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Four-year college degrees are the greatest scam ever perpetrated on the middle class in the United States. The rise in tuition compared to the rise of a starting salary for a college grad is clearly out of sync. The tuition has risen 200% and the starting salary has only risen about 25%. This makes it almost impossible to start an average job that could possibly reimburse that much debt. You can read my in-debt analysis here.
According to a recent report, an online expert believes 90% of online content could eventually be generated by artificial intelligence (AI). To understand how that could be possible we first have to explain the process of neural networks. In order to talk about neural networks, a subset of AI, we have to explain how classical programming works. In classical programming, you have your variables and your operator which is the mathematical sign of the operation you want to perform on your variables.
Example:
4 + 3 = 7 In words 4 + 3 equals 7
So the operator in this case is a plus (+) sign, that's what you code into your program. Then you input your variables (4,3) in your code, then you can call your variables a,b.
The computer outputs 7 as the solution.
Neural networks work differently. You give neural networks the variables from your problem and then you give the solution. In other words, you give it a problem that's already been solved. You have the variables you have the solution for and the problem has been solved. An example would be a football game where you know the outcome because you know the player metrics and you know who won the game. You train your neural network on a number of games, then you would ask a question about a game that has yet to be played, given the player metrics, and ask who will be the winner of that game (solution). In neural networks, the computer programs itself and there's no need for a programmer. The only need is data and I am talking about maybe millions of terabytes of data to train your network on.
As AI becomes more common our computers become smarter while our college grads from all indications become dumber, based on International testing. But when will AI overtake the average college graduate in intelligence? It will be the line when most college degrees are obsolete or will be, shortly in the future. A number of school systems have already banned students from using ChatGPT, an AI-powered chatbot.
The latest version of ChatGPT was released in November of 2022. There are unsubstantiated reports that there are far more powerful Innovations of GPT 3 that are at least a decade ahead of what is publicly available.
In the fall of 2020, The Guardian had GPT-3 write an entire article to convince us robots come in peace. If you read the article you may become very scared, knowing this was from over two years ago. Today ChatGPT has been used by high school grads to write their college admissions essays. The writing quality is spectacular. The potential college graduate that wants to write for a living has no future. Numerous other college specialties will have very doubtful avenues into the middle class as well.
ChatGPT has also been used to write python code and HTML. Another avenue that has been explored is its usefulness to set up Excel spreadsheets for data science. The most definitive work I found challenges the capability of ChatGPT to complete advanced college work comes from a white paper from the Wharton business school. The professor of an operations management course had ChatGPT answer a number of questions for MBA students.
From his summary:
“Considering this performance, ChatGPT would have received a B to B- grade on the exam.” This is a master's level course in the highly competitive Wharton School of business. What does this say about the average Bachelor of Science student's performance?
From my experience using ChatGPT, I think it can also replace an eighth-grade teacher for precocious students. The students could ask questions about algebra, science, or social work. The one problem is the student would have is to be conversant with colloquial English. During my numerous drive-throughs for fast food, I increasingly find that the human being at the other end of that speaker cannot speak or understand colloquial English, or sometimes understand simple mathematics. This I find very challenging for my ravenous appetite for fast food. yet these are considered the staple of entry-level jobs into our middle-class system.
If university professors are so smart then it would be easy for them to figure out how a college graduate could fit into a world where ChatGPT is so proficient at performing middle-class tasks. It is not only an issue that the software is becoming much more capable, the hardware is also becoming much faster and much more proficient. In other words, the hardware is faster and capable of analyzing more data in a short period of time.
Below I have a graph of Moore's Law which is essentially a type of analogy for how smart computers are becoming. Every two years the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles, this is almost like a surrogate of how smart computers are becoming.
It is not only Moore's law that is predicting more transistors every two years but there's new innovation and computing power called quantum computing.
From a live science article:
“Quantum computing is a new generation of technology that involves a type of computer 158 million times faster than the most sophisticated supercomputer we have in the world today.” Not only is the neural network software becoming more sophisticated but the hardware is becoming faster and more proficient at analyzing data.
Conclusion
With mounting college degree debt, advances in ChatGPT software, and the advent of quantum computing, today's Bachelor of Science student is going to be very challenged to compete against this and obtain a middle-class standard of living in the US. This whole advance in technology definitely calls into question whether or not a bachelor's degree is obsolete in this advanced technological world.
Will AI Make Traditional College Degrees Obsolete?
As a former professor, I can attest to how the 4-year degree that was once so prized is now little more than a hoop that students are expected to jump through. When I first entered university as a commuter student on a full scholarship back in 1983, I entered a world that I never encountered in my urban public school. I was challenged to think, really think, about books, about science, about history, about IDEAS that I had never encountered before. After an initial culture shock that usually left me crying in my car every day (I was a first-generation student), I learned that I could do it, I could hold my own. I could overcome obstacles and succeed. Nowadays students have had all obstacles removed, and if they were ever seen to be crying in their cars, they would be given a coloring book and a therapy dog. Before I retired, one of my students (a 24-year-old senior) failed my course. Mom and dad went straight to the provost. Because the student had a "plan" in place through the office of disabled students, he was given the opportunity to take the course again with another professor, despite the fact that I had documentation proving that I had met all of the required accommodations. This student learned the valuable lesson that, indeed, a university education is now all a scam designed to keep young people out of the job market for at least four years -- which is now more like six. I am so sad for the bright teens who will really want to learn, but who will find the ease of AI to be too tempting. My advice? Learn to grow, harvest, and preserve your own food. Now there's something that is valuable. Once you've mastered that, buy a sewing machine. Yes, we used to learn that essential skill in school, too.
There are many quotes along this line but for some reason I always remember the quote from Jurassic Parks fictional scientist Dr Ian Malcolm...."Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
I believe we as a human species have been losing intellectual ability since at least the 90s. I have a family member that is a primary school teacher, that did a little research on children books. Based upon their research of children's books from the mid 20th century to the children's books of today.......their quote "We expected a lot more from kids then, than we do now.".
AI will only accelerate this de-evolution in the human species. Right now a student can have an AI write a paper for them and most educators probably couldn't tell it was written by AI. Papers to me are to show the educator that the student understands the material and can intelligently discuss that material. If AI takes over this task, students will not be required to know anything and will likely not know how to discuss the material well.
The problem as I see it, is that I don't think you can put the genie back in the bottle. Now that AI is out there, I don't know how you could regulate it or curb its use.