> 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.
If 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.
Yeah, 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.
Can 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"?
There are tons of reasons AI is actively making the school system worse (amongst many other aspects of society). Immediately jumping to "political coalition thing" seems strange.
The 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) 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.
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.
> 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... There's a similar awkward period right now as people try to figure out AI.
I 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
This has been the case for essentially all newspapers since time immemorial. Reporters write the articles, editors write the headlines.
Is this a political coalition thing or is there a real teacher-related reason they don't like it?
Well, of course. Horse buggy manufacturers and drivers were dead set against automobiles.
So peanuts.
The public universities budget in California is something like 60 billion.
This isn't even a rounding error.
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
You pay for the rubber stamp.
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... There's a similar awkward period right now as people try to figure out AI.
Why is it always the same kind of intellectually challenged people who need custom avatars?
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.
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.
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.