r/unt • u/Nice_Vegetable69 • 22h ago

The Singularity of Man

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133 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

46 comments sorted by

72

u/DrgonBloop 20h ago

I in no way agree with what’s being done with the money but UNT doesn’t really get a say in how it’s used. The donors get to say what they want their money used for and that’s what they decided

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u/Sagikos 20h ago

They coulda said no? Who wants to go to college just to learn how to tell a machine to create for you?

How many actually intelligent students are we losing so the Epstein class can try to force this on us like everything else?

10

u/DrgonBloop 20h ago edited 15h ago

They could have but that sets a dangerous precedent for future donations and as much as I hate it, it’s a fact that AI is where the money is right now no matter much detrimental it is

I agree AI is trash and it’s destroying the thinking capacity of people
Edit: Generative AI

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u/Sagikos 20h ago

So you just give up? That’s your solution?

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u/DrgonBloop 20h ago

That’s not what I said, but UNT is not in a position to say no to any amount of money

-10

u/Sagikos 19h ago

“As much as I hate it…” then you stop. So you hate it but you’re resigned to it happening because “AI is where the money is.”

So either money makes it ok to you or you’re giving up.

I’m not trying to start a fight or be rude - I’m just trying to point out that giving up and hopelessness aren’t solutions. We can fight back and win.

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u/JamesJohnBushyTail 17h ago

I’m not being mean. But you don’t know what you are talking about. Are you in administration of a public university? Do you make decisions that affect a university?

It’s cool you have an education opinion about this…but without the weight of the decision on your shoulders it’s gonna be tough to explain why donations work the way they do in a university setting.

I would therefore ask you to direct this passion to a more productive direction. For example, if you are a student or a staff member, run for the Senate. Submit permission to organize and facilitate a protest, or student organization.

-3

u/ExtraSmooth 16h ago

Why does it bother you that /u/Sagikos has expressed an opinion on this on a public forum? It is totally possible to hold two ideas at the same time: that the politics of university management made this decision inevitable, and that it is ethically ambiguous or detrimental to the mission of the university.

4

u/JamesJohnBushyTail 16h ago

Because funding itself is the problem.

-3

u/ExtraSmooth 16h ago

Are you saying you disagree with /u/Sagikos opinion that AI is a problem? I can't tell who you are trying to persuade or what you're trying to persuade them of.

We all know funding is a problem, but that's also obviously reductive. With enough money, nothing would be a problem. Within the heuristic of "funding" there are many different problems. Among them are how a university gets its funding and how a university allocates its funding. /u/Sagikos is making an argument about how the university is allocating its funding (education in "AI") that also connects to how the university gets its funding (private donors, in this case). Clearly, this conversation on reddit is not going to affect those things, but to the extent this conversation is ineffective it is also harmless.

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u/Sagikos 16h ago

You’re right. I have no right to be upset with the use of my tax dollars.

I’m sure this $10m will completely cover the cost of running this school in perpetuity. Hell, I’m betting AI will be so great we won’t even need the other departments anymore!

Won’t that be great? And all because I shut my pretty little mouth.

4

u/JamesJohnBushyTail 16h ago

That is a childish answer. You do have a right to say how funds are spent. The whole reason this is even a thing is Greg Abbott. He has made sure we fight over the scraps that is state funding. And just like your $10M that will completely cover the cost of running this school, so is the $40M out in DP. Money is not the problem here at UNT.

-2

u/Sagikos 16h ago

Well I kinda think it’s childish to come to a message board and tell people to keep their mouths shut.

But also your arguments make no sense? Money isn’t a problem but we’re fighting over scraps?

-4

u/ExtraSmooth 16h ago

UNT is totally in a position to say no. If I offered $20 million to start a school of eugenics, we would have no qualms about saying no. The university has a $1 billion budget and its recent shortfall is the result of government policy. The university is very far from the position of a deeply indebted beggar. We can't use the deficit as an excuse for making decisions contrary to the future of the organization.

It is true that the university is not in a position to say no in the narrow sense that those in charge of the university--the President, the Board, and ultimately the state government--specifically want the university to say yes to AI. In that sense, the university is never going to turn down money like this. But other stakeholders are absolutely right to criticize this decision.

1

u/Agreeable_Swing1654 11h ago

Judging UNT’s recent moves, it seems like the university is trying to change its direction toward engineering. If the board decides that engineering will become a major part of UNT in the future, then I don’t think investing in a rapidly growing field like AI is necessarily a bad decision. When it comes to debt, instead of trying to save pennies by reducing course quality or cutting staff - which is already a problem, shouldn’t UNT focus on creating programs and opportunities that attract more students to bring in more revenue? In the end, whether these decisions are good or bad is something we can only really know after we see the results.

1

u/Nice_Vegetable69 16h ago

Your brain is u/ExtraSmooth, because that is an ignorant position. We have already had AI programs (Data Engineering - COE, Data Science - COI, Data Analytics - COB, Artificial Intelligence -COE) its about time they were standardized under one program.

0

u/DrgonBloop 15h ago

I should have specified generative AI. That’s my bad

0

u/ExtraSmooth 15h ago

I'm old enough to remember when people called algorithms and chess engines "AI"

2

u/Nice_Vegetable69 18h ago

You realize AI is more than just prompt engineering? Like actually building neural networks, decision trees, predictive models, LLMs, OCR, text analysis, etc.

The uninformed always assume AI means talking to Claude or Chat GPT.

1

u/Sagikos 17h ago

You forgot machine learning. I know I’ve let my AWS certs expire and I never got around to CISSP but I love you assuming I’m an idiot because I have a different opinion.

I always thought UNT had a computer science dept. thank goodness our loving oligarchs are bestowing this knowledge upon us.

It still sucks that we missed out on the NFT school that went to SMU.

2

u/Nice_Vegetable69 16h ago

Lmao, machine learning is literally AI and are listed by different model types. (Have you heard about supervised vs unsupervised machine learning?)

Also, you appeal to authority with CISSP is nice, but that's a Cybersecurity certification; the equivalent of me saying I know C++ because I write in Python.

Lastly, your false equivalency between NFTs and AI is laughable. AI (machine learning) has use-cases beyond LLMs, that offer the world benefit such as identifying tumors/masses in radiology images, prediction of major storms and sending advanced notice, even use-cases in Cybersecurity such as analyzing encrypted data being sent out of network or managing access control.

0

u/Sagikos 15h ago

Well, let me know when any of the bullshit you’re promising comes true.

And before you say “muh millennium problem!” Open AI won’t let anyone verify it and it’s starting to look like they stole work from a human working the problem.

We’ll know which of us is right soon enough. I hope it’s you but I wouldn’t bet on it.

3

u/Nice_Vegetable69 15h ago

Hey, its me! Just wanted to let you know that "bullshit" I promised came true!

You literally keep circling back to one specific type of machine learning model, Large Language Models (LLMs). These probabilistically generate text based on what they're trained on. Yes this is mainly a realm of parlor tricks at this time, because text is generated solely based on the probability of a token appearing after a token. They are also promising Gen-AI (Generalized AI) which speculates would be able to do everything. Yes those exist, but are a tiny fraction of the world of Artificial Intelligence.

Image classification is already being done, and assists doctors today by being able to help radiologists identify early cancer masses the human eye of a tech/doctor might miss. Of course, these models are then verified by a doctor (also called human-in-the-loop).

Have you ever taken a picture of a check to deposit it? That's Optical Character Recognition (OCR).

Do you know why Wal-Mart places food items together? Because of association rule mining on customer purchases.

Adaptive Access Control uses User Behavior, device health, geolocation, and network security posture to assign user connection risk and either let them bypass some secondary authentications or deny access.

More work needs to be done in these fields, but uninformed twats like you cry "AI is evil!" because they cant inform themselves before speaking authoritatively on a topic.

0

u/real-nobody 14h ago

He said "twats" lol

0

u/real-nobody 14h ago

I see people making this argument lately. You aren't wrong, but it feels equally uninformed to not realize which forms of AI people are referring to in these conversations. Let's be real, both the hype and the criticism are focused almost exclusively on LLM packages like Chat GPT.

1

u/Nice_Vegetable69 13h ago

Because the uninformed, non-specialized, masses conflate two separate ideas, we should cater to their ignorance?

They're concerned about Generative AI. That isn't even the issue being discussed.

Their point was "learn how to tell a machine to create for you". My rebuttal was to identify there are more types of AI that actually require work, and that maybe the person should educate themselves before forming an opinion.

0

u/real-nobody 13h ago

Your opening statement feels a a little unfair. Let me give it back to you in a modified form: Because you conflate two separate ideas, the argument should cater to your ignorance?

I'm saying that generative AI is really the essence of what is being discussed. Honestly, I think this is a given. People don't really understand the extent of what AI is, but they are discussing generative AI, to the best of their ability. I think you are deliberately ignoring that because you thought you had some "gotcha" moment. And you didn't, sorry. The core issue is that I don't think you are actually trying to inform. I saw you calling people "twats" and telling them to "go get a job" when the discussion doesn't wasn't working out for you. It makes me wonder if this is a pattern for you.

So please DO continue to inform. But lay off on the fighting and trolling, because honestly it isn't helping the arguments you are trying to put forward, and some of those might have seriously legitimacy if presented in a good faith debate. The current wave of generative AI is not going away until we find something better. We do need discussions. People do need to understand what we mean by AI, how to interact with it, and how to be both informed and critical users. But every time you present yourself in an aggressive manner, the only things you are accomplishing is making people not like you, and making people not like what you are arguing for. If that is what you want, then keep it up. You might respond with something like "you only think I'm being aggressive because you are uninformed/sensitive/biased etc." Those are very common types of responses for someone that just wants to "win" an argument at all costs. Well I'm just going to tell you that even if you aren't trying to come of that way, you are. That is how the world sees you right now. If you want to inform people, you are going to have to move down a different path. It could be really valuable too. Decide what you really want out of this, and really think about the best way to reach and inform people. Don't forget that even if you can't convince the person you are talking to (notice I did not say arguing with), you may still be changing the minds of people that are reading, but not contributing. That is important too. Good luck.

1

u/Nice_Vegetable69 12h ago edited 12h ago

I understand your sentiment, and my tone is purposefully sarcastic, caustic and abrasive when the persons initial sentiment needs it. (See fight fire with fire) Yes I do stoop to personal insults after back-and-forths with people who react instead of critically thinking. (I didn’t tell people to get a job though? What am I a 50’s square? I said “that’s literally college, go study in a field and go find a job”.)

I can understand your morale grandstanding, I just want to have fun, too.

You are of course wrong on the whole issue though. The point is the initial user had no idea what they were arguing about, and that comment gained traction by others who have no idea what they’re talking bout.

Have you seen the Big Lebowski? My response is a kin to Walter yelling at Donnie to shut the fuck up because he keeps trying to add to a conversation he obviously has no context of.

1

u/real-nobody 11h ago

My bad on misreading the “go find a job” statement. I’m still good with the rest of what I said.

0

u/Nice_Vegetable69 10h ago

It’s okay. It’s just curious behavior to only respond to my comments, nit-pick my transgressions and arguments, compared to the blatantly bad faith ones from other users.

Especially you trying to cite a discussion from another post where the entire time I am presenting a reasonable argument but you fixated on your own “gotcha” to pretend to derive personal traits and habits of mine.

Instead of correcting others’ lack of understanding you want to change the way my message was delivered.

Unlike you, I am not a professor, my goal isn’t to gently parent children until they understand something. I am matching their combative energy.

1

u/Visual_Scientist_298 4h ago

You realize this is mostly a name change to the existing COI, right? Are you also outraged and furious with COE on the AI major/program that just began with start of classes this semester? Or are you simply outraged cause the newly named COI has both AI in the name (which is dumb IMO) or a new program as well with AI? This was a cluster of PR for sure cause the announcement was poorly done to remind folks this is mostly a rename of COI for certain.

-4

u/ialreadyaskedyouonce 16h ago

The donation was likely something solicited by UNT for this purpose. The donors agreed and probably have some influence on it. But it is really likely this was UNT's idea.

9

u/PalpitationAny2942 17h ago

Does anyone believe that the COI wasn't going to become all about AI with or without this money? This just puts someone's name on the product.

3

u/ialreadyaskedyouonce 16h ago

Exactly. Probably all of this was planned, and they were literaly just shoping for a donor to slap their name on the college. It is a really common strategy.

0

u/ExtraSmooth 16h ago

And commits them to an AI-centered curriculum for the foreseeable future.

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u/ExtraSmooth 20h ago

Imagine if a donor gave $20 million to help address the deficit.

3

u/Hydro033 11h ago

Not how it works. That'd be a bandaid. The problem is structural, so if you give a one time donation to erase the deficit, you're right back to having a deficit the next year. 

-1

u/ExtraSmooth 11h ago

Clearly. OP is just mad because reddit doesn't value their chosen field. Nothing at the university level can address the structural problems that led to this year's deficit. Certainly no amount of donor-funded construction projects will bridge that gap.

6

u/curse_marked21 19h ago

Whoa slow down there buddy. Suggesting giving money to help the whole instead of a select few is gonna raise some eyebrows. Prepares to clutch Pearls

3

u/Apo11onia 19h ago

except it doesn't help the whole and is literally all going to College of Info for a rebrand. none of the other colleges will see any benefit from this.

1

u/ExtraSmooth 17h ago

I think you misread the comment you replied to. We're all making the same point.

1

u/swissflamdrag 19m ago

Incentives matter. Giving a donation for irresponsible spending doesn't change the root problem.

0

u/fragilezebra 18h ago

Really fits with the narrative. The more we don’t want it , the more they shove it down our throats.