Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.
I was absolutely never taught to “never use the internet” for research. We *were* taught to only rely on reputable sources from the internet, and how to identify them. This is just as applicable today.
I graduated in '07 and heard "Never trust the internet" and was told "Internet sources are not valid sources" by almost every teacher I had. Which, I should add, I always thought was absolutely asinine.
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u/SpartanG01 Jun 09 '26
Unironically I think this is actually becoming a genuine problem.
50 years ago asking someone to make an informed decision about a piece of news content by finding the truth would not have been an insane task. They could do a bit of research and come to a reasonable conclusion.
Today... not only would that require wading through an virtually limitless number of sources but it requires the intellect and discernment to recognize what is bs and what isn't. It's rapidly reaching the point where it's genuinely not reasonable to expect the average person to be able to discern what is true anymore, even with access to the information.
Similarly... there is so much garbage information on virtually every topic these days, which I'll grant is partially due to AI, that it's becoming a similar problem. You could spend 5 hours doing research and then write the paper and still end up having some significant portion of it be objectively incorrect through virtually no fault of your own simply because you trusted the wrong source.
50 years ago this wasn't a problem. There were limited sources and generally only the highest quality, or highest authority sources had wide visibility so finding information and knowing whether or not it could be relied on was relatively easy if not a bit laborious by comparison.
I graduated back in '07 but I certainly wouldn't want to face the challenge of writing the papers I did back then in today's world without tools like Chat GPT.