That's an interesting point that I haven't considered before: that the narrative of AI replacing jobs plus the widespread cheating in school using LLMs is making students less engaged and new graduates less employable, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy for AI.
This is one of the aspects of AI ethics that I don't think gets nearly enough attention: the general psychological effect that information about AI has on people, regardless of their interactions with the tools themselves.
Students getting lazy, or dropping out of subjects entirely because they don't think they have a future in them.
Depression and a general feeling of despair. I see this in programming communities quite a bit - people who see LLMs as an existential threat to their careers and that they have wasted their lives getting good at something which is now being devalued.
"ChatGPT psychosis" - where people talk to LLMs and have unhealthy thought patterns reinforced by them to disastrous ends - gets a ton of coverage. But what about these milder but still meaningful effects where the very existence of AI disrupts people's future plans and self-worth even if they're not using it at all?
I keep remembering this clip in these discussions:
> I went through this Ford engine plant about three years ago, when they first opened it.
> There are acres and acres of machines, and here and there you will find a worker standing at a master switchboard, just watching, green and yellow lights blinking off and on, which tell the worker what is happening in the machine.
> One of the management people, with a slightly gleeful tone in his voice said to me, “How are you going to collect union dues from all these machines?”
> And I replied, “You know, that is not what’s bothering me. I’m troubled by the problem of how to sell automobiles to these machines
No one gets fired for tuning out of temporary tuning out of his smartphone or doing chores the classic way I guess. ;)
I use mobile services timeboxed and in conjunction with blockers for certain services. I also went back to use old-school pencils and paper for work whenever possible. It is helpful - and fun.
It's like when we forgot all things that we can google, but on a much, much greater scale. For example, multiplication by heart. I think oral, in person examination should be used with students whenever possible, in order to deal with cheating.
If others are slacking, it's an opportunity to level up and stand out.
Also, IMO there are market forces currently reshaping the jobs landscape, it's not only AI, I don't even think AI is the main driver.
I don't see the relation. A "ghost job posting" is not evidence of recent graduates failing to meet the requirements of the past; it is a job posting an employer has no intention of filling to begin with.
> Surely this would be indicated by a glut of unfilled job postings.
I posted a link about Ghost jobs. Then, you said:
>[...]it is a job posting an employer has no intention of filling to begin with.
GP' comment speaks to recent graduates feeling less engaged. Whether it's because they fail to meet the requirements, or the requirements are literally fake doesn't matter. AI isn't used simply to cheat on coursework, but also to erect a de facto glass ceiling viz fake jobs with fake requirements, engagement suffers.
A labor pool's competence drops, especially at the lower/entry-level end, when educational achievement for the labor drops.
To illustrate with reductive absurdity: If every CS student in the market used AI to do all of their coursework, and got a degree still -- that would, among other things, likely reduce appetite on the hiring side.
Right, but there's no way of actually measuring whether or not there's a drop in competency if the earnest job postings aren't there to begin with. I.e. there's no way to test your hypothesis.
