'We Could've Asked ChatGPT': UK Students Fight Back Over Course Taught By AI (theguardian.com) 55
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Guardian:
James and Owen were among 41 students who took a coding module at the University of Staffordshire last year, hoping to change careers through a government-funded apprenticeship programme designed to help them become cybersecurity experts or software engineers. But after a term of AI-generated slides being read, at times, by an AI voiceover, James said he had lost faith in the programme and the people running it, worrying he had "used up two years" of his life on a course that had been done "in the cheapest way possible".
"If we handed in stuff that was AI-generated, we would be kicked out of the uni, but we're being taught by an AI," said James during a confrontation with his lecturer recorded as a part of the course in October 2024. James and other students confronted university officials multiple times about the AI materials. But the university appears to still be using AI-generated materials to teach the course. This year, the university uploaded a policy statement to the course website appearing to justify the use of AI, laying out "a framework for academic professionals leveraging AI automation" in scholarly work and teaching...
For students, AI teaching appears to be less transformative than it is demoralising. In the US, students post negative online reviews about professors who use AI. In the UK, undergraduates have taken to Reddit to complain about their lecturers copying and pasting feedback from ChatGPT or using AI-generated images in courses.
"I feel like a bit of my life was stolen," James told the Guardian (which also quotes an unidentified student saying they felt "robbed of knowledge and enjoyment".) But the article also points out that a survey last year of 3,287 higher-education teaching staff by edtech firm Jisc found that nearly a quarter were using AI tools in their teaching.
"If we handed in stuff that was AI-generated, we would be kicked out of the uni, but we're being taught by an AI," said James during a confrontation with his lecturer recorded as a part of the course in October 2024. James and other students confronted university officials multiple times about the AI materials. But the university appears to still be using AI-generated materials to teach the course. This year, the university uploaded a policy statement to the course website appearing to justify the use of AI, laying out "a framework for academic professionals leveraging AI automation" in scholarly work and teaching...
For students, AI teaching appears to be less transformative than it is demoralising. In the US, students post negative online reviews about professors who use AI. In the UK, undergraduates have taken to Reddit to complain about their lecturers copying and pasting feedback from ChatGPT or using AI-generated images in courses.
"I feel like a bit of my life was stolen," James told the Guardian (which also quotes an unidentified student saying they felt "robbed of knowledge and enjoyment".) But the article also points out that a survey last year of 3,287 higher-education teaching staff by edtech firm Jisc found that nearly a quarter were using AI tools in their teaching.
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Endless profits are impossible.
Tell that to those that place profits over everything else in life. Failures like Elon Musk that, despite all his money, obviously suffers from a deep (and justified) feeling of inadequacy.
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Why would he feel inadequate when, according to a trustworthy source, he's a better boxer than Mike Tyson [i.redd.it], fitter than LeBron James [yimg.com], hotter than Tom Brady [thedailybeast.com], one of the top minds in history with a near-Olympian physique [comicsands.com], the world's best runway model [techcrunch.com], better at resurrection than Jesus [theverge.com], the world's best bottom [preview.redd.it] (ahem) [preview.redd.it] (cough) [twimg.com] and the ultimate throat goat [i.redd.it]?
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Indeed. Also reminds me of a certain "stable genius".
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Sooner or later, we'll end up at the point where trying to maintain the ways of the past is a fruitless fight. Teachers' jobs are no longer going to be "to teach" - that that's inevitably getting taken over by AI (for economic reasons, but also because it's a one-on-one interaction with the student, with them having no fear of asking questions, and that at least at a pre-university level, it probably knows the material a lot better than the average teacher, who these days is often an ignorant gym coach or w
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Isaac Asimov wasn't trying to design a blueprint for the future when he wrote The Fun They Had.
Look... kid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Look... kid...
You're being taken for a ride. There's no job waiting for you. It's all AI now, lol. If you think the quality of AI is crappy today, it's only getting better. Do you HONESTLY think that you'd have a job of any kind waiting for you in 4 years? LOL. With the speed it's all moving? Your bank should try to call their student debt loan due.
(Unless you're taking "underwater basket weaving" classes, err... until Tesla Optimus bots can swim.)
Re: Look... kid... (Score:1)
Re:Look... kid... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is AI is shit and these kids can see that plain and simple. All these bosses salivating at sacking everyone are wreaking their businesses and in 4 years will be out of business.
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Indeed. I mean they have been subjected to slow for a full semester now. Anybody that does not see the limitations after that has a problem.
UK loans system (Score:2)
You get student loans to pay your course fees, which are paid back as via the income tax system, taking 10% of your income above a certain threshold. If your income doesn't reach the threshold, zero to pay - though interest does still accumulate. After 40 years any outstanding loan is written off.
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Sounds like a great way to keep you in debt the majority of your life. Great plan!
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Hahaha, in 4 years the collapse of the hallucination that LLMs are actually very useful will have concluded. Things are already mightily crumbling. Those that apply themselves and learn stuff will find something worthwhile in 4 years. Obviously, with this mockery of teaching, that will be impossible, but real teaching is still being done. You just need to insist on it.
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There are other factors at work as well. But we will see what happens. Still, being well educated is always a huge advantage, even if it sometimes requires time to manifest. Obviously, if you study a BS subject or do not apply yourself, you will be screwed except in a boom.
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If AI can teach it, it should be able to apply it (Score:2)
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About students using AI to write a paper on her test subjects she said:
If AI can answer my questions realize that same AI can do your future work/job.
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You know what they say, whose who can't do, teach... (Whose that can't teach, teach teachers.) So no, being able to teach (poorly, in this case) does not mean being proficient in the subject matter.
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Those that can't do, teach. Those that can't teach, governor.
AI is terrible. (Score:3)
It’s good for a handful of things, but as a rule content that is largely AI generated is not useful. AI chatbots and ai generated answers to questions are not particularly informative and often contain glaring logical contradictions, nonsensical statements, and even factual inaccuracies. AI, in its current form, will never be able to think, make decisions, or teach students. It’s as if we created the world’s smartest insect and asked it to raise our children, when it should be summarizing wikipedia articles and filtering spam.
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as a rule content that is largely AI generated is not useful
Keep deluding yourself. If AI is not useful then why are trillions of dollars being invested in it? Or is your thesis that all the tech corporations in the world are idiots? If it hasn't massively increased your productivity then, sorry, but you ain't using it right.
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as a rule content that is largely AI generated is not useful
Keep deluding yourself. If AI is not useful then why are trillions of dollars being invested in it? Or is your thesis that all the tech corporations in the world are idiots? If it hasn't massively increased your productivity then, sorry, but you ain't using it right.
AI is very useful, it does a lot of things with summarization and compression that really exceeds previous capabilities. However a lot of those trillions of dollars are not being invested in what AI does good, but instead what AI _appears_ to do good by sounding very authoritative on things it is wrong about, much like a lot of people running tech corporation. Not the first time companies have invested poorly in new technology and many companies will be pruned and lose all of that investment just like has
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But you are the delusional one here. People spend money on a lot of stuff, blindly assuming all of the spending is smart, is, well, dumb. Being employed at a large chip manufacturer, I can see the a lot of really stupid shit done.
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If AI is not useful then why are trillions of dollars being invested in it?
This may well be one of the dumbest questions ever asked on /. as it ignores the entirety of human history.
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Because corporations don't want to pay people anymore, and slavery is (mostly) illegal. AI will never ask for a raise, try to unionize, sleep, take the day off, or get sick. Plus, AI expenditures are relatively predictable, and you don't have to pay overtime. Corporations don't want AI because it's the next best thing, or that it's superduper awesome, they want it because fuck everyone who has to work for a living, that's why. Why
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I'm not saying IA itself is not useful, but that AI generated content is not useful. There are certainly things it does well that can improve your productivity, but generating answers to questions, generating complex code, writing stories and things like that are not among them.
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Answering questions, writing code, writing stories - are among the most basic use cases for AI and have already demonstrated to have been solved to superhuman levels (as in well-above average human ability) by todays systems. Every benchmark shows this very clearly. Gemini 3 scored nearly 50% on ARC-AGI-2 - please find out what this means. If you're not impressed then you are burying your head in the sand.
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I've used them, I am well aware of what they are actually capable of, which is mostly expanding a small piece of text into a large one without adding anything of value. In most cases, it sounds like a highschool student trying to BS their way to meet a necessary word count without really engaging with the material. Trying to call it "superhuman" is actually hilarious.
Re:AI is terrible. (Score:5, Interesting)
Indeed. As an example, I currently have a student looking at all the major AIs (including coding ones with paid subscriptions) for code security review. With small, well known samples they are good. With larger samples, they are >50% fail. With CVEs (the things that matter) they are so far almost 100% fail.
Add that using AI coding assistants makes you about 20% slower, and the only thing AI could be called for this application is "completely unsuitable".
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Yeah, it seems like AI coding is totally misguided today. AI would be good for helping people with syntax, or identifying typos. Maybe you could use it to produce early demonstration versions of software to help set requirements, but using it to actually write code doesn't make sense for any kind of real product you intend to ship to customers, especially if security is any concern.
Traditional lectures are obsolete (Score:3, Interesting)
'a term of AI-generated slides being read, at times, by an AI voiceover'
Which raises the hard question of 'what is the point of classroom teaching'. It's the fact that this question hasn't been addressed well that is actually at the heart of this mess. Add in the fact that many academics know that their jobs are of little value and we have a perfect example of gatekeepers monetising their status for as long as possible. Add in the increasing evidence that a degree doesn't actually do the magic of getting you a far better job, and there's a serious storm brewing...
Re:Traditional lectures are obsolete (Score:4, Insightful)
What nonsense. First, the most important part in teaching is to select the materials and structure them in a way that makes sense. Second is the actual teaching and anybody halfway competent does far more than just reading the slides. It is about demonstrating you know your stuff, the materials are worthwhile working through, you respect the time of the participants and any good lecture will also need a real entertainment factor.
I think you have never designed and then held a lecture. And if you ever have heard lectures, apparently they were not any good.
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This. I'm a working professional, and I also teach. Truth is, the industry I work in changes significantly from year to year... I'm constantly updating content in my lectures, and these tools can be fantastic support, but they're not good instructors.
"nearly a quarter were using AI tools in their teaching"
Hell yes I do, it'd be insane for me to not use them. AI is great for "Did I forget anything?" "Is there a contrarian approach that I'm ignoring?" or "Make this awkward paragraph read more clearly"
I also e
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"but honestly, having some old fossil droning on about their book that's been out of print for 20 years isn't engaging either."
When I was in uni, many years ago, one of my favourite courses had no recommended text books. Because as the lecturer said "I haven't written it yet". He was teaching us from his draft chapters. We were very engaged as reviewers of his work!
Of course... (Score:2)
If we handed in stuff that was AI-generated, we would be kicked out of the uni, but we're being taught by an AI
The reason you need to do the work yourself is because the goal of education is for the student to learn. Using ChatGPT to write your essays is the same as plagarism. However, using AI to TEACH a course is completely different. The AI is taking the job of the teacher, just the same as AI will take all the jobs. Ultimately, what do you care if you learn from a human teacher or an AI teacher? If the teaching is the same quality, it should make no difference to you.
A complete failure (Score:5, Insightful)
The primary job of a lecturer is design of the lecture, select the material and structure it. That requires insight, experience and understanding of the target audience. The second most important thing is teaching the material and that requires a lot more than just standing there and reading the slides. In fact, just reading the slides is a complete fail. What you need to di is talk about what is ion the slides, signal what is important, how this relates to the rest of the world, what is the future perspective and, most important, do a bit of storytelling with real-world examples not on the slides, etc. The students must have the impression you know your stuff, and that you, as the lecturer, respect their time and provide something of value. That is what keeps them engaged and is critical for the learning effect. Things must be _interesting_ for them.
Hence this "course" is a complete fail and waste of time and essentially a scam. The students would have been much better served by being told to buy a specific book and to work through it.
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Sadly so true. At this point the scammed students might seek competent and qualified legal advice on their best options to deal with this situation.
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Education quality varies greatly between the different UK universities. At the top you have Oxford and Cambridge (some other universities ocassionally get in between the big two's dominance), but education quality in some of the universities at the bottom of the list is not great. Back when the economy was better many of those places were there for people to get the student lifestyle experience (back then involving a lot of partying and drinking) and eventually to graduate in order to get a job that require
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The primary job of a lecturer is design of the lecture, select the material and structure it.
If that was true then we don't need lecturers anymore since all the material already exists. No the primary job of a lecturer is to *teach the subject matter*. Whether the material used are AI generated or not is irrelevant. The question is a) are they correct, b) are they able to be understood. If a lecturer checks this then there's no reason not to use AI to generate it.
You said the second most important thing is that lecturing is more than just standing there. That I would argue is the most important thi
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The primary job of a lecturer is design of the lecture, select the material and structure it.
If that was true then we don't need lecturers anymore since all the material already exists.
That would require that there are no more and no less than the materials required in existence. The problem students face is not lack of materials. The problem is they are faced with vastly more materials than they need and most do not yet have the skills to competently make a selection and structure structure what they selected.
Other than that, I agree with your statement.
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I do recall one lecture where the professor started by writing up a brief overview of stochastic processes on the whiteboard and then turned around to us, the first words out of his mouth were "don't panic, we can get through this"
The lecturer is there to read the room and be responsive to what's necessary to get the points across, otherwise may as well just read it in a book
Not that there aren't some great books that have been better than some lectures I've attended and for all I know AI can get to the poi
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The lecturer is there to read the room and be responsive to what's necessary to get the points across, otherwise may as well just read it in a book
Yes, very much so. Sometimes it is hard, but the better the rapport you build with the students, the better it works. Talking to them in breaks helps. Showing the occasional weakness helps. If some student know something relevant better than you, let them talk for a few minutes. Of course, some students want the degree, but not do the work (which is really stupid, but it happens) and that is why I have stopped teaching mandatory subjects. If you do not really want to be in my lecture, I do not want you to b
That depends, was it wrong? (Score:2)
AI is a tool, nothing more, nothing less. There's no reason why one person can't use a tool while the other is banned from it.
The lecturer using AI to generate materials is perfectly okay, providing they were proof read. The dissemination of correct information is key, not how it was done.
The student using AI to generate materials is not okay. The goal is to demonstrate knowledge, it's not something that can be outsourced.
Also the linked reddit post bitching about AI generated images in lectures is just fuc
To paraphrase (Score:2)
“Why should I bother to learn something no one is willing to bother to teach?”
The original quote is: “Why should I read something no one could be bothered to write?” Talking about AI news articles and books, but I think it applies here.
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It's the only quote I ever use about AI.
As soon as I realise an article, or an image or whatever is AI generated, I just stop and go elsewhere, and often just block that channel/page/site/user.
At this point, it's openly discriminatory as a policy, as far as I'm concerned. This was AI - NOT YOU - making this and I'm not interested in the output of an AI. If I were, I'd just go onto an AI and have it make that, rather than pick it up from some other third-hand place that reposted it.
The irony of "social" me
Reminds me of a scene from a movie (Score:2)
Better and worse than reality (Score:1)
At least the professor in that movie had to think up his own lecture material.
With AI, not so much.
On the other hand, that teacher was limited by what he could fit in his own head.
In a few decades (or a few years?) a well-trained AI that has literally been trained in every important-and-still-relevant publication on the topic will be able to write a top-notch college-freshman-level lecture on topics that aren't rapidly evolving.
Just ask AI (Score:2)
Its interesting that the criticisms of this don't appear to be different outcomes. Is there any real difference between the content and presentation of a lecture by AI and one created by a human? It seems to me that is the only important question for the student.
And the question of "why do I need a college to provide me that?" is a legitimate question. If you break a college professors job down into component parts its not clear that most of the actual tasks can't theoretically be done by AI. It can create