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trashboat

@ trashboat @midwest.social

Posts
1
Comments
51
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Amazon is reportedly training humanoid robots to deliver packages

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  • Also doors and gates

    They may also have concluded that the public finds a humanoid robot more acceptable than those cube 4-wheeled robots that never took off that people like to tip and kick over and stuff

  • YouTube tops Disney and Netflix in TV viewing

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  • Might be a silly question, but is YouTube TV considered a part of YouTube here?

  • Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

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  • I mean we’re talking about kids who are functionally illiterate. The system has failed to teach them this basic skill. Critical thinking about complex and nuanced topics is way beyond that!

    I agree with you there, and I don't think we're really all that far off from each other. Writing has both synthetic (the critical thinking to which I referred) and syntactical (what I believe you're getting at) components to it, and kids have been missing out on the synthetic component for quite a while now and are now beginning to miss more of the syntactical part as a result of AI.

    Where I disagree with you is:

    And the problem is they’re not going to learn the basic skills if they use AI to prevent themselves from doing any work.

    Kids not doing their work didn't start with AI. LLMs haven't even been mainstream or otherwise publicly available for three years yet. A lot of these kids were never going to complete coursework in good faith because the curriculum is failing to engage them. Either that, or there are influences in their lives that make it altogether impossible, such as poverty or neurodivergence. In my other comment I was speaking mainly to career readiness, but the principle of meeting students where their circumstances and interests lie applies throughout their time in K-12.

    A trend I've noticed in this issue is demonizing students (hence why I keep bringing it up). These kids had nothing to do with their parents putting iPads in front of them instead of reading to them when they were little, or having to take classes that were designed before their parents were born, or so many other observations about the structure of education that make it archaic and broken (perhaps by design, but that's out-of-scope here). Every stakeholder around this issue should be discussing with each other the ways that school can better serve students; instead, we've hastily created a stigma that using AI to complete assignments that you don't understand, don't have time for, or simply couldn't care less about makes you a cheater.

    It is truly a wicked problem, and I believe the way that our leaders haven't adapted education is primarily to blame. I haven't even mentioned social media, and I think that government's inability to regulate it has its share to blame for kids struggling in school. But as problematic as AI is, it is not the reason why this is happening, and we may have to agree to disagree on that point.

  • Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

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  • I may disagree with you that the ability to write alone is where the problem is. In my view, LLMs are further exposing that our education system is doing a very poor job of teaching kids to think critically. It seems to me that this discussion tends to be targeted at A) Kids who already don’t want to be at school, and B) Kids who are taking classes simply to fulfill a requirement by their district— and both are using LLMs as a way to pass a class that they either don’t care about or don’t have the energy to pass without it.

    What irked me about this headline is labeling them as “cheaters,” and I got push-back for challenging that. I ask again: if public education is not engaging you as a student, what is your incentive not to use AI to write your paper? Why are we requiring kids to learn how to write annotated bibliographies when they already know that they aren’t interested in pursuing research? A lot of the stuff we’re still teaching kids doesn’t make any sense.

    I believe a solution cuts both ways:

    A) Find something that makes them want to think critically. Project-based learning still appears to be one of the best catalysts for making this happen, but we should be targeting it towards real-world industries, and we should be doing it more quickly. As a personal example: I didn’t need to take 4 months of biology in high school to know that I didn’t want to do it for a living. I participated in FIRST Robotics for 4 years, and that program alone gave me a better chance than any in the classroom to think critically, exercise leadership skills, and learn soft and hard skills on my way to my chosen career path. I’ve watched the program turn lights on in kids’ heads as they finally understand what they want to do for a living. It gave them purpose and something worth learning for; isn’t that what this is all about anyway?

    B) LLMs (just like calculators, the internet, and other mainstream technologies that have emerged in recent memory) are not going anywhere. I hate all the corporate bullshit surrounding AI just as much as the next user on here, but LLMs still add significant value to select professions. We should be teaching all kids how to use LLMs as an extension of their brain rather than as a replacement for it, and especially rather than universally demonizing it.

  • Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College

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  • Do we have to throw mud at “cheating” students? I’ve been hearing similar stuff about K-12 for a while with regards to looking up answers on the internet, but if the coursework is rote enough that an LLM can do it for you, then A. As a student taking gen-eds that have no obvious correlation to your degree, why wouldn’t you use it? And B. It might just be past time to change the curriculum

  • End of 10 - Windows ten is ending. Microsoft wants you to buy a new computer. But what if you could make your current one fast and secure again?

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  • Again… So much proprietary software is the industry standard, particularly Adobe, and much of it is Linux-compatible, making it not so easy to make the switch as a freelancer

  • xkcd #3081: PhD Timeline

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  • I have to believe that this factor is equally to blame

  • WSJ Drops Shock Exposé on Elon Musk’s Alleged Attempts to Impregnate X Influencers — ‘To Reach Legion Level Before the Next Apocalypse’

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  • A lot of that stuff is tragic and hard to believe, and I agree with you that all of it happening at once is completely crazy. But to me this article illustrates a more granular and fundamental level of Elon’s psychology that’s deeply messed up. Though of course I can’t say I’m surprised that he behaves this way behind closed doors

  • WSJ Drops Shock Exposé on Elon Musk’s Alleged Attempts to Impregnate X Influencers — ‘To Reach Legion Level Before the Next Apocalypse’

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  • This… might just be the craziest thing I’ve read since the election

    Someone should totally try to catfish him, though. Sounds like it wouldn’t be all that challenging

  • There’s AI Inside Windows Paint and Notepad Now

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  • Yeah I’ve only used Inkscape a little bit but I would not categorize it as a program that can quickly be picked up

  • Mike Johnson says men need to stop ‘playing video games all day’ and get to work: ‘They’re draining resources’

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  • You could’ve just said he looks like the Keebler elf’s accountant

  • Four Democrats Pass Bill Making It Harder for Married Women to Vote

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  • The bigger issue is how hard it can be for marginalized populations to get an ID if they live 10+ miles from an issuing office and they don’t have a vehicle/public transit system that can get them there. These challenges are by design and the reason why Republicans have been pushing for voter ID requirements for so long

  • US Social Security Administration Shifting All Public Communications to X

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  • Don’t ever see a whole lot of casual WoT references lol

  • Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides”

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  • Interesting how college educated Americans switched sides over time

  • Adobe Gets Bullied Off Bluesky

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  • I’ve always seen Blender as a 3D art tool but never as a precise 3D engineering tool. Didn’t even know Blender had CAD features

  • Trump Claims Nazis Treated Jewish Prisoners With “Love”

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  • Not to mention that among their rationale for attacking Palestinian support has been stopping antisemitism

    Unsurprising to hear that they were projecting about something else

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  • Nice

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  • I’ve gradually been switching over. The UI is somewhat confusing in my experience- but the MSO UX+UI is consistently getting much, much worse as time passes

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  • Your comments never disappoint