFNA 4mo ago"For STEM, at least" is doing a lot of work there. In fields like history, archaeology, and linguistics a lot of important research is only on paper. For the last decade, colleagues and I have been scanning publications and uploading them to the shadow libraries, but we have barely scratched the surface.
- elicash 4mo ago> In addition to the welcome message for incoming students, she has used her A.I. avatar to communicate with parents and alumni in languages she does not speak. She said she was working on creating a kind of hologram of herself that could do the same. This reminded me of back when it was popular on websites to use transparent video to have owners of companies virtually "walk" onto the webpage and talk directly to the user. Stuff like https://newimagemedia.com/videopackages/walk-on-spokesperson/ https://newimagemedia.com/videopackages/walk-on-spokesperson... There's a similar awkward period right now as people try to figure out AI.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- wr1276 4mo ago"This was not, in fact, Teniente-Matson addressing the new class, but her brand-new custom A.I. avatar." Why is it always the same kind of intellectually challenged people who need custom avatars? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOEEpWAXgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YOEEpWAXgU “Our professors were pretty anti-A.I., and then C.S.U. signed the contract with OpenAI and things changed,” Ok, another corrupt university run by bribes.
- phyzome 4mo agoA lot of this is about admins, but I also find it weird when university lecturers embrace LLMs, which are fundamentally opposed to the principles of academia as I understand it.
- dyauspitr 4mo agoWhat is this chaos? The article doesn’t mention any of it, just some small insignificant amount spent of implementing it.
- chadash 4mo agoFind me a university that bans AI usage on campus in CS courses. I don't mind if students have access to AI and use it to help study, but I want some kind of assurance that they are able to build things without using AI. As a hiring manager, I will immediately prioritize hiring graduates of that school. I can teach someone who knows how to code how to use Claude Code. I find the other way around quite difficult.
- justinator 4mo agoWhat is your confidence level that potential base level candidates can write a bubble sort function? (and is that at all important to you?)
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- chadash 4mo agoI don't care if they can write bubble sort off the top of their head. I do care that when they were in class, they had to go through the exercise of implementing bubble sort in their algorithm, realizing that they had an off-by-one error, identifying the problem, and fixing it. School is like working out at the gym, and AI is like bringing a forklift to the squat rack.
- justinator 4mo agoGreat metaphor.
- HDBaseT 4mo agoYou could hire people who graduated prior to 2023~. (not suggesting this is an effective or smart move).
- jimbokun 4mo agoWell seems like this is de facto the way companies are hiring right now. Unemployment for new grads is much higher than for people who have been in the industry for a while.
- AAYALAG 4mo ago[flagged]
- beej71 4mo agoI asked my students how they felt about having AI teacher avatars and they had a lot of negative things to say. The one thing that stood out the most to me was "it's disrespectful".
- BobbyTables2 4mo agoElementary and secondary schools are too content to use AI both for test question generation and grading of student responses… What are we even doing here?
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 4mo agoActual title: A University System Went All In on A.I. Now It's Tearing Itself Apart.