In my masters course they implemented rules around AI use. Some assignments permit AI use up to a point, but you have to sign a declaration in which you define exactly how you used it and exhaustively document your process, including all inputs and outputs.
Last year another student was freaking out about this new rule, she didn't understand what they were asking. I tried to explore with her what her process was with using AI in her assignments, where its involvement began and ended in each step of assignment writing.
She honestly could not understand the questions, no matter how I approached it. I might as well have been asking her about her decision making process behind how she digests her food.
I had the horrifying realisation that she couldn't answer because she has no concept of PROCESS anymore, the sequential steps of researching and writing an assignment have vanished into the black box of the AI. Even if she is making choices along the way around what to emphasise, de-emphasise, restructure, cut, and add, those options are all suggested and executed BY chatgpt. She just feeds it with the marking rubric, criteria, and core texts and then lets it guide her towards an outcome.
This is somebody who, by her own admission, finished her undergrad just a few years ago right before AI became prominent. Since then she's surrendered her entire learning process to an LLM.
I sit in lectures and watch people in the rows ahead use AI to explain the readings for the next class to them.
I'm seeing students use AI to answer questions that are asking them to introspect on how their own life experiences, value systems and ethics inform their responses to the course material.
What fucking hope do we have of not winding up in the worst dystopias imagined when we've gone beyond tech oligarchs simply controlling the information available, we're now also handing over our very processes of learning, synthesizing, and applying this information.
And I'm treated like I'm paranoid for thinking this is a bit worrying.
2087
stormborns
yousharknotpass
