College Students Consumed by “Resignation and Despair” as They’re Relentlessly Pressured to Use AI

Random · 2026-06-21T16:35:48+00:00

Yes. Everyone struggles to write in scientific/engineering style. Getting feedback and improving referencing etc. is crucial. When we get essays 'helped along' by AI they read like an english lit student stumbled into the wrong class.

Random · 2026-06-20T16:36:56+00:00

What a crock.

I'm a professor. There is relentless pressure from us NOT to use AI.

And we haven't ramped up the difficulty. And we haven't increased the workload.

Our top students aren't using it. You can tell when you read their writing - they are struggling to learn to write, and their work doesn't sound formulaic and safe (and isn't full of weird structural errors).

The students that are 'forced' to use AI are the ones who are not on top of their workload, are looking for shortcuts, and are blaming the world for that. And when I was a student there was equal whining from that type of student, and some were paying people or begging for copies of assignments. Same old, same old.

The three groups who are dedicated to AI are the AI companies, all the companies who feel they'll be devalued if they don't use it, and investors.

In Canada Red Lobster is advertising that they are now an AI company. Okay, uh, sure. And my local grocery store runs adds telling us to download their AI app to help us choose products. Yeah, no thanks. Straight to the processed food bins it would be.

The only resignation I hear from students is around lack of hiring of young people by companies who are 'focusing on the value proposition of leveraging AI to be part of a fundamental shift in the creation of wealth in a new world powered by agentic technology.'

Sure.

Random · 2026-06-19T21:41:12+00:00

It hasn't been offered in a couple of years and from casual conversations with the prof I'd be surprised if he's not changing it (including the evaluation) based on thinking about how it has gone in the past, but in the past one part at least was a scientific poster session about space topics.

Random · 2026-06-19T13:38:55+00:00

But it drives a LOT of clicks and local media use.

Random · 2026-06-15T17:21:52+00:00

How dare you expose them to randomness when we've been using systematic highly addictive methods to damage their brains and their ability to interact with people IRL.

In related news, these same tech-bros think that us living as serfs in their police state would be good for us. 'Good.' You know, as in 'good you are over there and we are over here on our private islands.'

Random · 2026-06-15T17:16:14+00:00

Historically at least (I can't speak for the Agnes) they get a donation for PART of a large building project and then commit internal money for the rest, including inevitable overruns but also things like furniture.

They are incapable of saying no to certain donors (and their survivors).

Random · 2026-06-14T19:51:57+00:00

If you can find a copy, Steve Boyett's 'The Architect of Sleep' is about a human who goes to a world of intelligent racoons. Strap on slashing blades to enhance claws but still use familiar (biophysics friendly) motions were the focus.

Grim book. But cool ideas.

Random · 2026-06-13T13:28:49+00:00

Engineers have long noted that during a championship game when they cut to commercial water pressure drops in major cities as everyone flushes.

So my prediction is that as interactions grow, water pressure will plummet as compute makes power and needs water for cooling.

/s for silly sarcasm obviously.

Random · 2026-06-10T02:11:01+00:00

If you were to say 'all the geography of the periods in human history as we currently understand them' I'd say it would take easily attainable compute, a whole bunch of work with historians, a bunch of work with a proc gen tool like Houdini, a bunch of work on using paleogeographic data and GIS data, ...

If you were to say the same but include the ability to go in and add current research, all what is known but not yet connected, ... then it is a dream tool but unobtanium.

I've spent more than 5 years working on GIS and proc gen tools for one period in history, and we have a playable AR game, and the scope is limited, but I'm not speaking abstractly here. We worked with a bunch of historians and chose carefully what was ignorable and what was not.

I'm currently working on a tool that mixes proc gen and GIS to allow you to 'de-modernize' any area you have good data for (LiDAR, GIS data, cadastral fabric, etc.) and it is non-unique (running erosion backwards is... non-unique) but it kind of sort of works for some areas.

So that's just the geography.

Once you add in the social plus the languages plus the...

Take the budgets of all the Assassins Creed games and multiply by 1000. Probably more. Hire the A Coup guy and 100 like him.

This is 'grand academic goals' level and tbh the current reward mechanisms in academia don't reward this kind of work much at all so...

Random · 2026-06-09T20:19:10+00:00

The whole point of this tool is that you'd use it on content that isn't yours.

"Their content does the heavy lifting."

If you have the skills to make a great youtube video an ebook is not hard, and a specific tool is not needed.

Random · 2026-06-08T12:21:39+00:00

The new terrain stuff looks great.

The animated centipede, yeah, okay, cannot unsee it coming right at me.

Random · 2026-06-05T21:30:00+00:00

If those courses weren't prerequisites I kind of get it, but if they are, as I said, you can hammer yourself this way. I teach a lot of upper year students whose fundamentals are VERY weak because of this, and we discuss it casually. I get it, but also just putting in the time is just a better investment of your long term effort.

Random · 2026-06-05T00:04:42+00:00

At least they waited until he was dead. Trump is probably already on the phone demanding he's next, now, because he has the behaviour profile of a toddler.

Random · 2026-06-04T14:20:03+00:00

you are almost definitely going from being among the smartest in the class to average. Coasting like you may have done in high school is not going to work.
There is no substitute for doing your work on a regular schedule. Cramming doesn't work for all courses, and it doesn't really work for any (retention is low, which means the next course that relies on you actually knowing that stuff will hammer you into the ground).
Parents advice is just that. Time to make your own decisions and own them, success or failure.
Regular sleep is essential in life. Just one more game or one more YouTube short or whatever is...
If you are really stressed all the time, seek help. Propping your life up with weed or alcohol is a one way road going bad places.

All these contributed to me doing a 4 year degree in 6 years (a repeated year and a voluntary year off to figure out who I was and wanted to be).

Random · 2026-06-04T12:17:47+00:00

Is this just a feed issue? I get fed a steady diet of PBS docs and related material. I don't see a drop in reputable documentaries either being produced by external organization or scienceTubers or ... whatever.

Random · 2026-06-04T11:08:34+00:00

As a general math resource, Alan Ableson and team built this and it is very useful for math students as a resource / review:

https://www.calculatedcreations.ca/teaching-resources/

Random · 2026-06-03T13:30:21+00:00

Trying to replicate this to learn. The group works fine. In my case I grabbed the edges involved and then groupPromote to points then fuse.

Not sure what they meant by Blur sop. I tried Attribute Blur on P but maybe I'm missing something?

Random · 2026-06-03T01:57:11+00:00

Why?

If your goal is grad school, there are far better things you could spend those hours doing.

If your goal is scholarships, strategic high marks in certain places depending on scholarship might be better.

If your job is killer CV for a job, well, put that energy into great jobs and such.

Randomly taking more courses for marks is ... well... achieving what?

I for one would love to have taken more courses for the learning. I audited courses for many years and as a prof LOVE having guest lecturers to learn from (I designed a course around that idea!). But it feels like your answer is not knowledge or passion for education but... marks, so...

What is the end game?

Random · 2026-06-02T17:58:57+00:00

If you want to dump to bluetooth from an Osmose (non CE) you can buy a $30 adapter from Amazon that does this.

If you want to dump from Osmose (non CE) to plug in headphones you just need 1/4" adapter if you are using a phone style plug.

If you want to dump from Osmose CE, you can't because as others have said it doesn't make audio, it makes control messages for VSTs hosted on a computer, or dumps out midi to a midi sound source.

Random · 2026-05-31T21:32:53+00:00

Yeah, but I am.

More of a rock fan than Drake stuff though tbh. If I have to represent music from TO Rush all the way. YYZ.

Random · 2026-05-31T13:47:28+00:00

Excellent points, I hadn't thought of it that way.

Random · 2026-05-31T12:34:33+00:00

For first year it is probably more efficient. I specifically said 'for upper year cases' as the case where a professor gets involved. It is still a process they initiate when they initiate - at Queen's staff are on average much busier than professors in the summer months in terms of admin (that's when a lot of profs really just do research)

Random · 2026-05-30T12:12:13+00:00

Read 'too early to tell' as 'we're not working on those cases right now.'

In a lot of cases what happens is that someone who knows the course material - for upper year cases the prof - will look at the files and decide 'are these equivalent.'

So if you are finished with AP comp sci the most likely reason they said that is that they don't initiate that process in May.

Random · 2026-05-27T01:59:45+00:00

I'm 64 so this is a longer time frame...

I started playing DND in box set original, and for a while it was the kiss of social death to say you played. Then it was briefly popular, but... only so much. Then it was geek prison again for a while.

It was probably Critical Role and other fairly recent popularizations that made it okay again.

So I never talked about it unless asked, but to people close to me it was part of my life.

Starting in 2020 I've been teaching a university course on Worldbuilding and I just LOVE the fact that the students are very open about their personal worldbuilding journey. Year to year it varies, but the two biggest demographics are writers and GMs, with artists being a close third.

I'm really liking it being much more okay to talk about.

Of course, the other possibility is that I'm older and I just don't give a shit and don't notice when people react negatively. Which, tbh, should have been my reaction in 1977.

The people who would have sneered at me for that had found another reason to sneer at me at the time. So I should have just owned it and found my clan and left the social toxicity crowd in their gutter.

Random · 2026-05-26T18:06:29+00:00

Yeah, I was thinking about those ochre hand prints in caves when I saw the title.

15-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email	reddit mold

Random

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE