Anybody who has received an AI essay when they wanted a personally written essay will know that there was no work done. The hallmark card-level argumentation is not going to get any better, and the student is not going to learn anything from comments about work they didn’t write. I was sorely tempted to say, please direct me to the chatbot who wrote this so I can give them the feedback, they might actually learn something. AI is not a substitute for teaching, it’s a substitute for working, and if you want to have educated people they need to work on the process. AI is not a calculator helping you with a math problem, it is a friend doing your homework for you so you can play. Why is that degree worth anything when you didn’t do any work to get it?
Very inspiring stuff from Anastasia. We need to develop this sort of language that can be used to articulate why humans are necessary in education and can’t be replaced by AI.
I love how the argument for throwing gen-eds in the dumpster is "We basically treat these classes and those that teach these classes like garbage and are surprised when students don't do well."
I have been an adjunct. My husband is an adjunct. He has a masters in English and can't get a full time position in higher education locally - everything is done with part-time faculty at the expense of students and education. You have the least paid, least supported faculty doing this foundational work with zero support from administration. No insurance. Abysmal pay. And then they act surprised when students fail.
Anecdote - my husband was slated to teach three courses last semester. The week before, two were canceled with zero notice. Zero recourse. We don't even qualify for unemployment because he still taught one class, but it was too late to go to other schools since he had blocked out time for these courses. If I were to do that as a private business owner, I'd get black listed. I'd have terrible reviews. It would have been financially better for us if they had cancelled all of his classes, lol.
But it's NORMAL for adjuncts to get treated like this. They are contract workers, not "real" employees.
This infuriates me to no end. You cannot make a living teaching these classes. And instead of addressing this very real failure of both students and faculty - administrations solution is to automate an already poor process and expect better results.
I wish this didn't surprise me. But here I am all hot and bothered again.
My deep compliments to those pointing out the massive flaws in logic. This was a great read.
I had thought that a liberal arts education was to make one more human. The response has been to complain about the precarity of work. The working classes have always dealt with this — being laid off when production was slow or changed back in the day. Now it’s even worse with gig work being the norm. So capitalism has reached your shores and this should teach folks that when you don’t advocate for a living and humane way of work for everyone — eventually it gets you too. This is what happens when you use your degree to make yourself feel like a superior class — that simply because you have a degree, it shouldn’t be happening to you.
My husband taught people transitioning careers English and writing - skills that apply to almost any job. I taught journalism part time while working full time as a... journalist. It's nice to know we're the elite. I really thought the elite got to take vacations or have new cars or something. I must have missed a meeting.
This is a startlingly cruel reply. So you just gloat when capitalism harms someone? What kind of politics is that? Even Trumpists aren’t generally so open in their spite and schadenfreude. Also pray tell us what you do for a living Mr. Self appointed representative of the working classes and what you personally are doing to advocate for humane work for everyone. You know besides being telling people who complain their work is inhumane to shut up.
You are right — that was inappropriate. I’m not myself these days. I rightly blame the higher-ed system for many things but, taking it out on her was not ok.
It's wild that the pro-AI side chose to open with "so we all agree that that most gen ed classes are useless, right?"
Apparently we, as a society, really really want 90% of the population to have a piece of paper that says "B.A.", regardless of whether they learned or did anything to get it.
I propose we mail them out along with voter registration forms, in envelopes that say "YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN PREAPPROVED FOR ENTRY INTO THE MIDDLE CLASS!!!"
Along with a bill for $80,000, of course. Think of the efficiency!
You don’t need a degree to be in the middle class. But that is what people with degrees think — that it makes them superior to other people just because they have a BA. FYI the BA is the new high school diploma — do you have a graduate degree? If not you are not in the middle class according to your own criteria.
Not sure where any of this is coming from. I'm a high school drop out.
I'd like to go to college in a couple years, but only if I can find a program that's not a complete waste of time. Getting through it without having to sell my kidneys would be a plus too.
Principia Mathematica being given a publication date of 1630? Russell must be laughing through his hat.
Apart from that, the assertion that 'general education' consists of 'things already known' is puzzling. Already known by whom? Not our students, who have not received very good integrative learning skills in high school. And certainly not now, that they've outsourced even the most basic cognitive efforts to LLMs.
Isn't it simple? You don't bring a forklift to the gym. Nobody really wants to lift heavier, bag skate, or do drills, but you do it because you get stronger if you do.
So happy to hear Robins call out the low quality of the MIT "AIs hurt learning" study that's been making the rounds. If you read the methodology, hard to see it as delivering any signal against the main claim
I have great respect for you and Robbins. Good points all around. Something that wasn’t brought up is the question of when, over the course of history, has progress been stopped by humanistic appeals? At no time in history has progress been stopped by humanistic appeals. I recognize that doesn’t mean that it cannot finally happen — although the odds are extremely low and the risk is too high. Given that we cannot stop progress — we must embrace it so that we are able, in these early stages, to endow it with what we value most about being human. It is precisely the Robbins and Bergs who should be working together to find out how we do that rather than taking a very long to nonexistent shot on keeping it in its place.
“It’s not academic integrity. It’s not pedagogical quality. It’s not some vague and bespoke and kind of sentimentally conceived humanistic value, important as all these might be, and they certainly are to me. The cost of relying on AI is a degradation of the most basic, fundamental, non-artisanal, non-specialized cognitive capacities. Using AI to perform intellectual tasks is destroying our students, as thinkers and as humans”
After opening with this, Anastasia cites the bullshit MIT study, briefly mentions AI making students “subcognitive”, whatever that means, and then spends the rest of the debate making exactly the kind of vague, sentimental, bespoke, artisanal arguments she said she wasn’t going to make. I wonder if she read the study herself or was just subcognitively parroting what was reported in the news.
Hollis totally wiped the floor here. She is absolutely correct that most professors are abysmal teachers and a good AI is better than a lousy human.
Anybody who has received an AI essay when they wanted a personally written essay will know that there was no work done. The hallmark card-level argumentation is not going to get any better, and the student is not going to learn anything from comments about work they didn’t write. I was sorely tempted to say, please direct me to the chatbot who wrote this so I can give them the feedback, they might actually learn something. AI is not a substitute for teaching, it’s a substitute for working, and if you want to have educated people they need to work on the process. AI is not a calculator helping you with a math problem, it is a friend doing your homework for you so you can play. Why is that degree worth anything when you didn’t do any work to get it?
Very inspiring stuff from Anastasia. We need to develop this sort of language that can be used to articulate why humans are necessary in education and can’t be replaced by AI.
I love how the argument for throwing gen-eds in the dumpster is "We basically treat these classes and those that teach these classes like garbage and are surprised when students don't do well."
I have been an adjunct. My husband is an adjunct. He has a masters in English and can't get a full time position in higher education locally - everything is done with part-time faculty at the expense of students and education. You have the least paid, least supported faculty doing this foundational work with zero support from administration. No insurance. Abysmal pay. And then they act surprised when students fail.
Anecdote - my husband was slated to teach three courses last semester. The week before, two were canceled with zero notice. Zero recourse. We don't even qualify for unemployment because he still taught one class, but it was too late to go to other schools since he had blocked out time for these courses. If I were to do that as a private business owner, I'd get black listed. I'd have terrible reviews. It would have been financially better for us if they had cancelled all of his classes, lol.
But it's NORMAL for adjuncts to get treated like this. They are contract workers, not "real" employees.
This infuriates me to no end. You cannot make a living teaching these classes. And instead of addressing this very real failure of both students and faculty - administrations solution is to automate an already poor process and expect better results.
I wish this didn't surprise me. But here I am all hot and bothered again.
My deep compliments to those pointing out the massive flaws in logic. This was a great read.
I had thought that a liberal arts education was to make one more human. The response has been to complain about the precarity of work. The working classes have always dealt with this — being laid off when production was slow or changed back in the day. Now it’s even worse with gig work being the norm. So capitalism has reached your shores and this should teach folks that when you don’t advocate for a living and humane way of work for everyone — eventually it gets you too. This is what happens when you use your degree to make yourself feel like a superior class — that simply because you have a degree, it shouldn’t be happening to you.
lol.
My husband taught people transitioning careers English and writing - skills that apply to almost any job. I taught journalism part time while working full time as a... journalist. It's nice to know we're the elite. I really thought the elite got to take vacations or have new cars or something. I must have missed a meeting.
My apologies — I’m not myself these days. I rightly blame the higher-ed system for many things, but taking it out on you is inappropriate.
Respect. I don't see people apologize on the internet often. Hope whatever's going on for you works out ok.
Many thanks for your kind words — I don’t deserve them.
This is a startlingly cruel reply. So you just gloat when capitalism harms someone? What kind of politics is that? Even Trumpists aren’t generally so open in their spite and schadenfreude. Also pray tell us what you do for a living Mr. Self appointed representative of the working classes and what you personally are doing to advocate for humane work for everyone. You know besides being telling people who complain their work is inhumane to shut up.
You are right — that was inappropriate. I’m not myself these days. I rightly blame the higher-ed system for many things but, taking it out on her was not ok.
It's wild that the pro-AI side chose to open with "so we all agree that that most gen ed classes are useless, right?"
Apparently we, as a society, really really want 90% of the population to have a piece of paper that says "B.A.", regardless of whether they learned or did anything to get it.
I propose we mail them out along with voter registration forms, in envelopes that say "YOU HAVE ALREADY BEEN PREAPPROVED FOR ENTRY INTO THE MIDDLE CLASS!!!"
Along with a bill for $80,000, of course. Think of the efficiency!
You don’t need a degree to be in the middle class. But that is what people with degrees think — that it makes them superior to other people just because they have a BA. FYI the BA is the new high school diploma — do you have a graduate degree? If not you are not in the middle class according to your own criteria.
Not sure where any of this is coming from. I'm a high school drop out.
I'd like to go to college in a couple years, but only if I can find a program that's not a complete waste of time. Getting through it without having to sell my kidneys would be a plus too.
Principia Mathematica being given a publication date of 1630? Russell must be laughing through his hat.
Apart from that, the assertion that 'general education' consists of 'things already known' is puzzling. Already known by whom? Not our students, who have not received very good integrative learning skills in high school. And certainly not now, that they've outsourced even the most basic cognitive efforts to LLMs.
Isn't it simple? You don't bring a forklift to the gym. Nobody really wants to lift heavier, bag skate, or do drills, but you do it because you get stronger if you do.
So happy to hear Robins call out the low quality of the MIT "AIs hurt learning" study that's been making the rounds. If you read the methodology, hard to see it as delivering any signal against the main claim
Really impressed with Anastasia's clarity and cogency.
I have great respect for you and Robbins. Good points all around. Something that wasn’t brought up is the question of when, over the course of history, has progress been stopped by humanistic appeals? At no time in history has progress been stopped by humanistic appeals. I recognize that doesn’t mean that it cannot finally happen — although the odds are extremely low and the risk is too high. Given that we cannot stop progress — we must embrace it so that we are able, in these early stages, to endow it with what we value most about being human. It is precisely the Robbins and Bergs who should be working together to find out how we do that rather than taking a very long to nonexistent shot on keeping it in its place.
“It’s not academic integrity. It’s not pedagogical quality. It’s not some vague and bespoke and kind of sentimentally conceived humanistic value, important as all these might be, and they certainly are to me. The cost of relying on AI is a degradation of the most basic, fundamental, non-artisanal, non-specialized cognitive capacities. Using AI to perform intellectual tasks is destroying our students, as thinkers and as humans”
After opening with this, Anastasia cites the bullshit MIT study, briefly mentions AI making students “subcognitive”, whatever that means, and then spends the rest of the debate making exactly the kind of vague, sentimental, bespoke, artisanal arguments she said she wasn’t going to make. I wonder if she read the study herself or was just subcognitively parroting what was reported in the news.
Hollis totally wiped the floor here. She is absolutely correct that most professors are abysmal teachers and a good AI is better than a lousy human.
Excellent.