7 comments

  • beej71 1 minute ago
    I do like that they're open to reconsidering the grading paradigm wholesale. I taught at a boot camp for a while and our highest-placed cohorts were the ones to whom we gave neither grades nor certificates. They plainly understood the game was between them and an eventual interviewer, not them and the school or instructor.
  • testfoobar 1 hour ago
    This is a bunch of fluff. I hope at least the snacks and lunches during the discussions were good.

    "Guiding principles: Be bold. Be humble. Put humanity front and center. Lean into learning. Teach with intentionality. No one size fits all."

    "Recommendations: Adapt educational processes for an AI-aware world. Center people, community, and the residential experience. Build processes, teams and tools for continuous reflection, iteration, and improvement"

    • rpaik 3 minutes ago
      It's going to be difficult not to be "fluffy" as no one really knows the true impact and what's going to happen. And it's especially challenging for universities as voices questioning the value of higher education will only grow louder.
    • 123h-asdg 5 minutes ago
      They have always dressed it up as concerned humanitarianism. They did it already with large donations in the past:

      https://www.philanthropy.com/news/can-a-350-million-gift-cha...

      All concerns, while the real goal is stated right in the article:

      "With this new approach, he says, experts in many fields can gain a deeper understanding of AI so they can better harness it. Meanwhile, computing experts are gaining greater exposure to the work of their counterparts in other fields. That exposure is giving the technologists a better understanding of how to create and train AI tools to better serve others."

      I'm sure they will have many meetings about future meetings.

    • copperx 38 minutes ago
      I hope AI was used to generate those empty words. What a waste of human effort.
    • jespinel 1 hour ago
      > This is a bunch of fluff.

      Accurate description.

      • mag7269 20 minutes ago
        “Boy, these guys are just [your typical Bill Lumberghs] with upper management written all over them.”
  • us-merul 46 minutes ago
    I think this has been going on well before AI or LLMs: "A fundamental danger, as we’ve discussed, is that AI can allow students to bypass learning. Equally concerning is that students may internalize a transactional model in which assignments are outputs, teachers are evaluators, peers are optional, and knowledge (or an MIT degree) is an optimizable commodity to be acquired or produced as efficiently as possible."
    • miltonlost 20 minutes ago
      Ok, but did AI and LLMs make the cheating easier, faster, harder to detect? Whatabout the past doesn't change the problems now.

      "My leg already had a cut on it. No need to worry about the new stab wound in my chest!"

      • us-merul 16 minutes ago
        Absolutely; it's a real problem. But institutions like MIT have also been participating in, and benefiting from, this transactional relationship from their side in offering degrees that they know carry so much value.
  • phasefactor 57 minutes ago
    "Be bold" by saying nothing of any interest. I have to agree that this is basically just fluff.

    Anyone put it into pangram yet?

    • 16bitvoid 39 minutes ago
      97% human-written
      • phasefactor 18 minutes ago
        I guess prolific em-dashes is not considered a sign of LLM writing anymore.
        • tyrabound 2 minutes ago
          It's actually not em-dashes, they are en-dashes, which is either intentionally to deceive (e.g., swapped) or used incorrectly. Both of which are bad, it's up to everyone to decide on which is worse coming from MITality.
  • a2ff6eeb0 44 minutes ago
    Education is so cooked. In 10 years, people arent going to find it useful financially. The AI will be better at economically relevant thinking.

    And there aren't enough hobbyist learners to sustain education at its current level.

  • UJ-FLD-ScrTr 30 minutes ago
    You can think what you like about MIT, but at least they're giving it some thought, however perfunctory it may seem. Many German universities prefer to try and ignore the issue and hope for the best.
    • ncr100 3 minutes ago
      How is this interesting? Sincerely?

      Tell us more about how MIT giving AI some thought compares superiorly to 'many German universities', and please tell us more about which German universities and in which circumstances.

    • CalRobert 27 minutes ago
      I mostly think about what they did to Aaron Swartz.
      • 123h-asdg 21 minutes ago
        They also formed committees and investigated after the fact back then!
  • 31aqi87 1 hour ago
    [flagged]