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Remember When Bosses Were Forcing Their Workers to Use AI? They’re Now Realizing They Made a Huge Mistake: "AI is changing not only how we work, but also how we judge the people we work with." (futurism.com)
submitted 22 hours ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 70 points 13 hours ago (17 children)

My son has gone back to college in his late 20s, and he is shocked at how many PROFESSORS are using AI for their lessons, and reading their presentations to the class for the first time.

He's got one prof who told them on the first day that she didn't want to teach this course because she didn't know anything about it, but the original prof left, so they forced her to teach it. She's learning the subject from AI at the same time the students are. She was reading the AI lesson, and got to a fundamental point that my son knew about, but she didn't, so instead of explaining it, she just said to skip it. My son was appalled. It would be like studying math, and having the teacher skip division because she didn't know what it was.

This is a major college in a major city, and it's common.

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  • [–] 19 points 11 hours ago

    I taught at a small college in the early 2000s. It was the type of place you got an associates degree. I was hired to teach there a few weeks after I graduated from college. I had four days to prep for teaching a full courseload. Day classes and night classes. I had never taught a day in my life prior. I was a presenter at a museum previously. I had the fun job of staying one day ahead of my students. I would spend every free moment in the textbooks writing outlines for every chapter I could. Each class I would try to stay on topic and would sweat any time a question would come up, hoping I could answer. I never worked harder in my actual college career than I did when i had to teach. I did eventually get ahead and turned up to be a pretty good teacher. I was liked and respected by my students and peers.

    I'm just saying getting thrown into the deep end is nothing new. Instead of writing outlines, you can generate them. However, I would agree that all that time I spent working is what enabled me to be a good teacher. I understood the work required at the pace it was expected. I'm not against AI, but I don't think it belongs everywhere. It is a tool, not a panacea.

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  • [–] 11 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

    My friend (acquaintance maybe) who is a language teacher told me he used a “Resume Generator” to make his resume for him earlier this week.

    A resume is the easiest shit ever, it’s one page, and you know all of the information that should be on it. This “language teacher” had to use an LLM to make his, because he’s a dumb lazy bitch.

    I feel bad for any kids who end up with such a worthless instructor… I honestly hope he doesn’t find work, the kids deserve better.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 child)

    That's an awfully harsh assessment. People are being encouraged to do this sort of thing and as a language teacher why not get a first draft done for you?

    The real test of whether it is pitiful it is if that person took what was given and ran with it rather than review and modify it.

    If society is demanding people know how to use AI, it would be stupid of a teacher not to do so themselves, because they have to teach how to use it.

    Once again, the key is how one uses AI, not if one uses AI.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 hours ago

    They asked me how to modify a pdf because there was a typo

    I said you just change the typo in the original document and then remake the pdf

    They said they couldn’t do that, because they didn’t have the source document, because they made it with a “resume generator”

    I said “What’s a resume generator? Like an LLM wrote it for you?” They said “I don’t know”.

    So yeah, they just took the LLM output and ran with it, only changing one typo.

    No one pressured them to do this, they did it of their own volition, and it is pathetic.

    No one except for AI companies wants teachers to use AI, they're explicitly supposed to stop students from relying on it, and this fool can’t even recognize an LLM while using it themselves

    The only people pushing the use of LLMs are the people who profit from their use, moronic CEOs, and people who can’t understand simple concepts like sentience.

    This teacher is a lazy dumbass. You can call me harsh if you want, but I see myself as a realist, harsh or otherwise.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 hours ago

    About the only time I have been like 'Yeah alright, I get it' is if you have a sort of writers block. Get a rough draft spat out but then bounce of that, but do not rely on LLM junk for anything more than that.

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  • [–] 5 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

    I'm a university instructor and I definitely use AI to help learn material. But I write all the student-facing material by hand. And I use LLMs to check my work for errors, directing it to never offer a rewrite.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

    If I found out I'm paying thousands of dollars in tuition just for my instructors to be learning the very subject matter they're teaching from LLMs I would be so upset that I might drop out and seek refunds.

    I expect better from a university instructor.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 hours ago (1 child)

    Well, it's hardly the only place I learn things. But if you can verify a fact that an LLM gives you, it's still a fact.

    Another fact: there's a pile of human shit out there, too. So you get the truth by hook or by crook.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 hours ago

    if I can verify a fact an LLM gave me I'm still:

    1. wasting my time needing to verify something from an inherently and unfixably untrustworthy source
    2. contributing to and encouraging the environmental destruction that LLMs cause
    3. reinforcing to big tech that LLMs are worthwhile
    4. increasing my mental dependence on LLMs

    Sure, humans still lie and manipulate and fuck up all the time. That doesn't excuse or explain the many flaws of LLMs.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

    Noooooooo. Current models are completely incapable of fact checking, despite any claims they may make. They get extremely basic shit wrong. For example, one popular model was recently caught telling people the wrong day for Election Day. Which is just so incredibly basic but they can’t manage it.

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  • [–] -3 points 5 hours ago

    Current models are completely incapable of fact checking, despite any claims they may make.

    This is demonstrably false. Ask it to find the bugs in a chunk of code, for example. You can try that right now.

    You always have to back up what it says with an authoritative source, but that's not particularly tough to do once you have a candidate answer. And if it's code, you compile it.

    It's arguably far easier than trying to sift through the mountains of SEO shit yourself.

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  • [–] 1 point 34 minutes ago

    @BarneyPiccolo @eicker When I went to university, it was before it was deregulated and pushed into a profit extraction machine. So, if I had taken a class that cost a few dollars for the course, and a TA had come in and said "Hey, it's my first time teaching this, but I'll do my best but Professor Smartypants has written the curriculum and will be reading essays." I would have accepted that for anything but degree requirement courses. (I was a TA in grad school and I have great sympathy for them, especially now.) But at today's cost, which would be in the thousands, there is absolutely no way would I tolerate this. Your son should be able to transfer to another class with a qualified instructor, and if not, he may still be inside the drop/add window. That's obscene, and in no way acceptable. Oooh, I am so angry for him!

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