CS Grads Can't Find Jobs

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A recent graduate triple-majored in computer science, math, and computational science and has completed the coursework for a computer-science Ph.D. He would prefer to work instead of finishing his degree, but he has found it almost impossible to secure a job. “We’re in an AI revolution, and I am a specialist in the kind of AI that we’re doing the revolution with, and I can’t find anything.” -The Atlantic

20 Recent Articles about the Impact of AI on Students

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What the panic about kids using AI to cheat gets wrong - Vox 

How AI Is Changing—Not ‘Killing’—College – Inside Higher Ed

AI Makes Research Easy. Maybe Too Easy. – Wall Street Journal 

The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting – The Atlantic

Students Are Using ChatGPT to Write Their Personal Essays Now – Chronicle of Higher Ed

These workers don’t fear artificial intelligence. They’re getting degrees in it. – Washington Post

Almost all the class of 2026 are using AI to do their work – The Atlantic

Duke Just Introduced An Essay Question About AI—Here’s How To Tackle It - Forbes

ChatGPT’s Study Mode Is Here. It Won’t Fix Education’s AI Problems – Wired  

AI is helping students be more independent, but the isolation could be career poison – The Markup

I'm a college writing professor. How I think students should use AI this fall - Mashable

ChatGPT's new study mode won't give you the answers - Axios

University students feel ‘anxious, confused and distrustful’ about AI in the classroom and among their peers – The Conversation

I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students. – New  York Times

How Are Students Really Using AI? Here’s what the data tell us. - Chronicle of Higher Ed

So long, study guides? The AI industry is going after students – NPR

At one elite college, over 80% of students now use AI – but it’s not all about outsourcing their work - The Conversation

Students have been called to the office — and even arrested — for AI surveillance false alarms – Associated Press  

AI in education's potential privacy nightmare - Axios 

AI to the Rescue It’s an all-purpose study tool — it’s changing students’ relationships with professors & peers - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Selling Out

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We "sell out" whenever we fail to take ownership of who we are. It's much easier to default to the expectations of friends/work/society/church rather than taking responsibility for our thinking and actions. Turning control over of what we have been entrusted with to someone (or something) else is an attempt to take the responsibility off our shoulders, so there’s someone else to blame.  

AI Advice for Students

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AI Advice for Students

1- Think Beyond Academic Integrity

         Not just “Is this cheating or not cheating?”

         But also, “Am I taking the opportunity to learn, practice, and cultivate my skills?”

To some students, college now feels like, “How well I can use ChatGPT.” Others describe writing essays as a coordination problem: get the prompt, feed it to the bot, skim the output, add some filler, hit submit. No thinking required, just interface management. 

2-Define Your own Educational goals

Ask yourself: “Besides grades, what are my goals as a student?”

Prioritize learning and skill development

Seize opportunities to get the practice you need to become a better thinker, writer, and communicator. 

3-Prompt to Challenge your Thinking

Instead of outsourcing your thinking (“Suggest a thesis statement I can use for my essay.”). Look for ways to think critically about the subject (“Ask me tough questions to help me figure out my thesis statement.”).

Don’t just ask, “Am I outsourcing the writing to AI?” Ask, “Am I outsourcing the thinking to AI?” We must use AI to expand our mind’s capacity to engage, rather than using it to outsource our thinking.  

4- Focus on AI Literacy & Integration

Unless you want to build AI systems and become a data scientist, focus on taking outdated processes and updating them to make use of the available AI tools. Understanding the benefits and limitations of AI in light of ethics should be the goal, along with figuring out how to mesh it into your workday. 

5- Double Down on your Humanity

•  We can’t let it strip us of our humanity.

•  Optimistically, AI may be “a piece of technology that, instead of replacing humanity, amplifies it.”

•  We must retain oversight & not lose ourselves by depending on the machine.

•  Doubling down on what makes you human may be what saves you from being replaced or minimized by AI. 

6- Get Well-rounded         

Be well- rounded in liberal arts: think of your gen ed classes as now core classes. Focus specifically on growing these skills: analytic thinking, creativity, information literature, resilience, agility, leadership, self-motivation, empathy, curiosity. Their value will rise as AI takes over routine tasks.  

7- Distinguish between AI-generated content, AI-assisted content, & AI-supplemented content

Group A ❌                    Group B ✅                              Group C 🤔

AI-generated content              AI-assisted content/writing                AI-supplement content

Facilitated writing/learning    

AI-generated content ❌ is entirely produced by the AI or sections are produced by the AI, based on detailed instructions (prompts) provided by the author. Some AI is best thought of as a set of automation tools that function as closed systems that do their work without oversight—like ATMs and dishwashers. 

In academia, it is not acceptable under normal circumstances unless there are significant and clear reason why this was necessary. However, in business, it is likely to be treated as acceptable when the content is merely informational and not intended to be creative. The focus in this situation is accuracy and speed with minimal effort as opposed to authenticity. For instance, a summary of a business meeting or an email answering a particular question about the business, where it is assumed, the writer may incorporate AI-generated content.

Group B ✅ is work that is predominantly written by an individual but has been improved with the aid of AI tools. AI is part of the process. The author remains in control, and the AI merely acts as a polishing tool. As opposed to automation tools, these collaboration tools—like chain saws and word processors. In any given application, AI is going to automate or it’s going to collaborate, depending on how we design it and how someone chooses to use it.

This kind of assistance is generally accepted by most publishers as well as the Committee on Publication Ethics, without the need for formal disclosure. This includes: creating outlines, improving clarity, grammar, summarizing, brainstorming, generating transcription, condensing notes, creating study guides, practice questions, editing, and suggesting alternative approaches to a problem. 

Group C 🤔 includes changing phrasing, generating a citation list, revising sentence structure, reducing word count, etc. Writers and publishers disagree about whether using AI in this way is ethical or not.

Does AI Replace the Expert?

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The question is not whether AI can do things that experts cannot do on their own—it can. Expert humans often bring something that today’s AI models cannot: situational context, tacit knowledge, ethical intuition, emotional intelligence, and the ability to weigh consequences that fall outside the data. The value is not in substituting one expert for another, or in outsourcing fully to the machine, or indeed in presuming the human expertise will always be superior, but in leveraging human and rapidly-evolving machine capabilities to achieve best results. -David Autor and James Manyika writing in The Atlantic

This is daring greatly

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When we spend our lives waiting until we're perfect or bulletproof before we walk into the arena, we ultimately sacrifice relationships and opportunities that may not be recoverable, we squander our precious time, and we turn our backs on our gifts, those unique contributions that only we can make.

We must walk into the arena, whatever it may be—a new relationship, an important meeting, our creative process, or a difficult family conversation—with courage and a willingness to engage. Rather than sitting on the sidelines and hurling judgment and advice, we must dare to show up and let ourselves be seen.  This is vulnerability. This is daring greatly.

Brené Brown, Daring Greatly

GoLaxy AI

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Generative AI is making it exponentially easier for China to create believable, engaging content. GoLaxy — which operates in close alignment with the Chinese government's interests — appears to be tapping generative AI to mine social media profiles and create content that "feels authentic, adapts in real-time and avoids detection. "Documents show that GoLaxy has created profiles for at least 117 members of Congress and over 2,000 American political figures and thought leaders. -Axios

AI's impact on the job search by college grads

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"Recent history grads have a lower unemployment rate (4.6 percent) than recent computer science grads (6.1 percent), according to the New York Federal Reserve Bank. History is one of the most popular college majors among congressional staff members, and historians find work in some surprising places, such as the National Security Agency and the American Girl doll company." -Washington Post

Businesses Racing to Adopt AI: Speed without Control

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If you don’t take steps now to centralize AI strategy, you’ll be left with a patchwork of disconnected tools, uncontrolled costs, and compliance nightmares. The winners in this era won’t be the ones who adopt AI fast, they’ll be the ones who adopt it wisely. Shadow AI isn’t going away; it’s going to accelerate as AI becomes embedded. -Unite AI

When you plan for Italy but Land in Holland

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It’s like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting. After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place. So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met. It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

Emily Perl Kingsley

How AI could help prevent languages from disappearing

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I’m fascinated by how AI could help prevent languages from disappearing entirely. Most TTS development focuses on major languages with massive datasets, but there are over 7,000 languages worldwide, and many are at risk of extinction. What excites me is the potential for AI to create voice synthesis for languages that might only have a few hundred speakers left. This is technology serving humanity and cultural preservation at its best! When a language dies, we lose unique ways of thinking about the world, specific knowledge systems, and cultural memory that can’t be translated. -Claudia Ng writing in Toward Data Science