I’ve reached the point as a professor where what I am doing is simply grading students on their use of LLMs. While a handful of students are doing honest human writing, most are entering the prompts directly into an LLM and that device then does the work for them. Some will follow the process, drafting iterations until it sounds like they way they want it to sound. Others just hit me with the first thing the LLM spits out. I am not sure what my role or any of our roles truly are as educators anymore, because education is slipping away. Most of my students do not actually want to learn anything in regards to the subjects being taught. I suspect this is not limited to Composition and Literature, though those things are deemed far less important in the US public eye. They lack a general interest or understanding of why knowledge of anything not pertaining to their narrow value lens is relevant. Why do what a machine (LLM in this case) can do faster and better than your own burgeoning ability. Why work to get better at anything we don’t, in this specific moment, care about?
I don’t have an answer that translates to them. That worries me.
Some Thoughts:
- Absolutely Bonkers Headline of the Day: “Police Rescue More Than 400 Cats From Being Eaten in Vietnam in a Bust of a Major Animal Theft Ring” So that’s who is eating the cats!
- Today the Lady Talis and I had a wonderful conversation about the relative youth of our nation and the disconnect that we have, as a result, to anything older and deeper. We actually believe as an American culture that 250 years is saying something. Arrogant.