Ohio University Says All Students Will Be Required To Train and 'Be Fluent' In AI (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0177989679
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/06/09/2130227/ohio-university-says-all-students-will-be-required-to-train-and-be-fluent-in-ai
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/ohio-university-ai-training
> The university said its program will prioritize the incoming freshman class and onward, in order to make every Ohio State graduate "fluent in AI and how it can be responsibly applied to advance their field." [...] Steven Brown, an associate professor of philosophy at the university, [3]told NBC News that after students turned in the first batch of AI-assisted papers he found "a lot of really creative ideas."
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> "My favorite one is still a paper on karma and the practice of returning shopping carts," Brown said. Brown said that banning AI from classwork is "shortsighted," and he encouraged his students to discuss ethics and philosophy with AI chatbots. "It would be a disaster for our students to have no idea how to effectively use one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created," Brown said. "AI is such a powerful tool for self-education that we must rapidly adapt our pedagogy or be left in the dust."
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> Separately, [4]Ohio's AI in Education Coalition is working to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that the state's K-12 education system, encompassing the years of formal schooling from kindergarten through 12th grade in high school, is prepared for and can help lead the AI revolution. "AI technology is here to stay," then lieutenant governor Jon Husted said last year while announcing an AI toolkit for Ohio's K-12 school districts that he added would ensure the state "is a leader in responding to the challenges and opportunities made possible by artificial intelligence."
[1] https://ai.osu.edu/
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/09/ohio-university-ai-training
[3] https://www.nbc4i.com/news/local-news/ohio-state-university/ohio-state-announces-every-student-will-use-ai-in-class/
[4] https://innovateohio.gov/wps/wcm/connect/gov/7484d716-5c6f-47d2-a04a-7914e11bc44c/AI+In+Education+Strategy.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CONVERT_TO=url&CACHEID=ROOTWORKSPACE.Z18_JQGCH4S04P41206HNUKVF31000-7484d716-5c6f-47d2-a04a-7914e11bc44c-pdaPrLS
Re: (Score:3)
Is it possible to have AI do the unit tests?
Re: In the not-so-distant future (Score:2)
Who's going to guard the guard?
Re: (Score:2)
The Computer Is Your Friend. The Computer is happy. The Computer is crazy.
The Computer will help you become happy. This will drive you crazy. Trust the computer.
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, AI already writes decent unit tests.
Re: In the not-so-distant future (Score:2)
I refuse to work with AI-generated code and send it back to the author. You've caused this mess. You fix it. That's the only way to make them learn a lesson.
Re: (Score:2)
As with any new technology, there are both positive and negative effects. One one hand, you have to deal with garbage code. On the other, in the hands of a skilled developer, AI can be a real time-saver. The skilled developers (like you) care too much about the code, to let AI mess it up.
Re: (Score:2)
But the lowest denominator will win, management will use dumb metrics and go with the latest fad. Then pat themselves of the back for being up with the times. I have seen it this too many times to think it won't happen.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it will happen as you suggest. And those companies will start to decline.
But--capitalism being what it is--new companies will spring up, that don't use dumb metrics, that care about the stuff they build.
As always, the rotting old companies make room for new growth.
The biggest part - Train (Score:5, Insightful)
They're trying to be you know, hip with the times, but really they're just saiying they're going to require all students to give over their data to AI to train it, and the university is going to sell the training data.
Re: The biggest part - Train (Score:2)
Sooo... the students should put a $value on that . they could form a union or coalition ... annnd get what ?
A "free" "education"?
This suddenly looks like college football , if I'm not mistaken.
Re:The biggest part - Train (Score:4, Insightful)
Or they're planning to teach all their students how useless AI is. And that is a lessons worth teaching.
The best explanation of AI I have seen (Score:2)
The true purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill without allowing skill to access wealth.
Pay to work (Score:2)
Isn't the university getting cheap labour out of this?
A small problem... (Score:2)
"I'm going to be managing AIs and telling them what to do!"
"I hate to break it to you, but you need to be somewhat accurate and precise in your words. A good vocabulary is also pretty important."
"Pfft! I don't need to spell or know a lot of words, I'll have AI for that!"
The enshittification continues apace... (Score:5, Interesting)
How long until Ohio State University degrees are as worthless as toilet paper?
Re: (Score:2)
Are they worth anything now?
Re: (Score:2)
The real question is how many of these entering freshmen will have jobs in their major waiting for them when they graduate? If you want a job in 4 years you should be learning something that AI can't do (or even help you do) yet.
Re: (Score:2)
How can anyone who lived through covid compare something as valuable as toilet paper to some crappy kind of paper you can barely wipe with?
Such a good tool indeed (Score:2)
> AI is such a powerful tool for self education
This is worrying. AI, or frankly speaking AI gen, can do a fair amount of thing. Whether it is useful or not, or a good idea, is up for debate. But leaving education to a statistical model that may or may not have been curated (and, curated by who and for what purpose) is pure foolishness. The most basic thing people will tell you, even people that advocate (responsible) use of these models, is that you have to be able to check, nay, double check their output. That's not very compatible with self education,
Re: (Score:2)
You are right problem is you need the knowledge first in order to check the AI my fear is that they make students lean using AI before they have learnt how to do it themselves. Kind of like you should teach people to add before you give them a calculator, but worse because that calculator can get it very wrong.
_NOT_ Ohio University (Score:2)
Major peeve of mine... Ohio University is a very different (and much better) place than that buckeye college... Headline should read "AN Ohio University..." Go Bobcats!
Re: (Score:2)
Fly766 noted:
> Major peeve of mine... Ohio University is a very different (and much better) place than that buckeye college... Headline should read "AN Ohio University..."
Upmod +1 Informative, please ...
Re: (Score:1)
> Fly766 noted:
>> Major peeve of mine... Ohio University is a very different (and much better) place than that buckeye college... Headline should read "AN Ohio University..."
> Upmod +1 Informative, please ...
I was thinking more like -1 Big Fat Whiner
Re: (Score:1)
Glad that you have life so under control that this rates as an issue for you.
Hopefully the includes fact-checking (Score:2)
...because the current crop of AI systems have a tendency to hallucinate plausible-sounding bullshit. If your question has a correct answer, you can't count on AI to give it to you.
You can count on it to give you answer that LOOKS correct, but that's not the same thing at all.
Typo: Hopefully that includes fact-checking (Score:2)
That is all.
Re: (Score:1)
> ...because the current crop of AI systems have a tendency to hallucinate plausible-sounding bullshit.
So....it's a lot like many humans.
Leaders will lead (Score:3)
AI is evolving faster than any educational system around here could keep up with...
Unlessssss... they could truly go back to Socratic ideals... training of the mind, not just the use of the latest tool. You have to think more deeply on purpose. Like the study of math. It's "hard." How much do you want to know? It's never finished until you are.
Learn leading-edge tech that might change tomorrow (Score:1)
Yeah, I don't see any problems with that.
THE Ohio State University (Score:1)
Had to be saidâ¦
Training students to use upcoming products? (Score:1)
I've never seen so much collusion between schools and an emerging market trying to find ways to be relevant. They thought kids who attended class through Zoom during covid had some lost years...
Re: (Score:2)
The freshmen in college now are the same students who lost a couple years of middle/high school in 2020.
The quality of schools in the US has been on a downward trend for decades, but with this latest group I think the deteriorating might be so swift, jarring, and noticeable that it actually does have an effect on the credibility of education as a whole. The frog isn't being boiled slowly anymore.
Somebody bribed them (Score:2)
That's all this is. One of the AI Bros gave somebody over there a bunch of money.
This is what happens when you underfund your University system it rapidly becomes corrupt. There's a reason why there was a lot less of this crap 20-30 years ago when our dumbasses were in college.
And notice I said less. I am so sick and fucking tired of how Americans cannot comprehend the slightest amount of nuance.
Re: (Score:2)
20-30 years ago... you mean the .com bubble?
Embracing the inevitable (Score:2)
Ohio State University sees the future of work and they realize there's no point in complaining about it. People are going to be herding AI agents for a living and they might as well get used to it. Do it now as part of your curriculum, and get better at it than most people. Employers want results. Figure out how to use modern tools to be massively productive and you could get a job. It might even be interesting.
AI, Do my homework and exams (Score:3)
That should cover it.
Re: (Score:2)
But it doesn't. For example, the lawyers that keep submitting court filings with fake references evidently have wrong assumptions about what AI is and is not (for now)
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/06/03/attorneys-court-ai-hallucinations-judges/
Re: (Score:3)
Don't worry, Ohio University I'm sure will back anyone who graduates with a legal degree from them, providing them with compensation and a free alternative degree program in something useful (with living costs included) when they're inevitably disbarred.
And that'll go for any other profession where their students have followed their University's advice and decided they don't need to understand a topic, just plug in questions into the spicy autocorrect machine.
Re: AI, Do my homework and exams (Score:2)
What if it's the same AI doing the grading?
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't cite any fake sources.
Turnitin.com can simply add a citation checker, and teachers will know exactly who got AI to write their homework answers.