With AI, is it still useful to go to college?

Image credit: Generated by Unbounded AI tools

The results of the college entrance examination will be announced immediately, candidates are busy filling out their volunteer applications, and major colleges and universities are also stepping up their enrollment promotion.

Recently, the short film "A Stone" filmed by Peking University has sparked a lot of discussion on the Internet. The film raises a topic that everyone is very concerned about: With AI, is there a need for universities to exist?

At the moment when AIGC is becoming popular, this short film by Peking University is very good at catching hot spots. This worry is justified. As shown in the play, all books are currently scanned into the database, and the books read by AI cannot be finished by a professor in a few lifetimes. AI also knows more than any teacher. On campus, every student can have a direct conversation with famous masters through AR equipment. Any question, as long as you ask, the answer will be automatically generated. If acquiring knowledge can be done easily anywhere, why bother to go to college and go to university?

The professor in the play did not answer this question directly, but asked the students to carefully study the ancient book "Jinshilu" and then make a class report to see how this book differs from the book in the AI database.

A student accidentally spills coffee on a book while reading. After seeing it, the professor said: Only the book after reading will leave traces of thought, and the coffee spilled on the book is the ripple of thinking.

AI can scan all the content of books into the database, but it cannot scan the notes and annotations made by everyone into the database. And these annotations are the inheritance of people's thoughts, which promote the progress of human beings.

The play sparked discussions on AI, and the main points around it include:

1. Knowledge is knowledge and thought is thought. AI is just a database, not thinking. In addition to preaching and teaching, the most important thing for teachers is to cultivate personality, continue and expand human thinking.

2. Embracing change, the carrier of knowledge dissemination has experienced different forms such as stone, bamboo slips, paper, and e-books from ancient times to the present. Forms are constantly changing, and the human mind is constantly stretching.

3. AI has intelligence and culture has inheritance. Knowledge is everywhere, and it doesn’t mean it’s yours. Only by reading, thinking, and remembering can you form your own thinking.

4. AI can only let people know what is known. The unknown is created and discovered by people. If it is only acquired without thinking and collision of ideas, knowledge opportunities will stagnate and regress.

These discussions are very valuable, but don't forget that in the current social environment, you can only deliver food if you don't go to college, but you can choose whether to go to the university or not.

Some time ago, there was a video on the Internet. Some students were interviewed on the street and asked them: Tsinghua University and Peking University’s admission letter or 100 million, which one do you choose?

All the students choose the admission letter from Tsinghua University, because they think that after graduating from a good university, they can find a good job, and money is obtained through hard work, and even 100 million won't be able to get into Tsinghua University.

These students have nothing to do with the world, and their imaginations about the future are wonderful. They don't know that with a population of 1.4 billion in China, only about 200,000 people can come up with 100 million in cash.

Adults who have been "beaten" by society are very realistic, as Ge You showed in a movie, the reporter asked if he would donate 1 million to those in need, and Ge You said yes. 100 million is also willing, and 1 billion is also donated. And when asked if he would donate a car, Ge You said no, because he really had a car.

Therefore, at a time when almost all fields are being subverted by generative artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT, it is more realistic and less anxious.