AI - A force for Good or Bad?

[sime42]

On 29/10/2025 at 10:32, Squaredy said:

The educational establishment (especially universities) have really been caught napping by AI.  Apparently most universities have no policy or method of determining how much of students’ work is their own.  And when you add to that the fact that most assessments are now course based (very few degrees need exams now according to my ChatGpt) it is quite a pickle.

 

I had a chat with my own son’s maths teacher last year about the system they are made to use for maths homework (when he was in Year 10 so age 14).  I pointed out to the teacher that because of the way the system (Sparx maths) works it encourages pupils to cheat.  
 

He assured me it was impossible for kids to cheat as they all get set different questions.  I had to inform him that most likely every kid in his class knows exactly how to cheat using a whole variety of apps, all of which are literally in front of them on the same screen as they are using to do the homework.  Even Google lense gives the answer to all these problems, with all the correct workings to copy down for the workbook.  My twelve year old now uses Sparx Maths, and sure enough all his mates know how to cheat.

 

This raises one of the critical points.  Organisations have to very quickly come up to speed and work out what impact AI could have and how they will manage it.  Right now schools and universities are clueless as to what the impacts are, or what they need to do.

 

Students cheating is the least of our worries when it comes to children and AI. 

 

Teenage boys using ‘personalised’ AI for therapy and romance, survey finds | Artificial intelligence (AI) | The Guardian

WWW.THEGUARDIAN.COM

---

Male Allies UK worries rise in chatbot ‘girlfriends’ will leave boys unable to socialise and respect boundaries

 

 

"The research, based on a survey of boys in secondary education across 37 schools in England, Scotland and Wales, also found that more than half (53%) of teenage boys said they found the online world more rewarding than the real world."

 

 

 

[openspaceman]

15 minutes ago, sime42 said:

I want to ask for a more in-depth explanation of the ANDing masquerading as adding thing.

I got that wrong, it's 55 years since I last had to do it.

 

It does add but it does so by NANDing two numbers and the discarding the most significant bit

 

(0)101==Decimal 5

(0)001== Decimal 1

(1)110 NANDed

Discard most significant bit

110==Decimal 6

 

So the most basic thing a computer does is a comparison of binary digits and from this simple operation every thing which we do on a computer is based.

 

Next it's qubits and that totally confuses me.