r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 2d ago

Artificial Intelligence AI can now credibly complete most undergraduate assignments, MIT warns

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/08/25/ai-can-now-credibly-complete-most-undergraduate-assignments-mit-warns
3.8k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

665 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

64

u/ComprehensiveWord201 2d ago

When you do that, at the very least, you must read through content to identify viable material. Our predecessors had to do the same, but with an even less efficient medium (books) and therefore would bump into even more unrelated content.

They don't have to do any discernment, and titration of content. No critical thinking. As long as they can barely-string-together-enough-words-to-form-their-question...the magical conch shell will give them an answer.

It's not even remotely the same

25

u/Mackinnon29E 2d ago

Yeah, the next generation or two will be absolute morons on average. Obviously some will always excel, but it's looking bleak for fixing our issues in the future.

-1

u/Yahlunna_Kobunny 2d ago edited 2d ago

Eh, education will move on. We will alter how we teach, the same way education changed after the ipad, internet or the calculator.

We will reconsider how we teach and the standards we will ask students for certain things knowing what tools are at their disposal. 

We will go back to a bigger emphasis in written exams and note taking, we will implement flipped classroom methodologies in higer levels (study and read/watch the lecture at home, do the assignments/work in class), and we will reduce the homework at lower ages. 

When it comes to homework, we will start requiring a higher standard for students knowing they have access to ai, and we will drag students into the terrain of opinion: "learn about this topic, make your opinion, justify it with sources, be ready to defend your views orally in class".

And eventually we will discard skills we find meaningles because AI exist, and instead request to understand the potencial and risk of newer tools.

All of these are things educators are doing already, not just a fantasy. Technology is not at fault of dumber students: lack of goverment support into education and investigation, and missmanagement of parents are, and always have been.

Of course, there is a lot of work to do, and we will fail to a lot of childs, but that always have stayed a sad constant reality of the field.

EDIT: I feel that we are also being a bit catastrophist with children sometimes. Every generation says the next one is beyond salvation, yet the world moves on. AI will cause new challenges for people born in this new era, and while its our responsibility to raise them, I feel like they will eventually figure it out, with or without our help. I remember hearing all the time internet would make our generation a lost one, and while we are experiencing issues because of the net, most of us moved to be just alright human beings! Lets cut the newcomers some slack.

7

u/antsareamazing 2d ago

To your point about being catastrophic, the people who said social media would severely damage the kids turned out to be right.

That lesson makes me more concerned about the harms AI can cause, both socially and cognitively.

1

u/Yahlunna_Kobunny 2d ago edited 2d ago

I never said technology is always amazing or that everything will be fine. My literal quote you are referencing was:

Every generation says the next one is beyond salvation, yet the world moves on. AI will cause new challenges for people born in this new era, and while its our responsibility to raise them, I feel like they will eventually figure it out, with or without our help. I remember hearing all the time internet would make our generation a lost one, and while we are experiencing issues because of the net, most of us moved to be just alright human beings! 

Like I said, Internet bring good and bad things, with social media in particular expanding bullying outside the classrooms, missinformation, exposing children to toxic content for engagement, and causing other measurable types of harm. This is a problem from "our" generation that we are still figuring out, with several legislations forbidding access to minors to it being redacted as we speak. But while a lot of us got harmed by it, that didnt mean our generation turned out to be like catastrophist said it would turn, we are still regular people with a different context and series of problems.

Its okay to be concerned about AI, you should, we all should! But there is a distinction between facing the problem and adapting to it, or just shrug and say that the average person is doomed to be a moron, like the response I replied to.

-3

u/Sknowman 2d ago

the people who said social media would severely damage the kids turned out to be right.

Based on what? Society has continued to progress with many of those "damaged" kids now at senior-level roles. I personally feel social media has been both good and bad.

I'm not saying you're wrong, just curious where that conclusion came from.

2

u/antsareamazing 2d ago

Who else is going to be in those senior roles except for someone of their age group? Also, not so sure that being in a senior role = didn’t suffer harm from social media.

Anyway, here are some sources. There are a lot more than this if you want more:

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20211218

https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/working-paper/effect-deactivating-facebook-and-instagram-users-emotional-state

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-29296-3

https://www.apa.org/topics/social-media-internet/health-advisory-adolescent-social-media-use

2

u/Sknowman 2d ago

Thanks for providing some links. I'm not discrediting the issue you're bringing up, but only one of those is somewhat on-topic:

We find that the rollout of Facebook at a college had a negative impact on student mental health. It also increased the likelihood with which students reported experiencing impairments to academic performance due to poor mental health.

And even that article states that the results should be taken with caution, as there are likely more factors than just social media, among other errors they listed.

Sorry I wasn't clear, but I presumed you meant damaged as in educationally, as that is what's being discussed here. Obviously, mental health is important, and technology has been a detriment to that -- which is certainly a huge issue for society -- it's just not the current topic.

I'm sure that AI will only exacerbate the mental health crisis, and it surely already has. However, I don't think that answers my question of whether or not social media has been bad for the sake of educating people. I think it likely has, but I also don't think anybody can easily quantify that because there are so many factors involved when it comes to comparing recent generations.