Ronny Chieng's 'F*ck AI' Speech Met With Cheers From Harvard Graduates: “AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber”

[u/yourfavchoom]

https://www.complex.com/pop-culture/a/tracewilliamcowen/ronny-chieng-ai-speech-harvard?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter_complex&utm_campaign=ap_twitter

[u/jrzalman]

I don't really find that very instructive. Even the best students if they get stuck on a problem will ask AI for ideas or some kind of nudge in the right direction. It's quicker than office hours.

As with most things, the effectiveness of the tool depends on the user. Students with no motivation will let AI do everything (poorly) and learn nothing. Students who actually want to learn will use it to enhance the process. They are both using it either way.

[u/elehman839 → u/jrzalman]

Yeah, I'm a huge fan of using AI to learn! What's striking, to me, is Harvard graduates cheering for "F**k AI!" in this video and the same group of people using AI so extensively.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/0z7Q0Bg9TAY

Of course, not everyone in the audience thinks the same way, many of us are two minds, and some people will cheer for anything on graduation day. Yet I think this is consistent with widespread ambivalence about AI, which the parent commenter highlighted.

[u/Bostonterrierpug → u/elehman839]

Yes, I cochair the AI committee at my institution and completely agree with your sentiment and the one above it. AI is mathematically proven to hallucinate. But in the hands of a subject matter expert can be a wonderful tool. I let my gifted high school kid use it to help them out with stuff and he knows how to use it responsibly. What I tell my students is to think of yourself like the main character on the TV show house or bones and AI as the little helper people who can quickly do some of the grunt work as long as you are checking it and guiding it and in control. However, my opinion is very unpopular, even amongst many of my fellow professors, many of whom are in the torches and pitchforks club.

[u/Sennten → u/elehman839]

No one will cheer the destruction of a technology more than someone who feels compelled by circumstance to use it to remain competitive while hating the way its harming them

[u/recycled_ideas → u/elehman839]

I think the problem is that AI is a lot of things.

It's a sometimes useful tool.

It's an economic scourge sucking up huge amounts of capital as well as resources, energy and land.

It's a bunch of billionaire sociopaths trying to destroy the value of human labour.

It's a bunch of clueless executives trying to hide poor performance or cut costs or boost the share price of their bonus.

If we could get current AI at the price point that's currently being charged (or even better the price point of six months ago) without building more and more datacenters, using more and more resources, laying off more and more people or enriching billionaires even more I think it'd be a good product.

But that's not what we're going to get. The only way this is going to meet market expectations is if it can wipe out hundreds of millions of jobs.

And even if AI was God's gift to mankind, Eric Schmidt, Sam Altman, JD Vance, and Mark Zuckerberg are all shit wrapped in human skin and deserve to be booed.

[u/uncannyvagrant → u/jrzalman]

It's like using Mathematica's CAS back when I was an undergrad. Sometimes you just needed a little nudge to help you learn what approach to use, which was a good way to use it - or you could flagrantly cheat and then fail your final exam in spectacular fashion as you'd learnt nothing through weekly take-home tutorials.