this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
864 points (98.5% liked)
Fuck AI
7048 readers
2050 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'm in postgrad study at the moment and the amount of university students that rely on ChatGPT for 80%+ of their assignment/project work has really shaken my trust in the current gen coming out of higher education.
This is after the unit lecturers have each belaboured the point that GenAI must be 'used responsibly and with care to triple-check any output is valid and understood - and that any confirmed plagiarism or hallucinated references are an 'instant zero' on assignments.
They don't care. It's easier than reading textbooks and thinking.
(All this to say - I don't think #QuitChatGPT will have any affect on those using it regularly, regardless of their morals)
I swear I don't understand college students who work so hard not to learn.
It's like they want to get as little education for their money as possible.
The purpose of college today isn't to learn, it's to get a degree.
Also undergraduate content can often be found on the internet and self-studied for much cheaper than a degree, but it won't give you the resume credential and network for getting a job
College is also the time to network because as young adults realize, its not what you know but who you know.
Because being more intelligent than before isn't the point anymore. It's to get a $50k certificate that says you can do jobs unrelated to what you studied. It's shows that you are breakable and thus likely to be a good worker.
Ah, the good old days.
I mean you can probably still pull of a State University at $50k a year, right? I graduated highschool in 2010 so my data is definitely out of date but how much can a public school cost!?
According to US News & World Report, the national average cost of in-state tuition is $12,436 and the national average cost of out-of-state tuition is $29,815. So it sure is possible (on average), but just barely. I also randomly checked Florida State University and their tuition is $6,517 for in-state and $21,683 for out-of-state students so it's a relative bargain.
three's a VAST range in there and fsu is not a good school.
the real point of college is even less about the paper and more about the networking. that's what you pay for at a good school.
Because they're not going to college to learn, they're going to get a degree. The prevailing mentality is "I'm paying for this so that I can go through the motions and graduate so that I'll meet the minimum qualifications for an entry level position."
It's a result of the commodification of education: treating universities like a business rather than as centers of learning. Everything's transactory.
Professors are afraid to fail students because the administration wants the best retention ratings, and cause bad reviews might mean they lose their jobs.
Oh, and because expecting college students to actually learn something is elitist, apparently...
Don't get caught forming coherent thoughts in complete sentences with proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. Someone might accuse you of being petite bourgeois and get your professor fired for playing favorites...
This doesn’t match with my experience at a state school at all, lol. I get whether I put a period before or after my citation picked apart. Is this how students at private schools get treated?
I don't know, I went to a community college. I don't know what grades other people got on their essays, but sometimes we did peer revisions and I saw the quality of other people's writing. They called me racist and elitist if I made too many grammar corrections, so I can only imagine what they said about the professor when they get a bad grade because I stopped correcting their grammar during proofreading.
There's also this thing that sometimes happens where the professor adjusts for privilege in grading. The effect is that I would get a B+ or an A- for having a couple typos, but someone who can barely spell or formulate a complete sentence might get the same grade as me or even better.
And if I get an A in the class or on a test I have to keep it a secret or all my classmates will hate me and claim it was because of white supremacy or some shit.
I’m going to a community college in California right now and that doesn’t match my experience at all. These were announced grading policies?
More like undercurrents in the student body that professors had to be aware to avoid being slandered on exit surveys and ratemyprofessor
Weird, do you feel like sharing generally where this is? I’ve corrected grammar in my English writing classes plenty of times as part of peer review, even (gently) corrected another student on how they were using a racially insensitive term, despite the fact I’m white and they weren’t without it being an issue (they were an international student and we had been reading some stuff from the 1800s that used outdated terms).
For other classes I’ve had a mix of whether or not the professors care about grammar, but those that do have always been upfront about how to get in contact with free tutors on campus to check your work.
RMP is a crapshoot anyway on how useful it is; one terrible prof at my school is constantly leaving really obvious 5 star reviews for himself to override the hordes of people going DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THIS CLASS!!, while a fantastic professor I have has close to the same middling rating because she does a class that qualifies for fulfilling a gen ed requirement, and people who are uninterested in it just don’t like the class.
Unless you’re in college for STEM, every degree is just a piece of paper with very little educational value behind it. You start learning after the degree, once you get the job that you need the degree to get.
Even then
Even STEM bachelor's degrees can be a little iffy. I finished my undergrad and felt like what I truly learned was how little I knew.
The thing about a college education is that you absorb a lot of information that you don't really think about.
I'm no smarter than I was in high school, but I know a fuckton more. I just can't itemize what it is I've learned.
College used to be optional. Most people didn't go, you went there because you wanted to learn, or you wanted to go into a particular field that required higher knowledge.
Now, college is just a paywall that gets in the way of having a normal job that can pay you an ok amount of money if you're lucky. This is especially true now for when it comes to the prerequisites. Kids aren't there for knowledge. It's so they can get a job. No one cares about those college level English courses being forced on them when they're going to end up as middle management at an insurance agency. Especially now, when their PC will tell them their grammar sucks before they send out that email.
When I was in college, I did some TA work helping to run labs. This particular lab was a general chemistry lab for the health care track, nurses, doctors, etc. This girl walks up to me, deadpan, and asks "What does 'M-L' mean?" She was asking what milliliter meant. I shit you not, that has scared me about ever going to a hospital for anything more serious than a cold.
Lol yes that is worrying. She could have just been having a brainfart though.. Everyone has those sometimes.
I've been to hospital quite a bit (visiting and assisting people mostly) and the standards have been very high for nurses, doctors, technicians etc. I hope that can comfort you somewhat.
It’s gonna be like when cell phones got popular and suddenly no one could remember anyone’s phone number anymore, but this time it will be that they can’t remember anything
I think my brother's has like, a 6 in it? Maybe an ampersand...?
"Was there a 'niner' in there? Were you calling from a walkie-talkie?"
"I'm sure it ended with 'Bravo Indiana'"
This is disheartening to hear. Why would you pay $60k-$100k in tuition alone only to waste the paid opportunity?
It’s like buying a new Toyota Tacoma, slashing the tires, draining the radiator, and then taking it out for a spin and expecting a quality drive.
Sure is disheartening and I don't much understand it beyond 'path of least resistance'. I'm not in the US though, I'm in Australia and our university fees are far lower for citizens.
I'll add that it's not universal, and I haven't met nor worked with all the students in my course as there's hundreds. But so far in my experience it's the international students (China, Malaysia, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Philippines) that have GenAI most ingrained in their workflows - its just presumed by them that everyone is using ChatGPT for their work in assignments. Conversely, I have worked with a German international student who wants very little to do with GenAI (like myself).
Worth mentioning that the international students pay 'full fees' for the courses, no government assistance like citizens - that means they pay 5-6 times as much for their courses, so I would have thought they'd have additional motivation to get value from their time studying, but that doesn't seem to be the reality of the situation.
Perhaps this isn't obvious to you but higher education, while valuable, has long just been a rubber stamp.
Many grads don't work on their feild of study and many people are just trying to get the paper so they can get a job.
It's been like this for 30 years.
I use my degrees at work. In fact, had I not paid attention I would have long since been fired, sued, or placed in prison. Possibly all three. Though, low odds on graduating at all.
Rubber stamp or not, the information remains disheartening.
I was using Notability and it let me have a preview of that, and I tried it on a ~40+ page reading I had for class. I feel like it worked well at picking out trivia (‘what is the definition of x’, ‘who did this thing’, etc), but it felt pretty shallow. If you’re preparing for a multiple choice quiz or refamiliarizing yourself with something then I’d say it’s probably okay, but if you’re studying for the essay portion of a test it’s not enough.
AI is helpful for free response in my experience and I get better grades than most of my class by using it to study (specifically I have OpenCode set up with all of the course material downloaded and accessible). It's not really logically coherent and makes mistakes a lot, so you have to think about the information it's giving you which ironically improves its study utility.
I think it'll have an effect. I've only used chatgpt and copilot for some LISP routines and excel macros but from the people I know who use them a lot more, chatgpt SUUUCCCKKKSSS and this might convince people to at least check out the competitors and see how much better they are