Once we’ve primed the AI pump with our brains, university doesn’t have to pay us anymore.
rizona State University soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, for $5 per month, to create an apparently unlimited number of customized “learning modules” using artificial intelligence. The AI chatbot, called Atom, uses online instructional materials from ASU professors to create a course that’s tailored to the goals, interests and skill level of the user. After asking a handful of questions and processing for about five minutes, Atom debuts a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes and videos from a half dozen experts at ASU.
You might be wondering, as I was, about the quality of the “learning modules” produced by running a course through a buzzsaw and splicing fragments together. Apparently and unsurprisingly, it’s not good.
ASU literature professor Chris Hanlon was one of the first to raise awareness of ASU Atomic. Hanlon told 404 Media that no professors he’d spoken with had given their permission for this generative content.
“None of the ASU faculty whose course materials were harvested for the module I generated were aware that their image, lectures, lessons, or other teaching materials are being used,” posted Hanlon on Bluesky.
Hanlon said the course materials were pulled from Canvas, a course management system. Hanlon criticized the AI-generated clips as error-laden, jumbled, lacking context, and confused.
“Concerning the course itself, there’s no throughline I can see; none of the videos really speak to one another — it’s a mishmash, though the individual lessons that comprise it probably make a lot more sense in their original context,” said Hanlon.
Oh, great. We use Canvas here. I respect my fellow biology professors, but I don’t see how it would improve our courses to have a machine fuse us into a nightmarish agglomeration. But that’s what happens when you see education as a fungible collection of “modules”.
The initiative by ASU is called “Project Atomizer”. An atomizer is “a device for converting a substance, especially a perfume or medicine, to a fine spray.” That sounds like an apt description of the project.
You may be wondering who is responsible for this abomination. I think it’s safe to blame the president of the university, Michael Crow.
Not much exists publicly on Project Atomizer. The initiative was mentioned briefly in a February presentation by ASU President Michael Crow, part of a larger proposal to make AI the focus of the future: “current realities require current solutions,” according to the presentation.
Crow said in an interview last week with the Greater Phoenix Chamber that ASU has 50 AI tools, three of which are augmentative AI tools for students. Crow said he uses AI for “everything” in his daily life.
“[W]hen I’m driving to work, I use the Gemini tool. Basically, I’ll pick a subject that I don’t know enough about and I’ll get myself educated in like 22 minutes or 25 minutes,” said Crow. “I use it for basically quick analysis of really complicated things that I don’t have enough facts [for].”
Crow also revealed that he has used AI to write 20 white papers since November. He’s also used AI to create multiple architectural proposals: one for a site in Hawaii near the village of Javi, another for an addition to the West Valley campus in Phoenix.
Oh god. An administrator who thinks a subject is a collection of facts, who uses it to churn out papers, who uses it to design buildings…fuck me sideways.
Perhaps ‘Staff Reporter’ is an LLM as well.
There’s no Javi in Hawaii. There’s no ‘j’ in the Hawaiian alphabet…
Look, if the AI manages to not sexually harass its physics students or cape for sex traffickers, it’s already clearing a low bar for ASU.
Oh god. An administrator who thinks a subject is a collection of facts, who uses it to churn out papers, who uses it to design buildings…fuck me sideways.
Haven’t heard that since the 60s, maybe the 70s.
I don’t know why everyone is so upset about AI taking over the world, the human experience is overrated. Look at what humans have done to the world, can AI make it any worse?
/s
Stuffin @ 3
What automated systems can make worse… read how Stanislaw Petrov stopped a nuclear war after the early warning system OKO claimed USA had launched ICBMs.
.
On the other hand, I would not mind if Skynet misidentifies this Michael Crow as a threat to be dealt with.
(Jewish space lasers going ZZAP!!!)
@3. stuffin : “Look at what humans have done to the world, can AI make it any worse?”
AI : Hold our virtual beer.
Keokil, perhaps it’s an attempt to render a sound equivalent to the Spanish J as in Juan in the Latin alphabet?
Renderings in the Latin alphabet are can be confusing viz ‘s’ and ‘sz’ in Magyar and the Wade Giles versus Pin yin for Mandarin Chinese? No, I don’t speak either of those languages but I try to follow the text in Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle (A kékszakállú herceg vára) and the names in the Hawkes translation of The Dream of the Red Chamber.
“I use it for basically quick analysis of really complicated things that I don’t have enough facts [for].”
And he is far too stupid to realize that the LLM AI also does not have any facts as well, it simply invents them as required to keep engagement. How did such a complete moron get into that position? Does he also have a Harvard MBA to be that bad at his job?
I thought universities were supposed to police plagiarism, not practice and publish it.
#6 submoron could be if combined with another phoneticization of Hawaiian ‘w’.
Hawi (pronounced haVEE) in Kohala district exists.
Yeah, this is very much the self-important MBA attitude. “I run a business. I’m important. Every other part of the business is a replaceable cog even if I don’t know what they actually do.”
AI stands for Abominable Insanity! the magat-in-chief admitted he doesn’t care about people’s pain and suffering. The aholes running the AI dystopia machines are sociopaths and obviously don’t care how many thousands of lives they ruin, either. The populace is just cannon fodder to them.
Martha and the Vandellas won’t stop singing to us: ‘Nowhere to run to, baby, Nowhere to hide’
And, now the college professors can’t get that out of their head, either.
PZ, TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN! If you don’t you could end up just another casualty of the war on education.
P.S. having listened to this michael crow and his ‘run the university like a business’ blithering on NPR* he is just another corporate university administrator sociopath.
*NPR now stands for Nothing Pertinent Reported.
And, if they approved of this abomination, my respect for ASU professors just dropped through the floor!
Maybe, to counteract this canvas harvesting of works, professors should flood canvas with a huge load of bullshit texts.
I’m going to get back to work on computer hardware and enjoy the Animals 60’s hit playing in my brain: ‘We’ve gotta get outta this place, if it’s the last thing we ever to’
“Science is built of facts the way a house is built of bricks: but an accumulation of facts is no more science than a pile of bricks is a house.”
— Henri Poincaré
kevindorner, shoulders of giants.
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/prior.2.ii.html
Thinking you can “get yourself educated” on an unfamiliar topic in 22-25 minutes is just as foolish as using Gemini to do so.
garydargan@8–
The modern executive philosophy: Plagiarism is someone extracting your IP without paying. Extracting someone else’s IP without paying is smart business.
University presidents have long had the job requirement of being near-moronic in intelligence: their only work is to give canned speeches and perform ritual ass-kissing of rich donors. Anyone with a functioning brain would go crazy and fail, so they get these guys who don’t have such. (I mean, look at Larry Summers. I rest my case.)
At my old university, there was a considerable belief that the president did not actually exist materially, since he never manifested physically and also sounded, in his written emissions,….well, just like ChatGPT.
So yes, university presidents are deliberately selected for their low intelligence and should never be listened to or followed on any matter or decision. They are the human equivalent of chatbots.
A wood chipper is used to atomize tree limbs, and as “Fargo” showed it can be used to create a fine spray of other fluids. AI is but a word chipper of which the spray does not seem to be fine at all.
The Canvas outage during university grading week was the work of hackers stealing all of Canvas data, and it coming back online was due to a payment being made to the hackers for the return of that data. I wonder how many copies were made before the return, and well, the rest can be imagined. How can anyone even tell where any Canvas data is coming from when ASU, and who knows how many others are spewing it out as if from a hydrant.
To be fair, $5 per month is rather cheap. A lot cheaper than real tuition. Affordable!
Now, is it worth nothing? Or is it worse than worth nothing?
I mean, one will get a little knowledge. Worth the cost?
(“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” — Alexander Pope)
The town is called Hāwī . Pronunciation: Haawee or Haavee. This knucklehead is misspelling and mispronouncing ‘Olelo Makuahina Hawai’i like a Haole.
The volcano, it is not Kil-a wea, It’s pronounced KEE-louw-WEa. The island is of Kaua’i is not Kawia, it is pronounced KAoo-wA’- ee.
OK, my pronunciation guide isn’t all that great, but the point is, please show some respect for the Kanaka Maoli and not mangle the languge like it is no big deal. It is disrespectful.
Ol’ Doc Crow has an MPA, which must be much better than an MBA.
He is the originator of the New American University which seems to be a money grabbing scheme, parallel to the underpinning of PZ’s original post.
Of late, meaning since the weekend, I am seeing a lot of talk about grade inflation at Schools like UT Austin, Harvard and Princeton. Clickbait headlines like 60% of students have “A”s. Are there some American academics here that give their thoughts on this?