Learning and Education
As a college student, he told me, he has mostly inhabited a world with ChatGPT. For those in his position, the many moral questions that AI provokes—for example, whether it is exploitative, or anti-intellectual, or ecologically unsound—take a back seat to the simple truth of its utility. Lieber characterized the matter as pragmatic above all else:... See more
Ian Bogost • This Year Will Be the Turning Point for AI College
the corrupting power of convenience
Contemporary academia engages, more or less permanently, in self-critique on any and every front it can imagine. In a tech-centered world, language matters, voice and style matter, the study of eloquence matters, history matters, ethical systems matter. But the situation requires humanists to explain why they matter, not constantly undermine their... See more
Stephen Marche • The Undergraduate Essay Is About to Die
Self destructive doubt, when it is an academic’s job to doubt?
One of the assumptions those who say this is the end of high school English make about students is that if students can find an end around doing the actual work of school, they will definitely take it.
What does it say about what we ask students to do in school that we assume they will do whatever they can to avoid it?
What does it say about what we ask students to do in school that we assume they will do whatever they can to avoid it?
John Warner • ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving
For Lieber, AI’s allure seems more about the promise of achievement than efficiency. As with most students who are accepted to and graduate from an elite university, he and his classmates have been striving their whole life. As Lieber put it, if a course won’t have “a tangible impact on my ability to get a good job,” then “it’s not worth putting a... See more
Ian Bogost • This Year Will Be the Turning Point for AI College
misplaced motivation caused by societal incentives and pressures. To succeed or even survive, the bar is so high. When assignments/classes feel arbitrary, a means to an end, an obstacle to overcome or an obligatory box to check, there is every incentive to expedite the process of learning and none to engage with it.
utilitarian framing of education: how does this make me more hirable
humanistic framing of education: learning how to think deeply and solve problems
I wonder if I would have loved reading in high school if I was reading the what I now love. Is the selection to blame or are my tastes so very different? If I read The Scarlet Letter today, would I resent it like I have or find it as profound as my teachers promised it would be?
And yet, despite the drastic divide of the moment, natural-language processing is going to force engineers and humanists together. They are going to need each other despite everything. Computer scientists will require basic, systematic education in general humanism: The philosophy of language, sociology, history, and ethics are not amusing... See more
Stephen Marche • The Undergraduate Essay Is About to Die
The technology is no longer just a curiosity or a way to cheat; it is a habit, as ubiquitous on campus as eating processed foods or scrolling social media. In the coming fall semester, this new reality will be undeniable. Higher education has been changed forever in the span of a single undergraduate career.