A recent Wall Street Journal article on how students are using AI to cheat on homework and tests indicates we are in a rapid transition where our entire educational system is being hijacked by technology. AI is permitting students to defeat the traditional learning process and lowering the level of difficulty and the intellectual content of coursework. This of course leads to a general decline in reasoning, and worse yet, the belief that AI provides reliable truths.
Take a careful look: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-ai-cheating-students-97075d3c?st=CD2dHb&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
I have personally noticed that clerks in retail stores can’t make change if you give them cash, and the interest in and ability to handle demanding subjects like math and science are on a continued decline, plus our country’s scores are already low compared to others. We were doing poorly already, and now the widespread free availability of AI is going to further degrade the learning process.
Perhaps more worrying is that we will eventually have too many who can’t function in their jobs when their electronic support systems fail. It will be as if we were all robots, and someone turned off our power supplies. This is already true if the computers in our retail establishments go offline … the commerce system grinds to a halt.
How do we think of education in this modern context. We saw the elimination of cursive which now makes it impossible for those students to sign their name … they must print it. I have been told by so many of our utility clients that entry-level employees are less prepared to enter the workforce than their predecessors, and they must hold remedial classes on basic skills.
Couple this with the T Ball generational attitudes that everyone gets a trophy and that grades are classist, racist, and elitist … you get a toxic cocktail on life skill-preparation. Fortunately, we now seem to be in a correction phase of the idea that anyone who identifies with a profession should have the right to be one. No, it is not classist or racist that I am not a pilot … I haven’t gone through the training, and I am not capable and certainly not qualified to be a pilot.
I have heard investigations are underway into the FAA’s DEI hiring practices where it is suspected minority candidates were given answers to tests to ensure diversity quotas were met. Even Bill Gates, a long-time advocate of DEI initiatives, has declared it has gone too far. It’s time for the pendulum to swing back to a more balanced state and for people to not just expect but to demand high performance and excellence, and that can’t be the product of software the person uses … it has to be based upon personal competencies.
You should try this and compare it to what you used to have to do to solve equations: https://www.wolframalpha.com/ One could say this can teach you how to solve problems. But, it can also make you lazy to the point you can’t solve problems without this software.
And, finally, take a look at this WSJ article recommending that we stop using in person teaching altogether plus illustrating how Chicago’s teachers negotiated to get pay raises with no relationship to their teaching successes:
Beam me up Scotty … there definitely is no intelligent sign of life here …