Wrong mindset—a seven-day, 10-minute per day course is the lower limit on what procurement officers will consider acceptable and grant a contract to, which hopeful contractors submit to RFPs as a way of out-competing their competition by submitting the lowest bid.
No actual feedback from or impact studies involving actual users or outcomes are ever registered.
It's like mixing sawdust into the cookies to cut costs, except that when a depivered CBT is worth less than the electricity consumed powering the monitors it is (sometimes) displayed on, nobody with enough influence to matter ever gets upset enough about it to mean anything.
From TFA: "The course repeatedly contradicts its own privacy and security advice."
Further:
"The course contains a serious inconsistency when it comes to data privacy and security. On the last day of the course it offers common-sense advice, stating “PROTECT your private info. Never share passwords, Social Security numbers, medical records, or confidential work data with AI tools,” later adding not to share “income data.” But some of the advice and exercises leading up to that point had already prompted users to input some of these “never share” types of data.
On Day 3, the course urges the user to input a photo, PDF or recording of their own voice.
On Day 4, it says that a “power move” is for users to “give AI your own data to work with,” including instructions to “paste your resume” and “share your monthly expenses.”
On Day 5, the course says that a good use case for AI is putting “medical symptoms” in to learn medical terms and prepare questions for a doctor.
On Day 6, it tells the user to share their address to find a restaurant near them.
Modern US universities are just hedge funds with legacy schools attached.
Not surprising that just like the corporations (including lots of HN darlings like Apple) they are taking turns sucking the orange cock to facilitate line go up.
I disagree -- I suspect that no one expected this banal item to be put on such a visible public spot (front page YNews). I'll assert that it is the filters and amplification that is so changed, and results like this occur. It was a dramatic media statement at the time to talk about a "long tail" of worth and specialization, and there was a collective excitement about making an Internet where some assistant teacher writing just a handout that strikes a certain nerve or chord and then the world gets it in seconds.
In this case, considering the tech-sociology of the writing, I'll say that the security researcher in another post gets it right -- mercilessly hone in on contradictions or unintended consequences, and quickly.
for anyone reading this, many major Universities with Law schools or related serious matters, have published explicit rules about LLM use and writing, for different contexts already.. long ago..
> This seven-day long, 10-minute-per day course
I guess ten minutes is the limit attention span of an average adult these days?
We can keep this up and in a few years we'll be down to bathroom-break long 15-second-per-short courses.
Wrong mindset—a seven-day, 10-minute per day course is the lower limit on what procurement officers will consider acceptable and grant a contract to, which hopeful contractors submit to RFPs as a way of out-competing their competition by submitting the lowest bid.
No actual feedback from or impact studies involving actual users or outcomes are ever registered.
It's like mixing sawdust into the cookies to cut costs, except that when a depivered CBT is worth less than the electricity consumed powering the monitors it is (sometimes) displayed on, nobody with enough influence to matter ever gets upset enough about it to mean anything.
we call it the grift economy
i've seriously been thinking of making my rfc and other docs at work in reels format.
From TFA: "The course repeatedly contradicts its own privacy and security advice."
Further:
"The course contains a serious inconsistency when it comes to data privacy and security. On the last day of the course it offers common-sense advice, stating “PROTECT your private info. Never share passwords, Social Security numbers, medical records, or confidential work data with AI tools,” later adding not to share “income data.” But some of the advice and exercises leading up to that point had already prompted users to input some of these “never share” types of data.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
Academia has gotten so dumb and sycophantic, now even Princeton. Continue like this and the intellectual centers will be in Beijing and Moscow soon.
But of course bending over for the industry and grant money is more important.
> Academia has gotten so dumb and sycophantic
Modern US universities are just hedge funds with legacy schools attached.
Not surprising that just like the corporations (including lots of HN darlings like Apple) they are taking turns sucking the orange cock to facilitate line go up.
You seem to confuse writing about an industry backed AI literacy effort with endorsing it, the article is mostly critical
The sychophany is not limited to academia unfortunately.
I disagree -- I suspect that no one expected this banal item to be put on such a visible public spot (front page YNews). I'll assert that it is the filters and amplification that is so changed, and results like this occur. It was a dramatic media statement at the time to talk about a "long tail" of worth and specialization, and there was a collective excitement about making an Internet where some assistant teacher writing just a handout that strikes a certain nerve or chord and then the world gets it in seconds.
In this case, considering the tech-sociology of the writing, I'll say that the security researcher in another post gets it right -- mercilessly hone in on contradictions or unintended consequences, and quickly.
for anyone reading this, many major Universities with Law schools or related serious matters, have published explicit rules about LLM use and writing, for different contexts already.. long ago..
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