Mastodawn

the roamer Jul 24, 2025

Met my MSc dissertation students this week. All good natured people. But the genAI rot is spreading.

About half of them do their work, and ask me questions about the problems they encounter. I advise on possible next steps. We meet again next week. All good.

But.

The other half, each of them perfectly well meaning, came back to me with questions that had nothing to do with their projects, and proposed solutions that are alien to the framework we are using. After some serious conversations, I found that in each case they had relied on chatGTP answers to their prompts. They had not read the actual papers I had given them.

Some had implemented equations that are patently false, not by error (this would be good for learning), but because chatGPT told them so.

A significant part our students can't read anymore. They need to interact with genAI, and they think this is research.

We are heading for trouble. In higher education, and in society at large.

#noAI #AcademicChatter

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CyberFrog Jul 24, 2025

@the_roamer I have heard similar things from other academics and educators before, but would you care to expand on the "A significant part our students can't read anymore" comment?

I am interested in what you mean by this in particular

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the roamer Jul 25, 2025

@froge

What I meant is this: they still have to learn, or re-learn, the need to engage with a given text, take notes, get confused, get back to it ... produce their own understanding from this struggle. Reading is active construction of knowledge by the reader. They want to buy knowledge. I don't blame them as individuals, it is the poisened air we all breathe.

#noAI

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stefan

@the_roamer @froge Another aspect to this is imho the psychological aspect of motivation:

students (or people in general?) try to find the easiest way to solve a problem. For us before LLMs, we read the papers, but some read summaries if available, and some cheated (but that was unethical).

Now with LLMs there is a even easier (seemingly) solution available, so its hard/harder to find motivation to do the hard problem (do the actual reading).