Cheating is lying, a breaking of God’s 9th commandment. Christian students ought not cheat with the help of AI (or in any way), even though it will mean falling behind their cheating classmates. In the long run, such faithfulness will put them ahead.
Do we fear God?
[The same applies to pastors who use AI to produce sermons]
I’m reading many articles about the AI crisis in higher education.
I agree with your general point, but I think the article is pointing to something much bigger: If everyone can carry a college sophomore around in his pocket (I have heard chat bots compared to college sophomores), then of what use is a flesh-and-bones college sophomore?
The assembly line model of college education may need to evolve back to a more medieval model of small group sessions with medieval technology, oral examinations, etc. I’m actually pretty shocked that schools are still assigning take-home essays. It took me about 10 minutes of using ChatGPT to figure out that the take-home essay needed to be (essentially) sunsetted in favor of a return to the blue book exam.
Frankly I think that the professors need to take responsibility for the fact that they are making it so easy to cheat. They are making suckers out of the honest students and that is no way to run a university.
The professors would have to not be cheating themselves. “Publish or perish” would have to end. The system is problematic from top to bottom.
What’s the positive side of this? Could the crisis lead to the downfall or reformation of universities? Isn’t this again revealing the corruption of the modern universities? Might we get interesting again in education?
The old adage, “You can’t cheat an honest man” goes through my head a lot these days. It’s not true 100% of the time, but it’s true often enough to give me pause about lots of things.
We can hope. Our ancestors packed more into a typical 8th grade education than we can fit into a typical 12th grade education, and university these days seems mostly to be a place to learn things our ancestors would have considered pretty ordinary for a 12th grade education. It seems like the whole sector has been underperforming for generations now.
Regarding universities, this may be of interest:
As for AI, @dtcoughlin gave a good illustration: he saw two women at the gym recently, they were on the treadmills, except one was walking on it, the other had her feet on the sides and let the tread zoom under her. At the end both of them ‘went’ the same number of miles, but one woman got exercise and built up muscles while the other did not.
Did I get that right, Daniel?
Did I get that right, Daniel?
Exactly. This article from Chronicle of of Higher Education uses a similar exercise analogy:
It is easy to explain to students that offloading an assignment to ChatGPT creates no more benefit for their intellect than moving a barbell with a forklift does for their strength.
…
“Learning results from what the student does and thinks,” as the great educational theorist Herbert Simon once noted, “and only as a result of what the student does and thinks.” The assignment itself is a MacGuffin, with the shelf life of sour cream and an economic value that rounds to zero dollars. It is valuable only as a way to compel student effort and thought. (emphasis added)
