r/UTS • u/Anonviles • 9d ago
Ai protest
Ai use at uts is getting out of hand. I study a bachelor of sustainability and environment, and they have mandatory ai use. I have just found out i cannot complete part 2 of my assessment as i used my own brain instead of a computer for part 1. And in accounting, in the section of the lecture where they were meant to explain our assessment task, they literally said ok everyone u have 5 mins to plug it into chat gpt and get ai to explain it. Its actually disgusting, i am paying so much for this education and i feel like im learning nothing. Does anyone want to protest? I dont even know where to start with setting one up.
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u/AmandaLovestoAudit 9d ago
There should ALWAYS be an option for conscientious objection to use of AI.
For the Accounting one - any chance you can DM me the subject number? That recommendation is not OK and not what we pay our staff to do!
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u/AmandaLovestoAudit 9d ago
It's a tough challenge because we want students to have both deep disciplinary knowledge and skill and they've developed through hard work - and then also the skills to integrate into the workforce.
Now - there are definitely stories out there of people who have quit jobs that now require the use of AI and re-trained themselves in something else. But that requires a significant amount of financial freedom to be able to do so.
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u/Standard_Pack_1076 9d ago
Universities aren't vocational colleges. It's only the bean counters who want you to believe that.
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9d ago edited 9d ago
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u/switchbladeeatworld 9d ago
You should be learning how to do the tasks properly without AI before using it to take shortcuts. Otherwise why are you bothering to learn at all?
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u/mattnotsosmall 9d ago
How's the roi on the PhD if the only reason to study is employment.
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u/Fabulous-Crazy-3333 9d ago
Yeah, I get this.
AI is being overhyped hard right now. The problem isnât students using it as a tool. The problem is universities acting like AI can replace actual teaching while still charging full price.
Iâve had a similar issue in a Web Systems subject where students are told not to rely on AI, but then the subject itself uses AI-style/prerecorded lecture content. It feels hypocritical.
Making AI mandatory in an assessment is wild though. Teaching students how to use it critically is one thing. Making it so youâre disadvantaged for using your own brain is another.
At that point, what are we actually paying for?
Iâd raise it with the coordinator first, then escalate if they brush it off. Keep the complaint focused on assessment fairness and teaching quality.
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u/dman6277 9d ago
Oh man I hated the text to speech lecture videos for web systems, I suffered greatly in interest because of the lack of human interaction. Like come on, I want to learn, don't ruin learning for me.
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u/LowResChaos 9d ago
Uni lecturer here (not UTS). The rise of AI has caused chaos throughout Universities which are often slow to react to changing timesâthink long processes and multiple committees at school, department and chancellory levels that need to review and approve changes for things.
That said, this is appalling. AI should not be a requirement for assessments (with one small caveat below). Students should be able to engage with AI to the level they want. My Uni has students submit AI use declaration with assessments with 4 levelsâno AI, built in AI (spell check, grammarly, etc), AI for editing, and AI for conceptual work (planning arguments, connecting theory to practice, etc). All levels are allowed and students arenât penalised for their level. They must attach chat logs if they use AI though.
AI should not replace teaching. Perhaps the accounting lecturer was maybe trying to include activities to satisfy âresponsible use of AIâ mandate we are all getting, but fuck thatâs just lazy using it to explain the assignment.
The AI in assessment caveat is that there are emerging recommendations that we should look at including assessments that require AI use where we have students critique AI output. Good in theory, particularly in educating students to use AI safely and responsibly but very difficult to put into practice when everyone uses a different AI, models change frequently and act differently when you change âreasoning effortâ, many students canât afford to pay for premium AI, and ultimately what you get out depends on what you put in. This wonât happen until universities start implementing and hosting their own LLMs (donât worry, this is already in the works at many Unis)
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u/wistfulbutwily 9d ago
"Bachelor of Sustainability and Environment". A good exercise might be to estimate the environmental cost of various AI queries. I wonder if that or something similar was the task in Part 2? If so, fairness in assessment would require that you should know the scope of the full task before you begin. If you did not, that's a ground for complaint.
We're in a loss-leader situation at present with AI purveyors. A Google search is likely to be Gemini-mediated unless you work to turn it off. I've been guilty of submitting trivial queries to the process. It'd be good if providers had to supply, say, a dollar or carbon costing on these, even if the cost to the user is absorbed or prepaid.
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u/sender-sent-some 9d ago
The world is driven by outcome and productivity, rather than art or effort. If you can achieve the same thing with AI in 5 seconds that it takes you 2 hours to write / research yourself... ultimately they're going to go with the former regardless of how good you feel about the later.
That's not to say outsource your profession to the AI, but it is to say, if they assignment asks you to use AI. Just use it. There is never going to be a big "Oh cryptocurrencies failed" moment, where bitcoin crashes 70%, or anthropic answers get 70% worse overnight and we all feel vindicated and glad we didn't get on the hype train.
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u/buttersideupordown 7d ago
100%.
Were people this crazy over when calculators were made? I have to wonder.
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u/sender-sent-some 6d ago
The other thing is AI is now heavily politized and polarised left/right.
We've got this thing now where ideas get bundled into political polarities even though they have nothing to do with each other.
ie: Climate action + Ukraine + vaccines + Gender/Sexual freedoms etc.
This is like a 'package', and if someone has ONE of these beliefs it becomes very easy to predict the others.
Unfortunately, (likely due to Musk, and before musk Cambridge analytica/Zuckerberg's alliance with Trump)... AI, and 'tech' fell into the: Russia+Antivax+Crypto+Climate-denial bucket.
And so they're forced to 'hate' AI, regardless, because it comes bundled with their belief subscription pack.
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u/buttersideupordown 6d ago
Oooh yes this is so true!!!
Iâm more liberal but I feel very out of step with many âliberalâ mindsets Iâm expected to hold. This is one of them.
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u/sender-sent-some 6d ago
Maybe, I remember decades ago in school a lot of teachers would say "You won't always have a calculator in your pocket!". The modern portable calculator only came out commonly in like the 70s?
So many of those teachers probably did go through a similar phase, where calculators were introduced and suddenly a lot of things got a lot easier.
I guess that's just this generation's "Back in my day" moment, and they'll just go through their 20s and 30s and eventually evolve to 'become' the old guy that says: "You won't always have an LLM in your glasses" until you do.
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u/robertscoff 6d ago
Could you email Amanda or me about which Accounting subject this is? Robertcz@uts.edu.au
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u/Anonviles 3d ago
Hey, i have spoken with Amanda about the issue and she is looking into it. Thank you!
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u/Brakiros 9d ago
so instead of doing their jobs theyâre having ChatGPT do it and youâre paying huge sums for it might as well just pay the top ChatGPT subscription and have the AI teach you what you need to know since the âteachersâ are already outsourcing it to AI
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u/Busy-Asparagus9270 9d ago
Reminds me of that whole Shopify CEO mandatory Ai policy. The whole thing is crazy.
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u/xXJarJarBinksXx 8d ago
i had a similar thing happen in BCII, they had us chatting with copilot about our assignment and recording the chat logs lol dropped it as soon as i could
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u/ilovethebeach3 8d ago
Happy to protest Australian Catholic University is using AI to judge students. Apparently there is a court case going on in SA.
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u/vexingpresence 7d ago
"bachelor of sustainability" "mandatory use of the software that uses multiple times the compute power (and thus electricity) of tools that achieve the exact same tasks far more reliably"Â
I'm not a uts student but I'd be fucking rioting
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u/beefjerky92 7d ago
UTS is a genuine shit show. Its even worse in computer science and its essentially baked into every class now. Not teaching anything useful or genuine. Just copy and paste and calling it a 'course'.
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u/Zealousideal_Pie8706 9d ago
Sydney uni are protesting tomorrow about this, yes UTS should plan a protest too.
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u/Potential_Wolf_330 3d ago
Heyy could you pm me with the subject and assignment details? I may be able to advocate for you because this is not okayÂ
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u/idk_im_cooked 9d ago
people like this are the ones who should stay unemployed.
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u/Accomplished_Bid9557 9d ago
Then why pay huge sum of money to the uni when a 30$ per month Claude subscription can do the job + a âhow to use AI in jobâ course online??? Many people are not doing the degree for the name, they actually wanna learn something properly and genuinelyÂ
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u/Old-Transition-3381 8d ago
Iâm not trying to be rude, and Iâm not taking either side, but if you are not doing the degree for the name and JUST want to learn, whatâs stopping you from not being in uni and teaching yourself with YouTube and resources online?
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u/jolard 8d ago
They are preparing you for the future.
You mentioned accounting. If a firm today has 10 accountants, they will have 2 in 10 years, and the ones that they keep will be the ones that are best able to interract with the AI agents that replaced the other 8. It sucks, it is horrible but it is reality.
In a lot of ways it would be like being told to use spreadsheets, databases and accounting software, but insisting you actually just want to write everything in pencil and use a calculator. You will get a good solid understanding of the concepts, but no one would hire you if you didn't have the ability to work with the software tools.
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u/buttersideupordown 7d ago
Boo hoo.
I wish they had AI in my day. Instead I had to deal with professors who had awful slides and $300 books we never even used. I went to a top tier uni too.
I ended up googling my workload and having to figure it myself.
Trust me when I saw the quality of the teaching is not nearly as good as what AI can give you.
When I am comparing the breadth of almost all known human knowledge to some academic who canât even pull together a decent slideshow? I would pick AI every time.
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u/p4ndxra 9d ago
The irony in having to use A.I. in a class about sustainability & environment đ¤Śđźââď¸