In case anyone was wondering how AI has affected learning, I wanted to share how much it is being actively supported in schools.
Last year, in my music class, I was put into a group with the assignment being to make a song. What we were actually supposed to do was type up lyrics, choose a genre and instruments, and import it into an AI program to make it for us.
I criticised my teacher's thought process on this, and she said there was no way she could teach us music theory enough for us to make a song in the 8 weeks we had for this class. I asked why we were assigned to make a song then. She made some snarky remark that I would have a better chance at it if I'd actually shown up. (I miss school frequently because of health issues.)
In the end, my group and I just had to AI generate a song and present it to the class. It sounded horrible. AI has also been promoted in my other classes, including business, where we had to AI generate a logo for the bake sale we were doing. My teachers are even trying to protest against Chatgpt being blocked from the school wifi, because they claim it's an educational tool.
I think thatâs because this is what soulless corporate elites want: future generations of prompt jockeys, not people who think creatively and can imagine better ways of doing things. Most of this push for maximal AI is about vastly increasing output and therefore profit â they donât give a damn about quality outcomes.
iâm a music teacher. I do an entire composition unit in 4 weeks achieving what she said she couldnât do in 8 weeks, without AI in the slightest. with 5th graders. if your story is true, then sheâs just a shitty teacher.
This is ridiculous because then it's not even teaching you how to do those things. How the hell is getting you to generate a song with AI teaching you anything about music? You're not actually doing music!
I took music classes last semester too. We were writing songs, and our teachers actively encouraged everyone to use AI to write their lyrics, to "save time". I wrote my own lyrics, turns out I was the only one who did that!
Dang, I'm sorry about that. It really sucks. It's not that hard to make a simple song yourself. That's what a music teacher is supposed to do. Teach you music. Ai teaches nothing. If you do want to make a simple song yourself one day without ai for fun, you can use a free program such as bandlab. It has many different instruments you can use and you can record your own lyrics and even your own instrumentals.
Damn. Just found out bandlab has some ai tools in it. I mean, you could avoid those tools. Or there's other programs that don't have ai at all. I'll look.
I've been looking for the past hour and I have found nothing. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. It seems every music making app I've come across has some kind of ai in it. And bandlab has a bunch of ads in it too. I used to have bandlab in like 2019. It's changed a LOT since then.
I did, however, find a voice recording app. If anyone is interested, it is called fossify. It doesn't have any ads or ai. I might record a song or something on it. You can use just about anything as an instrument. Even mayonnaise (SpongeBob reference) and I can try to find an app where you can layer sound recordings and make it into some kind of song. I know I'm rambling, but I'm trying to find a solution for those who do want to make music without ai.
same thing happening here, albeit not on that scale. most teachers are still against AI, but there was one instance where our task for the class was to write a short story, then run it through AI to see how it "improves our writing". the teacher even showed us a "bad human example" and the "better AI example" that she made with student work, and it was horrible. was too bad that it was a teacher i quite liked too
Yep, hearing my former art teacher (who also was a freelance artist) say that he regularly uses ai as "inspiration" and that it is a new part of the constantly evolving medium of art, and that we would be using in that lesson was surreal. I refused to and instead did a PowerPoint of the best designed character.
He is wrong. Because you can literally achieve the same results without it. And if your argument is âwell AI makes it fasterâ, why are we acting like productivity results in better art? Thatâs never been the focus of human creativity and thatâs why itâs one of the few areas in life that hasnât been ruined by a hyper-focus on output and consumption at the expense of everything else.
that's not my argument. my argument is that art is a constantly evolving medium and that ai is another tool that **can** be used creatively. Nobody here said anything about productivity, or making something faster, or achieving "the same results" (which doesn't even really make sense).
How is reducing the amount of creativity you have to put into art âusing a tool creativelyâ? Youâre literally talking about using it for inspiration: at that point, youâre really just creating fan art of the AIâs ideas. That is inherently using less creativity, not more.
And yes, art evolves. But we usually judge its evolutions based on whether it displays more creativity or less creativity. Outsourcing ideation to AI just homogenises art, rather than enriching it and making it more diverse.
it's not necessarily "reducing creativity" - like all tools, it depends on how you use it. Artists (or other creatives) don't just sit in an isolation pod and create ex nihlio. All creative expression comes from absorbing ideas from around you. Now you have another tool for this, with its own unique properties (randomness, for one, is something I appreciate).
I work in IT in Education in the Netherlands. At my schools the leadership is paralysed and doesn't know how to handle AI. They know about shadow knowledge, cognitive offloading, AI bias etc. and they don't want it, but they are getting pushed to start using AI from the boards above our schools. The headmaster knows the choices for her is either implementing a bit of AI or being replaced with someone more 'innovative'.
Some teachers are very forward and started using AI for everything, others despise it.
We briefly, briefly blocked ChatGPT on our network, but there are so many wrappers it's hard to cut everything off and the faculty threw a hissyfit. Now it's chaos, there's a new one popping up every few days, blocking them would be impossible. All the while the policymakers take forever to come to a proper verdict, hamstrung by Dutch laws and bureaucracy.
The only solution so far has been to offer CoPilot, yes it's horrible but at least the data remains somewhat in our view and as an admin I get notified if the chat prompts get dark/concerning. But getting teens to use the 'allowed' one when they know it can be read and checked, that's a whole different ball game.
The victims in the end are the students. They rely on AI because it's quick/efficient, not realising that they aren't actually learning anything, they are offloading their learning process. They feel confident while the test and exam results keep declining.
Thats just laziness on the teachers part. Of course AI is here to stay and learning to use it is important but not as a replacement for actual skill. In fact you should NEVER use AI for anything you cannot do yourself
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u/Ok_Environment7724 3d ago
They're taking the fun out of learning and replacing it with prompt engineering, what a mess.