The Daily Peeve / Rant

[happystuff]

Hope you get to have a restful and relaxing vacation, tradd!

[Tradd]

Office manager just texted me that system is back up, but we need to change password to 14 characters. That needs to be done at work computer so I can’t do that from home.

Besides that, I have to leave an hour early tomorrow to get two new tires after one got punctured by a screw and can’t be fixed. AWD means two, not just one, new tires. $500.

[Tradd]

Work system went down for about an hour at 3. I had stuff to do that didn’t require customs clearance software. Got the new tires on then worked for almost two hours at home. Got a ton done. So glad tomorrow is my last day before vacation.

[Tybee]

I'm teaching a class I haven't taught in about two years. When AI started coming into the class, I would have 2-3 students out of 25-30 use it, according to Turnitin.

This class had its first paper due this weekend. Out of the 25 students who submitted a paper, only three showed an AI score of zero. Three showed scores of 35-50%. Two showed scores that indicated the student was able to bypass the checker. The other 14 students showed an AI score of 100%.

This is the first class where I decided to accept all papers, regardless of AI scores. The checkers themselves are AI, and therefore not really trustworthy, and I'm not going to get into a shouting match with students about their work anymore. It's not worth it. Each time I reject a paper for AI, it is a couple of hours of extra work for me. Ironically, they have lowered our salary now, so it's a double paycut.

[iris lilies]

I'm teaching a class I haven't taught in about two years. When AI started coming into the class, I would have 2-3 students out of 25-30 use it, according to Turnitin.

This class had its first paper due this weekend. Out of the 25 students who submitted a paper, only three showed an AI score of zero. Three showed scores of 35-50%. Two showed scores that indicated the student was able to bypass the checker. The other 14 students showed an AI score of 100%.

This is the first class where I decided to accept all papers, regardless of AI scores. The checkers themselves are AI, and therefore not really trustworthy, and I'm not going to get into a shouting match with students about their work anymore. It's not worth it. Each time I reject a paper for AI, it is a couple of hours of extra work for me. Ironically, they have lowered our salary now, so it's a double paycut.

That sounds so stressful, ugh. I cant even imagine facing 25 papers and having to determine which used AI.

[catherine]

That sounds so stressful, ugh. I cant even imagine facing 25 papers and having to determine which used AI.

I see a future where it won't even be an issue. It will be like punishing a cashier for not adding up groceries on the outside of the paper bag. When I went to my market research conference last year, everyone was in a panic about how AI was going to destroy the "art" of report writing. But the key message is--you still are the "manager" of the work. AI is just a word-making cash register. You value the end product on the ideas and insights, not for concoctions of purely human origin.

I know how radical that sounds, but in my experience so far with AI and market research, I have found that I use AI to draft alternative words, and sometimes I use it to draft a whole summary. I have to say, I'm still better at deciding how to use the output for my desired outcome. I'm more of an orchestra conductor now, or a choreographer rather than the dancer.

But still, Tybee, I agree that you have a significant challenge in assessing a student's ability to think critically in this new world.

[iris lilies]

Yesterday I was thinking about the last big shift technology forced the average person to make, not AI, but it affected everyone, and that was a move from print form to digital forms of communication.

Remember when email was first new and people you knew printed out every email message they received? Aye yi yi.

Part of that shift was in my library world. Oh my people were all in a tither when journals began producing their content in online form. When I managed a large public library system, including their acquisitions department,I had several conversations with department heads who could NOT make that mental switch. One department head spent several days printing out entire journal contents and then delivered them to my office saying “now we need to send this to the bindery so we can put it on the shelf with the other physical volumes. “

I guess she had the expectation we would print out most of the Internet. Oy.

So I got ‘round that by soothing those of that mindset saying “ hey, let’s sit on this idea for several months to see how it all shakes out.” Not surprisingly, it all shook out to a result of not printing the entire journal databases on paper, it shook out by all that crap she had printed out ending up in the paper shredder.

And tons of government documents for which we went ‘round and ‘round about the necessity of cataloging. You folks have absolutely no idea of what the federal government and your state government produces. Back in those days there were “depository libraries “ that automatically received one paper copy of Each item the government printed. It was all copyright free. Anyone could reproduce it in any form, and the more juicy reports were picked up by commercial printing houses and distributed/sold. But anyway – by the time I retired, all the clamor for cataloging each of those government documents had greatly died down because so many of them were online and iindexed in keyword searches.

To this day, there is that collection of government documents sitting in Central library of the St. Louis public library. I don’t know how much weeding they were able to do when we moved to the renovated building because there are all kinds of strictures for disposing of items in that collection. At one time we supposedly had – get this —- 1 million items in that Gov Docs collection.

[catherine]

That amount of print documentation would definitely make my head explode. Yeah, the internet definitely has its place!

I remember when we had been composing in word processors and then on big desktop computers for a year or so our company hired an older market research guy, Fred. Fred never worked without his trusty tape and scissors. Every report he wrote he would literally "cut and paste" changes. Some in the office would laugh at him, and his outmoded process did nothing to promote him as a relevant employee. He didn't last long. I'm sure he was very experienced and knowledgeable, but sometiems you have to fake keeping up with the times.

[iris lilies]

That amount of print documentation would definitely make my head explode. Yeah, the internet definitely has its place!

I remember when we had been composing in word processors and then on big desktop computers for a year or so our company hired an older market research guy, Fred. Fred never worked without his trusty tape and scissors. Every report he wrote he would literally "cut and paste" changes. Some in the office would laugh at him, and his outmoded process did nothing to promote him as a relevant employee. He didn't last long. I'm sure he was very experienced and knowledgeable, but sometiems you have to fake keeping up with the times.

Yeah, our entire 7th floor was devoted to rows and rows of shelving of that Gov Docs collection with 3-ish employees paid to maintain it.

And as someone who appreciates visual illustration and commercial art, I found it the most visually boring place in the library Our governments don’t put stock in making document covers pretty. I doubt that there were any graphic designers paid to produce them.

[catherine]

Yeah, our entire 7th floor was devoted to rows and rows of shelving of that Gov Docs collection with 3-ish employees paid to maintain it.

And as someone who appreciates visual illustration and commercial art, I found it the most visually boring place in the library Our governments don’t put stock in making document covers pretty. I doubt that there were any graphic designers paid to produce them.

When I think of how often I find a car insurance policy stuck in a tax return folder, I have to give those three document custodians major props.