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Will Granger's avatar

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Anything that by definition encourages students to think less can not be good for them. And save the lame arguments that everybody's doing it so...

The concept of a liberal arts education as far back in Ancient Greece was about developing the mind, the whole person. It was never on the job training for a specific career.

It was funny and predictable this week watching the AI worshippers try to explain away the latest data showing how AI harms cognitive processes.

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Stephen Fitzpatrick's avatar

Marc - one thing I'm noticing in the discourse - and I can see this in the evolution of your thinking since 2023 - is a shift from the possibilities of AI and education to a focus on the limitations of the use of AI in education. Is that mostly because of the speed of the technology, the way in which it's mostly being used by students, the lack of training, or something else? What's changed? I do think this was a tipping point year - are we going to see a return to trying to ban AI in classrooms in the fall? I agree that it's unlikely to work, but it just seems to me there is a collision course between the corporate / private use of AI and academia's response. What do you make of academics who are still championing the technology? Are they becoming outliers and if so, why? What is the response to students who say this is now a part of their daily existence - not because they asked for it, but because it was given to them - and to pretend otherwise is simply unrealistic? Is the goal going forward to convince students not to use AI? There is a disconnect to me between how AI is discussed within education and how it's discussed in the wider culture, but especially in the business and corporate sector.

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