MIT published a brutally honest report on what AI is doing to students.
A committee of professors and students spent five months studying how AI changed learning on campus, and the findings read like a warning to every university on the planet.
Study groups are disappearing. Office hours are emptying out. Problem sets and take-home exams no longer prove anything, because AI can produce credible solutions to almost any written assignment in the undergraduate curriculum. Students who lean on chatbots lose mastery and confidence, and some slip into what the report calls cognitive surrender, reaching for AI at the first hint of struggle.
The numbers are rough. 46 percent of surveyed MIT undergrads use LLMs daily. 90 percent worry about their own overreliance. Undergrads who feel AI makes them replaceable now outnumber those who feel it makes them capable.
The committee's answer surprised me. They refused to fight AI with surveillance. The report calls AI detectors unreliable, says lockdown browsers feel like spying, and warns that policing students builds a classroom atmosphere of mutual distrust.
Instead, MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely, since without a GPA to optimize, much of the incentive to cheat with AI evaporates.
The committee warns professors against replacing undergrad research assistants with AI agents just because they're cheaper, because a university exists to grow people, not output.
The most famous tech school on earth admitted the machines broke its way of teaching. Its answer is more humans, not more software.
People twist themselves in knots trying to convince you that younger gens today have a leg up on all who came before just because of technology, when anyone under 50 sees cost of living, valuation of equities, and declining ROI of a degree and knows that is complete fucking BS.
I would guess that consumer sentiment is poor because it is the worst non recessionary job market in history, the worst housing market in multiple decades if not ever, people are paying higher taxes but they're being called tariffs, real income growth is stalling, they are having to dissave to keep consuming, the cost of credit remains prohibitive, homeowners can't tap their equity without paying higher rates for it, the value of higher education is in structural decline while the costs keep rising, 33% of new college graduates are unemployed, AI is coming for white collar workers' jobs, energy costs are rising, and the president who ran on ending wars started a war while increasing his net worth by $3 billion. Just a wild guess.
@fejau_inc I’ve been doing this for myself (via markdown files in Claude with my own categories). That has been the real unlock for me—AI that knows me and what I’m focusing on via markdown files I can take with me wherever (or tell Claude to ignore at times).
@fejau_inc I’ve been doing this for myself (via markdown files in Claude with my own categories). That has been the real unlock for me—AI that knows me and what I’m focusing on via markdown files I can take with me wherever (or tell Claude to ignore at times).
@omriceren@JSeyff I’ve seen this first-hand, too (investment management industry). Young reporters that are not doing the work to understand what they are writing about and just going to print with shoddy work (including misquotes).