[ExI] all we are is just llms

[William Flynn Wallace]

What is a liberal education?  Exposing students to the worlds of
literature, history, the sciences and behavioral sciences.  Etc.  With
professional help and guidance.  In other words, nothing that is not on the
web, including professional help, and all or mostly free.  The 'mostly'
part is the for-profit sites which give you certificates and so on.  I see
no future for traditional liberal arts colleges except in those cases where
graduation from them is a huge plus for getting hired - Harvard, Wharton
and such.

Professors will be online to give guidance and help, along with personal
opinions.

Colleges get tons of money from the feds for research in all fields.  Would
it be better if those research parts of colleges just go commercial and
leave the education business?  They could still get fed money, no?  I
really don't know anything about this aspect of colleges.

As Spike said to me a good while back. lectures are history.  I loved doing
them but I see his point.  Is face to face contact really necessary for
most students?  Some want (say they need) a lot of hand-holding and they
will have to do without it.  Maybe more later.   bill w

On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 3:26 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
> efc--- via extropy-chat
> Subject: Re: [ExI] all we are is just llms
>
>
> On Fri, 21 Apr 2023, spike jones via extropy-chat wrote:
>
> >>... In the age of ChatGPT, what is a university now?  ...
>
> >...The disadvantage is that the students who lack intrinsic motivation
> and interest in the field drop out rather quickly. ...Daniel
>
>
> You said it right Daniel: students and motivation.
>
> When covid lockdowns came, we transitioned suddenly to online learning.
> That didn't work for some of the students.  Others pulled way ahead of
> their classmates, way ahead of where they would have been had they been in
> the classroom.
>
> One of my former college roommates earned a PhD from Purdue and has been
> teaching engineering in the college where we graduated for nearly 40
> years.  During a visit last year he pointed me to this material...
>
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCm5mt-A4w61lknZ9lCsZtBw
>
> ...and admitted straight out that he cannot improve on this.  I subscribed
> and listened to about 20 of the lectures, all of the controls stuff, and I
> am still floored at how good it is.  A motivated student can get with the
> best online free material and get a good undergrad level engineering
> education that way, just with currently-available online resources.
>
> This brings up a new and interesting question.  Can we make a university
> or college or for-profit institution which would evaluate students
> reliably, so that industry can choose these candidates.
>
> spike
>
>
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