561
Professors Say AI Is Destroying Their Students' Ability to Think (futurism.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
169 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 129 points 7 months ago* (60 children)

It's absolutely terrifying. I am a returning student to uni in my thirties and the only person not using any AI. They literally depend on it.

I just had a classmate the other day turn to me, frustrated, saying "You ever ask chat(gpt) a question and it gives you a whole, like, paragraph you then have to read? like, why can't it simplify it?"

Did I mention I am an electrical/computer engineering double major? So yeah, even reading is too much for these kids. Future workforce is fucking cooked.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 60 child comments
    •
  • [–] 44 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Oh yes! We are fucked.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    It genuinely feels that way yeah like idk what we do about this problem it's bad, however bad you think it is it's worse

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    I've seen some videos of Costco brawls between gen z men over Pokemon cards they want to flip. Surely the bar can't get lower then that

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I think, unfortunately, we are being lead by grifters creating a society of grifters i.e. the future generation is learning the lesson that the way to get ahead is by grifting.

    I know this is gonna sound dramatic but if it keeps going? We're looking at apocalyptic outcomes for the future of civilization.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago

    the future generation is learning the lesson that the way to get ahead is by grifting.

    So basically how it always was?

    There's a reason why there are billionaires...

    But yeah it's likely getting worse, like an elite and otherwise brain-dead propaganda following society (to exaggerate a little bit...). Initially after reading Adorno years ago, I never thought that the rather negative way he wrote, and something like the third Reich will not happen again, yet here we are repeating mistakes, fueled by accelerating climate-change (and the resulting conflicts)...

    We are leaving (or rather have left) the most peaceful era of humanity, back to smashing each others heads without a real reason, leaving a more positive holistic utopian future... Sad.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    i think thats a different situation, some people are greedy and think they can make money flipping cards which is pretty mucha problem with TCPi/TCPJ but they have very little incentive to fix that issue, MTG unintentionally remediated that issue by pushing out UB sets multiple times a year more than normal, essentially making older sets useless/or less useful as you have to keep buying the new sets to keep up. this is about people inability to think for themselves.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [+] 21 points 7 months ago (4 children)
    [deleted]
  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    It's honestly disheartening. I understand our education system is not well in that tests aren't actually very condusive to learning, but they treat the idea of learning a skill like it's some obnoxious chore they just want over with so they never have to do it again when its like... bruh civilization/tech grows exponentially, y'all gotta learn your whole lives and it should be something you ENJOY it should give you pride to be good at something or understand a subject thoroughly.

    i don't even know what to begin doing about this problem but even if you pretend the environmental impacts are fine/manageable, I can't help but think this shits gotta be destroyed for the future of humanity.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 10 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Future workforce is fucking cooked.

    Yep, and I predict that programmers actually understanding code (and especially being able to quickly and thoroughly review code), are becoming increasingly valuable (again?) in the future, when someone really has to guarantee what the AI actually generated (and let me tell you there are still so many stupid things the AI does...).

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    my older bro who is in tech, depends on it for almost every question he has or when he is ask a very simple question. asked him something about laundry last year, he said "use CHATGPT", theres really no hope for these people. and then later on ask what was causing "flies " to appear in the house, he kept using AI eventhough it was pretty giving inaccurate info,

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    my bro who is in tech refers to chatgpt as a go-to anytime he has a question or is asked a very simple question, yea pretty much screwed, and he think AI slop generated pictures are epitome of some kind of art piece.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the "chat" slang was short for ChatGPT.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    no, it's for the chat audience in video streams

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [+] -23 points 7 months ago* (35 children)

    I’m almost 50 doing a doctorate in engineering. ChatGPT is very helpful to do homework but won’t really teach you to do things. That said, I’m very glad to have it because this program would be so much harder without something to check my answers and understanding.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 35 child comments
    •
  • [–] 57 points 7 months ago (16 children)

    ...except that it doesn't really "check your answers and understanding"...

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 16 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 48 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    If you want a calculator, try an actual calculator or a website that actually does math like Wolfram alpha.

    A chatbot can't actually do math. It can only give you an answer that looks right because it has no fundamental understanding of what "right" actually is.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Love Wolfram. I believe Stephen is a big proponent of this stuff? Found his blog on it (turns three years old next Monday) and curious for your thoughts on it.

    In Just Two and a Half Months…

    Early in January I wrote about the possibility of connecting ChatGPT to Wolfram|Alpha. And today—just two and a half months later—I’m excited to announce that it’s happened! Thanks to some heroic software engineering by our team and by OpenAI, ChatGPT can now call on Wolfram|Alpha—and Wolfram Language as well—to give it what we might think of as “computational superpowers”. It’s still very early days for all of this, but it’s already very impressive—and one can begin to see how amazingly powerful (and perhaps even revolutionary) what we can call “ChatGPT + Wolfram” can be.

    https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/03/chatgpt-gets-its-wolfram-superpowers/

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 34 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    With that naivety you are setting yourself up for failure.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago

    How old are you and what doctorates do you have?

    We're not in a dick-swinging contest here. At least I am not :) What a dumb way to deflect from the point I am making. If you have any understanding of the matter, you know that LLMs are only statistically accurate, and mathematically, that is useless.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
    • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    No, it actually doesn't. How LLMs work is that it takes in written words and makes a sentence based on the likelihood of what the next word will be based on human readable text. That's literally it.

    Hence, there's absolutely no guarantee that ChatGPT's 'review' of your homework will always be 100% correct because it is probable that the answer was written incorrectly in the billions of lines of text it has been fed.

    On the other hand, a calculator has been superficially wired for it's purpose to process an input. 1 + 1 will always equal 2.

    I'd wager your supervisor will be horrified to learn that you're getting an LLM to learn from rather than your peers. This is why i absolutely hate that it's being used as a substitute what essentially makes us human: art, music, research, learning etc.

    It's a tool that needs a licence because you need to know how to use it to complement your existing skills, not supplement it.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    We’re allowed to use them. We just have to provide the prompt used and the answer given.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Ah very interesting. Still, it's a shame cutting out the peer to peer discussions to expand one's own learning and understanding.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    To do an in person degree I’d have to quit my job. I have been waiting for years for a program like this. That said, doing it in person would be a better experience and I wish I’d had the opportunity to do something like that years ago.

    TLDR; should have had my doctorate years ago. I went to Argentina and had to abandon my work when the economy collapsed.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
    • load more comments (1 reply)
  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    The thing is; you have the experience and knowledge necessary to understand when you are being fed wrong information when it hallucinates. You have come this far not needing a machine to think for you and are not useless without it.

    I had a networking lab in which we were faced with using an Aruba layer 3 switch, after learning Cisco all semester. The point was for us to research Aruba commands, and rather than even try to look up any actual references or the information provided by our professor they immediately tried to ask chat, which proceeded to keep giving them CLEARLY Cisco commands. Despite me expaining this they chose to ignore me until a half hour of failed commands later lead then to give up and just wait for me to try and figured it out.

    Btw I am, by no means a genius. I actually think I am of average intelligence, and I'm okay with that. But I have become one of the smartest/go to people in most of my classes because once chatgpt cannot figure it out they genuinely don't know what to do. They just don't understand how to think for themselves.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago*

    Learned helplessness. There is nothing more shameful then just giving up after the obvious route is exhausted.

    It's like this a lot with family, like show me you made an effort to troubleshoot, otherwise you're just demonstrating you think your time is more valuable then mine to do the whole rigamorole

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago

    Using AI to help with assignments in education is like using a forklift in the gym. You are taking stats for everyone else and undermining your opportunity to learn and train your brain.

    You are paying to get the opportunity to train your brain and educate yourself, a d are squandering the chance by using AI. It's not the best idea.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 14 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    this program would be so much harder without something to check my answers and understanding.

    Do students these days not have study buddies?

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Gen Alpha can barely look people in the eyes when they're talking.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Ah yes "looking people in the eyes while talking", famously something actually important and meaningful and not just literally the most well-known neurotypical "if you don't follow the expected social rules you are Wrong" demand...

    -- Frost

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah dude that's how norms work.

    If you're staring off into space and can't talk directly to someone, you need to learn that skill.

    Like, this is common sense.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (2 replies)
  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Thanks for sharing! Good luck with your doctorate!

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Thank you. I appreciate the support among a sea of personal attacks. I didn’t realize that this place had such strong tankie vibes.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
    •
  • [–] a comment that isn't shown here: deleted, from someone you've blocked, or on another page. view the thread from it
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Proof that the slop dispenser has ruined your critical thinking skills. All I said was that you don't understand what a tankie is, you're just saying words you've heard that have a negative context without knowing what the word actually means. Not criticizing you talking back

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    No, you decided long before making a comment that I was worthy of your discrimination and anything I could say would just be evidence of that. You're stuck in the circlejerk, my friend. It is time for you to learn to be kind instead of cruel.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    Being cruel would be letting someone hurt themselves in the long run and weaken their own ability to do something they set out to do. Being cruel would be to encourage your use of LLMs to 'learn'. You don't like the truth and that's on you, I guess, but it's not discrimination to tell you you're making mistakes. It's absolutely hilarious you would even use that word in this situation and just confirms to me that you're just a pretty convincing troll, arguing in bad faith.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
    • load more comments (2 replies)
    • load more comments (1 reply)