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Carnegie (Steel), Gould (railroads), and Rockefeller (Standard Oil) all advocated vocally and explicitly against higher education for the masses. They wanted a malleable labor force and recognized that education was defense against exploitation.

I might have fallen in love with you

Seems like AI proponents want people to stop reading, and that scares me

The function of colleges is to create new knowledge. Part of how they do that is sorting through the students to find the ones with the ability to do it. Those people are rare. The job you get from going to college is an incentive to go through the sorting.

goldberg is in bed with the robot boys, his zionist rag was sold before it was bought, a fountain of chatbot hype long before he inked the deal with OpenAI

not that there is anything wrong with going to college purely for the credential. Like sure maybe one was young and dumb and sheltered and naive once, and didn't think about those things, but in reality future employability and earnings matter. A degree helps.

Yes. New Yorker: Tons of Right Wng disinformation from RW media & from the RWngers we in mainstream media hired to appease the RWng ref workers--have caused distrust of institutions like universities Which of course prompts us to ask: How can RWngers at the New Yorker make that distrust even worse?

Many generations fought for the right to learn to read and write. Or to even get a library card or own a book. And now we're supposed to be okay with just giving it all up because a computer can write something for us?

Honestly just look at current job listings. A degree in any field with no relevant work experience will get you in the door faster than a decade of real work experience in the field they're hiring for. The jobs that are listed for work experience want you to train ai for half your normal wage.

Yeah, it’s fucking dumb as rocks

Well, Columbia was the first Ivy League college to collaborate with the Trump administration to disappear its own students, so. The “worthy of work” crowd seems to be self-owning all the way down.

Like teaching students how (not what) to think, how to curate sources of information, logic, etc. Really poor form from the New Yorker ..

Also, if you're The New Yorker it's such a self-own. Good luck to sell future copies written by AI to avarage Joe.

Please just read the article. Jeff as usual is grossly misrepresenting the piece for reasons I’ll never understand.

sounds to me like they're telling on themselves

If your ideas are defensible, don't you think your time would be better spent defending them instead of convincing everyone, with your childish behavior, that they're best avoided?

Although “education for its own sake” is great I think there is a more practical argument about acquiring technical and analytical skills for a professional career that goes beyond “credentialing”.

Elsevier and McGraw Hill are stopping printing operations of textbooks next year so all "science" will be infinitely revisable.

No. My sister edits medical texts/ exams. AI will not be able to ascertain the nuances involved

Will you look at that!

The purpose of higher education is to exchange ideas with persons qualified to inform the value of those ideas. It's called "peer review."

Americans already distrust billionaire-owned media. Add this to the endless list of reasons why.

Multiple degree haver jay caspian kang

www.wordpsychic.com

What a stupid thing to see anywhere, let alone The New Yorker.

Maybe a little supply and demand would cause them to lower the damn costs.

Weird that everyone who writes these pieces send their kids to the most expensive colleges possible.

Wow. People who don’t go to college aren’t “worthy of work”? Would the author like to say that to his mechanic’s, hairstylist’s, landscaper’s, restaurant cook’s faces?

Yea, I learned a lot. And a lot learned from me.

And most people aren't aware of Betteridge's Law of Headlines: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteri... TL;DR - The answer to 99% of question headlines is no.

It's kind of funny actually insofar as the second everybody agrees this is true is the second it stops being useful for that purpose

I went to Antioch College in the '80's and did my own thing, lots of independent studies. Worked in theatre in Chicago after and worked in a used bookstore. I learned more from reading in my 20's than I did in college. But I didn't go to an Ivy, or rigorous study college. Learned how to survive life

Quite the bold and brain dead premise.

Part of this feels like a version of the radical centrism that once again hates their mothers for making them do things they don’t want, like “go to school”

Ofc, the average New Yorker reader's view of college is that it is the primary networking opportunity with/for the rich and powerful for their kid.

Man, that quote is insane! What college did this author go to? Did they not actually, you know, TEACH them anything there? (Also, if this person is in charge of hiring anyone, clearly they're sleeping on the job!)

Jay Caspian Kang has been a dumbass since I first read his crap on Grantland and he continues to get worse.

If you start from a BS premise, who cares where you end up?

Maybe AI can make annoying fonts that randomly squish certain letters like S and K to leave more room for others obsolete

Also a clear indication that they don't understand the concept of credentialing and the original economics articles (Spence, 1973) about it.

Will AI make the NYer obsolete? If it keeps publishing drivel like this, it won’t matter either way

Could The New Yorker be written by AI? And how could you tell?

If I were him, I’d be asking “will AI make writers like me obsolete?”

Is the New Yorker trying to put itself out of business?

Oh yeah, let's jump right in with that stupid premise. AI come up with that for you?

This is written by someone who completely wasted their college years.

The question is will androidization make college obsolete.

I guess it's a tacit admission by Kang that he did not learn anything useful in college. I, on the other hand, did.

"Americans distrust institutions" Half of Americans can't read. So that checks out

I can’t stand AI. I know my Gen X self is not wanting to learn but everything I’ve seen so far is slop. I purposely use it at work when required and give the results from that trash. Then I show actual results.

Well, I think we can agree the author learned nothing from college.

Don’t blame me, I read articles by Jay Caspian Kodos

They are describing diploma mills, not real colleges and universities.

Maybe we have to bring back the quaint notion that the purpose of education is to broaden the mind and strengthen the character of our citizens. And our schools seem to failing on all counts.

The subhead makes a fairly good point and there’s no reason AI would be the answer to it

I would argue the VAST majority of people in college are so specifically to get a degree for work.

Can AI Simps Ever Forget Hallucination Chatbots and Find True Happiness?

Will calculators make math obsolete??

Maybe for him and the kind of folks he hangs out with it *is* nothing but a credentialing process. I'm sorry for Jay that he has such a shrunken and truncated life and happy that my kids are getting more out of their college experience than the people he associates with.

This kind of article is among the kind drivel that seeps out of Axios about the ‘almighty power of the AI’. All this is written on it his promises that it’s developers have made to the venture capitalist that fund them. And politicians who seem to want to use their product in government. Rubbish!

The New Yorker asks another faux-thoughtful rhetorical question, and we know its answer is already YES.

"people already distrust institutions" - guy promoting distrust of institutions

Lol!

I note here that Jay Caspian Kang was quite happy to go to Bowdoin and then Columbia for grad school, before blethering on in the New Yorker(!) about academia being too elite and out of touch He's the kind of beneficiary of an elite education who is happy to pull up the ladder after himself

"will AI make dumbshit opinion columnists obsolete?"

credentials, you say? He received his undergraduate degree from Bowdoin College and received his Master's of Fine Arts (MFA) degree from Columbia University in 2005

The books were: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, by Ethan Mollick And ChatGPT For Dummies, by Pam Baker The first did its best to be pro-AI, and the second did its best to be neutral and factual. Neither succeeded in making gen AI look like anything but a net negative.

I had a 30-year career in the T portion of STEM on the strength of a Cold War Era international relations BA, and you think college ~isn't~ a decent job work permit? Maybe wake up to the world as it is, and not as you would have it.

Where to even begin? College seems to have become a trade school where the trade is capitalism. I graduated from a lib arts college w/ a Chem degree, then to med school. Best clinicians I've met through my career were NOT science nerds. Learning how to learn is of prime import in some professions

Will a lack of the fortitude to go after real stories make the New Yorker obsolete?

'Americans already distrust institutions, including academia...' Um, ok, which Americans are you talking about here? And why is this entire thing premised on their pathological view, as if that's just the accepted, standard view a normal, educated person would have? Who is this actually for?

If we agree that eating primarily serves as a nutrition delivery mechanism that provides select amino acids and carbohydrates to the body's cells . . .

I am sure that the author, Kang, will send his offspring to an ivy-league elite university so they will have cushy lives. And the ones who believed Kang's nonsense will labor for the likes of Kang and his offspring.

Isn’t this the same publication that ran an article that asked “should we start smoking again?”

Is it bad to start an article with a made piece of information?

AI is a tool. We've seen what video calls have done and the students have largely moved back to the classroom except for a few cases of personal need. So I think the students and the professors will end up finding a good path that uses the best of AI and not the worst.

Education is life, to me. Without education... minds and souls don't develop.

The decades long campaign against education has advanced beyond public schools to universities. Inevitable, really.

I've never seen kids as 37 years old as the average US kid of 20 and yet their physical horizons are terribly narrow.

Inconceivably philistine and destructive framing. So disappointing.

I wish Jay Caspian Kang a very happy "fuck right off"

Learning. WHAT IS IT EVEN FOR??

WILL COLLEGE MAKE A.I. OBSOLETE?

Wild to see this in a magazine largely staffed by wildly over-credentialed people who should know better.

What is his argument? That AI will dole out the credentials? Why would anyone trust credentials issued by the sycophant machine?

This is the shit that shat when billionaire wealth hoarders are allowed to buy printing presses. Time to tax ALL billionaires out of existence.

Are you positive that this writer APPROVES of what he's perceiving as the reality of the situation, or is he just being an unpopular Cassandra by actually talking about it? It's long been anything but a mystery that a college degree is the first checkpoint to pass on one's way to upward mobility.

Yeah we don't agree on that Jay. You can't whisk away the most contentious point of an argument and imagine what lies beyond. Well I suppose this article shows you *can*, but if we agree that we shouldn't,...

l am convinced that my students see their university education (and my courses in particular) as the way to a job. And some of them use ai (or even cheat with it) to get there

@jeffjarvis.bsky.social gods this is sickening. education is a value in and of itself, and this framing is disgusting.

Got one for @betteridgeslaw.bsky.social

The real concern is that employers will weigh factors other than GPA and the college degree more heavily. What university you attended might become even more important, harming students from low-income families.

Yeah, that’s a big “if.” They’re right that if we give in to the right‘s long campaign to enact that cynical gutting of what education is, then it will fail and we deserve for it to fail. So how about let’s fucking NOT?

That is absolutely bizarre.

Kang has always been a jackass. He should stick to writing crappy novels and opining about sports and movies.

Kang has always been a jackass.

www.wired.com/story/using-...

The ripple effects are just massive and states should recognize that and invest in them.

If I have to pay to get the knowledge then I’m entitled to expect some return. Not everyone can drop $250k to go explore new ideas and grow as a person for 4 years. I am a huge fan of a college education and the experience. But there’s a price point where that ceases to be a worthwhile investment.

You're either a bot or as dumb as a sack of hammers.

The more accurate figure is closer to $30k per year. And that is AFTER paying off school loans. During repayment on school loans it’s far less. Plus the risk of default during repayment. Seems like most of my detractors fail to realize somebody has to pay for the education.

The corporate rebranding of humanity’s pursuit of knowledge as a personal commercial transaction has worked on you. But there are still some people who have a less cynical view of scholarship and learning.

My learned colleague, you could say the same about us having gone to law school, no? 😉

Looks like you’re in Charlotte, not Birmingham. I didn’t look far enough to the right of your picture. However, I stand by my comment about the need for college education.

If it were still that way, conservatives wouldn’t be trying to kill it.

SWE here, took my first ever real humanities class this year as a community learner. Can confirm. Reading is a requirement, not a replacement. We had a lot of assigned reading. We also had class discussions, journal where we could tell or ask our instructors anything and get answers.

Um, as a former English major, reading books, whether on our lunch break or not, WAS the education.

That has nothing to do with AI or colleges and entirely to do with conservatives, liberals, and billionaires extracting everything they can and destroying everything while they do so. AI will not broaden anyone's horizons. It's literally meant to be a *replacement* for intelligence.

The price of college has been raised by people who consider it a credentialing institution, because they don't want the poors competing with their children.