Mastodawn

lynn / clarissa Jun 2, 2025

As someone who works in higher-ed and also has taught middle school and high school aged kids, my opinion is not that LLM use is exploding among students because they're lazy or stupid or anything else

it's because our educational system has prioritized a very transactional "do this bullshit, and you get the credentials you need to have a life" approach for

well

maybe forever, really

and no one should be surprised that adversarial approaches by teachers and administrators are being met with an adversarial approach by students

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ShadSterling Jun 3, 2025

@left_adjoint the schools themselves are an obstacle to learning and opportunity; the LLMs may diminish learning further, but they may also help with the opportunity, and potentially save time that can then be used for more effective learning and/or other pursuits.

It would be great if this leads to changing schools to actually nurture learning and skill-building. Unfortunately I think it will lead to graduates who have less of certain skills right when LLMs become expensive to use

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ShadSterling

@left_adjoint I guess “cheating tool” wasn’t the best description when it’s used as a gatekeeper-satisfier

(like how some people who come off as weird can get much better responses to applications and whatnot by running their writing through an LLM which generates output more likely to be recognized as in-group by the people who evaluate submissions)

But it’s still dangerous as a tool for the owners to extract control of real resources

https://mastodon.social/@ShadSterling/114509639472268342