If you're using a university to get credentials that are necessary to open the doors you need to reach your goals, then sure, that's what they are for. That's more or less how I thought of them before I went to college.
And that perspective isn't entirely wrong--for some people that's all they will ever be. It's just that they do more than that.
Universities exist to provide the resources academic researchers need to work. Whether they are studying physics, sociology, or creative writing. The buildings, the meeting spaces, the people they gather who share interests, they people with cross-cutting or even opposing interests are also a resource.
Universities exist to provide the resources students need to learn skills that are difficult to obtain otherwise. It's not practical for most people to be self taught operators of gas chromatography systems, confocal microscopes, or research reactors. The physical stuff isn't the only thing. Having a collection of experts on different topics clustered together means that as a student you have access to a massive resource if you are smart enough to engage with it. These are all people who can teach you, guide you, and make introductions for you.
Of course, I am kind of dumb and didn't really realize this stuff until after I graduated and was navigating the world as an adult. Relationships I built in college helped me land several jobs early in my career. I don't think my bachelor's degree did anything for me beyond my first job. People rapidly stopped asking about it.
The writer is quite elegant in her description of how LLMs are corrosive to the social aspect of university.
It is aggressive in its unicode support. You want to use vulgar fractions? Or Mayan numerals? They'll work. You want to use mathematical notation like ∈? It works.
Mostly it strips out ‘math variable names that jerks would use to embolden their spam headlines for emphasis’, which is indeed annoying and results in this:
I've seen some interesting new robotics advances, but few have become viable products yet. An example that keeps coming up is laundry robots.
Here's one, https://www.weaverobotics.com/isaac-0, a $4000 static laundry folding robot. Of course it's only available in California and some unspecified percentage of folding will be completed via teleoperation.
Same company claims they will soon start selling an $8000 mobile maid bot that tidies and folds laundry.
IDK, it looks like it needs lots of work. If it was actually able to pick up my crap and fold my laundry, I'd be tempted, but it would also need to not phone home with camera data, the audio or other content of conversations. I'd also want an easy way to shut it down in an emergency.
When you can replace human sewing machine operators in garment factories, that's when you'll see widespread adoption of robots across the economy. Managing big pieces of fabric is hard.
I think we've still got a long way to go before we get jetsons style robot maids.
And that perspective isn't entirely wrong--for some people that's all they will ever be. It's just that they do more than that.
Universities exist to provide the resources academic researchers need to work. Whether they are studying physics, sociology, or creative writing. The buildings, the meeting spaces, the people they gather who share interests, they people with cross-cutting or even opposing interests are also a resource.
Universities exist to provide the resources students need to learn skills that are difficult to obtain otherwise. It's not practical for most people to be self taught operators of gas chromatography systems, confocal microscopes, or research reactors. The physical stuff isn't the only thing. Having a collection of experts on different topics clustered together means that as a student you have access to a massive resource if you are smart enough to engage with it. These are all people who can teach you, guide you, and make introductions for you.
Of course, I am kind of dumb and didn't really realize this stuff until after I graduated and was navigating the world as an adult. Relationships I built in college helped me land several jobs early in my career. I don't think my bachelor's degree did anything for me beyond my first job. People rapidly stopped asking about it.
The writer is quite elegant in her description of how LLMs are corrosive to the social aspect of university.
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