Cheaters never prosper? Actually some do, but it’s still a bad thing to cheat.

(A repost from my own blog, just because)

Recently college dropout Advait Paliwal claims he’s co-created an AI, Einstein, that will help college students cheat. Not that he phrases it that way, of course. According to Paliwal, Einstein will the burden of work off the students, like automation has always done. Why should students learn things if AI can take classes for them? Isn’t the whole model of educators teaching people outmoded and antiquated? He specifically compares students to the horses that used to pull wagons and coaches — the automobile engine came in and suddenly they could live free! Well, if you overlook that the horses were often shot as they were no longer of value (we’ve seen a massive drop in the horse population since 1900).

This put me in mind of two articles I read about twenty years back. In one, the professors quoted said they’d seen an increasing number of kids who had no particular interest in learning or acquiring skills — college was a hoop to jump through, like their SAT scores, their high school GPA, their extracurriculars. None of it had any meaning to them — only hoops.

The other was a discussion of cheating in high school. The students were adamant they were not cheats — come on, high school isn’t real life! It’s just something you need to get the diploma that leads to real life. Once they beat the system, they’ll stop cheating.

Will they? Maybe … and maybe not. “Honest when convenient” is not the same as “honest.” Like C.S. Lewis’s thoughts on being invited to join the cool kids, once you compromise your principles a little, it’s easier to compromise next time, and possibly compromise bigger. If you can rationalize cheating in high school, why not college? The ASVAB or the LSAT? Why not pad your resume while you’re at it — after all, you know you’ll be awesome at the job, it’s not fair you’d be disqualified for lack of experience.

And yes, those students were cheaters. Maybe in their hearts they see themselves as honest; as Thomas Jefferson said, however, “it is in our lives, and not from our words, that our religion must be read.”Or as Immanuel Kant put it, “act as if what you did set a universal law.” People can tell themselves “cheating is wrong but this is an exception.” What they’re really saying is “cheating is okay.” I’d also bet money that none of them would be happy if someone else cheated better and gained a prize they wanted.

In the lively comments thread at the first link in this post, several people argued that yes, college really is just a hoop to jump through for a lot of people; that those who are genuinely curious about learning have always been a minority. There’s at least some truth to this; I remember a study some years back that concluded most fluffy, lightweight degrees exist so the college can bring in rich kids who can pay a full ride. Kids who need a degree on their CV but will be getting jobs based on their family and connections. They have no interest in study so a degree that requires little effort will let them graduate while spending four years carousing and screwing (and building some of those connections for their future).

The thing about degrees, though … they aren’t just a formality. They’re supposed to indicate a basic level of proficiency in field X, with abilities including writing coherently and (as one commenter put it) sitting and listening. If someone’s got the degree but not the skills, having jumped through that hoop may not help them in the long run. I certainly hope it doesn’t.

Paliwal’s bullshit (does anyone in AI say anything that isn’t bullshit?) makes no sense: training and learning are not like being yoked to the plow. Taking the “burden” off the student isn’t more efficient, it’s less efficient: they’ve wasted four years in college accomplishing nothing and learning nothing. And as someone recently opined on Bluesky, if you duck the hard part of learning, you miss out the fun part — discovering you’ve mastered a skill. It’s the same with writing: sure, writing a story is hard but that’s why it’s satisfying when I succeed. What would be the point in turning that part over to an LLM?

In the words of Chanda Prescot-Weinstein, “The thing is, even if you’re just thinking in terms of fiscal value, having gone through a degree program and being able to put it on your resumé/CV isn’t the most significant return on your investment: the way you have further developed your mind is.”

For further reading, 404 Media looks at how many people will be hurt if college studies are discredited. Inside Higher Ed looks at the short-term steps (back to bluebook exams!) and the long-term need to shift education away from the transactional model.