babar99

[babar99 @babar994]

@zenahitz what i find frustrating about this discourse is that the same people who ardently oppose AI also ardently oppose meaningfully punishing cheating. all that's left is a kind of magical thinking that this thing should "just go away" on its own

[babar99 @babar994]

@zenahitz completely agree. at this point, the only solutions I see are: 1) in-person assessment (kills take home, long-form essays, sadly); 2) radically increase punishments for AI cheating (e.g., expulsion). in status quo, cheating of any kind is ~unpunished so (2) is very unlikely

[babar99 @babar994]

@zenahitz IMO the fundamental issue is that the average student is in the classroom because they need a degree to get a job. if that student can cheat, they will (again, on average). doesn't matter how fun / interesting / undead you make class

[babar99 @babar994]

@BillyStu what is the new thing professors need to do here that they weren't doing before, in your view?

[babar99 @babar994]

@cremieuxrecueil No way to know if whole thing written by AI (unlikely IMO) or written by human edited by AI

[babar99 @babar994]

"prose engineers" 🥴

[Justin Murphy @jmrphy]

AI is basically the Status Apocalypse for the intellectual class. Look closely at the different viewpoints crystallizing, very few will last another 12 months.

Pangram will not work for much longer, or it will cost thousands of dollars. Slop is a technically solved problem but it's not evenly distributed yet because highbrow prose has tiny economic value relative to coding.

Uniquely stylish and powerful prose will still command a premium, but the best prose writers of the next generation are going to do that WITH AI (to variable degrees in many different production configurations).

Nobody whose identity, status or income derive from highbrow prose production wants to say this aloud because it means that all of their social worth and much of their self-worth is now up for grabs. Of course, the best writers today are well positioned to be some of the best prose engineers of the next generation, but they'd have to reinvent their way of thinking and working, which established careerists resent having to do.

The other big issue that contemporary writers resent is that, in the AI era, to be a "good writer" will require that you have real truths that other people don't have. And you're going to have to take risks to express them. Today, you can hide the lack of these two things with sufficiently advanced erudition and style. The people most freaking out right now are the fancy wordsmiths with fancy positions who have no real alpha and no real courage. It is absolutely rational for them to be stigmatizing AI unconditionally.

(The only reason I can say this aloud is that I've walked away from a successful academic career, so I've already traversed my status collapse voluntarily. I now feel pretty immune to whatever humblings technology has in store for us...)

[babar99 @babar994]

@SFGaliani @nsokolsky @tylercowen Well if you don't mind DM'ing or sharing in some less public capacity I would love to know (for my own classes I am thinking about this). But I understand what you mean.

[babar99 @babar994]

@SFGaliani @nsokolsky @tylercowen can you give an example of this part: "The task has to force them to proceed step by step, think through the output they get back, interpret it, and remain in command of the assignment." Thanks!

[babar99 @babar994]

@ahall_research @soumitrashukla9 can you puost about the knowledge wikis workflow? is there a connection to obsidian?

[babar99 @babar994]

@MereSophistry I hope you’re right! But consider what the in-class stuff looks like (for instance) at large universities. 120+ class, sometimes 200. Giant room. Minimal direct contact with prof. Submit everything through a learning software system. How big is the leap to online from there?

[babar99 @babar994]

@mnolangray Which of those three is Sacramento

[babar99 @babar994]

@surplustakes To me the bigger issue is that even if one parent can afford to stay home, neither wants to?

[babar99 @babar994]

@cblatts So cool. What do you do with your work email? Route that to Gmail as well or does your Claude setup grab the edu email as well?

[babar99 @babar994]

@aniketapanjwani if the leapfrogging happened this quick what's the probability the horse race changes lead again soon

[babar99 @babar994]

@pedrohcgs This is incredible, thanks for sharing. One Q: am I understanding that you are generating Beamer and then converting to quarto? Why not just quarto?

[babar99 @babar994]

@Afinetheorem But how do you know how safe this is? I’m not even disagreeing with you, I am saying this is what gives me pause to experiment more with having it use browser directly / access my email / give it my login etc.

[babar99 @babar994]

Lakers highlight reels will be like “Luka with the clutch three!” And they’re down by four to the worst team in the league

[babar99 @babar994]

The left for the last 20 years: actually foreign aid is a kind of subtle but perhaps more pernicious *neo-imperialism*

Trump: ok we’re getting rid of usaid and overthrowing another country explicitly for its oil