Comment by WarmWash
4 hours ago
Similar to the media, I've picked up on vibes from academia that have a baseline AI negative tilt.
In my own (classic) engineering work, AI has become so phenomenally powerful that I can only imagine that if I was still in college, I'd be mostly checked out during those boring lectures/bad teacher classes, and then learning on my own with the textbook and LLMs by night. Which begs the question, what do we need the professor for?
I'd be interested to see stats on "office hours" visitation time over the last 4 years (although admittedly its the best tool for gaining a professor's favor, AI doesn't grant that)
That's a fair point regarding pure content absorption, especially given that many classes do suffer from poor didactics. However, the university's value proposition often lies elsewhere: access to professors researching innovations (not yet indexed by LLMs), physical labs for hands-on experience that you can't simulate, and the crucial peer networking with future colleagues. These human and physical elements, along with the soft skills developed through technical debate, are hard to replace. But for standard theory taught by uninspired lecturers, I agree that the textbook plus LLM approach is arguably superior.
> Similar to the media, I've picked up on vibes from academia that have a baseline AI negative tilt.
The media is extremely pro-AI (and a quick look at their ownership structure gives you a hint as to why). You seem to be projecting your own biases here, no?
And how would those LLMs learn? How would you learn to ask the right questions that further scientific research?