[Dilligas]

Originally Posted by JohnN

My daughter is a university professor of microbiology. I asked her about AI and she said 11 of 47 students in her class this year used AI on their writing assignment. I was shocked it was that high!

I asked how she discovered and responded, I liked her approach (old man's DNA)
She said first, it's very obvious the student has not displayed that level of knowledge in class, previous writings, etc. She sits them in her office (one at a time of course) and asked if they used AI to plagarize, and that their response would factor into the punishment. All 11 pled guilty, 2 of them started crying. The one young man who thought he might challenge her, she replied "I liked what you wrote about genetic platicizing, can you expound on that a bit? - and he caved.

Punishment was to write a new paper, topic of her choosing, and graded one grade down - or take a zero. Without admitting guily, but proven guilty, the grade would be an F in the class and being reported to the Dean.

Our generation would not even think to do this, but times change and AI is finding it's place through trial and error. Let the college kids in your life know that scamming the university has a high degree of failure.
PS - Happy Mother's Day to all the moms

"Our generation would not even think to do this".....my wife as a major university professor and dean (1970-2012) found students plagiarizing every year. When the computers and internet became of use the faculty had programs that would find plagiarism.....so this is not new, only easier to do.

[rsmurano]

A lot of people took a tangent on this. It doesn’t matter if a pastor or an employee uses ai, no student should use ai to do anything but to help them learn. If you let ai write a paper, 100% of the students won’t learn squat. Once the student actually learns their trade in school, then if they use AI in their job, they can proof read what ai wrote to see if it makes sense to pass it out. All ai output should be evaluated before using it.

Nowadays, all the colleges are dumbing down their criteria so everybody advances, which produces not so bright graduates. Some schools/states have made it a rule not to give students tests because they don’t want anybody to fail.

[Pixelpups]

Remember when we transitioned from landlines to cell phones. At first there were dropped calls, then improved performance… but I can tell you that cell phones still cannot match the reliability of landlines. AI is here to help, but it too has screw ups; programmers are calling them “dreams.”

Doctors are using it to write their notes on patient exams. They can see more patients in a day because of it. Yet, I think a connection to the patient is lost - I always remember better when I have to write/type the information down. I’ve even changed my thinking, in the process of writing it down.

AI is a tool and used properly - an aid and used improperly - a potential accident. (Scammers, of course, use it as a weapon. Phishing emails are getting really hard to spot by bad spelling and grammar!)

[Velvet]

Originally Posted by rsmurano

A lot of people took a tangent on this. It doesn’t matter if a pastor or an employee uses ai, no student should use ai to do anything but to help them learn. If you let ai write a paper, 100% of the students won’t learn squat. Once the student actually learns their trade in school, then if they use AI in their job, they can proof read what ai wrote to see if it makes sense to pass it out. All ai output should be evaluated before using it.

Nowadays, all the colleges are dumbing down their criteria so everybody advances, which produces not so bright graduates. Some schools/states have made it a rule not to give students tests because they don’t want anybody to fail.

Yes this is when “education” becomes meaningless. When anyone can pass…at my university the engineers passed a horse to get his degree. They write every test for him over the years and brought him on stage to accept his certificate. After that you had to id yourself to write an exam. This was way before AI, before computers, before calculators.

When higher education becomes an institution where 50% of the population can pass to get a degree, why bother? Just buy the certificate on line. Cheaper for everyone involved and just as valuable.

[SoCalGal]

Originally Posted by SHIBUMI

Did you know the Pope gets 33,000$ a month in pay and has no expenses and no taxes. What would Jesus say?

I don't know what Jesus would say but GrokAI said:

False. The claim that the Pope receives $33,000 a month in pay with no expenses and no taxes is not accurate, based on available information. Here’s a breakdown:

Salary: Historically, popes do not receive a traditional salary. Pope Francis, for instance, explicitly declined any personal salary, and his expenses were covered by the Vatican. However, some sources suggest that Pope Leo XIV, the first American pope, may receive a monthly stipend of approximately $33,800 (or €2,500–€3,000 in some reports). This figure is not universally confirmed, and previous popes, like Francis, often donated such funds to charity or declined them entirely. The claim of a fixed $33,000 monthly salary is therefore uncertain and likely overstated for most popes.

Expenses: The Vatican covers the pope’s living expenses, including housing, food, travel, and security. This means the pope does not personally pay for these necessities, which aligns with the claim of “no expenses.” However, the pope may have personal expenses (e.g., charitable donations or minor personal items) that could come from a stipend, if accepted.

Taxes: The claim of “no taxes” is more complex. Vatican City does not impose income taxes on its employees, including the pope, so any stipend received would be tax-free in the Vatican. However, for Pope Leo XIV, a U.S. citizen, U.S. tax law requires citizens living abroad to file tax returns, potentially taxing income earned from working for a foreign government (like the Vatican). While certain exemptions (e.g., foreign earned income exclusion) or the unique nature of the pope’s role might reduce or eliminate tax liability, it’s not accurate to flatly state “no taxes” without considering U.S. obligations. The IRS may issue specific guidance for Leo XIV’s unprecedented situation.

In summary, the statement is false because:

The $33,000 monthly salary is not consistently verified across sources and does not apply to all popes (e.g., Francis declined it).

While the Vatican covers most expenses, personal expenses may still exist.

The “no taxes” claim overlooks potential U.S. tax obligations for an American pope like Leo XIV.

The situation is nuanced, and definitive claims about salary and taxes depend on the specific pope and their citizenship. Always cross-check such claims, as media reports can sensationalize or misrepresent Vatican finances.

[SoCalGal]

Originally Posted by OrangeBlossomBaby

We didn't have calculators. We had to learn the actual math.

Geez, how old are you? <teasing>

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by SHIBUMI

Did you know the Pope gets 33,000$ a month in pay and has no expenses and no taxes. What would Jesus say?

Please provide some documentation for the statement. It does not appear to be true!

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by SHIBUMI

Did you know the Pope gets 33,000$ a month in pay and has no expenses and no taxes. What would Jesus say?

You are confusing the Pope with the President.

The US President receives a monthly salary of $33,333.33 (based on the $400,000 annual salary)

[spinner1001]

Originally Posted by JohnN

My daughter is a university professor of microbiology. I asked her about AI and she said 11 of 47 students in her class this year used AI on their writing assignment. I was shocked it was that high!

I asked how she discovered and responded, I liked her approach (old man's DNA)
She said first, it's very obvious the student has not displayed that level of knowledge in class, previous writings, etc. She sits them in her office (one at a time of course) and asked if they used AI to plagarize, and that their response would factor into the punishment. All 11 pled guilty, 2 of them started crying. The one young man who thought he might challenge her, she replied "I liked what you wrote about genetic platicizing, can you expound on that a bit? - and he caved.

Punishment was to write a new paper, topic of her choosing, and graded one grade down - or take a zero. Without admitting guily, but proven guilty, the grade would be an F in the class and being reported to the Dean.

Our generation would not even think to do this, but times change and AI is finding it's place through trial and error. Let the college kids in your life know that scamming the university has a high degree of failure.
PS - Happy Mother's Day to all the moms

Imagine paying $100,000 per year and cheating your way through.

[Velvet]

Originally Posted by spinner1001

Imagine paying $100,000 per year and cheating your way through.

This is why term papers are a good idea - at least the student has an idea what the assignment is - but all test for marks should be oral, just like they used to be.

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by Velvet

but all test for marks should be oral, just like they used to be.

Where did you go to school? I think every test I took from kindergarten through college was written with the possibility of a few extra points for class participation.

[Velvet]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

Where did you go to school? I think every test I took from kindergarten through college was written with the possibility of a few extra points for class participation.

Not the way it was done in my parent’s time. In European schools most significant tests and examinations were oral. Time to consider that here. Hard to pretend to know something when you actually don’t in front of the examiner. My PhD defense was oral here.

My impression is that we don’t need to use schools as babysitters for high school and college aged students who don’t want to learn anything. Who resort to cheating in order to pass.They could be out working and beginning a life for themselves. It really starts with grade one, when the education policy is to place every child into grade two next year, they have not passed grade one, they have just gotten a year older. And there is no reason for it to be called “grade two” when all it is - is a collection of 7 year olds - just like in the playground.

[Rainger99]

Originally Posted by Velvet

Not the way it was done in my parent’s time.

That would be very time consuming. Some of my college classes had more than 100 students in them.

[Velvet]

Originally Posted by Rainger99

That would be very time consuming. Some of my college classes had more than 100 students in them.

Yes, and educational. First of all, we don’t need so many incompetent and uninterested students in classes. It is everybody’s waste of time and money.

There seems to be way too many students these days in classes who can’t do the work and of course they resort to cheating to pass (using AI, plagiarizing, stealing exams etc) - they have to. The problem is that they should not be there in the first place. It’s like asking a blind person to become a skeet shooter. So, yes, these students have a lot of mental anxiety, depression, mental health problems - more is expected of them than what they are able to do. The stress must be very high. If they are just lazy and uninterested they should not be there either. Some people’s answer is to dumb down the curriculum until it is meaningless, my answer is only the capable and interested students should be there.

[OrangeBlossomBaby]

Originally Posted by Velvet

Yes, and educational. First of all, we don’t need so many incompetent and uninterested students in classes. It is everybody’s waste of time and money.

There seems to be way too many students these days in classes who can’t do the work and of course they resort to cheating to pass (using AI, plagiarizing, stealing exams etc) - they have to. The problem is that they should not be there in the first place. It’s like asking a blind person to become a skeet shooter. So, yes, these students have a lot of mental anxiety, depression, mental health problems - more is expected of them than what they are able to do. The stress must be very high. If they are just lazy and uninterested they should not be there either. Some people’s answer is to dumb down the curriculum until it is meaningless, my answer is only the capable and interested students should be there.

Not everyone is interested in every subject, but most people are good in the thing they're most interested in. I was horrible with mathematics and history. Memorizing numbers has always been difficult for me, and that includes dates. But I wanted to be a journalist; a writer. I was able to squeeze by with my math and history requirements to get into college and excelled at "all things verbal."

You are suggesting that I shouldn't have been allowed to go to college at all because it was a waste of time, I was lazy and uninterested, or that I must of course have been cheating, or that I suffered a mental illness.

None of the above is true. I just suck at math. There's no shame in that. But I was required to take a math class in college if I wanted to get my degree. So I took probability/statistics, since I never took Algebra II, Calculus, or Trigonohowever it's spelled, and learning the odds of a dice game seemed infinitely more interesting than signing and co-signing with numbers instead of your signature (that's a joke, but that's seriously the extent of my knowledge of anything beyond basic algebra).

I also loathed memorizing dates and matching them with events. I'm not good at it. But I was required to take Western Civilization if I wanted my degree. So I took it. I barely passed. It was a huge class with around 300 students at 8 in the morning for 3 hours twice a week. I usually taped it and napped with the tape recorder on my lap, and fast-forwarded to the interesting parts the week before exams. I didn't cheat, because I didn't care enough about the grade. As long as I got a C- or better I was happy.

I aced every single English, writing, grammar, and literature class I've taken ever since 4th grade. That's my forte, and that's what I got my double-major in. With honors. Without AI.