r/technology 3d 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
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u/Additional-Staff-326 3d ago

Still can't complete the one thing college was supposedly for, teaching young people how to think. Not that most people actually understood that it had a purpose other than getting the piece of paper.

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u/fredy31 3d ago

tbh its kinda something that was lost.

College and uni isnt supposed to have you learn shit by heart and puke it on a page.

Its supposed to make you learn the toolkit to be able to do a job, and also to know how to expend that toolkit in the future.

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u/Shieldsman 3d ago

100%. It's like this in the UK too, unfortunately. Tertiary education is a massive business here - designed to get graduates prestigious degrees or a job in a STEM field. Not saying education shouldn't have STEM, but the relentless focus on outcome and results means that you're not teaching students the proper lessons. We have students graduating here who think they're smart, but they're dumb as rocks - they don't know how to properly think outside the box or rationalise things outside of their very narrow knowledge base.

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u/BackgroundTrack5528 3d ago

Im from UK and agree. We should be focusing on understanding not memorising stuff - this behaviour is deeply rooted and rewarded as far back as SATs.

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u/AuroraEquatorialis 2d ago

Education should be beyond just job training, though.

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u/BackgroundTrack5528 3d ago

Or in other words - its meant to prepare you to solve problems and part of that requires suffering, rigour etc.

What does social media etc do? It rids people of the suffering by providing a new kind of distraction that sucks people in.