BRFR Cake Stop 'breaking news' miscellany

[briantrumpet]

Did Google Gemini tell you that?

Since you mentioned it, I asked Copilot a question about cognitive deficit:

I'd actually go as far to say that the human brain simply with have a gap where reasoning and understanding should be, if AI is used extensively, and that that will be persistent, if AI is not used very very carefully.

Watching how the AI companies are hyping themselves as saviours of humanity (whilst bending the knee to an authoritarian madman) in order to max out their financial position does not fill me with optimism about their doing all this for the good of humanity.

 

[briantrumpet]

My cousin is a university lecturer and he says that AI has become a massive problem in assessing coursework. At one time it was relatively easy to use IT tools to check work for plagiarism but that is being made amost impossible with the increase in AI. He believes that it will lead to less use of coursework and greater use of examinations as a means of assessing student performance.

Quite so. Mirrors a conversation I had with a quantum physicist professor friend, who learnt his skills the hard way (and who feels he can't criticise too directly, as then the student feedback is negative). And that's almost the point: the struggle, the grappling with hard ideas, is what builds the brain. Making all this stuff 'easily accessible' will do no-one any favours (apart from the shareholders in the AI companies).

And yes, I know I sound like an old fart whose next pronouncement will be that abacuses ought to be more widely used (or maybe slide rules, if we make a small concession there).

 

[PurplePenguin]

It is 'easily accessible', but without the understanding of the material you're investigating, you've no idea if what AI is telling you is credible or not: all the inaccurate stuff is just as accessible, and if people haven't learnt the value of scepticism (and current politics would suggest that's the case), then it's not at all healthy.

One of my regular reminders to young learners is that education is not about the destination, it's about how you get there, and the struggle is the formative bit, not getting the 'right answer'.

On this subject you come across as a Luddite. Wikipedia is occasionally wrong, but no one reaches for an encyclopedia any more. Not least because I imagine they contained more errors than Wikipedia.

It's an amazing tool to learn with. If you doubt the information - read its source

 

[Ian H]

On this subject you come across as a Luddite. Wikipedia is occasionally wrong, but no one reaches for an encyclopedia any more. Not least because I imagine they contained more errors than Wikipedia.

It's an amazing tool to learn with. If you doubt the information - read its source

Wikipedia is the wrong analogy. It's more like an undiscerning scan of the internet in general.

 

[briantrumpet]

On this subject you come across as a Luddite. Wikipedia is occasionally wrong, but no one reaches for an encyclopedia any more. Not least because I imagine they contained more errors than Wikipedia.

It's an amazing tool to learn with. If you doubt the information - read its source

On this one I'll remain a Luddite for now, and will keep advising young people I know not to rely on it, and to relish the fun (and benefits) of learning the old-fashioned way.

I suspect that you are of an age that you had to do a lot of stuff the hard way, and that's why 'read its source' seems so obvious a thing to do (and you know the value of scepticism, as you had to do your own filtering).

You might even be old enough to have had to do it the very hard way, before whole-text searches of books was a thing, and bibliographies and index cards in libraries were still the best on offer. The difference between my bachelor's and master's degrees (about 20 years) really made me appreciate the brilliance of whole-text searches from the comfort of my armchair, but no-one was doing the filtering or the assimilation other than me and my brain: it just (massively) increased the amount of material I could collect and assess: the cognitive process was still the same, in essence.

The same can't be said of the way AI is being marketed as a tool for 'outsourcing' all the hard work to a system that doesn't know right from wrong amd will never have 'doubt' or 'hunches', or laugh at preposterous statements.

 

[briantrumpet]

Ironically, @PurplePenguin, I suspect the reason that you are both aware of AI's problems and know how to use it as a learning tool effectively might be because you did your formative learning the old-fashioned way, and see the dangers as well as the benefits, and have developed the skill to sift information and see bullshit for what it is.

 

[Evil_Breakfast]

My cousin is a university lecturer and he says that AI has become a massive problem in assessing coursework. At one time it was relatively easy to use IT tools to check work for plagiarism but that is being made amost impossible with the increase in AI. He believes that it will lead to less use of coursework and greater use of examinations as a means of assessing student performance.

So the pendulum would shift back towards a final exam; rather than the GCSE+Coursework model?
Interesting.

 

[Rusty Nails]

On this subject you come across as a Luddite. Wikipedia is occasionally wrong, but no one reaches for an encyclopedia any more. Not least because I imagine they contained more errors than Wikipedia.

It's an amazing tool to learn with. If you doubt the information - read its source

A bit like research?

 

[briantrumpet]

A bit like research?

Isn't that just scrolling through Facebook and X these days?

 

[Rusty Nails]

Isn't that just scrolling through Facebook and X these days?

That's so yesterday. Now you just look at the stuff their algorithms throw at you. That's what our resident MAGAT does.

 

[AuroraSaab]

AI is only as good as its source material.

Reddit is a dumpster fire of unevidenced, unscientific opinion.

 

[briantrumpet]

Haha. Thanks for calling me a Luddite, @PurplePenguin, and prompting me to ask Copilot (cue the irony meter) to ask if they've been misrepresented in history.

 

[PurplePenguin]

Ironically, @PurplePenguin, I suspect the reason that you are both aware of AI's problems and know how to use it as a learning tool effectively might be because you did your formative learning the old-fashioned way, and see the dangers as well as the benefits, and have developed the skill to sift information and see bullshit for what it is.

I'm not sure I agree with this. I don't feel I missed out by not having to use log books despite teachers going on about how we wouldn't always have a calculator in our pockets.

What I have gained is access to a vast amount of information that would have been very hard to come across. Some examples from my recent usage:
- How the footballer Eze's name should be pronounced. Received a detailed response regarding Nigerian pronunciation.
- Nationality laws of another country and the possibility of changes. I received a link to the English language laws with the relevant section identified. Plus a translation of and link to the ongoing discussions about which bits of law may change and the proposed wording. I wasn't getting that with the Dewey Decimal system.
- Info on how Angel escalator compares in length to others around the world.
- Info on how someone can be a carrier of MRSA, but not be infected.

To me it's just mind blowing that I can find this stuff out so easily. Of course some of the above, I could have found out in other ways, but some of it I would not have been able to.

 

[briantrumpet]

I'm not sure I agree with this. I don't feel I missed out by not having to use log books despite teachers going on about how we wouldn't always have a calculator in our pockets.

What I have gained is access to a vast amount of information that would have been very hard to come across. Some examples from my recent usage:
- How the footballer Eze's name should be pronounced. Received a detailed response regarding Nigerian pronunciation.
- Nationality laws of another country and the possibility of changes. I received a link to the English language laws with the relevant section identified. Plus a translation of and link to the ongoing discussions about which bits of law may change and the proposed wording. I wasn't getting that with the Dewey Decimal system.
- Info on how Angel escalator compares in length to others around the world.
- Info on how someone can be a carrier of MRSA, but not be infected.

To me it's just mind blowing that I can find this stuff out so easily. Of course some of the above, I could have found out in other ways, but some of it I would not have been able to.

I'm not arguing that it's not capable of amazing stuff, but that ignores two points:

- as I mentioned, your (and my) expectations of and abilities with it will be affected by the 'old school' hard learning we've done in the past (even if you're too young to have been subjected to log tables, slide rules, and non-calculator exams)

- you're not factoring in the potential enormous cognitive harm that I (and others) argue could be *an* outcome of its widespread misuse in learning (whether formal or informal).

And my Luddite argument is that the AI industry is not going to take any account of the cognitive harm it could do, as that would put a brake on its expansion, in a similar way that betting companies will push back on any controls that protect punters from betting addiction, as that undermines their bottom line. There are number of parallels (fossil fuels, smoking, etc) that wouldn't be very convincing in countering the suggestion that the goal of maximising profits will always win in unbridled capitalism, even if the outcome is massive human harm.

 

[secretsqirrel]

The other day a random thought, made me think of a pop video I saw as a youngster back in the day 80s. I saw a short clip of it and saw it only once, it might have been a bit obscure even in its day.
I took to google and asked the question with as much info as I could hazily remember….

What was the pop video with a man in a kilt swinging a hammer in the 1980s?
Within an instant came the reply….

The video you're likely thinking of is for "Over the Sea" by Jesse Rae, a Scottish musician who cultivated a "Highland warrior" persona in the 1980s.

Checked on YT and there it was, except it wasn’t a hammer, it was a claymore. I was impressed*



*sometimes it doesn’t take much.