We live in an insane era where many companies would want to be selecting employees who had a proven ability to learn and succeed without the aid of AI tools… before then forcing them to use AI for everything once hired
That’s just the usual routine of externalising costs while extracting benefits, maybe it’s just a very blatant example.
GOOD. If you use a clanker to think for you instead of putting in the barest minimum effort and actually learning, you do not deserve the honour of being qualified.
Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”
Among those who took the test, the average score plunged—from 96 all the way down to 48.
Id hate to be a recruiter or interviewer for this generation of students
I’d hate to be a teacher. Imagine how much time you’d waste grading AI-generated papers…
Or reviewing the work of junior colleagues. Fun times!
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they were already using software(way before pandemic) to grade papers.
To grade multiple choice questions, right?
… right?
I just started a new job, and after I (imo) aced the remote interview, they brought me in for an in-person, which didn’t seem unusual. I was surprised when they started asking all the same questions as in the remote and take-home interviews, but clearly they’ve been hitting issues with this.
I was hired during the pandemic and it was quite an interesting experience to get there. They had an online assessment center, several hours (with breaks) of all sorts of quizzes, questions and tasks, mostly intelligence and memory-related, combined with math, general knowledge, language proficiency and a section on personality and personal preferences, with a relatively limited focus on IT questions at the end that felt tacked on for the job. There was no surveillance during it - no webcam requirements or anything. They just sent me a link and I could complete this timed test at a point in time of my choosing, in one go. Since it wasn’t very difficult at all and there was more than enough time, I had no issues with this one.
Before the interview, I was handed a 20 minute condensed version of largely the same type of questions to be completed in person (very small room, alone, under supervision, to eliminate any possibility of cheating), which I completed in no time, and finally an extensive interview (IIRC about 45 minutes) in front of what I can only describe as a tribunal of eight more or less relevant people sitting in a half-circle in front of a chair for the interviewee (at a distance due to COVID), most of which would just silently judge me with their eyes and take down notes as two to three of them switched between interrogating, I mean, interviewing me. They were actually very friendly, but it did feel quite intense. I was extremely nervous in the beginning, even stuttered a little, but as the interview went on, my nerves calmed down. None of the questions were surprising nor upsetting, but due to my initial nervousness, I still felt like I had failed.
Anyway, after they had hired me (I received a call about two weeks later), they later told me that they had done this twice with about 100 applicants each, just to hire a single person. In retrospect, I can’t believe I successfully made it through all of this. I was very well prepared for the interview and had previously spent a lot of effort (several weeks worth) on the application itself, tailoring it to the job and the organization, but still.
If you have the amount of resources this large org has, I think this is a very thorough way of doing things. The simple method of repeating a portion of the test in person (with different questions, but the same kind as online) eliminates cheaters and can be done by an org of virtually any size. The lengthy interview in front of a diverse group I’m not so sure about though. With shy and nervous applicants (as well as those on the spectrum), this can be very overwhelming, but since they all have to find a consensus in the end, discrimination and personal preferences influencing the hiring decision are less likely to happen.
Yikes! Either that recruitment process is incredibly inefficient, or they’re hiring someone to take over the security of a nuclear weapon factory.
There was also a background check involved, which I forgot to mention. But overall, it’s very much the former and not even close to something like the latter.
They’ve already made it into the job roles.
I was helping somebody (a professional with a degree) on a software and they were, among other things, struggling to manually tally over ten items with the cursor as a pointer. They kept starting back at 1 and recounting. After many attempts they asked me to count the items for them.
So I had to stop helping and explain they needed to speak to their manager about the issues. 🙁
Hot damn… Having issues because you’re used to the AI thinking for you is one thing … being incapable of counting to 10 (with repeated attempts!) is quite another thing entirely.
Its the worst one I have encountered. Typically its just a lot of not caring about figuring stuff out and hoping somebody else can do the work for them.
its that SEVERE?, its likely someone unable to finish grad 1-5. they likely used AI all the way to graduation, or most of thier education was spent online during covid, which dint help things.
That’s the worst one I’ve encountered. Usually its just disengagement. Like they ask for help, our techs start showing them the solution steps, and rather than watching the steps as we go, they are on their phone checking Instagram. Like they think help is somebody else doing their job for them.
I’m looking forward to my next round of technical interviews. The people who depend on AI usually end up looking very foolish. Especially on the questions designed to make various LLMs hallucinate.
Do you have an example of the type of questions that will cause hallucinations?
they know they cheated, with a W on thier transcripts, assuming they arnt going for grad programs, it likely wont affect them anyways, a w is almost always count as a ZERO in some cases.
Other than this hot take
Ivy League college students are, by definition, intelligent.
It’s an interesting read.
Ivy League college students are, by definition, people who attend classes at an Ivy League university … nothing more and nothing less.
If you want to claim they’re anything other than that, you’re using different arguments – it can’t be justified definitionally. You’d think someone who was actually intelligent might know that…
Author was Ivy educated I take it?
nate anderson, so its probably slop that slipped by. at least, that’s easier for me to understand than a human being actually writing something like that since 1980.
What is the point of paying for college when you squander it this way?
40 years of telling kids a degree is a job ticket rather than explaining the value of a liberal arts education.
Every time I see k12 education discussion focused on “preparing kids for the job market” I cringe. Its the cart before the horse and just as agile.
To put it on your resume I guess
I had a guy who sat next to me when I took some community classes after work he would show up late and from the corner of my eye could see him scroll when I’d scroll and answer a question on quizes when I did.
I imagine he continued on and now makes more money than I do
The amount of scorn for degrees here is spectacular.
Medicine happens, in part, by experience. Even so, would you want your doctor or nurse working on you either of those roles without their degree(s)?
Psychologist?
Your lawyer?
The engineer designing that bridge you cross every day?
Who has scorn for degrees? All I said is I noticed someone cheating their way through some classes and it sucks knowing that people like that usually fair better monetarily
It’s mostly just a piece of paper required for most white collar jobs to even pass on your resume to a real person. That’s the only reason I got a degree. I already had tons of experience, but couldn’t get a decent full-time job because the job postings all had a degree as a requirement and the automated systems take that as a hard requirement because it’s objective and thus easy to filter on.
It’s mostly just a piece of paper required for most white collar jobs to even pass on your resume to a real person.
Fun fact: as long as you’re not studying to become a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or other professional with a governing/licensing body, you can just lie about it.
No employer has ever asked to actually see my diploma. No employer has ever requested a transcript from the school. And even if one does, what’s the worst that can happen? You just won’t get that specific job – but you can keep on trying and applying to other jobs.
seen people exaggerate or lie on thier resumes for non- license required jobs. and they do seem to have a better chance of getting hired.
resume reasons, especially ivy league schools. ivy schools tend to select students based on historical alumni reasons if they aren’t top cut, and people who grew up in wealth usually had better resources growing up to be smart (but it doesn’t by default mean they are smart)
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This is why I’m nervous about going back to school too. I’ve seen people find out their professors are just using AI and it feels so…gross. You pay a lot for school! What’s the point if it’s all just phoned in? And then to top it off you aren’t guaranteed a good job afterwards even if you do well.
I wish there was a better solution to all of this because I would like to change my life trajectory as I’ve grown tired in my current position
You have the right attitude and I hope you are able to successfully shop around. Some institutions are paying below living wages to overworked and precariously employed instructors. Of course they phone it in. Those places are not worth your money and just trying to cash in on the “diploma” ==“job ticket” mentality.
Find a place that actually gives a shit about education and you should find professors interested in actual education that will see your attitude as refreshing.
What’s the point if it’s all just phoned in?
You get a piece of paper at the end that proves you’ve gone through the class barrier hurdle successfully, thus demonstrating that you’re not one of those filthy poors, so you’re eligible for one of the good jobs.
Not even that these days. The good jobs are for people with connections. Those who made it through based on merit are more likely to end up as office drones that can be let go if the CEO wants a higher quarterly bonus to spend on gold trim for his third yacht.
Well, that’s what they mean by one of the ‘good jobs’.
Because, sure, that still sucks ass. But at least you’re not sweating like a pig and getting skin cancer while mowing lawns. At least you’re not pissing in a bottle and stepping over dead coworkers for Amazon. And at least you’re not getting physically assaulted by irate customers who are mad at your employer’s terrible policies in some shitty dead-end retail place.
Until those layoffs happen, you get to work in an air conditioned office. You get a chair to sit in. You might even get lunch breaks sometimes!
Damn, I never thought about how AI is making it so that even the professionals are unprofessional now… because AI enables the posers to get the job, and then they keep using AI to keep the job.
How can you maintain a workforce of specializations under these conditions?
It’s not just posers, it’s also an issue of just being easy, so even a seasoned, experienced professor can use it to avoid hours of prep for materials that would then be above the cut of the LLM content. Still lowers the standard, but without even changing the professors.
they can just AI generate all thier slides, and course material and just read off it verbatim. before AI, we had a biochem teach in college that only read off slides, very unhelpful in learning, when the tests came around it wasnt remotely similar to her slides at all. she would rather do research, which i assume most profs would than teach. not really surprising most students either got C-s or Ds in her class.
I was working while I went through it and it was hell. Now that I have all this knowledge crammed in my tiny brain it is easy to take the higher road, but I do wonder if I had a chance to cheat, if I wouldn’t rather do that than mixing sleep deprivation and stimulants to try to keep my Cs afloat.
Adding context, the nearly-perfect-marks midterm was a take-home exam. Not that chatbots aren’t a big problem in schools right now, but this same thing would’ve happened 15 years ago.
Depends on the material. We had quasi take home exams in math because there was no reasonable expectation for you to be able to determine a series of proofs in an hour. We’d get a list of like 8-12 problems and like 5 would be on the exam for you to regurgitate your proof.
Not the same at all.
Take home tests are usually formatted in a way where it doesn’t matter if the student has access to textbooks, or even the internet, since they still need to synthesize a response (thinking specifically of essay questions here, but it’s not exclusive to them) that shows they understood the material.
LLMs can now do that now. Or at least emulate that.
