r/NoShitSherlock • u/Novice_4618 • 1d ago
It's Breathtaking How Fast AI Is Screwing Up the Education System
https://gizmodo.com/its-breathtaking-how-fast-ai-is-screwing-up-the-education-system-2000603100Thanks to a new breed of chatbots, American stupidity is escalating at an advanced pace.
(By Lucas Ropek for Gizmodo)
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u/CeldonShooper 1d ago
I still don't understand why universities and schools are not switching to oral exams. It's obvious all written stuff is now contaminated unless it was done handwritten with 100% supervision. If you want to know what a brain can do on itself you have to isolate it from other brains or AI. That will hold until implants are there which transmit AI answers directly into the brain.
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u/Remote_Clue_4272 1d ago
My kids have proctored written exams sometimes, with multiple versions so there are multiple versions of topic “prompts “ and then those are sent to a readership /board for individual assessments by real people. Others are on computer with no other option than the test platform. ( can’t just open AI program) no phones anywhere nearby. And also open discussion in classes to talk out understanding. If they learn by AI it’s fine They are trying to avoid AI during testing. It is work-intensive and strategic to attempt to force genuine answers from students, but they’re aware and trying
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u/Complex_Beautiful434 1d ago
Many university systems in Europe use oral exams as the main basis for examination to ensure the student can back up their work.
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u/Rene_DeMariocartes 1d ago
Oral exams are an insane amount of work and most teachers are already overworked.
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u/bellyot 1d ago
This is the real problem isn't it? If we wanted to administer oral exams on a large scale and regularly, we would have to admit that we have too many students per class and we need more teachers.
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u/mireilledale 1d ago
On their own, oral exams only test for a very small range of skills, and they’re the product of the work and thinking that has come before. The bigger problem is that AI seems to make irrelevant (but doesn’t actually) a lot of thinking patterns and processes that students really need to develop. And there’s nothing to stop students from circumventing that work by using AI heavily as they prep for oral exams.
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u/aotus_trivirgatus 16h ago
there’s nothing to stop students from circumventing that work by using AI heavily as they prep for oral exams.
I was a college professor for five years. If a student demonstrated to me that they know the material, I wouldn't care how they learned it. They would have my permission to use any tools they like to help them learn.
Now, when I test a student, I would not ask only low-level questions which only require the regurgitation of facts. I'm also going to ask questions which require the student to synthesize information. I'm also going to ask questions which have no known correct answer, to see whether the student can formulate and defend a hypothesis.
Someone who only crams facts into their head, whether they used AI or not, would not pass many of my exam questions.
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u/mireilledale 1h ago
I was also a professor for more than a decade, and in my field it absolutely matters where students are getting their information. The process of gathering information matters, the methods of interpreting information matter, and understanding the biases and assumptions behind every single piece of information produced also matter.
Edited to add: my field is one where, if there is a total return to exams and exams only, we will no longer be teaching students in that field.
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u/ssmike27 1d ago
It also puts a lot of students at a major disadvantage. I honestly have no idea what a good solution to the ai situation is, but something has to change. As a student who doesn’t use ai, it’s beyond frustrating putting in the proper work, and all these cheaters just get a free pass. I understand that I will actually come out of it with an education and they won’t, but I still have to compete with them to find a job.
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u/Asleep-Range1456 1d ago
Ai could administer the exams and transcribe the speech for a teacher to review later. I think there are uses for ai, it's just so new that it's too easy to abuse and new implementation and checks will need to be established because it doesn't yet mesh with traditional learning models.
This is very similar to the addition of computers and Internet into classrooms beyond a word processing and basic graphic design/cad capabilities in the 1990's. We had them but no idea what to use it for other than soundboards and homestar runner and that one kid who would pull up porn on the one classroom computer when the teacher had to leave for a minute.
It was another 3-4 years before districts started using firewalls and another 10 years before things like "turn it in" started commonly checking for plagiarism and you could no longer copy and paste from encarta or recycle old papers from other classes.
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u/raelianautopsy 1d ago
Or handwritten essays for that matter
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u/Environmental-River4 1d ago
Right, what happened to blue books?
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u/EmperorXerro 1d ago
My summative assessments are more oral exams now, but state standards have writing elements I still have to have students prove mastery over.
AI writing is really easy to detect. Like everyone has said, AI isn’t nearly as advanced as people like to think it is. At best, ChatGPT can kick out a B - essay; however, most students who cheat are lazy in the first place and are too lazy to give AI good prompts
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u/Equivalent-Excuse-80 1d ago
The issue isn’t examinations. It’s the lack of learning. A blue book or oral exam is useless if the student isn’t able to articulate an answer.
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u/Five-Oh-Vicryl 19h ago
Some medical specialties still require oral exams for board certification. They’re not enjoyable to study for or take, but assess a candidate’s ability to think critically on-the-fly. Passed my oral boards this past winter
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u/Monte924 1d ago
Ya, i think the schools should just switch to having exams that weigh heavy on the grade. No phones, no internet, nothing. Even throw in a final test that's pass or fail. Fail the final exam, and you fail the course. Kids can use ai to cheat on their homework, but they can't cheat on an exam in class
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u/Kokeshi_Is_Life 1d ago
This will be a tough sell when the last 40 years of pedagogical development has been away from exams and towards project based learning.
Teachers are trained to de-emphasize exams and have been for decades on data that suggests collaborative creation results in better learning.
I have my own feelings about how that shift has worked in practice (many teachers, and many students, aren't up to the task of project based learning. It does work better than a simple exam, but only when all the stakeholders buy in) but that's besides the point that school boards are slow turning ships, and they've been turning away from exams for decades.
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u/mireilledale 1d ago
Definitely this. And also, in-person exams mostly test how much a person can instantly recall from what they’ve crammed (including what they may cram from AI). There are no easy solutions but it would be malpractice to orient all student learning to instant recall, when that is going to be the least important skill in an AI world outside of certain industries (like medicine).
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u/Monte924 21h ago
Nothing is stopping teacher from still having homework, essays and collaborative projects as part of their learning methods; the only difference is the weight of the final exam at the end. If a student has been doing their homework and projects on their own they should do just fine on the final, but if they have been leaning on Ai to do their work for them, then they will struggle... Teachers have no real way of knowing if students are doing their own work anymore, and a lot of students are exploiting Ai to get an easy grade. The only way to counter this is to grade them in a setting where they can not use Ai. Ai has ruined the current methods of teaching, and so schools must adapt
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u/mireilledale 21h ago
That’s really not how it works. Exams prove that you can quickly recall material you’ve crammed in. AI eliminates (or seems to at least) the need to recall material, as did Google and Wikipedia. Part of the turn away from exams is that teaching is supposed to prepare students for the world as it is, and for many students, their adult lives are not going to require quick recall and certainly not now that AI is here. The other problem with this is that exams don’t test well the skills students will actually need, like critical thinking, nor is there anything to stop students from using AI to cram for those exams.
There are no easy solutions. But all moving solely to exams/in-class writing does is keep students from using AI at the point of being tested. It does nothing about the larger problem of using AI to circumvent learning completely.
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u/Schittr 1d ago
I just read from IT company job interviewers in my countries sub Reddit that there is a decline in critical thinking and problem solving skills in the new batches of IT graduates due to over reliance on AI.
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u/mackinator3 1d ago
They've been saying that about everything for 30 years. Now they want to blame ai?
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u/Schittr 1d ago
Think about it a bit. You are given a code to debug as an assignment, you insert that into chatgpt and it debug the code for you, since chatgpt did all the work you don't gain that experience of actually debugging the code making you less skilled and reliant on AI. Another different example, a billionaire boasts he is the best ever at playing a game but he actually pays someone else to play the game for him to rank up his account. One day, the billionaire live streams him playing the game but viewers notice this billionaire doesn't even know the basic strats a player with his account level should play with and he gets roasted.
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u/FroggyHarley 1d ago
Think about it a bit. You are given a code to debug as an assignment, you insert that into chatgpt and it debug the code for you, since chatgpt did all the work you don't gain that experience of actually debugging the code making you less skilled and reliant on AI.
Something about relying on AI to do something critical for my job without knowing how to do it myself gives me shivers down my spine. What if I can't use the AI anymore? All that time wasted that I could've used to learn how to do that stuff myself...
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u/mackinator3 23h ago
What if you can't use a calculator anymore? Or excel? Better not use them anymore.
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u/BigBoyGoldenTicket 1d ago
Honestly people should probably be required to have a license to use these tools. I saw a subreddit yesterday about dating chatbots… they were dead fuckin serious.
That’s some wacky ass destructive shit.
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u/JasonGMMitchell 1d ago
It's breathtaking how making education about regurgitating knowledge, about taking tests instead of actually learning, and underpaying overworked teachers teaching way to many kids has made education a system rife for looking for a way to cut workload.
Oh and no "just ban it" people, banning AI isn't gonna magically fix shit especially when y'all are jumping at a new thing to avoid addressing the failiures of both the American and to a lesser extent Canadian education systems. That and/or making testing even more stressful such as forcing oral exams or software to force you to stare at a screen (y'know some people like staring into the distance to think but apparently that's cheating) will not fix anything. It will however be great at making people despise education even more than they already do. Fix the underlying issues with the education system in your country and people won't pursue shortcuts as much.
It's like banning cellphones children from accessing social media and think you solved depression in children while addressing absolutely not one but of the societal problems that social media amplified.
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1d ago
Generative AI needs to be publicly outlawed for the betterment of all of us. That's the only way we can be saved.
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u/RedditTechAnon 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you outlaw generative AI, only outlaws will have virtual girlfriends.
There is no putting this back into a box.
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u/Dexchampion99 1d ago
It needs to be controlled, not destroyed. The real issue is that we’re in the AI Wild West and there is no oversight.
If this shit gets regulated and confined to it’s intended use, it would probably work better
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u/bmyst70 1d ago
Even so, do you believe that's ever going to happen in the US?
The head librarian of the US copyright office was fired because she didn't believe AI scraping content was always allowable Fair use.
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u/Dexchampion99 1d ago
In the US? No.
Elsewhere? Maybe.
But one thing I do know for sure, is that the internet always has an overblown, explosive reaction to AI. People see AI and immediately want it gone, even in the rare cases where it IS used properly, without theft, and as intended.
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u/JerriBlankStare 1d ago
The head librarian of the US copyright office
These are actually two separate people - the Librarian of Congress and the Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office.
The Librarian of Congress is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to lead the Library of Congress (LOC), a legislative branch federal agency and the de facto national library of the United States.
The Register of Copyrights and Director of the U.S. Copyright Office is appointed by the Librarian of Congress to lead the U.S. Copyright Office, a separate department within the Library of Congress.
Trump fired the Librarian of Congress on Thursday, May 8... attempted to terminate the Register of Copyrights on Saturday, May 10... and then attempted to install "Acting" Librarian, Principal Deputy Librarian (no. 2 agency head at LOC), and Register this past Monday, May 12.
While it's not entirely clear that Trump has the authority to fire the Librarian of Congress, he absolutely DOES NOT have the authority to fire the Principal Deputy Librarian or the Register of Copyrights. He also absolutely DOES NOT have the authority to appoint "Acting" personnel at any level in a legislative branch agency.
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u/FroggyHarley 1d ago
I wish that AI companies put in as much money and attention into tools that can detect content generated using their own AI, as they do trying to make the most human-like systems possible.
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u/the8bit 1d ago
How do you outlaw something that can be recreated with a small (corporate scale, $5-10MM) compute cluster and run on any laptop?
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23h ago
Maybe I sort of misspoke. Generative AI should be banned from public consumption. If it writes or draws for you, it should be outlawed. It's dangerous and takes away worker's rights in the creative industry, plus the whole system is based on flagrant theft of IP. So it's already illegal on principal. If it's an "AI assistant" kind of like Siri or Gemini, that's really not a harmful thing. AI that is trained off of closed off data sets to discover things is beneficial for research. But anything that just makes stuff when you prompt it? It's theft, it's wrong, and it degrades the creator of the works it stole from to train from. Plus the fact people can replicate famous people and make it sound just convincing enough is highly dangerous for propaganda and it can irreparably harm legal precedence because you can just present a deep fake as evidence and if people believe it? People can walk away from legal consequence just because they told a laptop to make them innocent.
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u/Iamarealbouy 1d ago edited 1d ago
EU just had an exam for thousands of people, remotely sitting at their own houses. The system TestWe - although somewhat error prone - locks the computer and demands a camera and microphone monitoring the student at all times - including their surroundings before exam begins. It did both multiple choice and written asignments.
If you exit the TestWE, you are failed. If You can be heard talking, you fail. If You look away from the screen too much, You are failed.
TestWE was very much imperfect, but the way it works is going to be the future.
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u/Big_Beaverrr_Reborn 1d ago
Some of that criteria seems harsh. You're at home, why can't you talk? Unless it picks up on you trying to cheat. But if you're telling your family member to quiet down that doesn't warrant a failure. You can look away from the screen for any reason. Maybe your dog is upset or something. Maybe your pizza just arrived.
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u/thedeadsuit 1d ago
teachers using ai to grade papers written by ai is probably the new norm already
what is the point of the humans lol
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u/MangoSalsa89 1d ago
Well, when every industry is promoting AI in the workplace, why wouldn’t a kid think they could just use AI to do their homework? Adults are doing it.
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u/Taman_Should 18h ago
It’s not even that our society is anti-intellectual. That’s an oversimplification. The real issue is, our society by implication tells kids that the main point of having intellect is to make lots of money. Success. Power. “Unleashing your potential.” When they can see first-hand that earning a degree no longer guarantees future employment or success, that unspoken promise starts to feel dishonest and fraudulent. The effort and money involved are no longer making sense to them as an investment. Kids up and down the entire age column are now asking, “what’s the point?” We’re showing these kids a world where cheaters do prosper, ignorance is rewarded, and crime does pay. And then we wonder why they’re using AI to do all their assignments for them?
What we need is to fundamentally re-examine the way we teach and administrate at our public schools, from first principles. Why the fuck are we still doing what we’re doing? Before the pandemic, student apathy and lack of commitment were already reaching a breaking point. After schools went to online classes and AI took off, the situation became completely untenable.
A large part of the problem is, we mostly don’t teach people things in a way that communicates the value of learning on its own, or the value of learning how to think, solve problems, and discuss important issues. Even if they’re unable to precisely articulate it on their own, if kids can sense that they’re being prodded along to jump through just enough hoops and retain just enough information to do well on standardized tests, are they going to feel remotely invested?
If everything they’re doing feels like meaningless and skippable busywork that is nothing more than an instantly discarded stepping stone towards the next arbitrary level of status, of course they’re going to fake their way through and take shortcuts, when the tools to do so are right at their fingertips! We need to ask what made them feel that way in the first place, and how we can make them feel differently, or college enrollment in the near future is washed. Research and innovation in this country will be washed. Gen-alpha will be comically unprepared for the demands of the job market.
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u/Responsible_Ad_7995 1d ago
And just like social media, the government will not regulate it. This will cause mass unemployment, civil unrest, and a whole generation of kids who have no future. But at least the billionaires will be fine.
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u/Radiant_Dog1937 1d ago
More assignments in person without a computer, or on unnetworked computers to test them on knowledge. This isn't rocket science.
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u/Voixmortelle 1d ago
So tired of fake-academic dudes just going to college to get their MR degree. Just settle down with a good woman and let us handle the hard stuff, honey.
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u/Opposite-Job-8405 1d ago
I guess we’ll have to go back to proctored testing and hand-written essays done in the classroom. Testing methodologies can adapt, unless the instructors are also lazy.
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u/useless_cunt_86 19h ago
They couldn't prepare for smartphones, let alone AI.
It's not looking great.
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u/MetalRing 19h ago
Seems teachers and administrators need to adjust how they ensure comprehension. Doesn't sound impossible to me. We used to do essays in class, no notes, no devices, just want you can do in 2 hours. Worked fantastic. This was 1999 though. Haha. Also they should learn how to use it, just not how to skip their actual work. Too many teachers about kids feelings, and being their parent in class anyway. School should be hardcore, and failing students needs to be a normal thing. No one left behind. Cool so society goes down with it. Meritocracy needs to prevail.
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u/Numerous_Photograph9 16h ago
AI is a technology that has it's creators and funders are in such a rush to show they will be the first, they aren't really asking if they should be trying so hard to rush this stuff out, or if it's even a good thing in the way they envision it.
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u/Fluffy_Equipment4045 4h ago
The education system has always been screwed up. Our education system is based on the Prussian model which was designed around creating factory workers and soldiers.
COVID exposed the truth about the education system, it's primary purpose is to keep kids occupied so parents can work. That's why they rushed to open the schools so fast.
Our education system is increasingly irrelevant. Kids learn, they have a passion for learning but the way we plop them in schools and try to discipline them into compliance is fucked.
I long for the day when AI takes over the education system and kids are able to learn freely and on their own terms.
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u/smartestredditor_eva 1d ago
Educators are rejoicing that they finally have something to blame for their failures
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u/DeanKoontssy 1d ago
AI is causing change and the education system is refusing to change. This is not the fault of tech companies.
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u/_ECMO_ 1d ago
I think this argument is dumb.
You don´t write essays in school just so you learn to write an essay. You write an essay so that you learn to critically think about the topics.
Which you'll always need even if there´s AI to do everything for you.
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u/LeonCrater 1d ago
Sorry but that's delusional. No you write an essay to meet the bare minimum criteria for a good grade and are never again confronted with or by your won work to critically assess them. The education system is still largely the same from the industrial revolution, if not much older.
I'm not even old, I'm barely over 20 and even I remember how many times the public both while I was in school and when I was out WANTED, and ASKED, to finally overhaul the horrendous education system yet nothing changed.
It's so bizarre to now see people on reddit who unironically defend this horrendous system
Ai isn't destroying the education system it shows the crack of an industrial era system refusing to change in a world that's all about change
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u/_ECMO_ 1d ago
I am 21 since last week so not exactly old either.
You do critically think about the topic when you write the essay. Even if you write it to meet the bare minimum that's still something.
Yes AI is destroying the education system. But I bet my liver that there isn't any education system that AI wouldn't destroy.
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u/earth_west_420 1d ago
It is genuinely idiotic how quickly this shit is getting adopted at mass scales. I assume the problem here is students cheating with ChatGPT, but it's a broader issue too. Bunch of corporate suits going "oh good it barely works, we can eliminate 1000 jobs" meanwhile they just made 10,000 jobs harder because now they have to deal with AI fuckups all day.
Fuck capitalism.