Links 20
Jeff Sparrow: “Universities don’t merely face essays or assignments entirely generated by algorithms: they must also adjudicate a myriad of more subtle problems. For instance, AI-powered word processors habitually suggest alternatives to our ungrammatical phrases. But if software can algorithmically rewrite a student’s sentence, why shouldn’t it do the same with a paragraph – and if a paragraph, why not a page? At what point does the intrusion of AI constitute cheating?”
“The evidence that boys are doing significantly worse than girls when it comes to education is pretty striking. Forty years ago in the US, there was a thirteen percentage point gap in the percentage of undergraduate degrees going to men compared to women (in favour of men). Now, there is a fifteen point gap in favour of women. In the UK the figures (from 2017) are similar, with 27% of young men going to university, compared to 37% of young women.”
“Women have been invented several times in widely varying localities, but the inventors just didn’t know how to sell the product. Their distribution techniques were rudimentary and their market research was nil, and so of course the concept just didn’t get off the ground.”
