I like this conceptually... I... just can't listen to AI voices. Am I wrong to find them annoying?
Anyway, I'm also not super worried about AI... mostly because it doesn't exist yet. Hello, Amazon Go with your "Actually Indians" technology. LLMs aren't "AI", they're remix apps. LLMs can't do anything that humans haven't already done... it's just faster at replicating it. Speed can be useful, like when iteration is key... but, for the most part, what we're being marketed to as being "AI" isn't that useful. As you've mentioned, nearly everything it produces needs to be double-checked (which sometimes takes longer than if you just did the entire thing yourself). I often find using generative AI to be a waste of time — mostly due to the constant compromises/adjustments to your vision you have to make because what it produced didn't quite match what you saw in your head.
The reality is: if actual general AI was a thing, the public wouldn't have access to it until its usefulness to the powers-that-be is reduced to merely selling (renting) it to us. Just like LLMs — they first made waves over a decade ago (remember the uproar "robot journalists?" in like 2013/4)... now they're just something the general public can use.
Considering this, if general AI was really a thing — we wouldn't know, except... none of the problems it would supposedly solve have been solved... so, that's kind of a clue (unless breakthroughs are being held back to ensure profits are exhausted from other methods — but they would never do that, right??).
Oh, and there's a typo in the Counting Crows song title "A Murder of One" (also got some backwards opening quote marks through out that list).
This is fascinating! I actually can see how these songs connect to each other. I suppose this type of AI is not that far off from the algorithms we experience on a daily basis. It's interesting that it came up with songs by the same artists yet the reasoning was different for both choices!
Have you not seen the Terminator films? Hahahaha just kidding. I’m not particularly afraid. I’m worried about the future of education… I teach a college intro to film class online, and over the past year it went from 1-2 students using AI for papers and discussions to well over half - maybe even most students (at least in my current class). There is no way to prove the use of AI, and the college won’t file an academic dishonesty report on any student using AI (for that reason). So, we will be cranking out degrees to people who can’t write, or essentially learned nothing but how to use AI to learn for them. I seriously don’t even want to teach anymore because of it, but it’s how I pay my bills…
This use of AI that you have done here, I find interesting and entertaining.
It's like you are echoing everything I have felt in the last few years Kristin! I also teach intro (and some upper division) film courses and I've been just as frustrated about AI! Like you have found, there is no specific way of finding out for sure if a student has written something or not. In the "old" days one could copy and paste a questionable passage into Google and find if it's been plagiarized by the student. I caught a number of culprits that way! Not anymore! I KNOW some of what is being written comes from AI. This has helped me make the decision to retire in the next year!
Where do you teach? You can dm that to me if you want. I use Quillbot for the AI detection- a student told me that’s what they had used to generate AI lol 😂 They put AI detection in the plagiarism software, but removed it after few months ago. I mean I can usually spot it, but some are pretty good. The wildest thing is that AI *hallucinates* references. So, now I click all the links for references, and also send an email to a librarian to check the references.
I started teaching composition classes back in 2003, and remember the days of copying and pasting into search bars to check for plagiarism on suspicious papers!
My other tell tales for AI are - no specifics - all vague statements not backed up by evidence (examples) from the film…
My favorite from this current class was a paper on auteur theory - the student wrote a paper on why Spike Lee is an auteur using Do the Right Thing and John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood… stating the connection was that Singleton was inspired by Lee. At least I could give a 0 on that because he didn’t follow the basic instructions of choosing two films by the director to demonstrate they were an auteur. Um Spike Lee has directed over 24 films - no reason to not choose a second film of his to demonstrate he’s an auteur!
LOL! Thank you. There is a bill in California that aims to watermark AI (even Elon Musk reluctantly supports it), but I know little more than that. And I agree 100% and as someone currently getting another degree, I can tell you confidently that probably 95-99% of students are using AI. The more honest students should at least be citing the use of it, I know that I do. If they're citing it, at least you could respond/grade accordingly? I don't know what the answer is, but my hope is that it works itself out. And I do believe that it will... eventually.
I love that you teach film! Now there's an art form that has been deeply impacted by technology, and not always for the better imho. I'd love to know more about what you're teaching - I love American cinema of the 1970s.
But yes, I also agree that we'll be churning out a generation of kids that won't know what it means to research and write, let alone formulate their own thoughts.
The 70s was a great decade for films! I teach an intro class, so we look at the basic elements of film (lighting, sound, editing, cinematography, etc), genre theory, auteur theory, and the social impact of films. I love it, but having an increasing amount of students not into the actual learning has taken a lot of the fun out of it lol
Oh man, those are the nuts and bolts of filmmaking. I seriously love those elements, give me a good film with terrific sound design and solid editing, and I can forgive an awful lot. What a shame kids aren't into it. It can be such a powerful medium.
I like this conceptually... I... just can't listen to AI voices. Am I wrong to find them annoying?
Anyway, I'm also not super worried about AI... mostly because it doesn't exist yet. Hello, Amazon Go with your "Actually Indians" technology. LLMs aren't "AI", they're remix apps. LLMs can't do anything that humans haven't already done... it's just faster at replicating it. Speed can be useful, like when iteration is key... but, for the most part, what we're being marketed to as being "AI" isn't that useful. As you've mentioned, nearly everything it produces needs to be double-checked (which sometimes takes longer than if you just did the entire thing yourself). I often find using generative AI to be a waste of time — mostly due to the constant compromises/adjustments to your vision you have to make because what it produced didn't quite match what you saw in your head.
The reality is: if actual general AI was a thing, the public wouldn't have access to it until its usefulness to the powers-that-be is reduced to merely selling (renting) it to us. Just like LLMs — they first made waves over a decade ago (remember the uproar "robot journalists?" in like 2013/4)... now they're just something the general public can use.
Considering this, if general AI was really a thing — we wouldn't know, except... none of the problems it would supposedly solve have been solved... so, that's kind of a clue (unless breakthroughs are being held back to ensure profits are exhausted from other methods — but they would never do that, right??).
Oh, and there's a typo in the Counting Crows song title "A Murder of One" (also got some backwards opening quote marks through out that list).
This is fascinating! I actually can see how these songs connect to each other. I suppose this type of AI is not that far off from the algorithms we experience on a daily basis. It's interesting that it came up with songs by the same artists yet the reasoning was different for both choices!
Thanks Dan, it was a really interesting experiment. And kind of fun. :)
Have you not seen the Terminator films? Hahahaha just kidding. I’m not particularly afraid. I’m worried about the future of education… I teach a college intro to film class online, and over the past year it went from 1-2 students using AI for papers and discussions to well over half - maybe even most students (at least in my current class). There is no way to prove the use of AI, and the college won’t file an academic dishonesty report on any student using AI (for that reason). So, we will be cranking out degrees to people who can’t write, or essentially learned nothing but how to use AI to learn for them. I seriously don’t even want to teach anymore because of it, but it’s how I pay my bills…
This use of AI that you have done here, I find interesting and entertaining.
It's like you are echoing everything I have felt in the last few years Kristin! I also teach intro (and some upper division) film courses and I've been just as frustrated about AI! Like you have found, there is no specific way of finding out for sure if a student has written something or not. In the "old" days one could copy and paste a questionable passage into Google and find if it's been plagiarized by the student. I caught a number of culprits that way! Not anymore! I KNOW some of what is being written comes from AI. This has helped me make the decision to retire in the next year!
Where do you teach? You can dm that to me if you want. I use Quillbot for the AI detection- a student told me that’s what they had used to generate AI lol 😂 They put AI detection in the plagiarism software, but removed it after few months ago. I mean I can usually spot it, but some are pretty good. The wildest thing is that AI *hallucinates* references. So, now I click all the links for references, and also send an email to a librarian to check the references.
I started teaching composition classes back in 2003, and remember the days of copying and pasting into search bars to check for plagiarism on suspicious papers!
My other tell tales for AI are - no specifics - all vague statements not backed up by evidence (examples) from the film…
My favorite from this current class was a paper on auteur theory - the student wrote a paper on why Spike Lee is an auteur using Do the Right Thing and John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood… stating the connection was that Singleton was inspired by Lee. At least I could give a 0 on that because he didn’t follow the basic instructions of choosing two films by the director to demonstrate they were an auteur. Um Spike Lee has directed over 24 films - no reason to not choose a second film of his to demonstrate he’s an auteur!
Yeah, they try everything! I will check that out. I teach at DePaul University in Chicago.
LOL! Thank you. There is a bill in California that aims to watermark AI (even Elon Musk reluctantly supports it), but I know little more than that. And I agree 100% and as someone currently getting another degree, I can tell you confidently that probably 95-99% of students are using AI. The more honest students should at least be citing the use of it, I know that I do. If they're citing it, at least you could respond/grade accordingly? I don't know what the answer is, but my hope is that it works itself out. And I do believe that it will... eventually.
I love that you teach film! Now there's an art form that has been deeply impacted by technology, and not always for the better imho. I'd love to know more about what you're teaching - I love American cinema of the 1970s.
But yes, I also agree that we'll be churning out a generation of kids that won't know what it means to research and write, let alone formulate their own thoughts.
The 70s was a great decade for films! I teach an intro class, so we look at the basic elements of film (lighting, sound, editing, cinematography, etc), genre theory, auteur theory, and the social impact of films. I love it, but having an increasing amount of students not into the actual learning has taken a lot of the fun out of it lol
Oh man, those are the nuts and bolts of filmmaking. I seriously love those elements, give me a good film with terrific sound design and solid editing, and I can forgive an awful lot. What a shame kids aren't into it. It can be such a powerful medium.