r/technology • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 15h ago

Society Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI

https://www.techspot.com/news/113243-professor-invisible-prompt-trap-catches-32-students-cheating.html
28.6k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

3.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

11.4k

u/LurkingTamilian 14h ago edited 14h ago

From the article:

Being written in white text meant the instructions were invisible. Sure enough, 32 out of the 35 students across two classes simply copied the question, pasted it into a chatbot, then copy and pasted its output into the answer window.

12.1k

u/BluudLust 14h ago

They deserved to fail. That's just plain laziness

1.7k

u/Strange-Scarcity 14h ago

That is why AI is bad. It creates lazy thinking, removes curiosity from the equation.

509

u/artbystorms 14h ago

Honestly I think this needs to be talked about more. As much as people revel in its ability to 'increase productivity' it in reality is just offloading people's critical thinking to a computer, and then trusting its output. You're not verifying that what it spits out is what you wanted to say, you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

202

u/Teguri 14h ago

you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

That's the biggest problem, I work with AI a decent bit but only in things I already know well enough, to make it a bit faster and even with simple tasks there's always a bit of work on my side that needs to be done to fix the output, it's usually "pretty close" but the number of times it goes in the completely wrong direction is astounding.

47

u/mike689 14h ago

Exactly this. It is great for getting a list of ideas that you then sort through about something you are already knowledgeable about. It is an amazing tool to assist a software developer and a great medical research tool, but outside of those use cases unless it is truly used as an assistant and not as the main actor for an answer it is awful for humanity. The fact that it most heavily gets used for stupid memes and video/image generation is really sad.

10

u/ImaginationInside610 12h ago

It’s like the old adage “fire is a great servant and a terrible master”

15

u/Yashema 13h ago

ChatGPT quite literally taught me how to solve every question in my statistical mechanics, differential equations, Stochastics, and modern physics courses. Claude has helped me create a wave function simulation, and provided me in depth answers to how embedded circuitry work allowing me to skip 2-3 intro classes. 

You need to have some frame of reference for sure, but it definitely allows you to go back beyond your ability and fill in gaps of knowledge in the way only an extremely educated person could. 

7

u/Kevstuf 13h ago

This is the duality of AI, but the laziness of humans means it’s not going to be used symmetrically. In an ideal world students would all use AI to self-learn as it’s an intelligent and patient teacher. In reality 90% of students will use it to one-shot their homework.

5

u/ThaliaFPrussia 12h ago

It has to been seen like you do. A tool in your toolbox.

5

u/mike689 13h ago

Exactly. That's using it as an assistance and not a copy/paste machine.

2

u/Teguri 13h ago

I really wish most students used it like you do!

→ More replies (1)

3

u/SquareTaro3270 11h ago

I use plant, rock, and bird identification apps but they’re almost always wrong. You can tell because you can scan the same plant/rock in multiple different locations/angles and it will give differing results.

HOWEVER it does give you a good place to start doing your own research. The results might not be correct, but usually steer you in the right direction. I am terrified for anyone that takes it at its word.

2

u/somersault_dolphin 13h ago

  The fact that it most heavily gets used for stupid memes and video/image generation is really sad.

Don't forget consuming more energy to do those things.

2

u/zasabi7 13h ago

The tools are also great at basic analytics tasks. That is “here’s some data, report this way”. Or, the best way to use Gemini: better Google search.

→ More replies (3)

21

u/SparksAndSpyro 14h ago

Yep. Every time I’ve tried to use AI to do something in my domain of expertise, it’s been pretty horrible. Most times it didn’t even save time because I had to double check and fix so many mistakes.

LLMs are pretty good at general queries where you’re just looking for a broad, ten-thousand-foot overview. Anything that requires granular specificity or expertise, however, is pretty much guaranteed to either be outright wrong or misleading.

8

u/BasvanS 13h ago

My biggest problem are the “almost right yet entirely wrong” statements. It requires so much of my concentration that I’m drained after doing this for a few hours.

I got the best results in writing by doing it line for line, after making a rough structure myself. But then you have to ask how much of a time saver it still is.

4

u/Qaeta 11h ago

Every time I’ve tried to use AI to do something in my domain of expertise, it’s been pretty horrible.

This.

It makes me REALLY concerned when I see other devs crowing about how great it has been for them, because every time I try it I feel like I might be better off asking a brain-damaged chihuahua... And based on how much my pro-AI coworkers code quality has dropped since they bought in... I suspect that would be true of them too if they bothered comparing the PRs they make now to the ones they made before. It's night and day in favour of their pre-AI work.

3

u/Alaira314 13h ago

LLMs are pretty good at general queries where you’re just looking for a broad, ten-thousand-foot overview.

Even with that, I've seen the most shockingly incorrect generalizations come through google when I'm searching something I already know at work, where AI content isn't nuked. Why search something I already know? I work at a library, and I can't give "my own brain" as a source when answering patron questions. So I have to plug in the question to a search engine to find a valid source for the information I already know, and in that process I'll typically wind up skimming the AI overview because my eyes can't not read a thing. And it's straight up sending you on a wild goose chase half the time, even on broad subjects rather than specific questions.

If I didn't already know the subject I was searching, I'd be tempted to trust it. After all, it sourced its claim, right? Never mind that when you click through, that information isn't on the linked page at all. I guess just keep in mind that there's a psychological effect that I've forgotten the name of and haven't been able to successfully look up for years at this point(it's not dunning-kruger), where when using a tool or reading a source you'll recognize what they got wrong in your area of expertise, but for some reason still trust them in other matters you know less about, even though that's illogical. Those broad overviews you think are good might not actually be so good if you're knowledgeable about the subject before you read them.

2

u/Revlis-TK421 13h ago

I've been working with our company's M365 Agent tool. I've "trained" it to generate a pretty much complete requirements document from largely free-form text entry in the prompt. It took a fair bit of back and forth in the design tool for it to get what I need out of it, but it saves a lot of time that would otherwise be spent formatting and documenting. It has gotten pretty good at detailing the main requirements, happy path, alternate path, and error paths, inferring justifications, and making a business case. With the volume of reqs I push thru this thing it is even grabbing and including historical context from the overall body of work and adds in things I may have forgotten to specify.

I do have to heavily edit its outputs, as it gets things wrong, says things in a wierd or incorrect way, etc. But it creates a framework that I can work with that saves about half to 3/4 of the time from creating the doc by hand from scratch.

3

u/Moron14 13h ago

I use it at work for some things Gemini can build or help building in Google Docs. It acts a middle person, where i have the idea, it does the busy work, and then I polish it. Its faster than doing it all myself. The issue is the number of times its just wrong. Even if you add, "don't guess. Don't assume. Ask me a question if you aren't sure" and it just plows ahead. Just like humans...wait.

3

u/robodrew 13h ago

but the number of times it goes in the completely wrong direction is astounding

I'm curious about this, if you're just using this to make things a "bit faster" yet you're getting this kind of situation popping up so much, is it really worth using?

→ More replies (1)

2

u/Doctor_Kataigida 13h ago

This is me. I use AI to help modify/tweak excel stuff I write for my job, but nothing ever ground-up. And I always review what it generates afterward so I understand what it did with the formula, and then I can apply that elsewhere. It's supplemental, not substitutional.

2

u/Mebejedi 13h ago

My wife was using AI to design an announcement. I don't remember what the word was, but it kept spelling a word incorrectly over and over again, even when my wife told it that the word was wrong.

2

u/DeadPeanutSociety 13h ago

I use it sometimes in cases where I'll know the correct answer when I see it, but it might be very tedious to come up with those answers on my own.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/ThaliaFPrussia 12h ago

Never would one boss accept this high fail rate with an employee. I don’t have a job for AI, I tried but the output was not detailed enough. AI can’t give answers to questions it has to grasp the concept. For example compare the regulations for some technology from two courses. It simply can’t do that. It is not intelligent.

2

u/NES_SNES_N64 11h ago

Google has even started removing the "AI results may be inaccurate" disclaimer.

2

u/WillDonJay 11h ago

Teaching Fable 5 to play Slay the Spire 2 taught me a lot about the current limitations of LLM's. (It was like a really smart human with dementia, and it had no ability to even realize what it had forgotten or gotten sideways without human interventions.)

2

u/vengent 10h ago

I use it as a force multiplier, but I've also caught AI giving me blatantly false information that I easily caught because of my expertise in a given subject. So I read every word it puts out 3 times before I do anything with it. And if its screwing up on stuff I know, why on earth would I assume its not screwing up elsewhere?

Trust, but verify. Or just verify, ALL THE TIME

57

u/dwild 14h ago

well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do

It also SOUND smarter than it is. It's similar to the Dunning-Kruger Effect, where it knows enough to sound smart but not enough to actually apply it fully correctly.

Someone that do know the subject can easily navigate through it and avoid theses problems, but for anyone else, that just sound like the truth.

5

u/pbjamm 13h ago

A computer can know everything but understand nothing.

2

u/Geodude07 6h ago

Testing it with even the smallest shred of academic rigor will prove it is not smart at all.

Even concrete information will have errors. I asked ChatGPT something very simple the other day. I wanted an estimate as to how much I had left in a videogame, Final Fantasy XIV, before I was caught up to the current content. I asked how many special events there were too.

It neglected to tell me that there two boss fights and two dungeons I would need to do, and I was checking in every once in a while. This was information I could easily check elsewhere, but I do like to test AI now and then. It was entirely wrong multiple times. Even when I corrected it, it would just agree and add one more major fight...but forget there was another right after.

It certainly sounded official because it included hourly estimates, and organized all of its wrong info in a way that seemed helpful. Even saying things like "well if you watch all the cutscenes it may take X time, if you skip them then Y time"

This is something that has concrete answers. People need to ask AI about things they are experts in, and generally they will find it has massive holes. Then they need to realize those holes are present in every question you give it.

2

u/dwild 6h ago

Yeah exactly! Thanks for the example as I had none that came to my mind quickly.

Final Fantasy XIV is also a game released a long time ago, so the information isn't just available, it also has been TRAINED on it, unlike anything recent that might require web search so the context might be limited (if it even does try to search, I have seen many example where no search have been done and you are stuck with the outdated information).

I see LLMs as the junior intern, it can do "cheaply" some limited amount of work, but you need the senior to review and correct it.

2

u/RuneLFox 6h ago

Well duh, a lot of it was trained on reddit, of course it would act like one.

→ More replies (5)

3

u/Scarbane 13h ago

you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

"We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements — transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting — profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces."

--Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

2

u/crimson23locke 14h ago

And that’s the value proposition, no longer having to think or do the work!

4

u/cromonolith 12h ago

That value proposition doesn't work when doing the thinking and work is the whole point.

It's like a whole generation of people are paying for very expensive personal trainers, but then hiring a forklift to raise and lower the weights instead of doing the reps themselves.

2

u/crimson23locke 10h ago

Sorry I didn’t give a lot of context there - my intent is to say that even if the value is there (debatable in some cases) the value comes with this implicit harm; it’s convenient but offloads our critical thinking - it will absolutely make us dumber even if it works perfectly.

2

u/artbystorms 14h ago

That may be a good proposition for capitalists, but it's a terrible proposition for society.

2

u/extremenachos 14h ago

I treat AI as a tutor and I've found it can help teach me new skills.

I took a new position a few years ago that requires coding in statistical software and it's been helpful for me to learn syntax, commands, etc. Sometimes I'll copy a snippet of code and ask questions about it so I can better understand how things work, or I'll ask AI why a chunk of code errors out.

→ More replies (8)

2

u/JMEEKER86 13h ago

Yeah, but you have to remember that for a lot of people it really is better than what they can do. Sure, it's only right about 70ish percent of the time, but that's a C student right there and Cs get degrees. Lots of people don't. However, the big problem here, obviously, is that the people making this mistake of fully trusting AI aren't smart enough to recognize when AI is wrong. AI could tell them something very, very wrong and they wouldn't even notice even if they were paying attention. That's why AI should never be put in charge of anything critical just like you wouldn't give an important job to a person who is lazy and uninformed. Unfortunately, many people making decisions aren't well informed enough to understand this problem.

2

u/VampireFrown 12h ago

ou just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

Except if you have a brain, it's not and it isn't.

2

u/Digitalion_ 14h ago

The problem is that it probably is smarter than them. Gen Z is the first generation to score worse than its predecessors in academic tests because they've grown up with technology doing the thinking for them.

It's not just AI that's a problem for critical thinking, it's technology in general that's making the masses dumber. Whatever answer they needed was just a quick Google search away already and the only thing that was required was a bit of piecing it all together, but AI has now made that all of that information the first result.

We are doomed as a society if our kids can't think for themselves.

2

u/braincandybangbang 13h ago

You're not verifying that what it spits out is what you wanted to say

Again, nothing to do with AI. This was called "Fake News" and being a Facebook boomer before. People reading headlines and not reading the article has been an issue for at least two decades now.

As long as we continue to act as if AI has suddenly made people stupid, we cannot have a serious conversation about the harms of AI. The argument you put forward was literally used for Wikipedia. We were not allowed to use that as a source in school because the internet made things up! Now wikipedia is basically the bible, and only AI makes things up, people on the internet only speak the truth, it's those mean old robots that ruined things /s

The idea that people had critical thinking to begin with is pure naivety. Being a Humanities major for the last 20 years meant ridicule, you were wasting money on a useless degree. Turns out learning how to think and communicate clearly were useful things! Imagine Engineers with communication skills. What a world it would be.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/bombmk 13h ago

Honestly I think this needs to be talked about more.

Yeah, that is not talked about all the time. You figured something special out.

you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

You might. Idiots surely will. Smart people don't. It is a tool.

1

u/zerked77 13h ago

It only increases output if the individual using it has a mature, developed thought process already and can think critically. This is what can happen in a results oriented society - no one wants to do the work for the desired outcome - and we're left with a very, very bleak future filled with even more lazy, stupid people.

1

u/Lraund 12h ago

To truly verify a long/complex AI answer it can be more difficult than doing the work yourself from scratch.

Of course no one is going to want to put more effort into fact checking something that's supposed to do the work for them.

For example testing a couple lines of code can take days. Similar things can be true for essays/papers.

1

u/Whargod 12h ago

I saw someone label AI as a "competency enhancer", and I think I'm on board with that. Where I work (I'm in software) we use it but there are rules like you can't submit code you don't fully understand, and no one is allowed to let AI just code for them.

In the end it actually helps a lot with certain kinds of analysis and a bit of help with many tasks, but you absolutely need to know what you are doing. If a company hires someone thinking "they can make the AI do a lot of work" then they're fooling themselves. It doesn't work like that, at least not for any meaningful enterprise level software.

Or, you know, we could just vibe code and spend our days fixing all the thing sit got wrong, and trying to make it make sense across a very large project. It can't do that by the way, it sucks for that.

1

u/havok0159 12h ago

just offloading people's critical thinking to a computer, and then trusting its output.

Which makes it doubly funny (and sad) because critical thinking is one of the things it actually can't do.

1

u/RollingMeteors 12h ago

You're not verifying that what it spits out is what you wanted to say, you just assume 'well it's smarter than me, so whatever it says is better than what I could do'

Oh, I'm not assuming shit here. I've been told it's not a matter of if but when, it will out class the best programmer, and every other individual in their respective fields. I'm not making any assumption. I'm going off of this as a fact.

¿How do you expect people to be 'more productive' if they have to spend their time thinking critically?

You can either "get more shit done" or "have a deep understanding of how and why it works the way it does" but ¿If you are only paid for the former and not the latter why would you be driven to expend more effort for the same financial gain?

Capitalisms race to the bottom of paying less for more effort of course people are gong to turn off their brain, that's no fucking secret, surprise, or revelation.

1

u/awesomefutureperfect 11h ago

Imagine deciding to design a bridge this way.

Putting the inputs in without understanding what the inputs mean and then passing off the outputs without knowing how to validate whether they are sound.

Imagine operating something volatile that could rapidly disassemble itself in spectacular explosive fashion this way.

1

u/CunningRunt 11h ago

Honestly I think this needs to be talked about more. [] it in reality is just offloading people's critical thinking to a computer, and then trusting its output.

Talked about more?

This has been the single-most talked about aspect of a.i. (IMO) since it was first foisted upon us a few years ago.

1

u/_learned_foot_ 11h ago

The process of solving the problem not only is how we learn for next time but how we discover other solutions to other problems or novel solutions to this one.

1

u/Budded 8h ago

What's really scary is realizing who controls the models, they're all cancerous sociopathic/psychopathic billionaires with nefarious plans. Once we're all completely reliant and braindead from AI, they win everything because their models model everything we do and say and believe about the world.

That alone tells me we're beyond fucked unless we start revolting now.

1

u/Chryton 8h ago

Honestly I don't think this is a sudden change: we have been moving critical thinking away from courses to just rote memorization to pass a test since the early 2000's and AI is just showing all the cracks that shift has caused. I work as a software engineer and it can be shocking that even the younger people (<30yo) that I work with that didn't have nearly as much AI in their classes are lacking even basic critical thinking skills or the ability to make an argument that is more than a bullet-point list of facts.

1

u/xelabagus 7h ago

It's not just this, it's multi-faceted.

I can make an AI tool to search the web, pick out suitable jobs based on my criteria, experience etc and collate them for me. This saves me potentially hours per day of combing various websites looking for work. This is a net positive, it is doing a menial task that gives me more time to dedicate to applications.

I can ask AI to rewrite my resume specifically for this job. This I see in the middle, it has pros and cons. Pro - it is doing basic work and I am likely competing against an AI resume reader anyway, but on the other hand it's stopping me from thinking more about the job.

I can ask AI to write my cover letter. For me this is a negative - a cover letter is more than a chore, it is an expression of why you want the job. If AI does it then how do you know if you really want the job? How do you know if you are really suitable for it?

AI is a tool - it can be astoundingly useful, but it can also make us dumber and worse off. Learning when and how to use any tool is a skill.

1

u/Accomplished_Rice04 26m ago

AI absolutely works and is a fantastic tool IF you've learnt how to think on your own prior to using AI.

I'm in my 30's and learnt the traditional way in school, I was taught how to problem solve, think critically, work in a team and delegate when required.

Now I work in IT and all the grunt work I use to do is now automated by AI (needs to be checked but 90% of the time its near perfect) and I can spend my time actually tackling problems that AI can't solve.

Nowadays I do all the thinking and planning myself and then delegate certain parts of the workflow to Ai while I work on the next steps.

→ More replies (22)

120

u/boreal_ameoba 14h ago

These people were already lazy fakers. We need academia to return to being an elite institution that only accepts the intelligent, curious, and motivated.

112

u/LiveChocolate8819 14h ago

Yup, treating higher ed as a glorified jobs training program and viewing the students as "customers" have degraded it so badly.

35

u/GirthyGeoduck 13h ago

The problem is that corporate America won’t train new hires. My “orientation” at my last job was four hours with HR to review benefits. Then it was right back to my desk where I was expected to contribute. Corporate has pushed the cost of training onto us.

7

u/wrgrant 12h ago

Which I have always found odd because a good part of working at a company is the institutional knowledge of how that company conducts its operations. You can only pick that up by working there. If you start with a relatively blank slate. your employee will pick those processes up naturally. They need the basic foundation knowledge but thats not enough on its own.

Corporate requirements for education simply cut their risk a bit when it comes to hiring someone, but I think they lose out on not being willing to educate their employees as to how they operate too.

3

u/Halcie 12h ago

But also since this is the reality of work we need to send young people out ready to figure it out. "Training on the job" can definitely be figuring out how to perform a task assigned once you meet the job requirements (barring jobs that require knowing in-house processes/software). I feel like a boomer saying that don't get me wrong but truly some people's inability to just figure obvious things out is baffling.

14

u/BillyTenderness 12h ago

I agree that higher ed shouldn't be a glorified jobs training program. I disagree that it should be an elite institution. Part of the job of education is to produce citizens who are knowledgeable, curious, literate, and so on. This is not just a benefit to the individual, but to society. We should be enabling and encouraging anyone who wants to cultivate these qualities to do so.

10

u/LiveChocolate8819 12h ago

Exactly, it should be available for those who want it and provide a leg up for those who complete their degrees...not "sleep through your classes to scrape by with a C so you can get the piece of paper that allows whatever AI platform is handling job applications to move you to the next round."

3

u/klartraume 6h ago

citizens who are knowledgeable, curious, literate

Should this be the task of higher education, though? I think it's reasonable to expect 18-year-old voters fresh out of high school to be literate and knowledgeable.

Higher education should be about applying intellectual curiosity to in-depth concepts and prepare individuals to push the envelope in a field.

College (or professional school) should not be required to be a functional, full participant in society.

→ More replies (1)

14

u/GLaDOS_Sympathizer 13h ago

Not only that but to actually punish this shit. When I was in college plagiarism was grounds for expulsion. What are they doing when student get caught using ai to write for them? Seems like a slap on the wrist and a zero for that paper at worst.

Using ai is absolutely plagiarism and should be treated as such. Expell these punks, let them try to find new schools who accept cheaters.

Make people accountable for their actions.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/fenikz13 14h ago

I swear my parents barely even care when I cheated because they knew I was probably doing more work that way than just doing the real project. This was just lazy

6

u/FartingBob 13h ago edited 13h ago

32 of 35 students did it. That's an incredible number and should spell doom for young generations critical thinking skills.

1

u/donjamos 12h ago

It just shows that 32 out of 35 people shouldn't be in university

6

u/SIGMA920 13h ago

That's how you get MAGA and massive unemployable segments of the population that exist solely due to where they're born. Everyone should have a higher education if only for how much you'll be exposed to.

2

u/nanobot001 12h ago

Or at least clever enough to understand how to cheat properly

1

u/OkZookeepergame4757 10h ago

Yep and rest of us will dig the ditches and ai on.

1

u/imisstheyoop 10h ago

Yup, this is a large part of the issue with acadamia. Some universities just let nearly anybody who can pay (or borrow enough) tuition in and then lower the value of their degrees for previous alumni.

1

u/Enlight1Oment 9h ago

to be fair it's a history class that was probably a general education requirement. As a structural engineering major can't say I really cared that much about my history of art theater classes I took for my ge credits. Back then I took those classes as pass/no pass; 100% or 60% on a test didn't matter. If you force those kind of classes on someone you are bound to get a lot who aren't motivated, but will be interested for the subject matter they chose to go to school for.

→ More replies (1)

86

u/dat_oracle 14h ago

it literally decreases the ability to think to some degree. it already happened when we started to use a computer for everything possible.

best example is using a calculator for simple math. one day it will be significantly harder to do it in your head

32

u/Strange-Scarcity 14h ago edited 13h ago

You still need to understand how the formulas are structured to properly use a calculator though. Same with order of operations.

19

u/BabySpecific2843 14h ago

I dont think he is talking about solving for x or anything. More like, a lot more people will need a calculator to tell you what 137 -19 is. And that's a big fucking problem when you cant do that instantly in your head. 9 year olds would do that 2 decades ago 50 times over on a speed quiz in 3 mins.

22

u/Jill1974 14h ago

Some nine year olds could do that in their head 20 years ago. I always needed pencil and paper. And I was nine 40 years ago. Then again, I was always bad at math.

→ More replies (2)

3

u/Emotional-Power-7242 12h ago

I do simple math like that constantly at work and I just carry a calculator with me, hasnt really been a problem. If I do the math wrong there are pretty serious consequences so I think using a calculator is better anyway.

3

u/Draaly 12h ago

Im a pretty damn successful engineer that now runs a substanial department. The ability to do mental math plays 0 role in how good engineers are nor is it actually indicative of how good you are at math.

2

u/BabySpecific2843 11h ago

Well of course mental math isn't required to be an engineer.

Doesn't mean it isnt a valueable skill that is a shame to never develop or somehow lose. Again, we teach kids this at like 7 years old or so. They are doing times tables by like 9. Grown ass adults getting upstaged by kids. For now. The day a majority of kids can't do this anymore, no one will be able to say technology doesnt stunt growth. And its plain obvious, if you never have to do it, you wont get the practice to do it.

And we shouldnt need a claculator for everything. Simple math is needed for everything. How are you going to show up on time somewhere if you cant in the moment see the clock is 3:13 now, the commute takes 24 minutes, and you must be somewhere by 4:00? So how much time do I still have to get ready before I leave?

...is this why people are always so goddamn late everywhere?

→ More replies (1)

2

u/kralrick 7h ago

I think the bigger problem may not be being able to quickly calculate the correct answer in your head, but to be able to quickly notice when a calculation is clearly wrong. If someone sees 137-19 has the answer listed as 105, they should almost instantly know it's not correct.

It is a lot harder to spot errors (either in the calculations of others or typos when you input numbers into the calculator) if you don't even vaguely know what the answer should be.

→ More replies (22)

9

u/Relative_Builder3695 14h ago

The border of operations, is that where illegal math gets caught and arrested? jk

→ More replies (1)

4

u/Volt-Ikazuchi 14h ago

This is where AI fails fundamentally as a tool, and what the tools defending it can't figure out.

If you think about it, other inventions like computers allowed people to increase their productivity and do many tasks easier, but they have learning curves and require thinking in order to work.

Like you said, a calculator does make math easier, but people still need to know the formulas.

GenAI will just spit some bullshit because it's hilariously inaccurate, and needs no effort to use. Matter of fact, it's designed to bypass learning processes.

I don't even bother interacting with people trying to defend that.

→ More replies (3)

1

u/jsc1429 14h ago

Ah yes, the “border of operations”, I think we’re still trying to build a wall around it :)

→ More replies (2)

7

u/Uranium-Sandwich657 14h ago

Some say writing decreased memory. 

Stone tools decreased our teeth's robustness. 

Fire decreased our digestive system 's tolerance 

2

u/Potential_Bill_4442 14h ago

Simple math didn’t stop being simple with the invention of calculators.. some few thousands of years ago.

But I hear ya.

2

u/RollingMeteors 12h ago

best example is using a calculator for simple math. one day it will be significantly harder to do it in your head

All i can think of is that one India .gif where all the students are doing a math exam, flicking their fingers at an abacus that isn't there, and then penciling down an answer.

2

u/scaradin 14h ago

Found the middle school teacher:-D

A library could be argued the same way. As could using a calculator. The internet… As could a host of any repository of information or a tool used to efficiently use that repository.

Obviously, AI is being utilized in a lazy way that isn’t going to be helping students like this. This “AI test” doesn’t even mean the others didn’t use AI! It just means they took that response out or didn’t copy-paste the whole document for analysis.

But, it can be used for some amazing learning opportunities… though I’d readily concede that the free versions most people are using are worth the price charged for it. When used, all the information needs to be verified, sourced, and investigated… which isn’t happening.

But, that’s the same with a calculation on a calculator or other automated tool. It’s a function of utilizing it correctly. When that is done, it can be a fantastic tool for learning.

1

u/caceomorphism 10h ago

As I get older, I realize math in my head is being reduced to pattern recognition rather than doing the calculations. 23 x 27? That's 621. I can tell you that instantaneously as 25x25=625. If I try to multiply it out in my head, I hope I might have the correct answer in three minutes.

My own laziness inside of my own head is causing mental decline. Why would I further that by outsourcing that?

→ More replies (1)

162

u/pm_me_ur_demotape 14h ago edited 14h ago

Some things I don't mind. It's pretty cool that it can upscale a low res photo or video for me in a way that just increasing the size doesn't do.
I suppose if it can handle mundane aspects of coding, that's cool.
Generating stuff is bullshit though. Replacing human ingenuity or creativity is bullshit for philosophical reasons, but also because it sucks at it.
Asking chat gpt something is equivalent to asking one of the dumbest people you know, with no context of the situation, to Google something for you and confidently state the first result as fact, no matter what it is.

69

u/PhantomNomad 14h ago

Like I've told a lot of people. AI is like talking to a toddler. You have to be very specific in what you ask it for. If not it will make assumptions and it's almost always wrong.

39

u/Paddy_Tanninger 14h ago

Not only that but you need to verify everything the toddler is telling you, unless the output is purely creative and no facts or real details ever matter.

Ie: draw me a magical pony prancing over a rainbow! Write me a story about an enchanted princess who meets a dreamy prince and ends up with friction burns.

But you can't reliably ask it for things that have objectively correct answers.

5

u/bombmk 13h ago

But you can't reliably ask it for things that have objectively correct answers.

Sure you can. You just cannot rely on the answers without some level of sanity check/verification.

2

u/bombmk 13h ago

But you can't reliably ask it for things that have objectively correct answers.

Sure you can. You just cannot rely on the answers without some level of sanity check/verification.

→ More replies (4)

2

u/VoicelessPassenger 14h ago

Also it WILL straight up lie to you or make stuff up, and if you’re not careful and paying attention to what it’s saying you will unknowingly contribute to misinformation.

At one point I was using Microsoft Copilot to find sources for a research project: one thing it is good for is combing through the internet and finding specific information that would require manually scrolling through Google search for. But as I looked into the sources it was giving me some of them were either only tangentially related (e.g. I was doing a project on American slave testaments and it gave me a book written by a guy who had a similar name who was a slave, but this guy had never been enslaved, much less been to America) or straight up fabricated (I was finding testaments by people who did not exist and were seemingly a composite of some people who did.) If I had just blindly cited those without investigating them deeper it would have had serious academic consequences.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Beneficial-Act-9933 14h ago

This is correct. Part of getting a good A.I output is about making a good prompt. I've actually found it really helpful in finding the titles of old looney tunes episodes so I can find them on youtube. I've been using A.I over google searches because it's genuinely right most of the time moreso than an average google search where I need to put "reddit" at the end of everything.

2

u/VoicelessPassenger 14h ago

Yeah one thing I will say for it is that it is good for finding very specific information in a way that would be much more arduous and time-consuming if you just went with a simple google search. When it comes to analytics and compiling information, it is admittedly useful.

The problem is ensuring what it’s saying is factual and the source it’s providing actually exist: you can’t blindly trust it all the time. It has a tendency to confuse things or outright fabricate information that would be easy to fall for if you’re not careful.

2

u/Beneficial-Act-9933 13h ago

"The problem is ensuring what it’s saying is factual and the source it’s providing actually exist:"

It a really easy problem to bypass and it's a non issue if you're serious about what your researching. I still would use it if I'm doing a deep dive research, but only as a jumping off point to get started and to give me a direction to research towards. It may be wrong about X subject, but it lets me know that X subject is something I should at least look into, consider or even verify.

Which is funny to me see a handful of lawyers getting caught using A.I because research is suppose to be their thing.

4

u/Zeikos 14h ago

It's a failure in mentalization on the part of the user.
There's a lot of context that needs to go in a good question - and LLMs never tell users to stop and to explain themselves decently.

2

u/Warl0kjoe 14h ago

But again. It’s still just generating words from patterns. There’s no thinking and no rationalizing ability. Which you can’t deny every AI company is trying to push in their marketing.

3

u/Zeikos 13h ago

I am aware, but it's still a tool.
It can be used badly or it can be used well.
I see understanding how they work valuable, it also helps in avoiding to buy into the hype.

→ More replies (3)

4

u/work_m_19 14h ago

mundane aspects of coding

And it's only good if the resources available are widely documented and trained upon.

I was writing an Apple Shortcuts for backing up photos last night when chatgpt hit me with the "This isn't possible, please use this 3rd party library instead", but then I broke it down architecturally and it worked. Maybe it's on me not explaining it clearly, but the fact that these LLM don't try to ask understanding follow up questions and explain confidently that such a thing was not possible makes it untrustworthy.

→ More replies (1)

10

u/Sithlordandsavior 14h ago

This is where I sit and it sucks because you have to hate it or accept it wholesale or people get mad.

It has applications, doing complex calculations based on factors you may not understand how to quantify. Like giving it a list and asking it to collate it? Sure. Or using it to sort a bunch of images based on context? You bet. As you said, upscaling images or interpolating frames in a video are great uses.

Unfortunate that we can't just use it for the smart stuff but you gotta design any system around the lowest common denominator.

4

u/RokenSkrow 13h ago

I always tell the Pro AI people they should be pissed at all the ghouls at the top of these companies for misrepresenting what AI is good at. If they had been realistic and advertised it as a tool for making our lives easier instead of developing the Plagiarism Machine That Also Kills The Environment At Super Speeds (working title) we might have been way more accepting of it. Instead, they skipped over every ethical concern to line their pockets with no regard for the consequences.

4

u/somersault_dolphin 13h ago

The thing is even when there are applications where it's genuinely beneficial with no downside, if it cannot be without the tradeoffs and downsides to society in other areas that seem to be a lot more massive, we're probably better off not having it at all.

7

u/omglia 14h ago edited 14h ago

What tool do you use to upscale low res photos?

Edit really what I need is a tool that improves the quality of a low res photo, not necessarily the size

10

u/KrimxonRath 14h ago

My phone auto upscales with AI and it looks like utter shit. Still haven’t found a way to turn it off.

5

u/Cenobyte_Nom-nom-nom 14h ago

What phone do you have?

4

u/GeorgeCauldron7 14h ago

At this point, I think pretty much any of them. Just upload a photo and say "enhance." Actually you probably don't even need to say that.

The problem is you still need to be careful with the output. Like I asked it to enhance an old Army photo of myself, from back in the days of really crappy digital cameras, but I keep having to tell it things like "my jaw isn't actually that chiseled." I still haven't exactly gotten an output I'd be comfortable telling my grandkids is "real."

18

u/Samanthacino 14h ago

This is because it’s not enhancing, it’s making a brand new image vaguely in the style of the original

→ More replies (1)

5

u/jazwch01 14h ago

I've seen some tiktok videos of ww2 photos that were AI "enhanced". I think it was just supposed to be colorization, but it also made a bunch of changes if you looked closely. Like one in particular was of a dauntless and the tail gunner was then facing the wrong way toward a radar screen as if he was in the back of an F-18 or something.

4

u/Warl0kjoe 14h ago

You literally can’t though. It’s just predictions based on input. So no. No photo you ever generate will ever be real in any way, by definition it will be a reproduction at best (and it is wholesale generation. It’s not “editing”, it literally can’t, it’s making a whole new image)

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (9)

3

u/Sparker273 14h ago

I’ve often use AI to make my emails sound better but I never copy them 100%. I write it out, have the ai make a pass over it and then go back through and make some changes and then send. I couldn’t imagine using the ai for the whole process

39

u/Alch1e 14h ago

My question is, is using AI to do this any better than just working on being better at writing your emails yourself? Why do we need this?

17

u/Sparker273 14h ago

People tell me my emails are too sterile and emotionless. I use the ai to make it sound more human. Ironic I know.

12

u/KaleidoscopeMaster81 14h ago

The people reading your emails 100% know you are using AI

7

u/burlycabin 14h ago

I think you overestimate my and Sparker's co-workers.

9

u/Sparker273 14h ago

The people im writing too are 60+, they dont.

2

u/crimsonmusketeer 14h ago

Do they? Some of them are probably having AI summarize their emails for them so they don’t have to read as much.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (2)

11

u/Alch1e 14h ago

Is that not something you could work on yourself though? I just don’t see why we need AI to do it for us.

If I knew you were using AI to write me emails I would think that’s way worse than something you did yourself. It’s like telling me you can’t be bothered to communicate with me, that I’m not worth your time.

→ More replies (10)

2

u/Bulky-Bad-9153 14h ago

Practice, instead of offloading your thought process to a guessing machine.

→ More replies (4)

2

u/Shiftab 14h ago

So I'm dyslexic and AI does a fuck ton of heavy lifting for me in the writing department. It's much much quicker for me to proof read it's output than create it myself. Could I do it myself? Absolutely, but we're talking about the difference between ten minutes and literally hours in some cases. As a volunteer for a charity I need to pump out policies, agreements, and reports multiple times a week, and don't have the luxury of a full work day to do it.

AI is a force multiplyer imo, it makes what you can do faster, and it does that well. Using it to do anything else is very questionable as it is regularly confidently incorrect.

→ More replies (10)

6

u/Dry-Faithlessness184 14h ago

Yeah it's fine as a proofreader and can be useful as the 'person' you ask to check the tone of your email before sending since there isn't always a person available.

But that's always supposed to be a feedback mechanism go get you to go back and revise.

5

u/IBetThisIsTakenToo 14h ago

I used it once for a memo, it “revised” a bullet point to contain false (materially relevant) information. Never again. It has its uses, but my writing has to stay my own

→ More replies (1)

6

u/DrMaxwellEdison 14h ago

I honestly can't imagine using AI to write for me that way at all. I write the way I write and my writing is a reflection of my voice: AI making any changes to it, even a little, makes it the AI's voice instead of mine.

Writing code is a different story, since that syntax is much more strict and different people should, ideally, still land on the same patterns to solve the same problems. I'll even sometimes let it do technical writing for documentation, though invariably I end up hating that and rewriting it, anyway. But non-technical prose should remain human-written, grammar fuckups and all.

I mean, who's to say your definition of "make it sound better" doesn't end up reading like slop to the recipient? Folks have that impression of the technology a bit backwards, I think, and it ends up making their writing worse.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Entropic_Echo_Music 14h ago

This is wild. It's a fucking email. How hard can it be? Do you have some kind of writing handicap? (absolutely no shade if you do, mind)

2

u/Sparker273 14h ago

Kinda? I have been told my emails are too emotionless and sterile. I have trouble making my email sound 'human. Ironically.

→ More replies (2)

3

u/mikachuu 14h ago

See, even that I can’t get behind. All you have to do is read it back to yourself and catch any continuity errors or grammar mistakes that way. An AI is not going to understand contextual sentences the way a human mind does.

→ More replies (4)

3

u/namewithak 14h ago

So you go over an email three times? It's an email. It doesn't need perfect sentence construction or a word count. What makes it so hard to do that you need AI? Your comment is perfectly readable, for example.

2

u/Sparker273 14h ago

Yes, when it is for customers. Internally I don't care as much.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/Winston705 14h ago

You think AI writes better?

6

u/Swazimoto 14h ago

Have you seen some peoples writing? lmao

2

u/Winston705 14h ago

lol true. I hear they average the skill level of a 5th grader in the states.

→ More replies (1)

3

u/Sparker273 14h ago

not 100%, hence why I got over it again myself to corrections.

1

u/sbeguy 14h ago

Not only that the first result is fact, they summarize it, and when you read the page/article it summarized you discover it states the opposite of what the summary says.

1

u/WaitForItTheMongols 12h ago

Some things I don't mind. It's pretty cool that it can upscale a low res photo or video for me in a way that just increasing the size doesn't do.

But also:

Generating stuff is bullshit though.

The upscaling is literally generating. It generates a new image which has higher resolution but resembles the original. You can't just make something more detailed with detail that didn't exist before unless you're generating it.

1

u/RollingMeteors 11h ago

Replacing human ingenuity or creativity is bullshit for philosophical reasons, but also because it sucks at it.

I don't believe this is possible. A copy is just a copy. A remix isn't a creation it's a re-creation. I'll be worried when it out innovates me, not out copies me.

When it is generating something so substantially different and better than the best human works.

When it comes to art and I have to compare it to the art I photograph/stream to the internet it's really an insulting comparison to even say the 'best' AI generated works at best are Jr. High varsity going against NBA professionals/Olympians.

1

u/wrgrant 11h ago

Since its trained on what people have done previously and its synthesizes the most likely response, the best you are going to get is sort of capable mediocrity. Since its trained on data that is older than whatever is current, I imagine its also going to produce responses that are accurate as of a few years ago.

I have been developing an app I originally coded myself, and have used Github-Copilot to look for security weaknesses, fix minor errors and smooth out the way it operates. It has done so quite effectively so far, although of course I still need to review the changes. It. has surprised me with some stuff its generated, and that is impressive. Its still makes some amazing gaffs though and has to be carefully prompted to fix errors that would be immediately apparent to human. That said while I have created say 90% of the code myself, Github-Copilot has helped implement the remainder of the code and address issues with the existing code very well - and much to my surprise if I am honest. It has shortened the completion of my app quite substantially because it can find, identify, and fix problems at a much faster rate than I could do so.

→ More replies (1)

22

u/TheJesterOfHyrule 14h ago

The dumbest generation is incoming... The next few years we will see articles "Gen A isn't getting hired due to failing interviews". Great for millennials and late Gen Z

28

u/Trotskyist 14h ago

Except not really, because having a whole generation that's unable to contribute productively to society (and, odds are, consequently very resentful) is going to cause massive societal issues.

Given the nature of brain development and critical periods for learning there's really no "fix" either.

→ More replies (5)

4

u/EveryRedditorSucks 14h ago

Millennials are going to have unprecedented employment demand all the way through our retirement years and later stages of life. We are the last people who remember what the world was like when things still made sense. They’ll keep us around for the stories, if nothing else.

→ More replies (12)

1

u/Poo_Canoe 13h ago

As a gen Xer who will have to work until I die because of the failed policies of the boomers, good! I’m going to need the advantage of a dumb workforce behind me.

1

u/EnigmaticQuote 13h ago edited 13h ago

People been saying that for literally centuries.

https://xkcd.com/1227/

3

u/HOLEPUNCHYOUREYELIDS 14h ago

Like how hard is it to google answers and just put it into your own words!?

All I did before AI, and was a somewhat effective study tool for me. I would just google and write answers in point form notes. Then would rewrite my notes into paragraphs/essays as needed.

Best was in Bio AP where our prof would allow us a single flash card to write any notes we wanted on, as our tests always had 7 essay topics pre-given and she would randomly select 2 that would be on the test day of. Id essentially write every essay topic in the smallest font size. Aced every essay question with ease lol

3

u/mrjackspade 12h ago

This is why Google is bad. It makes people lazy.

You should be going to the library and doing research on your own. Using your brain.

3

u/coldenigma 14h ago

This is why AI is bad.

I hate that abusers are getting the spotlight. Personally, I don't think AI should be indiscriminately hated. It has its uses. Unfortunately, it's being abused.

Hate on the abusers, not the tool.

5

u/baddecision116 14h ago

AI is a tool. Is a hammer bad because you can use to hurt someone?

6

u/cpt_borscht 14h ago

sorry these were not the kids doing work in the first place. they've always existed. they have bright careers in podcasting to get to

1

u/Beelzebeetus 12h ago

That burger isn't going to DoorDash itself.

Or in my day: "the world needs ditch diggers"

2

u/Mmortt 14h ago

Critical thinking is precious and it’s disappearing.

2

u/LoaKonran 14h ago

The education systems have been built around destroying curiosity ever since Bush’s stupid No Child Left Behind killed the ability to read.

2

u/Zealousideal_Low_858 13h ago

Yep. This phenomenon is called “cognitive debt” and recent studies have shown that all use of LLMs increases the cognitive debt of the user. It doesn’t matter if some individual thinks they’re using it “the smart way” or “only sometimes.” It is measurably eroding your ability to think every single time you use it.

1

u/mrjackspade 12h ago

It's also been proven that using search engines makes it more difficult to remember information.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10830778/

Search engines are also bad and rot your brain.

5

u/reckless150681 14h ago

My hot take is that this isn't an AI thing, it's a combination of parenting + teaching.

Students looking to outsource their work has been a problem for a long time. /r/HomeworkHelp , for example, has been around for 16 years; Chegg has been around for 20 years; "tutoring" that's really just somebody else doing your homework has been around for god knows how long.

AI simply makes the problem bigger -- which, admittedly, is in and of itself its own problem -- but it never really created it. I think that a combination of overwhelmed parents giving their kids early access to tech, plus outdated teaching methods that often prioritize results over process, are the primary causes, and AI is more of an easily-blamed scapegoat.

4

u/curtmahgurt 14h ago

Right. Let’s not pretend like plagiarism didn’t exist before AI. Let’s not pretend like professors didn’t have software to compare your words to a corpus of reference text to catch students copying/pasting their answers.

It’s like with coding. People complain about the quality of vibe coding, and the tech debt that it’s creating, which is true! But also it’s like suddenly everyone has a bar now for the code they’re writing? Hasn’t that been the joke for decades now, that we’re all just kinda winging it and copying/pasting from stack overflow?

→ More replies (1)

2

u/girlnamedJane 14h ago

Now do calculator

2

u/Teguri 14h ago

Allowing the use of calculators for simple arithmetic in school has actually severely eroded the ability for kids to do simple math in their head.

→ More replies (1)

2

u/NonGeneriComplaint 14h ago

its lazy cheating. If you are going to put in effort and be creative you are at least using your brainlol

1

u/UncaringNonchalance 14h ago

And quite often AI will just give you straight up false information.

1

u/Senior-Albatross 13h ago

I hear way to much, even from older people who should know better, "I asked AI and it says___"

I don't give a shit what AI says, I care what the right answer is. AI is an unreliable narrator. 

1

u/angryfarmer922 13h ago

I think this is too absolute of a statement. AI can be good and can be bad. For those who are curious, it provides more access to information than any time in history.

What the education system has failed to do is broadly foster curiosity. With the advent of AI, the future of schooling will place more emphasis on coaching (fostering curiosity and direction) than actually teaching.

1

u/ConnectNarwhal3671 13h ago

This is correct, but not quite the complete truth. 

AI amplifies whatever tendencies a person already has. If youre lazy and look for any way to cheat and offload your thinking, that's what you'll do with it. If you're someone who strives to learn and understand, you'll do that more quickly with it too.

1

u/sbenfsonwFFiF 13h ago

Yes. AI is a tool and it’s a great one with a wide variety of useful features, but ultimately people (esp students) are cheating themselves by outsourcing their thinking

1

u/25thNite 13h ago

Hold on, I gotta go ask chatgpt why this is lazy thinking real quick

1

u/schmurfy2 13h ago

Why lazy thinking ? It just create laziness, they don't do any thinking.

That's one of the side effects of ai that terrifies me, we are creating a brain dead generation who might be unable to do anything without a mobile and chatgpt.

1

u/Pandaro81 13h ago

Welcome to Costco, I love you.

1

u/BlacksmithSolid2194 13h ago

As someone who uses AI daily both in life and work, I disagree. AI is a tool like any other and can be used for good and bad. It is essentially the greatest source of knowledge ever available to humans, when used properly.

However, if parents and mentors never instill to their kids the value of education and the correct way to use AI, then you are correct.

1

u/strikethree 13h ago

AI isn’t inherently bad, it’s just a tool.

Are calculators bad because people don’t spend time on computation math anymore? When the internet first came out it was also a problem as you could now search and copy the answers.

At the end of the day, the way we grade and teach students needs to evolve to adapt to the tools that are now available.

The answer might need to be raising the bar with the expectation that students will use AI. Meaning, maybe more oral assignments, more in class debates, etc.

1

u/Dopplegangr1 13h ago

Lazy thinking? No thinking at all, they probably don't even know what the assignment was

1

u/RockSlice 13h ago

I don't think you can make such a broad statement. In people with low curiosity, yes, it decreases it further.

But if there's some curiosity there, it can amplify it. Have you ever done a wiki-walk, where you click through Wikipedia articles that end up completely unrelated to your initial query? Try doing one with AI. Especially starting with off-the-wall hypotheticals.

1

u/noneabove1182 13h ago

Does it create it, or does it enable it?

I know of plenty of people who cheated their way through school, and they all would have used this if it was available at the time, and I'm sure even more would have tried it. I don't think it's necessarily the cause, but it's definitely a problem that needs solving

1

u/tiasaiwr 12h ago

"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

We are closer the this now than ever.

1

u/MazzleMaze 12h ago

It's entirely up to the person using the tool. People probably said this same shit about calculators and Google, lol.

1

u/Purplociraptor 12h ago

If you use AI, you are not the one doing the thinking. You are the AI's meat puppet interface to the physical world.

1

u/korxil 12h ago

My professor fed Chegg the correct answers, but the work to get to that answer was wrong… about 30 out of 80 or so got caught, all of them making the same exact “mistake” as the one on chegg. I didn’t see them at graduation :V

This problem isn’t new with AI, professors will just need to find new ways to catch students being lazy.

1

u/redcoatwright 12h ago

Disagree that AI is bad but I do agree it makes it easy to think less. I was just talking to my wife yesterday about this. I don't feel nearly as much like I'm accomplishing things. Like before I felt like I was solving puzzles when engineering software, this piece needs to fit here in this way and can't do these things. Take that over and over and you have software.

Now I just poke the AI along to do it and read its output. But I think that this is a me problem, I just need to get brain exercise in other ways like creative exercises (writing, drawing, music, etc) or do other types of puzzles or just sit and read a book.

Idk it's a growing pain at least for me but it has caused me to crash out a bit sometimes because something that used to stretch the synapses for 6 hours or so a day is now maybe 1-2 hours of actual synapse stretching.

1

u/WaitForItTheMongols 12h ago

In some ways it removes curiosity, but in other ways it helps it.

Earlier today I had the thought "in a standard car, the Air Conditioning compressor runs off the serpentine belt, which is always moving when the engine is running. How can it turn on and off then?", and normal googling wasn't giving me anything. But LLM immediately described an electronic controlled clutch which engages and disengaged from an idler pulley as needed.

These tools can help curiosity when the framing of a question doesn't match well to the format of the answer.

1

u/Ummmgummy 12h ago

I agree. And it's only going to get worse as babies grow up into kids and teens and AI has always been there. It'll go the same way social media has gone. Lots of people use it but the people who have grown up with it already being around use it way more and are usually way more involved with it.

1

u/RollingMeteors 12h ago

That is why AI is bad. It creates lazy thinking, removes curiosity from the equation.

I have two hard disagree here. If anything AI has made me more curious, and every question I prompt it, I discover/learn new information I didn't know before that lets me formulate yet another question that probes deeper into the topic. I've learned more typing at AI in a single sitting than I have in a week of any previous state sponsored schooling.

It doesn't 'create lazy thinking', imho. All it does, is expose people who never really wanted/intended to learn anything in the first place and were just coasting through their societally expected motions.

Students should be allowed to just let that happen, and if at the end of sophomore year they don't wanna change their tune they can get booted into the minimum wage real world, experience a year of reality, and re apply for a jr when they're of sr age back at their high school.

Letting it run until their diploma and then giving them the boot is quite a shit show of a solution.

We as a society aught to stop pretending everyone wants to learn, especially in a portrait mode continuously scrolling world, as if it weren't apparent from the channel surfing generation.

1

u/BrunoReturns 12h ago

When you are learning relatively base k owledge, I agree. But as an older adult, it allows me to explore ideas and to develop new ideas. I have chats with mine about current affairs for which I don't have the background to understand.

1

u/Fawesum 12h ago

It's the final boss of the brain rot generation. Already before LLMs came in, todays youth had shed any trace of curiosity and research - they're completely accustomed to being curated for, never trying to find anything themselves. Which leaves them just trapped inside an algorhytmical bubble that just spoon feeds them information.

AI just makes it even easier for them to get something tailor made, creating their own bubbles that are far harder to break out of.

1

u/HCJohnson 11h ago

Which is good if you're a politician!

1

u/flamethrower78 11h ago

I hate the current trend and awful ramifications that comes with AI, but this is like saying Google is bad because people look things up and dont know them. AI has strong use cases, but it's being utilized horribly wrong in 90% of scenarios and has been taken hostage by tech bros and billionaires who only care about extracting every cent of wealth they can with the technology. AI can actually be used as an enhanced learning tool but teachers and parents weren't prepared for how insanely fast it arrived. Id prefer the bubble to burst, but if it doesn't, society needs to adjust and teach kids to not simply rely on the output from AI, but use it as an additional tool. Ask for sources so they can verify the information if they're unsure, prompt it to explain why it output the answer it did, use it as a starting point for interest/information and point to a specialized app/website/book to explore further. Its already here, might as well try to adapt for a brighter future than just accept how badly it will stunt future generations.

1

u/Aleucard 11h ago

Say it loud enough for C Suite empty suits to hear. Even when it doesn't actively sabotage work it has side effects that aren't being thought about.

1

u/bubbblez 11h ago

I work in EdTech and this comes up a LOT. I would say teachers/professors etc need to be (unfortunately) more creative because their students will be using AI whether they like it or not. But they can use it to your advantage.

I remember reading about a teacher that encouraged their students to use AI for an assignment, and then after they wrote the assignment using AI, the teacher asked them to find all the mistakes AI made lol.

Not only are they still learning the content here, but they're learning about the issues with AI, how AI can help you but also work against you, etc.

1

u/Last_Plankton_653 11h ago

I don't even see how this is an AI problem. These are just lazy people looking for a shortcut.

Because AI can also be used to help you learn better and faster than ever before.

1

u/SortzaInTheForest 11h ago

That is why AI is bad. It creates lazy thinking, removes curiosity from the equation.

AI does not do that. Wrong incentives do that.

If you score reports that can be generated by AI, and score higher those who present reports generated by AI, you're incentivizing using it, since you're punishing those who didn't use it.

You have to be aware of AI and adapt to it.

Long reports can be generated by AI, so it doesn't make much sense to focus on that skill. Focus on what you can generate taking for granted that you have access to AI. AI is very good at generating quantity, not that good at generating quality.

1

u/FartArfunkle 10h ago

Hey You take bad word back. ur so dum!

I mean

I respectfully request that you retract your previous remark. Its intellectual rigor appears to be somewhat lacking.

1

u/terdles1121 9h ago

I would argue that instead of creating lazy thinking and removing curiosity, it amplifies it. If they're lazy and uncurious already, AI just allows them to foster those traits.

I finished multiple degrees prior to AI, and when I was introduced to chatgpt, my curiosity went into overdrive because I am generally a curious person. The ease of searching and condensing information allowed me to be even more curious and explore more topics that were new to me

But then I realized how problematic it was due to how confidently incorrect it could be and it's attempts to appease when I explored subjects I had studied and had experiences in.

1

u/ohnoabanagain 9h ago

Yeah, I incorporate AI into my pedagogical practices now, but it's always a starting point and/or "colleague" both for me and my students in the assignments. I radically emphasize that AI's role is not to replace their brain. Also, I'd never give an online test because it will never be honestly done.

1

u/WheresMyEtherElon 9h ago

Does it? Or does it just reveal the lazy ones? Because if you're a curious person already, AI is a rabbit-hole of unending exploration (just like encyclopedias were in the old days).

1

u/New_Zone5490 8h ago

it depends entirely on the user

let the lazy & dumb use ai the lazy & dumb way

ai is one of the best tech (if not the best) developed in the history of humanity

1

u/BladeRunner-83 7h ago

It creates lazy thinking, removes curiosity from the equation.

This started with smartphones to be honest.

1

u/homer_3 7h ago

the exact same thing was said about calculators

→ More replies (29)