The majority of young people use AI, and they try to be polite when interacting with chatbots like ChatGPT, but some might have too much of an attachment to it, according to a new study.
The main point here (which I think is valid despite my status as a not in this group Gen Z) is that we’re still like really young? I’m 20 dude, it’s just not my or my friends fault that school failed us. The fact it failed us was by design and despite my own and others complaints it’s continued to fail the next generation and alpha is already, very clearly struggling. I really just don’t think there’s much ground to argue about how Gen Z by and large should somehow know better. The whole point of the public education system is to ensure we well educate our children, it’s simply not my or any child’s fault that school is failing to do so. Now that I’m an adult I can, and I do push for improved education but clearly people like me don’t have our priorities straight seeing who got elected…
Tbh, I’m in my 40ies and I don’t think my education was so much better than what younger generations are getting. I’m a software engineer and most of the skills I need now are not skills I learned in school or even university.
I started learning programming when I was 9 because my father gave me his old Apple II computer to see what I would do. At the time, this was a privilege. Most children did not get that kind of early exposure. It also made me learn some English early.
In high school, we eventually had some basic programming classes. I was the guy the teacher asked when something didn’t work. Or when he forgot where the semicolons go in Pascal. During one year, instead of programming, there was a pilot project where we’d learn about computer aided math using Waterloo Maple that just barely ran on our old 486es. That course was great but after two months the teacher ran out of things to teach us because the math became “too advanced for us”.
And yes the internet existed at the time; I had access to it at home starting 1994. We learned nothing about it in school.
When I first went to university I had an Apple PowerBook that I bought from money I earned myself. Even though I worked for it, this was privilege too; most kids couldn’t afford what was a very expensive laptop then, or any laptop. But the reason I’m bringing it up is that my university’s web site at the time did not work on it. They had managed to implement even simple buttons that could have been links as Java applets that only worked on Windows. Those were the people I was supposed to learn computer science from. Which, by the way, at the time still meant “math with a side of computer science”. My generation literally could not study in an IT related field if we couldn’t understand university major level math (this changed quickly in the following years in my country, but still).
So while I don’t disagree about education having a lot of room for optimization, when it comes to more recent technologies like AI, it also makes me a bit salty when all of the blame is assigned to education. The generations currently in education, at least in developed countries, have access to so much that my generation only had when our parents were rich or at least nerds like my father (he was a teacher, so we were not rich). And yet, sometimes it feels like they just aren’t interested in doing anything with this access. At least compared to what I would have done with it.
At the same time, also keep in mind that when you say things like education doesn’t prepare us for AI or whatever other new thing (it used to be just the internet, or “new media”, before), those who you are expecting the education from are the people of my generation, who did not grow up with any of this, and who were not taught about any of it when we were young. We don’t have those answers either… this stuff is new for everyone. And for the people you expect to teach, it’s way more alien than it is for you. This was true when I went to school too, and I think it’s inevitable in a world moving this fast.
Failure often comes at multiple points, it doesn’t just fail at one. It’s a failure of education, of social pressures, of lack of positive environments, and yes of choice. The problem with free will is that you have the chance to choose wrong. You can blame everyone in the world, but if you don’t take accountability for your own actions and choices, nothing will change.
There has never been a time with as much access to information as now. While there as much, likely more, misinformation… that does not mean individuals have no culpability for their own lack of knowledge or understanding.
That doesn’t mean it’s exclusively their fault, or even anywhere near a majority. But that does not mean they lose all free will for their own actions. It does not mean they have no ability to be better.
Should we place the weight of the world on their shoulders? Absolutely not, that is liable to break them. But we also shouldn’t hide them from the burden of their own free will. That only weakens them.
I find it unfair to blame my peers for things largly out of their control. If you are born into an abusive family you’ll only ever know if you happen to luck into the information that such behavior is unhealthy. Is it some of their faults? Certainly, I know people who are willfully stupid and refuse to learn but even knowing these people I feel pretty uncomfortable blaming them for it. I’ve talked to them, I’ve educated them on stuff they were willfully ignorant of and do you know what it generally boils down to? School has taught them that learning things is hard and a waste of their time. They’d rather waste hours trying to get an LLM to generate a script for them than sit down and figure out how to do it despite knowing I’d happily help them.
School has managed to taint “learning” in the minds of many of my peers to such an extent that it should be avoided at any cost. School has failed us, is still failing the current generation and nothing is going to be done about it because it’s working as it’s meant to. This is the intended outcome. Like genuinely the scale of the fuckup is to the extent that enjoyingreading is not just rare but seen as weird. We’ve managed to take one of the best ways to educate yourself and instill dread in our children when it’s brought up. How do we expect people who’ve been taught to hate reading to just magically turn around and unfuck themselves? What’d they see a really motivating Tik Tok or some shit? I despise that platform but like seriously you older people just don’t it man. Been complaing since middle school and now people wanna turn around and blame us as if it’s some personal failing it’s fucked up dude. Our education sucks, has sucked and will continue to suck even worse until we stop pretending like this is some kind of personal failing.
Life is unfair, but unless we acknowledge our own failings it will never get better.
You want to walk through life blaming everyone else for everything that goes wrong in your life and take no responsibility for your own actions? Feel free. But just know nothing will ever get better for you.
I even acknowledge, multiple times, that it is not solely the fault of the person. But that does not mean they have no will of their own, no ability to change their circumstances. Sometimes that freedom is not enough, but unless you do something to take charge of your own life, again, nothing will ever change.
Not the fault of prior generations, either. They were raised by their parents, and them by their parents, and so on.
Sometime way back there was a primordial multicellular life form that should have known better.
The main point here (which I think is valid despite my status as a not in this group Gen Z) is that we’re still like really young? I’m 20 dude, it’s just not my or my friends fault that school failed us. The fact it failed us was by design and despite my own and others complaints it’s continued to fail the next generation and alpha is already, very clearly struggling. I really just don’t think there’s much ground to argue about how Gen Z by and large should somehow know better. The whole point of the public education system is to ensure we well educate our children, it’s simply not my or any child’s fault that school is failing to do so. Now that I’m an adult I can, and I do push for improved education but clearly people like me don’t have our priorities straight seeing who got elected…
Tbh, I’m in my 40ies and I don’t think my education was so much better than what younger generations are getting. I’m a software engineer and most of the skills I need now are not skills I learned in school or even university.
I started learning programming when I was 9 because my father gave me his old Apple II computer to see what I would do. At the time, this was a privilege. Most children did not get that kind of early exposure. It also made me learn some English early.
In high school, we eventually had some basic programming classes. I was the guy the teacher asked when something didn’t work. Or when he forgot where the semicolons go in Pascal. During one year, instead of programming, there was a pilot project where we’d learn about computer aided math using Waterloo Maple that just barely ran on our old 486es. That course was great but after two months the teacher ran out of things to teach us because the math became “too advanced for us”.
And yes the internet existed at the time; I had access to it at home starting 1994. We learned nothing about it in school.
When I first went to university I had an Apple PowerBook that I bought from money I earned myself. Even though I worked for it, this was privilege too; most kids couldn’t afford what was a very expensive laptop then, or any laptop. But the reason I’m bringing it up is that my university’s web site at the time did not work on it. They had managed to implement even simple buttons that could have been links as Java applets that only worked on Windows. Those were the people I was supposed to learn computer science from. Which, by the way, at the time still meant “math with a side of computer science”. My generation literally could not study in an IT related field if we couldn’t understand university major level math (this changed quickly in the following years in my country, but still).
So while I don’t disagree about education having a lot of room for optimization, when it comes to more recent technologies like AI, it also makes me a bit salty when all of the blame is assigned to education. The generations currently in education, at least in developed countries, have access to so much that my generation only had when our parents were rich or at least nerds like my father (he was a teacher, so we were not rich). And yet, sometimes it feels like they just aren’t interested in doing anything with this access. At least compared to what I would have done with it.
At the same time, also keep in mind that when you say things like education doesn’t prepare us for AI or whatever other new thing (it used to be just the internet, or “new media”, before), those who you are expecting the education from are the people of my generation, who did not grow up with any of this, and who were not taught about any of it when we were young. We don’t have those answers either… this stuff is new for everyone. And for the people you expect to teach, it’s way more alien than it is for you. This was true when I went to school too, and I think it’s inevitable in a world moving this fast.
Failure often comes at multiple points, it doesn’t just fail at one. It’s a failure of education, of social pressures, of lack of positive environments, and yes of choice. The problem with free will is that you have the chance to choose wrong. You can blame everyone in the world, but if you don’t take accountability for your own actions and choices, nothing will change.
There has never been a time with as much access to information as now. While there as much, likely more, misinformation… that does not mean individuals have no culpability for their own lack of knowledge or understanding.
That doesn’t mean it’s exclusively their fault, or even anywhere near a majority. But that does not mean they lose all free will for their own actions. It does not mean they have no ability to be better.
Should we place the weight of the world on their shoulders? Absolutely not, that is liable to break them. But we also shouldn’t hide them from the burden of their own free will. That only weakens them.
I find it unfair to blame my peers for things largly out of their control. If you are born into an abusive family you’ll only ever know if you happen to luck into the information that such behavior is unhealthy. Is it some of their faults? Certainly, I know people who are willfully stupid and refuse to learn but even knowing these people I feel pretty uncomfortable blaming them for it. I’ve talked to them, I’ve educated them on stuff they were willfully ignorant of and do you know what it generally boils down to? School has taught them that learning things is hard and a waste of their time. They’d rather waste hours trying to get an LLM to generate a script for them than sit down and figure out how to do it despite knowing I’d happily help them.
School has managed to taint “learning” in the minds of many of my peers to such an extent that it should be avoided at any cost. School has failed us, is still failing the current generation and nothing is going to be done about it because it’s working as it’s meant to. This is the intended outcome. Like genuinely the scale of the fuckup is to the extent that enjoying reading is not just rare but seen as weird. We’ve managed to take one of the best ways to educate yourself and instill dread in our children when it’s brought up. How do we expect people who’ve been taught to hate reading to just magically turn around and unfuck themselves? What’d they see a really motivating Tik Tok or some shit? I despise that platform but like seriously you older people just don’t it man. Been complaing since middle school and now people wanna turn around and blame us as if it’s some personal failing it’s fucked up dude. Our education sucks, has sucked and will continue to suck even worse until we stop pretending like this is some kind of personal failing.
Life is unfair, but unless we acknowledge our own failings it will never get better.
You want to walk through life blaming everyone else for everything that goes wrong in your life and take no responsibility for your own actions? Feel free. But just know nothing will ever get better for you.
I even acknowledge, multiple times, that it is not solely the fault of the person. But that does not mean they have no will of their own, no ability to change their circumstances. Sometimes that freedom is not enough, but unless you do something to take charge of your own life, again, nothing will ever change.
That’s a bit of a reach. We should have stayed in the trees though, but the trees started disappearing and we had to change.