Speaker 3
I don't resent those
Speaker 1
students at all. I know they're trying to come in and come out. I'm not trying to be a cop. But if you do cheat and it's easy to use enough to find out that you
Speaker 3
cheated, then you don't pass. Yeah, I mean, I can see if you're teaching a graduate seminar, like everybody is there because they want to be and they're going to be putting in the effort. But when you're taking compulsory credit courses, you can expect that most of the students there just want to pass. They're not going to be coming back to what they learn in their future career in your compulsory foundation course. So I mean, for that, for that sort of thing, which is where most teaching assistants are getting their jobs from, I can imagine, in the humanities, at least I say, this applies to the humanities and social sciences, most of all, for those TAs who are attached to those courses, this could mean big changes.
Speaker 1
I want to say like right off the bat, these are exciting changes because I think the education system as it is, the one that we've all been trained in for over 20 years each, it sucks. It's not good at testing interest. It's not good at gearing towards your interest. It's not good at encouraging any sort of creativity. So the most rational response is yeah, to try to get in, pass and get out. And this is going to make that model unsustainable. It looks to
Speaker 2
me. Yeah. I mean, isn't it like, hasn't university already for a long time been a whole bunch of people who really don't want to read and don't want to learn that much. And they just want the degree at the end of it. I mean, that's kind of a consequence of trying to do mass education. It's only a minority of people who come in and actually want to do the reading and are excited by the concepts. And for those people, I don't really think this changes that much. Like if someone actually is interested in the ideas and they're passionate about them, this might you can maybe use this as a crutch to like learn certain things a little bit faster. But ultimately, like if you actually have a love for the ideas and a love for the texts, I don't see why that's going to change. I think I'm a bit of a doomer about education in general. Like, like, I think it's kind of a farce a little bit. I don't know if there's a way to make people who just don't have the interest be interested. Like I don't know if that's a thing. So before and after the AI, like, I don't like I guess insofar as right now, we have some nominal ways to get people who maybe didn't realize they were interested to like come to find that they are interested in it. And I'm not sure if this AI is going to make that less likely to
Speaker 1
happen. People don't know what it's like from our end, I think to teach. So the worst thing to teach. Yeah, that's the worst thing to teach is the 101 courses, the intros, because you get because you get non majors, the non majors are not interested. They're interested in something else. And like, again, that's fine. But if you're teaching intro to philosophy or intro to sociology type type thing of social science or communications, I've taught before, which is like interpreting, interpreting films that usually usually people get interested in that. But it's like the elective courses. So as soon as you have general interest people, the experience as a course director or teaching assistant really sucks because you're fighting against people that don't want to be there, you don't want them to be there, they don't want to be there, but you have to. Yeah,
Speaker 2
no one wants to be there. Like,
Speaker 1
this is not going to change. I don't think so much like third year level courses, because if you're in a third year course, you're usually dealing with majors who actually have an interest in being there. And we all are involved in useless, useless disciplines. So if you're in a useless discipline in a third year course, you really want to be there.
Speaker 2
Yeah, but what this what this is really doing. So like, let's, so I guess what I what I kind of want to say is like, let's set aside the discussion about like, Oh, the people who this is maybe going to interfere with people who really want to learn and like, I don't think that's going to change. Like, I think people who are interested are going to want to be interested. Really what it's changing is the fact that the people who really don't want to be there who are looking for any shortcut, any way to not read. This is making their life easier.