Althouse: "The videos are all over social media... Go ahead and let A.I. do your homework — with the latest technology, you won’t get caught...."

June 19, 2026

"The videos are all over social media... Go ahead and let A.I. do your homework — with the latest technology, you won’t get caught...."

"Humanizers rewrite A.I.-produced text to make it sound less robotic, formulaic and trite. Autotypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact, they were produced by A.I. They even fabricate typos, deletions and revisions. Both tools can help students evade software designed to detect A.I.... In some cases, the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat...."

From "Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era/Big tech companies and small start-ups are using social media to hype new tools that allow students to trick teachers and A.I. detectors" (NYT).

82 comments:

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...: Very simple. Hand written in cursive.

The problem? None of the damned teachers can even read cursive these days. Back to blue-book exams.; 6/19/26, 9:39 AM
Shouting Thomas said...: At the extreme edge of this, Musk says that the formal brick and mortar school system is obsolete. You can learn anything on the internet. And, remember, AI is going to “take your job!” [sarc intended] What if the job you’re grinding away toward in the credentials race isn’t going to exist?

“Did you ever have to make up your mind? You pick up on one and leave the other behind.”; 6/19/26, 9:47 AM
Aggie said...: I predict that oral exams will make a comeback for the advanced specialized subjects, and it will be about time. Same for hiring interviews. HR is going to wither itself back into a reasonable, contained function that schedules training, and facilitates health insurance and retirement accounts.; 6/19/26, 9:47 AM
RideSpaceMountain said...: "the very same companies selling detection tools are also making apps that allow students to cheat."

A dialectically Hegelian mouse-jiggling solution for Gen Alpha.; 6/19/26, 9:50 AM
Levi Starks said...: Spy vs Spy; 6/19/26, 9:51 AM
Peachy said...: Get back to in person tests without access to phones or computers.
Get back to in person requests fro proof of knowledge.; 6/19/26, 9:51 AM
Peachy said...: We should also get back to voter ID and in person voting.; 6/19/26, 9:51 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: “Autotypers slowly drip words and sentences into documents, making it appear as if papers were typed at a human pace when in fact, they were produced by A.I. They even fabricate typos, deletions and revisions.”

In other words, they dumb it down to human level.

Online chess has had this problem for years. You can’t cheat by playing the best engine moves anymore; you’ll quickly be caught. So people play the third or fourth best move, and vary the time between moves (the engine responds instantly), and even mix in a few blunders, knowing the engine can bail them out of a bad position. They still get caught, but it’s getting harder.; 6/19/26, 9:58 AM
steve uhr said...: As some have noted, have them write in the classroom. Simple solution. School can provide simple computers w/o internet access so they won’t have to write by hand. Or they can learn that also.; 6/19/26, 10:08 AM
Leland said...: What a sad commentary on teaching that they cannot detect when their students are cheating.; 6/19/26, 10:26 AM
n.n said...: Anthropomorphic Intelligence; 6/19/26, 10:27 AM
bagoh20 said...: If I have AI, why do I need school. I know everything now, and I don't forget.; 6/19/26, 10:30 AM
Lucien said...: At bottom cheating students are cheating themselves out of a better education. Of course, for the generations that view college as merely a path to employment, learning itself doesn’t mean much.; 6/19/26, 10:33 AM
bagoh20 said...: If the only way to prove you know something is by producing words, AI is better at it. AI cannot do HVAC, or plumbing. AI doesn't want to get its hands dirty.; 6/19/26, 10:33 AM
bagoh20 said...: You really need to ask the question: what is education for? What does it give you, and is school the best way to get that? For me, college was for meeting chicks and having fun, and I got that.; 6/19/26, 10:36 AM
Justabill said...: As a wise man once said, “quit school, why fake it.”

I note by the way, that in our neighborhood, school has ended and the kids are playing outside, riding bikes, etc. Not inside staring at screens; 6/19/26, 10:36 AM
bagoh20 said...: AI can do indoctrination at much lower cost, and it doesn't need restrooms, lounges, or a pension.; 6/19/26, 10:38 AM
Peachy said...: Most school is a leftwing indoctrination factory.

We also need to find a way to get back to real learning.; 6/19/26, 10:39 AM
Bob Boyd said...: How will AI cheating affect indoctrination?; 6/19/26, 10:41 AM
John henry said...: You can read 4 chapters (They are short, 3-4 pages) of my newest book-in-progress at https://changeover.com/reviewchapters.pdf

I'd be willing to bet that nobody can tell me which were written 100% with AI and which were not. I've been posting verbosely here for 10-15 years so you all should be be familiar with how my writing sounds.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 10:41 AM
Bob Boyd said...: 3 of us cynics all thought of indoctrination at the same time.; 6/19/26, 10:42 AM
John henry said...: Peachy said...

Get back to in person tests without access to phones or computers.

And make them use slide rules! And yellow pads for the notes.

I just wrote a short bio of Keuffel, Esser and Pickett for my book.

I still have my K&E from '68 on my desk. I asked Claude to develop a 2-3 hours refresher course in how to use it so I can impress my grandson. He started Mechanical Engineering school 2 weeks ago.

Course looks fine but I have not started yet.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 10:47 AM
John henry said...: Peachy said...

We should also get back to voter ID and in person voting.

Like in Puerto Rico?

John Henry; 6/19/26, 10:48 AM
John henry said...: Oops.; 6/19/26, 10:49 AM
Mark said...: "What a sad commentary on teaching that they cannot detect when their students are cheating."

It sounds like Leland is volunteering to John Henry's challenge, given they think AI so easy to spot.

I am eager to see their easy success lol; 6/19/26, 10:53 AM
Ann Althouse said...: 6/19/26, 10:54 AM
Ann Althouse said...: Not knowing when AI has been used is like not knowing when people are lying. We have to find a way to do what we need to do anyway.; 6/19/26, 10:56 AM
Jaq said...: In both the case of using blue books and proper voter id, the mystery is why they don’t just do it. It isn’t like the teachers couldn’t just scan the blue books and grade them with AI.

As for taking jobs, I needed a new pump, took my old one to the store, hoping for a same day fix. The guy there took twenty five minutes trying to find the pump, told me that mine was “obsolete,” and that he would call me when he located a replacement that would work. I took a picture of the label, loaded it to Chat, and it found the exact pump, pointing out that the part number had changed, and it was $150 cheaper than the one that the store eventually recommended, so maybe that’s only a task, but add enough tasks together and you have a job.; 6/19/26, 10:59 AM
Richard Dolan said...: When I was a student at SciencesPo in Paris many years ago, the exams at the end of term were oral. Basically, a student entered the professor's office and picked a topic on which to make his oral presentation (literally from a hat, when I did it). You had 10 minutes to prepare your presentation, and it had to be divided in a very Cartesian way: intro, point 1, point 2, conclusion. You did that while the student before you was making his presentation to the professor (you were in the same office with them as that was going on).
Can't say I recommend that method of conducting exams (it's largely been abandoned in France too, in favor of what they call controle continu), but it has the distinct advantage of making it impossible for a student to cheat.; 6/19/26, 11:03 AM
Jaq said...: I know that increases in efficiency are supposed to make us all richer, but not sure that economics and human behavior will allow that,; 6/19/26, 11:06 AM
John henry said...: bagoh20 said...

AI cannot do HVAC, or plumbing. AI doesn't want to get its hands dirty.

An awful lot of HVAC and plumbing involves calculations of pipe and duct sizes and flows, making layout drawings, Checking for interferences, developing bills-of-materials, ordering and accounting for it, writing quotations, sending invoices and more. I would guess this is about a third of any project by time spent.

AI can do all that easily.

Claude developed an app that takes a picture of a receipt, decodes vendor, expense type, and amount (eg Culvers, food, $17.95) Subtotals and totals everything, saves the picture and gives me a PDF to attach to my invoice.

I developed this while sitting in an auditorium at my granddaughters school. Took me all of 5 minutes.

That morning I had spent an hour organizing trip expenses. My next trip I simply scanned each receipt as I got it, copied the total to my invoice and attached the PDF file to the invoice.

Or, I made a series of timers that I can use to track activities during a changeover assessment. They make a nice PDF report. for the client. Then I made another app that imports the time file, and makes a PERT/CPM chart automatically, color coded with critical path, 2nd and 3rd critical paths and more.

I might have spent 30 minutes prompting both.

Doing the PERT chart, assuming I even had the data, would take several hours if doing it on a project. Now it is automatic.

I am a HUGE fan of Claude. And, to a lesser extent Grok and Gemini.

If you don't learn how to use AI, it is going to use you.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 11:06 AM
gilbar said...: please tell me, AGAIN?
WHY are we paying teachers?
i mean.. they are day care workers, and should be paid for THAT..
but WHAT ELSE do they do?
anyone? any one want to tell me WHERE my tax money is going?

Since 1970, public school student enrollment grew just 8%..
Teaching staff expanded 60%..
Total education staff exploded 84% with non-teaching staff up 138%
https://x.com/Rothmus/status/2067732153689919735; 6/19/26, 11:13 AM
n.n said...: It's akin to female sims = females. Or couplets "=" couples. Or Diversity practiced in lieu of diversity. The fetus judgment and label. Et cetera.; 6/19/26, 11:14 AM
John henry said...: You can see my Changeover Loss Calculator, that I use to help clients and potential clients understand how much changeover cost them here www.changeover.com/changelosscalc.html

I used to do this with an Excel spreadsheet. I gave Claude the spreadsheet and said "make something like this in HTML so it can be used online."

It might have taken Claude a minute, literlly. I asked for a couple changes to fonts, colors and such. Another 5-10 minutes and Bob's my uncle.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 11:16 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Once traditional judgment is vanquished, rules don't have a leg to stand on. YouTube:Why is this important?; 6/19/26, 11:17 AM
bagoh20 said...: "AI can do all that easily."

Agreed, and that's how I use it, but none of that lays pipe, runs wires or moves any air or water.; 6/19/26, 11:22 AM
John henry said...: Another use case where Claude saved me hours.

I did an assessment of cleaning process in a sausage factory. As is my practice, I took copious handwritten notes of what was happening and ideas for improvement. Probably 20 pages or more.

Normally, I spend a couple hours typing these up and and formatting them into a nice report.

The next day, in my office, I read my notes into my phone in a free Android app called Voice Notebook. I might have done this on the plant floor but was worried about background noise.

This gave me a nice, rather unformatted transcription, about 90% accurate. I corrected the errors and fed it to Claude which gave me a nice report, almost ready for the client. A bit of polishing and what normally might have taken me most of a day took an hour or so.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 11:25 AM
rhhardin said...: The change from political to romantic marriages was what Anthony and Cleopatra was about.

And the marriage dynamic of Cleopatra showing Anthony that she was satisfied with him.; 6/19/26, 11:26 AM
Martin said...: Easy to fix. More short essays written by hand in class.; 6/19/26, 11:28 AM
John henry said...: Annette's Dilemna

Annette had read twelve thousand exam answers in her career, and she could tell, now, within the first paragraph.

It wasn't the grammar. The grammar had always been suspiciously good, even in the years before any of this. It was the rhythm — that smooth, hedge-free cadence, every argument balanced like a seesaw with nothing on either end. "On one hand... on the other hand..." Always both hands. Never a fist.

She set down Brennan's exam, the fourteenth of the stack, and rubbed her eyes. Contracts, second year, a question about promissory estoppel she'd written specifically to reward the student who'd actually sat in the back row arguing with her in October about whether reliance had to be reasonable or merely foreseeable. Brennan had argued. Brennan had real opinions, badly expressed, full of holes she could have torn apart with one well-placed hypothetical.

This essay had no holes. It also had no Brennan in it anywhere.

She thought about her own first year, hunched in the library at two in the morning, wrong about everything, terrified of being wrong, and how the terror itself had taught her something the correct answer never could have. The wrongness was the curriculum. You could not outsource the wrongness.

She picked up her pen and wrote, in the margin, the only honest thing she had left to grade with:

This is competent. I don't know if it's yours.

Then she turned to the fifteenth exam, hoping, the way she still let herself hope every single time, to find a fist.; 6/19/26, 11:29 AM
Jaq said...: You can tell that that’s AI by the cringe.; 6/19/26, 11:34 AM
Interested Bystander said...: Make the students bring a Blue Book and hand-write the answers to quizzes and mid-term exams in class. Problem solved.; 6/19/26, 11:37 AM
Maynard said...: 45 years ago, I graded college freshman and sophomore term papers as a grad student TA. It was torture. AI would have relieved me of most of that torture.

Kids cannot organize their thoughts well enough to write clearly. Flunk them until they learn to be adequate. Or do not assign work that they can so easily cheat on.; 6/19/26, 11:38 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: “I still have my K&E from '68 on my desk. I asked Claude to develop a 2-3 hours refresher course in how to use it so I can impress my grandson.

I’ve still got the Pickett N803-ES I got in high school. I never really learned how to use the LL scales. Maybe I should ask AI to teach me—but that seems a bit weird.; 6/19/26, 11:40 AM
Lazarus said...: Do kids still know how to write by hand? It can be frustrating if they don't know cursive.

Cheater tech will have more adaptations. Eventually, it will make fraudulent election results look normal.; 6/19/26, 11:42 AM
John henry said...: Here is the prompt I used: "Write a 250 word short story about a law professor named annette lamenting the use of AI by students"

Jaq, I asked Claude to "rewrite the story but make it less cringy"

It rewrote it saying :
Toned down the metaphor work (no more "fist" symbolism doing heavy lifting) and gave her some dry, specific detail instead — the toothless committee, the B+ given despite her suspicions, the small relief at a clumsy sentence. Let me know if you want it pushed even further toward plain and understated, or if this lands right.

I didn't see anything cringy about the first version but horses for courses and all. Toned down version is OK, no complaints.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 11:43 AM
bagoh20 said...: "This is competent. I don't know if it's yours."

So what? No answer is ever purely your own. All answers are derivative, an attempt to write what others demand.; 6/19/26, 11:44 AM
Lazarus said...: AI does give clearer answers about things, but it gives the accepted version of things. It's not very creative or open to unorthodox views. It hasn't yet perfected the "History Boys" tactic of presenting and defending startling, unorthodox, and even wrong-headed views to stride ahead of others.; 6/19/26, 11:46 AM
Smilin' Jack said...: “AI cannot do HVAC, or plumbing. AI doesn't want to get its hands dirty.”

The Chinese have robots that can thread a needle with one hand while changing a tire with the other. They’re coming for you.; 6/19/26, 11:47 AM
John henry said...: People think naval reactors run on atoms but they are wrong. They run on math. In the 60s, math done by hand on sliderules.

Before starting Navy Nuclear Power school, we did a 4 week prep course. 8-10 hours a day, 5-1/2 days a week, plus homework. Basically covered all the math, physics, chemistry etc that we should have already had from HS.

We also spent 2-3 hours a day learning how to use a sliderule. I knew how to use pretty much every scale on both sides. I knew how to interpolate and extrapolate logarithm in 3-4 bases.

Now all I can do is multiplication and division.

My K&E cost me $25 in the NEX. Today that would be $237. I could buy a cheap laptop for that.

I think I was making about $125/month at the time.

John Henry; 6/19/26, 11:51 AM
bagoh20 said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/19/26, 11:56 AM
bagoh20 said...: "They’re coming for you."

I welcome them. There is no job I ever did that I didn't wish I had a robot to do for me. I assume the future will be wildly lazy and unrewarding. When everything is easy, it's hard to appreciate anything, even when it's done perfectly.; 6/19/26, 11:59 AM
Interested Bystander said...: Re: Jhn Henry's comment about slide rules.
I remember the debates over allowing the Texas Instruments slide rule calculators in chemistry class. That was the early 70s. The professors finally relented.

Still, when I took my land surveyor exams in the early 2000s most calculators were banned. You could bring a simple non-programmable one to the exam and that was it.

I still have acouple of slide rules in a cabinet in my garage. I don't remember how to use them but I keep them as a memento of a different time.; 6/19/26, 12:00 PM
bagoh20 said...: As Musk has suggested, I expect that the future big product is going to be a personal robot as ubiquitous as automobiles. Most homes will have one. They will be close to human in form. You can program them to do anything just by showing them, even with a video, or an explanation. They do yard work, cleaning, fix your car, climb into the attic to fix a fan, paint the house, repair your roof without falling off, trim trees, etc. There will be companies that have specialized robots to do construction, etc. It actually sounds great to me, and this product would be the most valuable (useful) thing you have.; 6/19/26, 12:05 PM
Lazarus said...: What does this do for intellectual property? If A uses AI to create an app and B uses AI later and comes up with a very similar app, does A own the idea?; 6/19/26, 12:08 PM
Lazarus said...: I'm going to say now that no one needs a robot in the home, so that I will be remembered when everyone has one.; 6/19/26, 12:10 PM
Oso Negro said...: Professorial Luddites are retarding progress in this century.; 6/19/26, 12:11 PM
rcommal said...: Honestly, I worry about a lot of younger students not really being able to handwrite for an extended period. I get the sense that they really haven't had a lot experience/everyday practice at it. Part of this even extends into homes. If their parents are mostly electronic, how are they going to see and then experience making a handwritten list, for example, let alone an essay, in-person or not? How many have ever written a letter by hand?

We've done a disservice to our young people, I think. I think it's pretty settled--isn't it?--that the tactile (including writing by hand) really supports brain development and thence learning. I tried to emphasize this my son during our homeschooling journey (3rd through 12th grade), but I wish I had done it even more.

An anecdote: When we took our son out of school (it was actually a very good private one) after second grade, he was scoring pretty high marks in every area except for spelling. This drove me crazy, being a natural excellent speller myself. (My mom was also; my dad was not.) He was above grade level except for spelling. So I looked and looked and looked and finally found a scheme called "Spelling Power." It was a very different approach. It incorporated very customized assessment and monitoring. It incorporated not just repetition and oral and silent practice, but also pretty intensive, and varied, tactics components. (For example, I might have had him trace out spelling words in a tray of sand, while looking at a small erase board with the words and spelling the word out loud.) The idea was to engage multiple senses while helping to build the "scaffolding" in his brain. In a single year, he improved by four grade levels. Thus, I was sold. While I do not believe in "one-size-fits-all" at all, I'm a believer in that system, and I have purchased and given away this book on at least four or five occasions over the years. It can work for adults, too.

His father worked in technology, btw, and I spent a bunch of years in Enterprise-Wide migrations in the run-up to Y2K and shortly thereafter. So we most definitely not technology adverse in our own lives, not by the longest shot.

My long-winded (sorry) point is that I fear that we really have put many kids (many now grown) at a serious disadvantage because we "electronicsized" too many things for, what, a generation now?

I don't know how you come back from that for kids already grown or already in upper grades.

Regards,

Lori (reader_iam); 6/19/26, 12:15 PM
rcommal said...: For Bagoh20:

I used a lot of different strategies, methods etc. as my kid grew up, depending on where he was at any given time, the subject, the subject matter and so forth.

When he got to high school, I did go with a formalized, accredited curriculum, although still under my supervision. I did want him to go to college: he did have the capability and skills for that. However, I also wanted him to have practical skills (and I wanted him to have regular additional socialization; we had recently moved states). So, poor kid, I made him attend a weekly, all-day session in general maintenance at a local technical and community college, which meant he was "in school" six days a week during his freshman and sophomore years. The college had designed a specific program for homeschoolers, and it led to a General Maintenance certificate from that institution.

Fast forward. He did go to college and earned a degree in cybersecurity and coding. He also is very proficient in hardware. But you know what? Now, in his mid-20s, he's decided to pursue setting up a handyman business.

So go figure.

Regards,

Lori (reader_iam); 6/19/26, 12:17 PM
Quaestor said...: My freshman year included two courses required of every incoming student regardless of high school GPA, SAT, or any honor society membership — ENG 101 and ENG 102. Each course required a daily composition, three classroom hours per week, three compositions. The assignments had to be completed in the classroom under the watchful eye of the instructor and one or two grad student proctors. You wrote into one of those blue covered composition books. Nothing else could be on your desk except the Webster’s Collegiate and the Oxford Manual of Style. Misspell a word, F. Comma splice, F. Incomplete sentence, F. And a whole litany of grammatical errors too long to list, F to C, depending. There was no way to cheat.

The AI problem can be fixed, but only if American higher education is completely reformed from the outside. The inside is far too corrupt to reform itself.; 6/19/26, 12:42 PM
Known Unknown said...: "Not knowing when AI has been used is like not knowing when people are lying. We have to find a way to do what we need to do anyway."

Had an idea for a movie where a distinct breed of humans who were able to identify real vs. AI were hunted by multiple factions to either co-opt their abilities or to be eliminated.; 6/19/26, 12:45 PM
Oso Negro said...: bagoh20 said...
There is no job I ever did that I didn't wish I had a robot to do for me. .

Were you ever married?; 6/19/26, 12:48 PM
Paddy O said...: Wouldnt be a worry if folks had integrity. Whose job is it to teach kids (and adults) integrity?; 6/19/26, 12:56 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: “If their parents are mostly electronic, how are they going to see and then experience making a handwritten list, for example, let alone an essay, in-person or not? How many have ever written a letter by hand?”

Yeah, kids today. A lot of them can’t even make a stone ax by hand.; 6/19/26, 1:00 PM
John henry said...: I found a Youtube channel called Noir Jazz Cats they do long smooth jazz videos. Not much video but I like the music. I've been keeping it in background while working in my office.

Here is an example out of 50-100 https://youtu.be/hIkvQHk_sWM?si=iI-4S-kuwNmQuokl

It is supposed to help me focus and seems to do the job.

I download the audio as MP3s to avoid the commercials. One of the things I like is that the tracks run 3-5 hours each.

At first I assumed that it was some studio group. Then I got wondering, "What if it is AI?" If it is AI, should I care? I like the music, what difference does it make where is comes from? Stevie Wonder makes wonderful music using synthetic instruments. So what?

I asked Claude the other day, Claude told me it was AI and told me half a dozen ways to tell.

And I don't care. I still like the music in background.

There is also a whole class of music that combines techno and classics. I enjoy it sometimes. This is Greig's Hall of the Mountain King with a techno beat. I assume it is AI. I also don't give a shit.

John Henry

John Henry; 6/19/26, 1:01 PM
bagoh20 said...: "Were you ever married?"

No. You don't need to apply for a job just because someone is hiring.; 6/19/26, 1:04 PM
Smilin' Jack said...: "Not knowing when AI has been used is like not knowing when people are lying. We have to find a way to do what we need to do anyway."

AI can already detect when people are lying. It will probably be in the next upgrade to Google Glasses.; 6/19/26, 1:06 PM
Temujin said...: People will go to great lengths and spend a lot of time and money to avoid learning things, if at all possible. The trend toward the Idiocracy continues unabated.; 6/19/26, 1:27 PM
lgv said...: I once worked for a company that made high frequency circuit boards. These were used in radars and radar detectors. Every new radar detector was followed by a new model radar, followed by a new model radar detector. followed by....

It was sad when the gravy train ended, but eventually radars beat the detectors. So too will AI defeat all the AI detectors. The only way to defeat it is to prevent its use. I remember walking into the test room and having to write essays with supplied pencils in plain booklets that were provided.; 6/19/26, 1:40 PM
Jaq said...: Maynard, I once got a B++ on a paper. He said that he couldn’t give me an A, because I knew nothing about the subject, but it was a pleasure to read a paper by somebody who could write clearly. I think you may have finally cleared that up for me.; 6/19/26, 1:49 PM
DINKY DAU 45 said...: anal beads!; 6/19/26, 3:06 PM
n.n said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 6/19/26, 3:11 PM
n.n said...: Audacious Interloper; 6/19/26, 3:11 PM
Tina Trent said...: I was a composition teacher. I was given permission to do handwritten tests. Then the medical exemptions flowed in. But I did at least get a good baseline for the rest of the semester. I almost think I'd rather grade 120 AI essays than the crap most of my students produced -- not all of them. I later found out our school had several hundred IBM Selectrics in storage. I bought one. Those are the greatest typewriters/weapons to use in home invasions. Had I known then, I would have requested the Selectrics for my classrooms. I can't throw stones, nor Selectrics, at modern kids whose handwriting sucks. My handwriting is terrible too. I'm a lefty and they tried to make me write with my right hand at first.; 6/19/26, 4:28 PM
JK Brown said...: Hear me out. What if schools, especially colleges, pivot back to the true definition of education and away from being credential mills? But the incentive of schooling is to get good grades, not real learning.

The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealic attitude
--------Robert M. Pirsig

Usage: Education, properly a drawing forth, implies not so much the communication of knowledge as the discipline of the intellect, the establishment of the principles, and the regulation of the heart. Instruction is that part of education which furnishes the mind with knowledge. Teaching is the same, being simply more familiar.
[1913 Webster]; 6/19/26, 4:56 PM
Big Mike said...: I'm having a case of deja vu. I was an engineering undergraduate about sixty years ago. Affordable pocket calculators with log and trig functions had just reached the market but the engineering professors insisted that we not use calculators, we had to use slide rules, especially during tests. At first they insisted that it was due to affordability issues, but the price came down so fast and the capabilities improved so fast that they quickly became much cheaper than a good K+E. The insistence on slide rules certainly was not because they were eschewing computers and calculators out in the real world -- as luck would have it my father had reached out to a friend and landed me a summer job at a petrochemical research firm, and the professional engineers were griping that management was refusing to accept results calculated using slide rules. Period.

So why were the engineering profs insisting on their students using obsolescent tools? My take is that their pedagogy was based on the slide rule, and their store of homework and exam questions were challenging only if a slide rule was assumed. Replace slide rules with a better toolkit, and the professors would have to change what they taught and how they taught it. And that was just too much for them to do.

So when I see headlines that say "AI makes it easier to cheat," or words to that effect, what I'm really reading is the lament of professors that a new tool is on the horizon and they don't know how to incorporate it into their syllabus.

Let's take law as an example. AI can write a brief for a lawyer, but there is a problem -- today's AI refuses to say "I don't know" so it just invents cites and precedents. If a law professor really, truly, wanted to teach a law student how to function in the law firm of the near future, that professor would teach his or her students how to validate that the brief is accurate before sending to the judge something that risks the young lawyer being referred for disbarment.

Times change, tools change. A good professor can and will teach the students how to use the tools that are coming or have just arrived and not insist on doing things the way they've been done since the first buildings at Heidelberg were erected.

But most professors aren't really very good.; 6/19/26, 6:00 PM
imTay said...: <:/I>

OK, I read the four chapters, Chapter Nine strongly says AI to me, Chapter ten, less so, and the other two, I am going to say you wrote them. But I will say that it is not an easy call, and I might be wrong, except for Chapter Nine, the opening section, I strongly doubt I am wrong on that one. Mark Twain said in his autobiography that he learned to write as a typesetter, having read acres of print, well I have read a shit-ton of novels, so my style tastes may be somewhat effete, but content wise, all four chapters were pretty good.

Incidentally, I have been to Chateaugay, NY, Gibson's grandkids have a pretty cool guitar shop there. The sign says Guns, Gas, and Guitars, and they sell all three, the guitars are amazing, I am no judge of guns, but they sure had a lot of them for sale, and the gas and coffee was country gas station grade. It's a place I take my guests to sometimes, when the weather is not good for fishing, it's a nice drive into the St Lawrence valley.

And you know what else uses Bombardier engines? Military drones.; 6/20/26, 6:50 AM
imTay said...: Another comment on the Ski-Doo chapter, it mentions "several feet of snow" as an obstacle, well, I would be willing to bet that what they really encountered were snow drifts several feet high. This kind of disconnect from reality is a hallmark of AI, which hasn't experienced our world, and makes inferences about it from its training that often don't make sense to human beings who have actual sensory experience of what is being written about.. Several feet of snow in a single storm is ice-age level for Quebec, although you might see it high in the rockies.; 6/20/26, 7:14 AM
imTay said...: Of course the fact that you live on a tropical island might explain that one too.; 6/20/26, 7:16 AM
ceowens said...: @imTay may want to speak to someone from Redfield NY re snowfall.; 6/20/26, 8:36 AM
Jaq said...: The snow belt alomg the Great Lakes is not Quebec, and the other issue i have is the use of the word “several,” humans don’t talk that way about snowfall , it’s “three feet,” or “four feet,” the deeper and more unusual, the more likely that it would be noted in solid terms. I guess you could get that kind of depth if the road wasn’t cleared between storms, but a human would note that too.

The day that AI will be able to accurately describe a human experience on convincing terms, without just copying it, is the day we will have accurate weather forecasts ten days out.

But John Henry knows if AI wrote it, so let’s see who is right.; 6/20/26, 10:00 AM
Josephbleau said...: In Quebec the largest reported snowfall from a single storm is generally associated with the March 3–5, 1971 “Tempête du siècle” (Storm of the Century) where 81.5cm or 32inches of snow was deposited at Mont Apica. Almost 3 feet.; 6/20/26, 4:10 PM