Feed: Slashdot
Feed Link: https://slashdot.org/
---

Title: What's the Point of School When AI Can Do Your Homework?

Link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/26/2154...

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: There's a new agentic AI
called Einstein that will, according to its developers, live the life of a
student for them. Einstein's website claims that the AI will attend lectures
for you, write your papers, and even log into EdTech platforms like Canvas to
take tests and participate in discussions. Educators told me that Einstein is
just one of many AI tools that can do homework for students, but should be
seen as a warning to schools that are increasingly seen by students as a
place to gain a diploma and status as opposed to the value of education
itself. If an AI can go to school for you what's the point of going to
school? For Advait Paliwal, Brown dropout and co-creator of Einstein, there
isn't one. "I think about horses," he said. "They used to pull carriages, but
when cars came around, I'd argue horses became a lot more free," he said.
"They can do whatever they want now. It would be weird if horses revolted and
said 'no, I want to pull carriages, this is my purpose in life.'" But humans
aren't horses. "This is much bigger than Einstein," Matthew Kirschenbaum told
404 Media. "Einstein is symptomatic. I doubt we'll be talking about Einstein,
as such, in a year. But it's symptomatic of what's about to descend on higher
ed and secondary ed as well." [...] The attractiveness of agentic AIs is a
symptom of a decades-long trend in higher education. "Universitiesby and
large adopted a transactive model of education," Kirschenbaum said. "Students
see their diploma as a credential. They pay tuition and at the end of four
years, sometimes five years, they receive the credential and, in theory at
least, that is then the springboard to economic stability and prosperity."
Paliwal seems to agree. He told 404 Media that he attempted to change the
university from the inside while working as a TA, but felt stymied by
politics. "The only way to force these institutions to evolve is to bring
reality to their face. And usually the loudest critics are the ones who can't
do their own job well and live in fear of automation," he said. "I think we
really need to question what learning even is and whether traditional
educational institutions are actually helping or harming us," said Paliwal.
"We're seeing a rise in unemployment across degree holders because of AI, and
that makes me question whether this is really what humans are born to do.
We've been brainwashed as a society into valuing ourselves by the output of
our productive work, and I think humanity is a lot more beautiful than that.
Is it really education if we're just memorizing things to perform a task
well?" Kirschenbaum added: "What we're finding is that if forms of education
can be transacted then we've just about arrived at the point where autonomous
software AI agents are capable of performing the transaction on your behalf,"
he said. "And so the whole educational paradigm has come back to essentially
bite itself in the ass."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

---
VRSS v2.1.180528