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AI Education

Columbia Tries Using AI To Cool Off Student Tensions (theverge.com) 59

Posted by msmash from the whatever-floats-the-boat dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Can AI help "smooth over" discussion on abortion, racism, immigration, or Israel-Palestine? Columbia University sure hopes so. The Verge has learned that the university recently began testing Sway, an AI debate program currently in beta. Developed by two researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Sway matches up students with opposing views to chat one-on-one about hot-button issues and "facilitates better discussions between them," according to the tool's website. Nicholas DiBella, a postdoctoral scholar at CMU who helped develop Sway, told The Verge that about 3,000 students from more than 30 colleges and universities have used the tool.

One of those may soon be Columbia. News of the potential partnership comes after more than two years of escalating tensions at Columbia between students, administrators, and the federal government. The university has spent years at the center of controversy after controversy: expulsions of pro-Palestinian student protesters, a string of police raids, and demands from the federal government.

People at Columbia's Teachers College are testing Sway in order to potentially integrate it into the conflict resolution curriculum and "bridge-building initiatives at Columbia," DiBella said. He said there's also been interest from other teams at Columbia in using Sway for the fall 2026 semester and onward. Simon Cullen, an assistant professor at CMU and the other developer behind Sway, told The Verge that the company is also in touch with Columbia University Life.
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Columbia Tries Using AI To Cool Off Student Tensions

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  • Like there is any debate is horrific.

    Criminalizing abortion does not reduce the number of abortions it just kills women.

    Immigration is good for the GDP but not for individual workers in a hypercompetitive economy.

    And yes Israel and more importantly Benjamin netanyahu and the right wing hardliners of Israel are committing a genocide.

    We don't need AI to smooth things over we need to stop getting gas lit by our ruling class.

    • Re:Treating settled issues (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @02:53PM (#65641572)
      I might agree with some of what you say, but I'd hardly call any of those issues "settled"!

    • Are we sure that Sway isn't just a front-end of Slashdot?

    • Re:Treating settled issues (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @03:07PM (#65641632)
      Yeah, those are clearly not settled issues, just issues where you have settled on an opinion.

      Or are you kidding? You did pick the three most contentious issues. Did you just successfully pull my leg? I applaud you if you did.

      • Have you been trolled, and will you have a nice day?

      • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

        by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
        Yeah they are. They absolutely are.

        We have plenty of hard numbers on abortions in places to criminalize them and the effects on women's health in those places.

        We have plenty of stats regarding immigration's effect on the gross domestic product but we can also draw a pretty easy line between the number of high-skilled visas and the current unemployment crisis for college grads.

        And the vast majority of experts will tell you that what Israel is doing is a genocide. Israel's own people know it and t
        • What you have done there is explain why you hold the opinions you do. What you have not done is show how those three incredibly contentious issues are settled.

          The question is what to do, and you have not touched on that. This is where politics comes from. Wise people can look at the same data and draw different conclusions about what to do with it. You and I might say that allowing more immigration when labor is tight is a bad idea, but someone else may say it is more important to provide refuge and

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by VaccinesCauseAdults ( 7114361 )
      The impact on Palestinian population is extreme and should be stopped. But what often isn’t mentioned is that Hamas has the declared doctrine of eliminating its neighbour. 1988 Hamas Charter (Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement): unambiguously describes all of historic Palestine (including Israel proper) as Islamic land that cannot be surrendered and frames the conflict as a religious duty. Article 15, for example, calls for jihad to “obliterate Israel,” and Article 11 states that

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ElderOfPsion ( 10042134 )

      The civilian-to-combatant ratio in the war in Gaza is typical of urban warfare. If you disapprove of mass casualties, perhaps you should ask Hama not start an illegal war by committing genocide in Israel.

    • Like there is any debate is horrific.

      Let's do a thought problem.

      For any issue where you're sure you're right, note the number of people who have a different opinion.

      Suppose the number of people with a different opinion is excessively large, say more than 5% of the population. They have access to the same information that you do, but have come to a different position.

      Given that situation, what does that say about your position, and whether debate itself is horrific?

      • If you ban everyone who disagrees with you, does it feel good, even if the other side ends up winning the presidency and doubling down on whatever you banned, just because you tried to ban it rather than engage with it?

    • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

      by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

      Like there is any debate is horrific.

      Criminalizing abortion does not reduce the number of abortions it just kills women.

      Immigration is good for the GDP but not for individual workers in a hypercompetitive economy.

      And yes Israel and more importantly Benjamin netanyahu and the right wing hardliners of Israel are committing a genocide.

      We don't need AI to smooth things over we need to stop getting gas lit by our ruling class.

      It is hard to get SO many things wrong in one post but the fake insight on Israel is the worst.
      Israel is not committing genocide. It is preventing it. Specifically it is prevent the Genocide of Jews which has been repeatedly the case since Mohamed first killed all the Jews in Medina.

      It is about Jews. Do you know the difference between Zionist and Jews? NOTHING. They are ALL Jews and our right to our homeland, and daily prayer to return to our home transcends every Jew in every culture. You mistake Jewish

    • I prepared a five minute "lightning talk" for LibrePlanet 2021 on "Empowering users through Dialogue Mapping using IBIS".

      https://libreplanet.org/wiki/L... [libreplanet.org]

      The text of the talk in IBIS outline format with some minor changes is available here.
      https://pdfernhout.net/librepl... [pdfernhout.net]

      That talk is a much-shortened version of a longer talk I gave in July 2019 for the Cognitive Systems Institute Group Speaker Series where I suggested using AI to help with the Dialogue Mapping process:
      https://twitter.com/sumalaika/... [twitter.com]

      More

  • Quisling.edu (Score:2, Insightful)

    by abulafia ( 7826 )
    Columbia destroyed its reputation by its collaboration with this regime. Nobody wanting an actual liberal arts education will go near it for at least a generation.

    Maybe they can transition to being the version of Oral Roberts University where you have to be able to read to graduate.

  • Lets try talking nicely to the people we hurt. (Score:3)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @03:16PM (#65641662) Homepage

    That works, right? No? OK, lets try having an AI talk nicely to the people we have wronged.

    The students are angry because of your actions. You want them to calm down, try changing your actions.

  • No, it probably can't. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Friday September 05, 2025 @03:19PM (#65641666)
    And I certainly doubt that it will be at all fair in the attempt. I can't help but think that, either intentionally or not, there will be a thumb on the scale.

    Also... Really? You really think that AI can fix your antisemitism problem? Can it fix your political bias problem without you having to actually hire professors that don't all vote the same way?

    • ChatGPT:

      One interesting role for AI could be as a "translator" between sides in political debates. Not by moderating or censoring, but by reframing each side's words into language the other side is more likely to hear. For example, instead of "abortion is murder" vs. "abortion is health care," the AI could restate: "they are concerned with protecting life from conception" and "they are concerned with protecting the autonomy and health of women." Same underlying positions, but expressed in less triggering la

      • See how the AI finally learned to use simple ASCII for slashdot?

      • Now, that's interesting because you have essentially put the idea into action.
        But no, it didn't work. I'm less inclined to think this is a valuable idea now that I've seen it in action. As currently constituted, AI tends to be a cheerleader, and this is a situation that calls for a referee. You can see it in the wording of the output, and in particular the last sentence. It's always looking for a way to agree.
        Result? It's substituting itself for debate. In the listed example, you have a debate t
  • This will not end well, but it will nevertheless end.

  • "The Titanic is sinking! Quick, help me rearrange these deck chairs!"

    "Nah, I'm pretty sure I can think of something even more pointless and unhelpful to do."

  • Yeah F that.

    Genociders should have NO safe harbor.

    F those guys and all those who are not 100% against them.

  • the spring of '24, Sway would have to persuade students against their position of getting upvotes and/or laid, as that was the only concrete position I could ascertain

    CMU has their work cut out for them

  • These debates are not hot because people like arguing, but because people stand behind a certain dogma and against the other dogma. What is the point in cooling something off, if people are there to fight for a cause?

  • They should have called it brainwash, not sway.

    Or, you know, address the actual issues.

    Haha, just kidding.

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