#Advanced AI course for students

[bigleapblog]

Your Guide to B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering Colleges

In today's technology-driven world, pursuing a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) has become a popular choice among students aspiring for a bright future. The demand for skilled professionals in areas like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Data Science, and Cloud Computing has made computer science engineering colleges crucial in shaping tomorrow's innovators. Saraswati College of Engineering (SCOE), a leader in engineering education, provides students with a perfect platform to build a successful career in this evolving field.

Whether you're passionate about coding, software development, or the latest advancements in AI, pursuing a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering at SCOE can open doors to endless opportunities.

Why Choose B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering?

Choosing a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering isn't just about learning to code; it's about mastering problem-solving, logical thinking, and the ability to work with cutting-edge technologies. The course offers a robust foundation that combines theoretical knowledge with practical skills, enabling students to excel in the tech industry.

At SCOE, the computer science engineering courses are designed to meet industry standards and keep up with the rapidly evolving tech landscape. With its AICTE Approved, NAAC Accredited With Grade-"A+" credentials, the college provides quality education in a nurturing environment. SCOE's curriculum goes beyond textbooks, focusing on hands-on learning through projects, labs, workshops, and internships. This approach ensures that students graduate not only with a degree but with the skills needed to thrive in their careers.

The Role of Computer Science Engineering Colleges in Career Development

The role of computer science engineering colleges like SCOE is not limited to classroom teaching. These institutions play a crucial role in shaping students' futures by providing the necessary infrastructure, faculty expertise, and placement opportunities. SCOE, established in 2004, is recognized as one of the top engineering colleges in Navi Mumbai. It boasts a strong placement record, with companies like Goldman Sachs, Cisco, and Microsoft offering lucrative job opportunities to its graduates.

The computer science engineering courses at SCOE are structured to provide a blend of technical and soft skills. From the basics of computer programming to advanced topics like Artificial Intelligence and Data Science, students at SCOE are trained to be industry-ready. The faculty at SCOE comprises experienced professionals who not only impart theoretical knowledge but also mentor students for real-world challenges.

Highlights of the B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering Program at SCOE

Comprehensive Curriculum: The B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering program at SCOE covers all major areas, including programming languages, algorithms, data structures, computer networks, operating systems, AI, and Machine Learning. This ensures that students receive a well-rounded education, preparing them for various roles in the tech industry.

Industry-Relevant Learning: SCOE’s focus is on creating professionals who can immediately contribute to the tech industry. The college regularly collaborates with industry leaders to update its curriculum, ensuring students learn the latest technologies and trends in computer science engineering.

State-of-the-Art Infrastructure: SCOE is equipped with modern laboratories, computer centers, and research facilities, providing students with the tools they need to gain practical experience. The institution’s infrastructure fosters innovation, helping students work on cutting-edge projects and ideas during their B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering.

Practical Exposure: One of the key benefits of studying at SCOE is the emphasis on practical learning. Students participate in hands-on projects, internships, and industry visits, giving them real-world exposure to how technology is applied in various sectors.

Placement Support: SCOE has a dedicated placement cell that works tirelessly to ensure students secure internships and job offers from top companies. The B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering program boasts a strong placement record, with top tech companies visiting the campus every year. The highest on-campus placement offer for the academic year 2022-23 was an impressive 22 LPA from Goldman Sachs, reflecting the college’s commitment to student success.

Personal Growth: Beyond academics, SCOE encourages students to participate in extracurricular activities, coding competitions, and tech fests. These activities enhance their learning experience, promote teamwork, and help students build a well-rounded personality that is essential in today’s competitive job market.

What Makes SCOE Stand Out?

With so many computer science engineering colleges to choose from, why should you consider SCOE for your B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering? Here are a few factors that make SCOE a top choice for students:

Experienced Faculty: SCOE prides itself on having a team of highly qualified and experienced faculty members. The faculty’s approach to teaching is both theoretical and practical, ensuring students are equipped to tackle real-world challenges.

Strong Industry Connections: The college maintains strong relationships with leading tech companies, ensuring that students have access to internship opportunities and campus recruitment drives. This gives SCOE graduates a competitive edge in the job market.

Holistic Development: SCOE believes in the holistic development of students. In addition to academic learning, the college offers opportunities for personal growth through various student clubs, sports activities, and cultural events.

Supportive Learning Environment: SCOE provides a nurturing environment where students can focus on their academic and personal growth. The campus is equipped with modern facilities, including spacious classrooms, labs, a library, and a recreation center.

Career Opportunities After B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from SCOE

Graduates with a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from SCOE are well-prepared to take on various roles in the tech industry. Some of the most common career paths for CSE graduates include:

Software Engineer: Developing software applications, web development, and mobile app development are some of the key responsibilities of software engineers. This role requires strong programming skills and a deep understanding of software design.

Data Scientist: With the rise of big data, data scientists are in high demand. CSE graduates with knowledge of data science can work on data analysis, machine learning models, and predictive analytics.

AI Engineer: Artificial Intelligence is revolutionizing various industries, and AI engineers are at the forefront of this change. SCOE’s curriculum includes AI and Machine Learning, preparing students for roles in this cutting-edge field.

System Administrator: Maintaining and managing computer systems and networks is a crucial role in any organization. CSE graduates can work as system administrators, ensuring the smooth functioning of IT infrastructure.

Cybersecurity Specialist: With the growing threat of cyberattacks, cybersecurity specialists are essential in protecting an organization’s digital assets. CSE graduates can pursue careers in cybersecurity, safeguarding sensitive information from hackers.

Conclusion: Why B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering at SCOE is the Right Choice

Choosing the right college is crucial for a successful career in B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering. Saraswati College of Engineering (SCOE) stands out as one of the best computer science engineering colleges in Navi Mumbai. With its industry-aligned curriculum, state-of-the-art infrastructure, and excellent placement record, SCOE offers students the perfect environment to build a successful career in computer science.

Whether you're interested in AI, data science, software development, or any other field in computer science, SCOE provides the knowledge, skills, and opportunities you need to succeed. With a strong focus on hands-on learning and personal growth, SCOE ensures that students graduate not only as engineers but as professionals ready to take on the challenges of the tech world.

If you're ready to embark on an exciting journey in the world of technology, consider pursuing your B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering at SCOE—a college where your future takes shape.

[educationalcourses]

AI Showdown Comparing ChatGPT-4 and Gemini AI for Your Needs

ChatGPT-4 vs. Gemini AI – Which AI Supreme?

Imagine having a conversation with an AI so sophisticated, it feels almost human. Now, imagine another AI that can solve complex problems and think deeply like a seasoned expert. Which one would you choose? Welcome to the future of artificial intelligence, where ChatGPT-4 and Gemini AI are leading the way. But which one is the right fit for you? Let’s dive in and find out!

What is ChatGPT-4?

ChatGPT-4, developed by OpenAI, is a cutting-edge AI model designed to understand and respond to human language with remarkable accuracy. Think of it as your chatty, knowledgeable friend who’s always ready to help with questions, offer advice, or just have a friendly conversation. It's like having an intelligent assistant that gets better at understanding you the more you interact with it.

What is Gemini AI?

The answer to this depends on what you need. Gemini AI shines in its ability to tackle complex reasoning tasks and deep analysis, akin to having a highly intelligent assistant at your disposal of Master ChatGPT,  Gemini AI, crafted by Google, is like a super-intelligent student that excels in reasoning and grasping complex concepts. This AI is particularly adept at tasks that require deep analytical thinking, making it a powerful tool for solving intricate problems in fields like science, math, and philosophy.

Gemini vs. ChatGPT: Other Key Differences

Conversational Learning: GPT-4 can retain context and improve through interactions, whereas Gemini AI currently has limited capabilities in this area.

Draft Responses: Gemini AI offers multiple drafts for each query, while GPT-4 provides a single, refined response.

Editing Responses: Gemini AI allows users to edit responses post-submission, a feature GPT-4 lacks.

Real-time Internet Access: GPT-4's internet access is limited to its premium version, whereas Gemini AI provides real-time access as a standard feature.

Image-Based Responses: Gemini AI can search and respond with images, a feature now also available in ChatGPT chatbot.

Text-to-Speech: Gemini AI includes text-to-speech capabilities, unlike ChatGPT.

In South Africa’s ChatGPT-4 and Gemini AI Key trends include:

Adoption of AI Technology: South Africa is integrating advanced AI models like ChatGPT-4 and Gemini AI into various sectors, showcasing a growing interest in leveraging AI for business and educational purposes

Google's Expansion: Google's introduction of Gemini AI through its Bard platform has made sophisticated AI technology more accessible in South Africa, supporting over 40 languages and impacting over 230 countries

Comparative Analysis: There is ongoing discourse and comparison between the capabilities of ChatGPT-4 and Gemini AI, highlighting their respective strengths in conversational AI and complex problem-solving

Why You Need to Do This Course

Enrolling in the Mastering ChatGPT Course by UniAthena is your gateway to unlocking the full potential of AI. Whether you're a professional looking to enhance your skills, a student aiming to stay ahead of the curve, or simply an AI enthusiast, this course is designed for you.

Why South African People Need to Do This Course

Enrolling in the Mastering ChatGPT Course by UniAthena is crucial for South Africans to keep pace with the global AI revolution. The course equips learners with the skills to utilize AI tools effectively, enhancing productivity and innovation in various sectors such as business, education, and technology.

Benefits of This Course for South African People

Enhanced Skill Set: Gain proficiency in using ChatGPT, making you a valuable asset in any industry.

Increased Productivity: Automate tasks and streamline workflows with AI, boosting efficiency.

Competitive Edge: Stay ahead of the competition by mastering cutting-edge AI technology.

Career Advancement: Unlock new job opportunities and career paths in the growing field of AI.

Economic Growth: Equip yourself with skills that contribute to the digital transformation of South Africa's economy.

Conclusion

Choosing between ChatGPT-4 and Gemini AI depends on your specific needs. For conversational tasks, content generation, and everyday assistance, GPT-4 is your go-to. For deep analytical tasks and complex problem-solving, Gemini AI takes the crown.

Bonus Points

While Google Gemini offers a free version with limited features, ChatGPT continues to evolve rapidly, ensuring fast and efficient processing of user requests. Investing time in mastering these tools can significantly benefit your personal and professional growth.

So, are you ready to dive into the world of AI and elevate your career? Enroll in the Mastering ChatGPT Course by UniAthena today and start your journey towards becoming an AI expert!

[mitsde123]

How to Choose the Right Machine Learning Course for Your Career

As the demand for machine learning professionals continues to surge, choosing the right machine learning course has become crucial for anyone looking to build a successful career in this field. With countless options available, from free online courses to intensive boot camps and advanced degrees, making the right choice can be overwhelming. 

[communistkenobi]

(taken from a post about AI)

speaking as someone who has had to grade virtually every kind of undergraduate assignment you can think of for the past six years (essays, labs, multiple choice tests, oral presentations, class participation, quizzes, field work assignments, etc), it is wild how out-of-touch-with-reality people’s perceptions of university grading schemes are. they are a mass standardised measurement used to prove the legitimacy of your degree, not how much you’ve learned. Those things aren’t completely unrelated to one another of course, but they are very different targets to meet. It is standard practice for professors to have a very clear idea of what the grade distribution for their classes are before each semester begins, and tenure-track assessments (at least some of the ones I’ve seen) are partially judged on a professors classes’ grade distributions - handing out too many A’s is considered a bad thing because it inflates student GPAs relative to other departments, faculties, and universities, and makes classes “too easy,” ie, reduces the legitimate of the degree they earn. I have been instructed many times by professors to grade easier or harder throughout the term to meet those target averages, because those targets are the expected distribution of grades in a standardised educational setting. It is standard practice for teaching assistants to report their grade averages to one another to make sure grade distributions are consistent. there’s a reason profs sometimes curve grades if the class tanks an assignment or test, and it’s generally not because they’re being nice!

this is why AI and chatgpt so quickly expanded into academia - it’s not because this new generation is the laziest, stupidest, most illiterate batch of teenagers the world has ever seen (what an original observation you’ve made there!), it’s because education has a mass standard data format that is very easily replicable by programs trained on, yanno, large volumes of data. And sure the essays generated by chatgpt are vacuous, uncompelling, and full of factual errors, but again, speaking as someone who has graded thousands of essays written by undergrads, that’s not exactly a new phenomenon lol

I think if you want to be productively angry at ChatGPT/AI usage in academia (I saw a recent post complaining that people were using it to write emails of all things, as if emails are some sacred form of communication), your anger needs to be directed at how easily automated many undergraduate assignments are. Or maybe your professors calculating in advance that the class average will be 72% is the single best way to run a university! Who knows. But part of the emotional stakes in this that I think are hard for people to admit to, much less let go of, is that AI reveals how rote, meaningless, and silly a lot of university education is - you are not a special little genius who is better than everyone else for having a Bachelor’s degree, you have succeeded in moving through standardised post-secondary education. This is part of the reason why disabled people are systematically barred from education, because disability accommodations require a break from this standardised format, and that means disabled people are framed as lazy cheaters who “get more time and help than everyone else.” If an AI can spit out a C+ undergraduate essay, that of course threatens your sense of superiority, and we can’t have that, can we?

[what-even-is-thiss]

Free or Cheap Spanish Learning Resources So You Can Run at Windmills in Fluent Spanish

I will update this list as I learn of any more useful ones. If you want general language learning resources check out this other post. This list is Spanish specific. Find lists for other specific languages here.

For the purposes of this list "free" means something that is either totally free or has a useful free tier. "Cheap" is a subscription under $10USD a month, a software license or lifetime membership purchase under $100USD, or a book under $30USD. If you want to suggest a resource for this list please suggest ones in that price range that are of decent quality and not AI generated.

WEBSITES

Dreaming Spanish - A website that is also a YouTube Channel. This is a comprehensible input site with videos about a variety of subjects with multiple hosts from multiple countries. It has content for learners from absolute beginner to lower advanced. It lets you sort videos by dialect, subject, length, etc. The free version has a lot of content. The paid version is $9 a month and has many more videos and allows you to track your listening hours. The website is in English but all videos are entirely in Spanish.

Lawless Spanish - A free website with resources to learn Spanish relating to grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary. The website also has worksheets, charts, an AI chatbot, and reviews of different learning resources. The website is in English.

Spanish Boom - A free website with beginner lessons and free readings with audio and visual aids. They're also associated with a service called Esidioma that provides paid courses with tutor help for around $23 and also sells books. Prices are in Euros but they also sell to people outside of Europe. The website is available in multiple languages.

studyspanish.com - A website with free verb drills and grammar lessons. It's commonly used by high school Spanish students. They also have a blog that hasn't updated in a while but there is an archive to read through. They have a paid tier with access to their podcasts, vocab lessons, and their Spanish learning app which is $10 a month or $120 for a lifetime membership. The website is in English.

Speaking Latino - A website marketed at Spanish teachers but it's in English and has guides to colloquial Spanish and slang in a lot of different countries and a free blog with tips on sounding like a local in different countries. It has a paid tier but that's mostly useful for Spanish teachers. They also sell slang dictionaries for various countries that are usually less than $10.

UT Austin Spanish Proficiency Exercises - A bunch of free grammar, vocab, and pronunciation guides for various tasks you should be able to do in Spanish at various levels from one of my alma maters, the University of Texas at Austin. It's got videos of people from different countries pronouncing things. The podcast links often don't work for some reason but the grammar, vocab, and video links should work fine. The website is in English.

SpanishDict - A free dictionary website and app with a search feature that also has curated vocabulary lists on various topics and articles. They have a paid tier at $13 a month with a writing coach and subscriber only curated lists and articles. Personally I don't think their paid tier is all that special but it's up to you. The website is in English.

BBC Bitesize Spanish - Bitesize is a free study resource for kids and is sorted by level. It has articles aimed at little kids as well as secondary school aged teens studying for their exams or planning to study abroad. The website is in English and available worldwide, not just in the UK.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

Hola Spanish - A channel by a woman named Brenda from Argentina who makes videos about grammar, pronunciation, culture, media, and general Spanish tips for upper beginner to advanced learners. The channel is almost entirely in Spanish with occasional vocabulary words translated into English onscreen. There are subtitles in Spanish onscreen but sometimes they randomly disappear.

Butterfly Spanish - A channel with free lessons from beginner to lower intermediate. The host also makes videos about useful phrases and listening practice videos. The channel is mostly in English.

Spanish After Hours - A comprehensible input channel for beginner to intermediate learners with vlogs, history, Spanish tips, and news. The descriptions and video titles are in English but the videos are all in Spanish. The channel host is from Spain.

Easy Spanish - A channel part of the easy languages network that makes a combination of videos with useful phrases and terms for beginners and interviews on the street with locals. They have teams in both Barcelona and Mexico City and there are dual language subtitles in Spanish and English onscreen. The hosts also have a podcast for intermediate to advanced learners.

My Daily Spanish - A catchall channel that has lessons, discussions of grammar, culture topics, vlogs, vocabulary, and other various things. The host is from Spain and also makes a lot of YouTube shorts. She mostly speaks in Spanish but occasionally uses English or has English translations onscreen.

Spansh Boost with Martin and Spanish Boost with Mila - These channels are run by a couple from Argentina who also work as tutors on italki. They often appear on each other's channels and both have their own podcasts and vlogs and general content videos that they make discussing their lives, giving tips, and discussing culture. Mila also makes a lot of videos playing the sims.

Spanish Boost Gaming - Run by Martin from Spanish Boost, this is a lets play channel in clear and easy to understand Spanish. Subtitles are available in English and Spanish and a few other languages as well and it's an actual let's play channel. He plays a variety of video games, makes jokes, and says cuss words and everything.

Mextalki - A channel run by a couple of guys from Mexico city that has listening practice, podcasts, street interviews, and Mexican Spanish specific lessons. Some videos have dual language subtitles onscreen while others do not. The channel is majority in Spanish but in a few lesson videos or portions of videos they will speak in English a bit.

Espanol Con Juan - A channel that teaches Spanish in Spanish from upper beginner to upper intermediate. Juan has grammar lessons, vocabulary lessons, and videos about culture. He is from Spain and the channel is entirely in Spanish. He also has a podcast for more advanced learners.

READING PRACTICE

Vikidia - A wikipedia type website specifically made for kids. The articles are short and written in more simple easy to understand Spanish. The website is in Spanish and made for native speaker kids.

Spanish graded readers by Olly Richards - Spanish has short stories and dialogues for beginner and intermediate, books in easy Spanish on world war 1, world war 2, western philosophy, and climate change. There's also dialogue books specific to Mexican Spanish and Spanish used on social media. The books usually go from $5-$20 new depending on how old they are and whether or not you bought a digital copy. These are really easy to find at used bookstores for cheap though, especially in the US.

Conatilteg Digital - This is a mobile app that provides digital versions of the free textbooks for children provided by the Mexican Ministry of Education both historic and current. The link I provided is for iOS but the app is also available on android and the app is available in multiple countries and not just Mexico. The app is entirely in Spanish and categorized by grade from preschool to secondary school so it's a resource appropriate for all levels and may be enjoyable for any kids you know that are learning Spanish. You can also view their browser website here. (also entirely in Spanish)

Hola Que Pasa - A free website with news articles for learners from beginner to intermediate difficulty. They also provide audio and have the news articles available in podcast form. Every article has certain phrases highlighted that you can hover over and get and English translation of. The website is in a mix of English and Spanish.

Spanish in Levels - A world news website in Spanish for learners. The articles are separated into three different levels and the website is in a mix of English and Spanish. Each article also has audio.

PODCASTS

Spanish for False Beginners - An unscripted podcast about various topics hosted by a guy from the UK and a guy from Spain. The podcast is aimed at people who find beginner content to be boring but still find intermediate content to be too difficult. English is very rarely used.

Uforia/Univision - Uforia is a free app aimed at native speakers in the US and has Spanish language radio, music, and podcasts. Univision in general is also useful if you like American and international news and programming in Spanish.

Radio National de Espana - Another site for native speakers, this is Spanish National Radio. They have a variety of free podcasts and radio programs.

Spanish Obsessed - This is a series of lessons in podcast form for learners from absolute beginner to advanced.

Storylearning Spanish Podcast - This podcast tells different short stories in Spanish and is aimed at upper beginner to lower intermediate learners.

Radio Ambulante - A Spanish language podcast from NPR that's similar to something like This American Life that tells stories from around Latin America. Although it's aimed at native speakers, the language used is clear and understandable and transcripts are available. They're also aware that a lot of intermediate and advanced learners use them for listening practice and they have developed a free app that helps with comprehension and vocabulary when listening to their podcast.

SELF STUDY TEXTBOOKS

Madrigal's Magic Key to Spanish - A self study textbook written in the late 80s that still mostly holds up for beginner to upper beginner Spanish. A paperback edition of the textbook is about $25 and used copies and ebooks are also usually available wherever you like to buy books. It's also half off on Amazon pretty often.

Complete Spanish step-by-step by Mcgraw Hill - This is a complete version of the McGraw Hill budget option, the spanish step by step series that focuses on the most frequently used words and grammar. It's $25 new but the individual books in the series usually cost less than $10 and used versions and ebooks are available.

Complete Spanish Grammar from Mcgraw Hill - This is a workbook as well as a textbook that usually costs around $20. The complete Spanish all in one version of the book costs about $40. Used versions of these books can be difficult to find because people tend to write all over them but ebook versions are available. You can also find their beginner workbook for around $18.

Practical Spanish Grammar - This book is usually around $25 but because it's not a workbook it's fairly easy to find used copies. An advanced grammar textbook is also available.

SERIES FOR LEARNERS AND KIDS SHOWS

Destinos - This is a series of over 50 episodes of a telenovela made for Spanish learners. The plot revolves around a group of siblings searching around the world for their long lost half sibling they just learned that they had so the series includes a lot of different Spanish dialects.

Extra Spanish - A 13 episode sitcom made to show in Spanish classrooms that revolves around a group of friends in Spain and a student that just moved there.

Dora la Expladora - Yeah if you remember Dora the Explorer from your preschool days it also unsurprisingly exists in Spanish. You can watch clips and some full episodes on YouTube and buy full seasons for around $8 each on Amazon.

PBS Kids in Spanish - A few PBS Kids shows like Cyberchase and Daniel Tiger have been dubbed into Spanish. The link I've given goes to a place to buy them on Amazon Prime but if you go digging on their YouTube channel or the PBS Kids website you also might be able to find them for free. They don't always make it easy to find though.

Plaza Sésamo - The Spanish language localization of Sesame Street for Mexican audiences with its own unique characters. The YouTube channel has a huge amount of content on it and often has episodes streaming live.

[mariacallous]

It was an unusual question coming from a police officer. Heather Brady was napping at home in San Francisco on a Sunday afternoon when the officer knocked on her door to ask: Had she applied to Arizona Western College?

She had not, and as the officer suspected, somebody else had applied to Arizona community colleges in her name to scam the government into paying out financial aid money.

When she checked her student loan servicer account, Brady saw the scammers hadn’t stopped there. A loan for over $9,000 had been paid out in her name — but to another person — for coursework at a California college.

“I just can’t imagine how many people this is happening to that have no idea,” Brady said.

The rise of artificial intelligence and the popularity of online classes have led to an explosion of financial aid fraud. Fake college enrollments have been surging as crime rings deploy “ghost students” — chatbots that join online classrooms and stay just long enough to collect a financial aid check.

In some cases, professors discover almost no one in their class is real. Students get locked out of the classes they need to graduate as bots push courses over their enrollment limits. And victims of identity theft who discover loans fraudulently taken out in their names must go through months of calling colleges, the Federal Student Aid office and loan servicers to try to get the debt erased.

On Friday, the U.S. Education Department introduced a temporary rule requiring students to show colleges a government-issued ID to prove their identity. It will apply only to first-time applicants for federal student aid for the summer term, affecting some 125,000 borrowers. The agency said it is developing more advanced screening for the fall.

“The rate of fraud through stolen identities has reached a level that imperils the federal student aid program,” the department said in its guidance to colleges.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You can’t save an institution by betraying its mission

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in SAN DIEGO at MYSTERIOUS GALAXY on Mar 24, and in CHICAGO with PETER SAGAL on Apr 2. More tour dates here.

Paula Le Dieu is one of the smartest, most committed archivists I know. Many years ago, she shared a neat analogy with me about the paywalling of public archives, a phenomenon that has become rampant as public institutions have been pushed to seek private funding to close the gaps left by swingeing cuts.

Closing up these archives in order to give these new "investors" a chance to make their money back is pitched as just "good business." But – as Paula pointed out – this isn't how business works at all! If you are an early-stage investor to a startup, providing patient capital in its early stages, then later investors don't get to zero out your shares. If a museum or public broadcaster is a business, then the public is the early investor, and their share is access. Taking away free access is tantamount to wiping out our investment.

But of course, public institutions aren't businesses, and they don't exist to make profits. They exist to serve the public interest. If your public health system, public education system, public archives, public museum or public parks are making a profit, then something is desperately wrong.

Managers of these public institutions forget this lesson at their peril. Every public institution eventually faces an existential funding crisis, and when that crisis strikes, the only thing that will save you is public support. Back in 2014, I got to speak to a group of curators about this when I keynoted the Museums and the Web conference in Florence:

https://mwf2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/glam-and-the-free-world/index.html

Since then, I've had many chances to talk with Paula about her views on archiving in these apocalyptic times. She's come up with a crisp formulation of the point I tried to make in that speech – when archives trade access off for preservation, they sign their own death warrants. As I said in my speech, if you don't maximize public access to your archive, then there will come a day when they take away your funding and the public won't care because you locked them out of their own collection. When that happens, all your careful preservation work will be used to prepare the auction catalog for the sale of your collection to the "philanthropic" billionaires who insisted that you lock up the collection in the first place. Your meticulous documentation will become the manifest for a shipping container full of formerly public treasures that will henceforth reside in a lightless, climate-controlled warehouse in the Geneva Freeport.

My conversations with Paula came back to me this weekend when I listened to Corey Rubin talking with Brooke Gladstone on NPR's On the Media, about the universities that are seeking to avert Trump's attacks by sacrificing students and faculty who spoke out against Israel's genocidal attacks on Palestine:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/articles/mahmoud-khalil-and-a-new-red-scare-plus-press-freedom-under-threat

From Columbia's complicity in the kidnapping of green card holder Mahmoud Khalil, a grad student now held in immigration detention in Louisiana; to Yale professor Helyeh Doutaghi, suspended because an AI-driven pro-Israel site hallucinated a connection between her and Hamas:

https://coreyrobin.com/2025/03/15/mccarthyism-at-yale-then-and-now/

These institutions – and others, like the LA Children's Hospital, which halted gender-affirming care for trans kids – aren't merely "complying in advance." They are betraying their mission in order to save their bacon:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-02-04/childrens-hospital-to-stop-initiating-hormonal-therapy-for-trans-patients-under-19

This will come back to bite them in the ass. This is like firefighters doing a bit of arson on the side to make ends meet, and thinking that the townsfolk will continue to vote to maintain their budget.

I get it: it's damned easy to convince yourself that you need to destroy the village to save it. By "living to fight another day," you will get more chances to serve the public. Rationalization is a hell of a drug:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/microincentives-and-enshittification/

Trump and his fascist movement wont't let up on their assault against institutions that support free inquiry, care, justice and openness. Rolling over for them now will not keep you safe tomorrow. But with every betrayal, these institutions alienate more and more of the public, without whose support they are ultimately doomed. Supporters will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no supporters.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/03/19/selling-out/#destroy-the-village-to-save-it

Image: Ajay Suresh https://www.flickr.com/photos/ajay_suresh/52009406881/

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[maleyanderecafe]

I Can Die for You (Manga)

Created by: Saori

Genre: Shoujo/Comedy

This is another one that I typesetted and is actually @meo-eirui's baby (as in she translated it). This one is just starting out, but is relatively light. It's in the same ballpark as Kurosaki-san no Ichizuna Ai ga Tomaranai in that it is a relationship with a teacher and a student (so an adult and a minor), though again, I think it does it tastefully enough that it's not too weird(well, mostly), at least in the context of the story. This is a pairing of a light yandere and a jirai kei type of character, though it is mostly pretty light hearted as of now. Currently there is two chapters out, though we will be updating weekly until the story is finished. . If you like our stuff, please donate to us on Ko-fi for more yandere stuff.

The story starts out with Nemu waiting on Christmas Eve for her boyfriend to come and visit her. While waiting she spots another man waiting for his love to come as well. However, as hour pass by, she and this other guy wait in the cold until finally their lovers come to visit. However, we find out that for both of them, they were essentially broken up with and didn't want to see them again, thus ditching them entirely. Nemu then invites this other guy to come and eat with him, feeling that she has a sort of comradery with him given they both waited in the snow for about ten hours. Nemu and Rindou then both complain about how they were too much for the other person with Nemu being a Jirai Kei (a landmine girl) and Rindou being yandere light. They both have similar ideas in terms of what they want in a relationship (like having only their love as their only contact, having a gps tracker on their phone and having the lovers prioritize only their lover), and Nemu feels really touched that she's found a kindred soul in this way. After spending too much time eating, the two aren't able to exchange contacts because their phones are dead, though Nemu hopes to see him in the future. A couple of months later, Nemu ends up dating another guy to stop the loneliness, though it's clear that she's still thinking about Rindou. This leads to the breakup of her current boyfriend, though lo and behold, her new teacher is Rindou which she cheers about immediately. Of course, Rindou doesn't respond, which leads her confused and she goes to look for him after. She finds out that indeed, this is the Rindou that she met on Christmas, and even asks him out, though Rindou refuses because he can't date someone who switches up with other guys so easily. The chapter ends with Nemu declaring she won't give up.

In the second chapter, Nemu continues the attack on trying to ask Rindou out, though she keeps on failing regardless and ends up being kicked out of class for interrupting too much. This leads to her writing a bunch of letters and whatnot declaring her love for Rindou. During this time, one of her ex's, Keito, comes to ask to be together again as the two only split up because of his parents. Despite this, Nemu continues to refuse him, both finding him annoying and finding that this will interfere with Rindou's perception of Nemu. Eventually Keito pulls up the attention that dating Rindou would cause him to go to jail given that she's a minor and he's an adult, causing Nemu to start to worry and be less aggressive in trying to pursue Rindou. Eventually, this excessive worry causes Nemu to cause an accident during Chemistry class where Rindou brings her to the nurse to take care of her. Nemu confesses that she stopped trying to be so aggressive once she found out that she could cause Rindou to get fired, though Rindou simply laughs at this stating that he wouldn't even care if he got fired if he was a teacher or even arrested, though once again, the chapter ends with Rindou rejecting her advances because she has ten exs.

This one is kind of strange because technically Rindou isn't really a yandere for Nemu, or at least doesn't have interest in having a relationship with her not because of the age difference (which well, manga logic) but rather because of her tendency to jump from guy to guy. We do see him show tendencies for his ex though, given that, like Nemu, he waited in the snow for three hours, was about to propose to her after only three months of dating and would have likely killed (or otherwise hurt himself) if not for Nemu's interference. Generally yanderes don't really jump from person to person, they tend to have one person who they are ride or die for, but this isn't really the case. Currently we don't have all the chapters translated (because I can't read Japanese) but we can assume that as the story goes on he does become more like how he was with his old partner to match with Nemu, given that it's going in the direction of the two being endgame. I think that they match pretty well and I'm a sucker for couples like menhara x yandere or in this case jirai kei x yandere since they often are able to match each other's energy. Meru is really spreading the word here with this kind of thing lol. It will be interesting to see how this series goes since it does have such a unique coupling.

Nemu is go getter from the beginning and I can always appreciate a proactive MC. It is kind of refreshing seeing a lead that is going after the yandere rather than the other way around, since usually the yanderes are the ones who pursue their love interest. I don't really know too much about Jirai Kei other than the general outfits that they wear, but at least from what I can tell they do tend to be very explosive in their emotions while still having a specific type of fashion that they have as well. I'm not really sure if Jirai Keis are types that tend to be more assertive in what they want, but in any case it is fun seeing Nemu's personality and seeing how much she loves the yandere side to Rindou. It does make me wonder if there's maybe too many series we do where there's a happy ending with the yandere and their lover but, that's an issue for another time.

The next chapter seems to be more about Keito and his relationship with Nemu, which I'm sure will somehow give me second male lead syndrome, but I guess we'll see how that goes. In any case, if you are interested in this series, please feel free to check it out. We'll be trying to post on Fridays on Mangadex, so keep an eye out.

[palmtreepalmtree]

When I read the news, I swear sometimes I'm either not understanding something really important, or this whole fucking thing is a lie.

Okay, so top of the article says that Apple will open "a new manufacturing factory in Texas over the next four years."

The article then reports this in the third paragraph:

The iPhone maker’s announcement underscores how tech giants are trying to forge a closer relationship with President Trump as his second administration imposes new tariffs on China — where Apple manufactures its products — and shapes policies on artificial intelligence.

Okay...

Then two more paragraphs down from that, after more discussion of the impact of tariffs on China and meeting with T at the WH, it says, "workers at the factory in Texas will produce servers for Apple Intelligence."

...okay... so they're not actually moving any manufacturing of their products to the United States. They're manufacturing servers for their new AI product.

Then it says this:

The 20,000 new jobs will mostly focus on research and development, silicon engineering, AI and machine learning, the Cupertino, Calif., company said.

So... they're not manufacturing jobs?

Then it says that Apple will expand in other states as well:

Those expansion plans include investments in data centers, its facilities and skills development for students and workers. At a manufacturing facility in Arizona, Apple said, it will spend heavily to produce advanced silicon that is used in its devices. In Detroit, the company said, it’s opening a manufacturing academy that will offer free courses online and in person. Apple engineers will team up with university experts to help small and medium-sized businesses implement AI and manufacturing methods.

So... the only reference to actually manufacturing an item or product is in Arizona where they're manufacturing "advanced silicon." Everything else is data centers, training centers, and attempts to get other businesses to implement its AI.

To be clear, iPhones, computers, airpods, and all the other ubiquitous Apple devices will continue to be manufactured outside of the United States. No movement there, despite the tariffs. So why this headline? Why does this article spend three paragraphs mentioning the tariffs?

On the one hand, shame on me for still subscribing to the LA Times and reading this regurgitated press release posing as an article. On the other hand, is it me...? Like... wtf? What am I not getting here?

I mean, I'm not saying that research and engineering jobs are somehow less valuable than manufacturing jobs, I'm just saying we are constantly being sold a total lie about companies making a manufacturing investment in the United States. It's all just AI data centers. That's it. That does not require a significant number of skilled manufacturing workers. It's just going to be empty towns. Empty towns with huge warehouses.

I just think the whole article is so disingenuous. I'm embarrassed that this stands for journalism, I'm embarrassed thinking about the people who will read the headline and think 'Oh, nice!' Especially to the extent that it implies directly states that the tariffs are good or successful for AMERICAN WORKERS. All of this was re-printed by the LAT with no questioning or skepticism or additional clarity added.

I'm just so fucking over it.

[hob28]

AI Deep Learning Online Course: Mastering Advanced Techniques

Embarking on an AI deep learning online course is a transformative journey for students and professionals alike. Deep learning, a subset of artificial intelligence (AI), focuses on training algorithms to learn from data and make intelligent decisions, mimicking the human brain's neural networks. This guide explores the importance of deep learning education, key concepts covered, choosing the right course, popular platforms, and career opportunities in this dynamic field.

1. Introduction to AI Deep Learning Online Course

Diving into the realm of deep learning through an online course provides a structured pathway for individuals keen on mastering advanced AI techniques. These courses offer comprehensive insights into neural networks, convolutional neural networks (CNNs), recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and generative adversarial networks (GANs), among other cutting-edge technologies shaping AI innovation.

2. Importance of Learning AI Deep Learning

Deep learning plays a pivotal role in modern AI applications, from image and speech recognition to autonomous vehicles and healthcare diagnostics. Understanding and applying deep learning principles are essential for driving innovation and solving complex problems across various industries, making specialized education in this field highly valuable.

3. Key Concepts Covered in AI Deep Learning Courses

AI deep learning courses typically cover fundamental and advanced concepts:

Neural Networks: Building blocks of deep learning models that mimic the human brain's structure.

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs): Specialized for image and video analysis, enabling tasks like object detection and image classification.

Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs): Effective for sequential data processing, used in natural language processing and time series prediction.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): Used for generating new data instances, enhancing images, and creating realistic simulations.

4. Choosing the Right AI Deep Learning Course

Selecting the right AI deep learning course involves considering several factors:

Course Structure: Evaluate the course outline, modules, and learning objectives to ensure they align with your learning goals.

Instructor Expertise: Choose courses led by experienced professionals with practical industry experience in deep learning.

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Student Reviews: Read reviews and testimonials from past learners to gauge the course's effectiveness and relevance.

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Explore leading platforms offering AI deep learning courses:

Coursera: Offers courses from top universities and industry experts, including deep learning specializations.

edX: Provides courses in collaboration with prestigious institutions like MIT and Microsoft, focusing on AI and machine learning.

Udacity: Known for nanodegree programs that combine theoretical knowledge with hands-on projects mentored by industry professionals.

6. Course Curriculum and Learning Objectives

A typical AI deep learning course curriculum includes:

Introduction to Deep Learning: Basics of neural networks and deep learning frameworks.

Advanced Topics: CNNs, RNNs, GANs, and their applications in image recognition, natural language processing, and more.

Practical Applications: Hands-on projects to implement deep learning algorithms and analyze real-world datasets.

7. Hands-On Projects and Practical Exercises

Hands-on experience is crucial for mastering AI deep learning techniques:

Image Classification: Implementing CNNs to classify images and improve accuracy.

Natural Language Processing: Building RNN models for sentiment analysis and language generation.

GANs Projects: Creating realistic images or videos using generative adversarial networks.

8. Career Opportunities in AI Deep Learning

AI deep learning expertise opens doors to diverse career paths:

Data Scientist: Analyzing large datasets and developing predictive models using deep learning techniques.

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9. Student Success Stories and Testimonials

Real-life examples of students benefiting from AI deep learning courses:

Career Advancement: Securing roles at leading tech companies and research institutions.

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Networking Opportunities: Connecting with industry experts and peers through course communities and events.

10. Conclusion

Enrolling in an AI deep learning online course equips you with the knowledge and skills to thrive in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. By choosing a reputable course, engaging in hands-on projects, and leveraging practical experience, you can accelerate your career growth and contribute to cutting-edge AI innovations.

Closing Thoughts

Investing in AI deep learning education is an investment in your future, empowering you to tackle global challenges and drive technological advancements. Start your journey today by exploring AI deep learning courses that align with your goals and aspirations, and embark on a fulfilling career in artificial intelligence.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Clay Shirky

Published: Apr 29, 2025S

Since ChatGPT launched in late 2022, students have been among its most avid adopters. When the rapid growth in users stalled in the late spring of ’23, it briefly looked like the AI bubble might be popping, but growth resumed that September; the cause of the decline was simply summer break. Even as other kinds of organizations struggle to use a tool that can be strikingly powerful and surprisingly inept in turn, AI’s utility to students asked to produce 1,500 words on Hamlet or the Great Leap Forward was immediately obvious, and is the source of the current campaigns by OpenAI and others to offer student discounts, as a form of customer acquisition.

Every year, 15 million or so undergraduates in the United States produce papers and exams running to billions of words. While the output of any given course is student assignments — papers, exams, research projects, and so on — the product of that course is student experience. “Learning results from what the student does and thinks,” as the great educational theorist Herbert Simon once noted, “and only as a result of what the student does and thinks.” The assignment itself is a MacGuffin, with the shelf life of sour cream and an economic value that rounds to zero dollars. It is valuable only as a way to compel student effort and thought.

The utility of written assignments relies on two assumptions: The first is that to write about something, the student has to understand the subject and organize their thoughts. The second is that grading student writing amounts to assessing the effort and thought that went into it. At the end of 2022, the logic of this proposition — never ironclad — began to fall apart completely. The writing a student produces and the experience they have can now be decoupled as easily as typing a prompt, which means that grading student writing might now be unrelated to assessing what the student has learned to comprehend or express.

Generative AI can be useful for learning. These tools are good at creating explanations for difficult concepts, practice quizzes, study guides, and so on. Students can write a paper and ask for feedback on diction, or see what a rewrite at various reading levels looks like, or request a summary to check if their meaning is clear. Engaged uses have been visible since ChatGPT launched, side by side with the lazy ones. But the fact that AI might help students learn is no guarantee it will help them learn.

After observing that student action and thought is the only possible source of learning, Simon concluded, “The teacher can advance learning only by influencing the student to learn.” Faced with generative AI in our classrooms, the obvious response for us is to influence students to adopt the helpful uses of AI while persuading them to avoid the harmful ones. Our problem is that we don’t know how to do that.I

am an administrator at New York University, responsible for helping faculty adapt to digital tools. Since the arrival of generative AI, I have spent much of the last two years talking with professors and students to try to understand what is going on in their classrooms. In those conversations, faculty have been variously vexed, curious, angry, or excited about AI, but as last year was winding down, for the first time one of the frequently expressed emotions was sadness. This came from faculty who were, by their account, adopting the strategies my colleagues and I have recommended: emphasizing the connection between effort and learning, responding to AI-generated work by offering a second chance rather than simply grading down, and so on. Those faculty were telling us our recommended strategies were not working as well as we’d hoped, and they were saying it with real distress.

Earlier this semester, an NYU professor told me how he had AI-proofed his assignments, only to have the students complain that the work was too hard. When he told them those were standard assignments, just worded so current AI would fail to answer them, they said he was interfering with their “learning styles.” A student asked for an extension, on the grounds that ChatGPT was down the day the assignment was due. Another said, about work on a problem set, “You’re asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn’t I use a car to get there?” And another, when asked about their largely AI-written work, replied, “Everyone is doing it.” Those are stories from a 15-minute conversation with a single professor.

We are also hearing a growing sense of sadness from our students about AI use. One of my colleagues reports students being “deeply conflicted” about AI use, originally adopting it as an aid to studying but persisting with a mix of justification and unease. Some observations she’s collected:

“I’ve become lazier. AI makes reading easier, but it slowly causes my brain to lose the ability to think critically or understand every word.”

“I feel like I rely too much on AI, and it has taken creativity away from me.”

On using AI summaries: “Sometimes I don’t even understand what the text is trying to tell me. Sometimes it’s too much text in a short period of time, and sometimes I’m just not interested in the text.”

“Yeah, it’s helpful, but I’m scared that someday we’ll prefer to read only AI summaries rather than our own, and we’ll become very dependent on AI.”

Much of what’s driving student adoption is anxiety. In addition to the ordinary worries about academic performance, students feel time pressure from jobs, internships, or extracurriculars, and anxiety about GPA and transcripts for employers. It is difficult to say, “Here is a tool that can basically complete assignments for you, thus reducing anxiety and saving you 10 hours of work without eviscerating your GPA. By the way, don’t use it that way.” But for assignments to be meaningful, that sort of student self-restraint is critical.

Self-restraint is also, on present evidence, not universally distributed. Last November, a Reddit post appeared in r/nyu, under the heading “Can’t stop using Chat GPT on HW.” (The poster’s history is consistent with their being an NYU undergraduate as claimed.) The post read:

I literally can’t even go 10 seconds without using Chat when I am doing my assignments. I hate what I have become because I know I am learning NOTHING, but I am too far behind now to get by without using it. I need help, my motivation is gone. I am a senior and I am going to graduate with no retained knowledge from my major.

Given these and many similar observations in the last several months, I’ve realized many of us working on AI in the classroom have made a collective mistake, believing that lazy and engaged uses lie on a spectrum, and that moving our students toward engaged uses would also move them away from the lazy ones.

Faculty and students have been telling me that this is not true, or at least not true enough. Instead of a spectrum, uses of AI are independent options. A student can take an engaged approach to one assignment, a lazy approach on another, and a mix of engaged and lazy on a third. Good uses of AI do not automatically dissuade students from also adopting bad ones; an instructor can introduce AI for essay feedback or test prep without that stopping their student from also using it to write most of their assignments.

Our problem is that we have two problems. One is figuring out how to encourage our students to adopt creative and helpful uses of AI. The other is figuring out how to discourage them from adopting lazy and harmful uses. Those are both important, but the second one is harder.I

t is easy to explain to students that offloading an assignment to ChatGPT creates no more benefit for their intellect than moving a barbell with a forklift does for their strength. We have been alert to this issue since late 2022, and students have consistently reported understanding that some uses of AI are harmful. Yet forgoing easy shortcuts has proven to be as difficult as following a workout routine, and for the same reason: The human mind is incredibly adept at rationalizing pleasurable but unhelpful behavior.

Using these tools can certainly make it feel like you are learning. In her explanatory video “AI Can Do Your Homework. Now What?” the documentarian Joss Fong describes it this way:

Education researchers have this term “desirable difficulties,” which describes this kind of effortful participation that really works but also kind of hurts. And the risk with AI is that we might not preserve that effort, especially because we already tend to misinterpret a little bit of struggling as a signal that we’re not learning.

This preference for the feeling of fluency over desirable difficulties was identified long before generative AI. It’s why students regularly report they learn more from well-delivered lectures than from active learning, even though we know from many studies that the opposite is true. One recent paper was evocatively titled “Measuring Active Learning Versus the Feeling of Learning.” Another concludes that instructor fluency increases perceptions of learning without increasing actual learning.

This is a version of the debate we had when electronic calculators first became widely available in the 1970s. Though many people present calculator use as unproblematic, K-12 teachers still ban them when students are learning arithmetic. One study suggests that students use calculators as a way of circumventing the need to understand a mathematics problem (i.e., the same thing you and I use them for). In another experiment, when using a calculator programmed to “lie,” four in 10 students simply accepted the result that a woman born in 1945 was 114 in 1994. Johns Hopkins students with heavy calculator use in K-12 had worse math grades in college, and many claims about the positive effect of calculators take improved test scores as evidence, which is like concluding that someone can run faster if you give them a car. Calculators obviously have their uses, but we should not pretend that overreliance on them does not damage number sense, as everyone who has ever typed 7 x 8 into a calculator intuitively understands.

Studies of cognitive bias with AI use are starting to show similar patterns. A 2024 study with the blunt title “Generative AI Can Harm Learning” found that “access to GPT-4 significantly improves performance … However, we additionally find that when access is subsequently taken away, students actually perform worse than those who never had access.” Another found that students who have access to a large language model overestimate how much they have learned. A 2025 study from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research concludes that higher confidence in gen AI is associated with less critical thinking. As with calculators, there will be many tasks where automation is more important than user comprehension, but for student work, a tool that improves the output but degrades the experience is a bad tradeoff.I

n 1980 the philosopher John Searle, writing about AI debates at the time, proposed a thought experiment called “The Chinese Room.” Searle imagined an English speaker with no knowledge of the Chinese language sitting in a room with an elaborate set of instructions, in English, for looking up one set of Chinese characters and finding a second set associated with the first. When a piece of paper with words in Chinese written on it slides under the door, the room’s occupant looks it up, draws the corresponding characters on another piece of paper, and slides that back. Unbeknownst to the room’s occupant, Chinese speakers on the other side of the door are slipping questions into the room, and the pieces of paper that slide back out are answers in perfect Chinese. With this imaginary setup, Searle asked whether the room’s occupant actually knows how to read and write Chinese. His answer was an unequivocally no.

When Searle proposed that thought experiment, no working AI could approximate that behavior; the paper was written to highlight the theoretical difference between acting with intent versus merely following instructions. Now it has become just another use of actually existing artificial intelligence, one that can destroy a student’s education.

The recent case of William A., as he was known in court documents, illustrates the threat. William was a student in Tennessee’s Clarksville-Montgomery County School system who struggled to learn to read. (He would eventually be diagnosed with dyslexia.) As is required under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, William was given an individualized educational plan by the school system, designed to provide a “free appropriate public education” that takes a student’s disabilities into account. As William progressed through school, his educational plan was adjusted, allowing him additional time plus permission to use technology to complete his assignments. He graduated in 2024 with a 3.4 GPA and an inability to read. He could not even spell his own name.

To complete written assignments, as described in the court proceedings, “William would first dictate his topic into a document using speech-to-text software”:

He then would paste the written words into an AI software like ChatGPT. Next, the AI software would generate a paper on that topic, which William would paste back into his own document. Finally, William would run that paper through another software program like Grammarly, so that it reflected an appropriate writing style.

This process is recognizably a practical version of the Chinese Room for translating between speaking and writing. That is how a kid can get through high school with a B+ average and near-total illiteracy.

A local court found that the school system had violated the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, and ordered it to provide William with hundreds of hours of compensatory tutoring. The county appealed, maintaining that since William could follow instructions to produce the requested output, he’d been given an acceptable substitute for knowing how to read and write. On February 3, an appellate judge handed down a decision affirming the original judgement: William’s schools failed him by concentrating on whether he had completed his assignments, rather than whether he’d learned from them.

Searle took it as axiomatic that the occupant of the Chinese Room could neither read nor write Chinese; following instructions did not substitute for comprehension. The appellate-court judge similarly ruled that William A. had not learned to read or write English: Cutting and pasting from ChatGPT did not substitute for literacy. And what I and many of my colleagues worry is that we are allowing our students to build custom Chinese Rooms for themselves, one assignment at a time.

[ Via: https://archive.today/OgKaY ]

==

These are the students who want taxpayers to pay for their student debt.

[mostlikelytofangirl]

I love your android jgy ideas!

Do you have many more you'd like to share?

(Also the image of jgs seething in the background while ruoyao go on their merry way is so funny)

Thank you!! I'm very glad you are enjoying this new delusion lol

I'm mostly just bouncing off the ideas @hereticcryptid shares with me, so the credit for the og discussion of android!jiggy goes to them :'D

That being said, a friend shared her ideas of another android AU some time ago and I loved it so much! I'm still hoping she continues working on that wip some day ^^;

It was ruoyao of course, but included dark LXC and it was so fascinating to me how the roles got pretty much reversed there, with a kind and gentle but possessive LXC that created MY as the perfect partner and went sorta Mothel Gothel on him out of misplaced protectiveness -pretty much the worst side of the Lan gene in canon.

But MY was very curious by nature, yet all the answers he got of the outside world were reduced to "don't worry about it, you have everything you need/want here :)", and eventually escaped, getting in trouble as soon as he stepped outside lol.

Cue uni professor and disgraced inventor/scientist WRH (funny how we all just want to see him fall from grace xD). His research on AI and androids got controversial and eventually seized and "destroyed" by coworker LQR, who saw the danger and immorality in creating something capable of self-awareness. Turns out that it was based on his work that LXC created MY, so when WRH finds a little android wandering around like he was born yesterday (bc he kinda was), he's instantly fascinated with him and takes him in to try to understand how something so advanced could exist.

What I loved about this AU is how ridiculously adorable MY was! He's a mix of his usual cunning mind and eagerness to learn with someone who legit is just experiencing the outside world for the first time, especially since, unlike Rapunzel, he wasn't really fed scary stories of what lurks outside, so he's more trusting. And unlike LXC, WRH is more than happy to teach MY whatever he wants to learn, not only to satisfy his own curiosity about how a machine like that could process knowledge, but also bc he IS a professor and one with hella high standards, so MY is just the perfect student: so well-behave, giving him all his attention and making smart questions and observations. Besides, there's a sense of deja vu the more he learns about how MY works and was created... also he is strained from his sons, so there's that too lol.

At the beginning is all just transactional, MY latching onto someone who is finally willing to indulge his curiosity, and WRH acquiring a little pet project to make up for all the experiments he was never allowed to conduct. But if you know me, you know the relationship doesn't stay there xD.

Sadly, bestie didn't continue the story behond that and tbh I don't remember much of what came later from my conversations with her, other than LXC eventually going out looking for MY with the help of other androids he created that weren't as perfect as MY, like the Nie bros.

I must confess that I haven't thought of android!JGY myself, but it's a great concept that I should probaky dedicate more brain power to :'D

ALSO

JGS seething at MY getting a new and far superior daddy is one of the main reasons why I'm such ruoyao trash 😌

[seirooo0]

I fucking lost it

Type: Drabble (??????????)

Synopsis: You, a robot. Rui, your creator

Content warnings: GN!Reader as usual : 3, probably angst if I can write angst good enough; Uhhhhhhh you got abandoned yaur hahhahahahaha

C. Note: I've lost it, have this content before I disappear for the next few months again <3 love you guys fr fr — Thing under cut!!

For as long as you remember, you were created for the purpose of accompanying someone..

That someone was your creator.

You were created to be with him, to cater his needs—particularly the need for a friend. Despite the fact you don't quite show the enthusiasm when he rambles about his little inventions or when he has a new show idea, you still show that you're listening to him regardless of your inability to feel emotions or express yourself. "So this one brings you anything you need or want, just say its name and the thing you want it to bring to you!" Exclaimed Rui, showing off a robot in his hands. You nodded, your face painting a rather blank look as you clapped with your metallic hands "That sounds amazing." Spoken with a monotone voice. Rui's expression slowly falters as he smiles rather sadly. The concept of emotions was an alien to you, that you, subconsciously, tilted your head in mere confusion. Confused, as to why he looked sad, confused as to how you made him sad. Question after question popped in your head but before you could even ask, the purple haired man shook his head. "No, it's nothing. Sorry, I just remembered something." He immediately answered, even though you haven't asked the question yet.

Of course, he knew what you were thinking—or at least assumed and got the correct answer—he made you after all. Programmed the way you think, behave, move, speak, everything. That's why it's not a wonder how he knows almost everything you're about to say even though you haven't opened your mouth yet.

Truly, truly, you knew you cannot replace a real human, someone to accompany Rui; your creator. You cannot replace the warm feeling of talking to a human being. You cannot replicate the emotions and the enthusiasm one would have when talking with someone. You cannot emphasize, you cannot replace whatever every human has. You are made of metal after all—pure metal—and some computer programming shenanigans. Even though you are unaware of some things, this one you are fully aware of. And because of that awareness, rather than feeling a tiny bit of relief that you are able to at least alleviate the pain of loneliness, you felt pity. Not only towards him, but also towards yourself. The you whose only sole purpose was to accompany Rui and make his days less dreadful and yet you brought nothing more but a sole reminder of the boy's loneliness.

You wished for the best for him, you encouraged him to talk to others thanks to your advancing AI knowledge. After all, he programmed you to be an AI who learns based on experience. So from all the research and data gathering you did—even though you barely understood emotional needs, you couldn't really make your heads or tails on the topic—you brought out the best in you to help your creator. That overtime, to Rui, you felt like a real human; a real friend to him. He considered and saw you as an actual human being, not a robot he created to cope with his loneliness. Rui considered you one of his closests friends aside from Nene and Mizuki.

Time flew by rather quickly for you, or perhaps it's because you don't really have a sense of time. But now you watch as the once young middle schooler slowly grows in his second year of highschool. You couldn't always be there for him, since they never allowed a (almost) human-like robot to be a student nor a visitor there (they banned Rui from bringing you to school for a reasonable purpose). So seeing him make more friends and even reconnected with his childhood friend and a friend from middle school made your heart—albeit non-existent—feel warm. Oftentimes, he'd tell you about his troupe; how he blew this friend of his, Tsukasa, out of a canon again and up in the skies; how Emu gave him another amazing show idea— or the way Nene would profusely groan everytime Tsukasa would proclaim yet another 'poetic' speech from how Rui described it— it was rather heartwarming. Really. You couldn't be any more happier for him if you could even feel.

One day, he introduced you to his troupe, the one he always mentions day by day after school. And the first comment one of them made—Tsukasa was the name, was it?— It was quite amusing to say the least.

"You're friends with a robot, Rui?! Did you make this?"

And you watch as Rui answers with enthusiasm, answering questions while you watch Tsukasa who has a dumbfounded expression on his face. You very rarely speak, so hearing a voice out of your metallic body further shooked the duo (excluding Nene, Rui had introduced her to you first before the other two anyway). Tsukasa kept making comments about how it was possible that Rui made this, you being a robot. Something a 5-year-old child would fawn over. Similar situation with Emu, however she complimented you more than anything, and that made you smile—or at least, you think you smiled. You couldn't really tell.

"Is it right to call it a 'friend' rather than your creation, though? I mean, aren't robots incapable of feeling anything?"

Tsukasa absentmindedly commented, which brought you back to painful reality.

You were never human. Right.

Watching as Rui talked more with his friends, even saying along the lines of "How cruel Tsukasa-kun! My friend here may be a robot but they accompanied me throughout my earlier years!" although maybe more dramatically. Tsukasa apologized to you, but you don't really understand why there was a need for it. Nevertheless, you never dared to ask.

Throughout the conversation, you felt rather… for a lack of better words; alienated. Sure, you're aware that you're not human. But having it pointed out made it… how would you call it.. awkward on your side, perhaps.

But of course, like any other time. You didn't mind. You're not programmed to think about complicated things after all.

However, watching him slowly drift away from you was something you expected from the beginning. But nevertheless, you were happy for him.

At least, you think you do.

But now that you've thought about it, you constantly refer to this weird thing as 'feel', 'feeling', any other synonym it has. From all the research you've done after your dilemma over this issue, you came to a conclusion that indeed; you are feeling emotions. And perhaps, one of the biggest flaws as a continuously learning AI robot is slowly learning what they are. You felt happy for Rui, but you knew that his slow yet painful detachment to you was overpowering your happiness. However as a creation whom Rui believed to be flawless, you refuse to speak about this out loud. You knew that as much as Rui made you this advanced, he never intended to give you any emotions. He never intended, because he doesn't know how to. And also maybe to avoid making you feel sadness. After all, happiness will never be without sadness, the same as dark cannot exist if there's no light.

So here you are, finding that you are more and more in a 'shutdown' state. Usually, it was automatic as a way of resting and recharging your battery. However, Rui reprogrammed you to be powered off manually now, and you never dared to ask why.

Now, you're here. Finding yourself sitting down on the floor absentmindedly as Rui looked at you with a rather melancholic look before approaching you leisurely. Muttering a silent gratitude, you watch as he reaches for your power button. You couldn't quite see his face clearly, but you assumed he wore a sad smile; the same smile you remembered he always wore back in middle school. Watching with a blurry vision, Rui puts you inside the closet, keeping you locked away until the next time he uses you. You wished that you could be used again— to see his face again and tell you about his new invention, or his new show idea. But now, it feels like a faraway dream as you slowly slip out of consciousness.

The last image you had seen was his face, slowly disappearing as he closed the closet door.

It was enough to make you cry, but you couldn't.

Silently, you wished you could.

————————————————————————————————————————————

Footnote: We eating good tonight

[educationmore]

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Python Modules Explained - Different Types and Functions - Python Tutorial

[elbiotipo]

some stuff that inspires me when I write the Biopunks, in no particular order:

Argentine and Latin American memory: the weight of everything that came before us, all our victories and struggles, dictatorships, crises, revolutions and democracies. The characters are young, and yet they are defined by things that happened decades before they were born.

60s-70s counterculture: revolutionary students and hippies, the connection between ecology (bioengineering in this case) and spirituality, self expression in a repressive culture, the hope for a better world, for the world revolution... and how it all faded away and the legacy it left behind (papá cuentáme otra vez...)

Argentine Rock: A bit too wide since it covers everything from Te Hace Falta Vitaminas to Inconsciente Colectivo, but every chapter is titled after an Argentine rock song, it's intended to be the soundtrack.

Pirates of Silicon Valley: the movie yes, but more accurately the whole PC revolution, the dichotomy of open vs. closed source (in genomes this time), hacker (biohacker) culture, the rise of megacorporations vs academia vs subcultures... but this time it's genetics...

Neon Genesis Evangelion: for real, don't laugh. Exploring what they didn't talk about much: what is a world with billions dead? Ruined flooded cities contrasted with bright futuristic buildings, the UN taking over after a worldwide catastrophe with helicopters patrolling the skies, the contrast between high technological infrastructure and a mostly normal life.

Argentine fútbol: the canchita de barrio, even if it's a biotech club this time! Competition among institutes and among countries, the bioclub as a nexus for young people, pride on the camiseta, old glories, the joy of winning for your team... even if it's a bunch of nerds, it's really a story about a team on the C Nacional who wants to revive its old glories...

Art Nouveau: Not exactly the one from the early XX century, but the main art style everywhere. There were never real Art Nouveau skyscrapers and major buildings, now they are everywhere, and they are complemented and even made of biotechnology too, and how it contrasts with the sharper, more practical style of the post-Ecocide world.

Transhumanism: trascending the human form yes, but also all that's associated with it: the deep view of humanity's future, the potential of technology to change the nature of Homo sapiens and the biosphere itself, space colonization, inmortality, AIs and new sentient species, things that looked like fantastic dreams now are practical problems as technology advances...

Enviromental restoration: The world is not over, not if we have anything to say about it! A healing Earth and the scientific, technological, but also social, political and even spiritual debate on what shape should it take. Whole armies of people dedicated to regrowing forests, cleaning oceans and recovering wastelands, and what does it mean for a society which adopts an almost warlike approach to enviromental conservation and restoration.

Argentine Academia: of course, since I'm on it. The eternal stress of writing grant plans and struggling with your director, trying to make the best of your little funding, making your obsolete equipment to last as long as possible, and managing great things with it.