Probably not going to go belly-up in a while, but the enshittification cycle still applies. At the moment, investors are pouring billions into the AI business, and as a result, companies can offer services for free while only gently nudging users towards the paid tiers.
When the interest rates rise during the next recession, investors won’t have access to money any more. Then, the previously constant stream of money dries up, AI companies start cutting what the free tier has, and people start complaining about enshittification. During that period, the paid tiers also get restructured to squeeze more money out of the paying customers. That hasn’t happened yet, but eventually it will. Just keep an eye on those interest rates.
Don't be so sure about that, the numbers look incredibly bad for them in terms of money burned per actual revenue, never mind profit. They can't even pay for the inference alone (never mind training, staff, rent,...) from the subscriptions.
it is not just the US... the VSE - Prague's university of economics and business has decided to abandon graduation theses, because it is supposedly "impossible to verify" whether they were written by student or AI, and replaced them with "hands-on" graduation project)
well how would you verify wether a thesis was written by AI? Mind that accusations are a serious matter, so "i guess it sorta looks like AI" or a percent number spat out by some unreliable LLM-detection AI isnt going to cut it
i graduated just before the fuckery, and they were at the forefront of using software/weeding out software for jobs already. when i was HS, students already had given up on doing homework, and they were passing people with failing/D grades to graduation. eveyrone that graduated during the pandemic, or is taking classes, said my old college is pretty bad now. because most of them elected to be online classes. theres also other prevailing issues that never were solved when i was still in college. them USING CHATGPT, is probably a step up from just copy and pasting content from various sites with the same exact question or essay.
When I walk around in my uni people openly talk about using chatgpt to pass their classes. When I ask for help on some lecture groupchat first 4 answers are "I just used chatgpt."
They gave me a whole speech about how they take academic dishonesty so seriously at the beginning but I am honestly just disappointed now. Even using solution manuals make you considered a "good student"
I kinda dont like ChatGPT because it trains everything you feed it into it (goes the same with any LLM)
and hopefully it wont be forced Right???? (Probably)
I'm not supporting higher education becoming reliant on for-profit companies like this, but AI tutors and the like, if properly implemented, would be kinda awesome. For example, it's usually not feasible to have real life staff on hand to answer student questions at all hours of the day. Especially at the more early years of university, where content is simpler, AI is more than capable of meeting needs like this.
I don't fully agree with most of the people on this thread. I also hate AI slop being forced into what feels like all aspects of our life right now, but LLMs do have some genuine uses.