Oct
1
2024

Could AI be an Existential Threat to Existentialism?

[Amazon Link]
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Well, who knows? Megan McArdle (nee Jane Galt) takes on an easier issue: AI is an existential threat to colleges. Can they adapt? She is largely concerned at reports that a large fraction of students use AI to "cheat", passing off AI-written content as their own work.

Does existential sound too grim? Well, okay, I’m not arguing that all colleges and universities will actually cease to exist. But the more rampant the use of AI chatbots becomes, the more it threatens the value of a college diploma as a signal to employers that you are diligent, smart and ready for white-collar employment. The less economic value a diploma provides, the less willing parents and taxpayers will be willing to spend helping students get one.

Many academics will, of course, bristle at the notion that the purpose of college is to provide a job credential. But practically speaking, that’s where the money comes from to pay professors’ salaries. Between 1929 and 2013, educational institutions’ share of gross domestic product quintupled, not because parents and taxpayers wanted students to “learn to think” or become better citizens, but because college graduates earn a hefty wage premium.

AI chatbots threaten that premium in two ways. First, it is radically devaluing many of the skills that colleges taught, such as (the journalist pauses in alarm) the ability to research a topic and turn those facts into competent prose. Schools are starting to talk about how to teach kids new skills that are becoming valuable, such as writing useful prompts for the chatbot, but it’s not clear that they’re best positioned for that task. If you were starting from scratch to make the population AI-literate, you would probably not choose an institution with its roots in the medieval era, nor one staffed by tenure-track professors, who have a median age of 49.

[Amazon Link]
(paid link)
I wouldn't bemoan a radical restructuring of the entire American educational system, because I've read Bryan Caplan's he Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. (Amazon link at your right, my report here.)

Also of note:

  • It's a common enough error. Robert Graboyes misquotes Shakespeare, but that's OK for his purposes: Bubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble. He presents "Bob's 12 Laws of Bubbles", and here are the first two:

    1. If you can’t comprehend why an intelligent, well-informed, decent person might believe that (1) Donald Trump was a better president than Joe Biden is, or (2) Joe Biden is a better president than Donald Trump was, or (3) Donald Trump and Joe Biden are roughly equivalent on the great-to-horrific spectrum, then you live in a bubble.

    2. If you can’t comprehend why an intelligent, well-informed, decent person would (1) vote for Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, or (2) vote for Kamala Harris over Donald Trump, or (3) decline to vote for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, then you live in a bubble and need to stop watching cable news and go take a walk.

    And you will not want to miss the other ten. Plus, as a bonus, a Lawrence Welk clip, unfortunately containing no champagne bubbles.

    I confess that I have unfollowed some Facebook friends because they mostly posted intelligence-insulting political memes. Maybe running afoul of Graboyes' Law #9, and thereby being an asshole? Ah, well.

  • But speaking of bubble-dwelling… At the WSJ, James Freeman looks at the NYT's predictable election endorsement: Harris, Patriotism and the New York Times.

    Doing nothing to improve our public discourse or increase understanding across the partisan divide, the New York Times delivers its expected endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris under the intolerant headline “The Only Patriotic Choice for President.”

    This column hesitates to take the Times editorial board seriously, but for those determined to do so, a natural first question might be: How would they know? As the editorial itself acknowledges:

    Many voters have said they want more details about the vice president’s plans, as well as more unscripted encounters in which she explains her vision and policies. They are right to ask. 

    There may be more than ignorance at work here. The Times editorial falsely credits the vice president with an “unwavering commitment to the Constitution” despite her documented rejection of the free speech protections at the heart of the First Amendment, without which none of our other constitutional liberties would be safe.

    The reasonable conclusion is that Timesfolk are free speech absolutists when the Times is smearing Republicans but indifferent to First Amendment abuses if they are to be visited upon people who disagree with the Times. This seems deeply unpatriotic.

    Of course, she's not Trump. That's her major, perhaps only, advantage.

  • Kaus for alarm. Mickey Kaus rarely blogs these days, so attention must be paid when he points out The Trouble With Kamala's Nod. And also…

    : Ann Coulter cracked the code of why Kamala' Harris’ cackling laugh can be so annoying. It's not the sound of her voice. The problem is "she laughs when nothing remotely funny has been said." By laughing she’s asking us to become complicit in an emperor's-clothes social conspiracy to pretend it was funny. "If you don’t laugh, you’re rude ..."

    The same, I think, goes for an even more annoying and enduring Harris tic-- the way she nods her head like a bouncing ball after making what she thinks should be considered an important or profound point.** She's in effect asking the audience to join in acknowledging its importance. Reject that and you're rude.

    I confess I'm not that put off by the nodding, but that's me. Kaus has a few examples, most unfortunately requiring "premium" twitter. But here's one that doesn't:

    That would be annoying even in an audio-only form. A text transcript would be too.

  • See you in court. NHJournal has the eminently predictable next step in the struggle for free speech rights in Bow, New Hampshire: Bow High School Hit With Lawsuit Over Treatment of 'Pink-Wristband' Parents.

    Bow High School has been hit with a lawsuit on behalf of the pro girls-only sports parents who wore pink wristbands to their daughters’ soccer game earlier this month, a story that has brought national scorn to the affluent, liberal community.

    The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Hampshire, alleges that school officials violated the parents’ First Amendment rights by banning them from school grounds and events for wearing the pink wristbands as a form of silent protest during the Sept. 17 match.

    These school officials need some schoolin' themselves.