[SkyBelow]

The issue with education in particular is a much deeper issue which gen AI has ripped bandages off and exposed the wound to the world, while also greatly accelerating its decay, but it was not responsible for creating it.

What is the purpose of education? Is it to learn, or to gain credentials that you have learned? Too much of education has become the latter, to the point we have sacrificed the former. Eventually this brings down both, as a degree gains a reputation of no longer signifying the former ever happened.

Or existing systems that check for learning before granting the degree that showed an individual learned were largely not ready for the impact of genAI and teachers and professors have adapted poorly. Sometimes due to lack of understanding the technology, often due to their hands being tied.

GenAI used to cheat is a great detriment to education, but a student using genAI to learn can benefit greatly, as long as they have matured enough in their education process to have critical thinking to handle mishaps by the AI and to properly differentiate when they are learning and when they are having the AI do the work for them (I don't say cheat here because some students will accidentally cross the line and 'cheat' often carries a hint of mens rea). To the mature enough student interested in learning more, genAI is a worthwhile tool.

How do we handle those who use it to cheat? How do we handle students who are too immature in their education journey to use the tool effectively? Are we ready to have a discussion about those learning who only care for the degree and the education to earn the degree is just seen as a means to an end? How to teachers (and increasingly professors) fight back against the pressure of systems that optimize on granting credentials and which just assume the education will be behind those systems (Goodhart's Law anyone)? Those questions don't exist because of genAI, but genAI greatly increased our need to answer them.