AI on campus

Speaker 0:00 I think AI, and especially how students use AI, is very telling of those motivations. You know, there are some students who are using it to complete work for them, you know, to do it on their behalf, and there are some students who, you know, are staying away from AI or using it proactively. They're using it in ways that reinforce their learning. It's our responsibility now as students to, you know, use this tool to, you know, achieve your own individual outcomes.

Speaker 0:23 Everyone is talking about how AI is changing education, but we figured, what better way to learn about these changes than by asking actual students? My name is Greg, I'm from Anthropic, and today I'm joined by four university students who are here to give us the inside scoop. So why don't you all introduce yourselves?

Speaker 0:38 Hey, my name is Zain. I'm a final year student at the London School of Economics, and I study accounting and finance.

Speaker 0:44 Hi, my name is Chloe. I'm a junior at Princeton studying psychology and computer science.

Speaker 0:49 Hi, I'm Marcus. I'm a senior at UC Berkeley studying econ and data science.

Speaker 0:54 I'm Tino. I'm a second year grad student at the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University, and I'm studying a master's in digital transformation.

Speaker 1:03 Amazing. Thank you for being here.

Speaker 1:05 Thank you.

Speaker 1:05 So,

Speaker 1:06 uh, let's start by setting the scene. What are the vibes like on campus these days with, uh, AI? Um, how are people thinking about it?

Speaker 1:14 Yeah. So I did a survey, uh, not too long ago on how students are using AI, and I saw that, you know, ninety percent of students are, are using AI in their day-to-day workflows, using it to summarize lectures, using it to answer problem sets, to help give feedback on, on assignments that, that they had written. Uh, and so really a diverse, um, sort of like use case for, for AI, um, uh, within students. It's having an impact. Uh, universities are having to manage that. We're seeing changes in rules and regulations. We're seeing, uh, you know, some courses ban it, other courses encourage it, and so students are in a bit of a, a, a gray zone right now where they may not know how to use AI.

Speaker 1:52 Yeah, I, I also concur. There is a lot of chaos in understanding AI and what role it will play in universities. Um, but at the same time, there's a lot of energy, um, surrounding it, uh, especially being at Berkeley and s- uh, being so close to AI hype, um, in the Bay Area. I also agree that, like, over ninety percent, if not basically everyone, uses AI-

Speaker 2:13 Mm-hmm

Speaker 2:14 ...in some way or form. Um, mostly in the form of chatbots. Um, yeah, like summarizing lectures, um, doing assignments, answering questions where or when teachers, um, TAs, like, can't answer them for you. Um, I will say there is also a lot of confusion on like an administration's or like, uh, a professor's end on how, um, AI can play a role in the classroom. Um, and we're slowly seeing some changes around that.

Speaker 2:44 As business students, I see even my-myself and my colleagues, like, we use AI for a lot of different things. We use AI to understand and analyze business cases, um, do market research, um, just come up with financial research as well. So people use that for that as well. Um, people also use AI as well to complete quizzes, you know, like when you don't have time, 'cause when you're a grad student, sometimes you've got multiple jobs that you're working, and you don't always have time. So sometimes you can see, um, someone who just, you know, quickly submit answers and everything. So that's the bad side of it, that, um, when you're in grad school, you know, it's supposed to be like a, a time for you to expand your critical thinking, um, a time for you to be someone who is like more decisive, um, someone who has like substance in how you make decisions. And so that's, I think, the, the bad side of it.

Speaker 3:37 Yeah, I would say definitely the vibes are, like, really chaotic right now. Um, both I guess in a good and bad way. I think the good, obviously, like Zain said, there's a lot of exploration and cool projects and stuff popping up. The bad is because everything is such a gray area, it can be very difficult to stay resilient and hold yourself accountable.

Speaker 3:55 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3:55 It's very easy to just be like, "I'm just gonna give up and feed this all to AI and not do any of the thinking." I've noticed that there's a lot of tension as well between, I guess like the line of how much is over-relying on AI or how much is it good to actually have like an actual corp- cooperation between those two. Um, and I have also noticed that some people are really into it, so they use it a lot in terms of like all of their different workflows, while others, like my humanities and maybe some social science friends, are a bit more hesitant and have a bit more concern. So there seems to be a growing, like, identity polarization effect that I think is-- will be really interesting to see how it goes.

Speaker 4:31 I'm curious, uh, uh, you say that they're hesitant. Are they hesitant but still using it, uh, pretty regularly, or are-- is it a mix of some are using it a lot, some are not using it at all?

Speaker 4:41 Yeah. Great question. I think there's a spectrum. Um, a lot of especially like the pure humanities students have just completely opted out, I think because often in their classes and research, there's a lot more of just close reading. Um, while other, I think like for social science, I have noticed a slow trend where they're trying it out more and just seeing AI being applied beyond just like pure computational or like machine learning like contexts, which has been cool.

Speaker 5:05 In a lot of, um, computer science and also like other engineering classes, it's still kind of a taboo to use AI. I mean, in application these days, we're using a lot of like AI coding assistants, um, to build actual projects outside the classroom. But in the classroom, we're still using, um, like VS Code and, and blocking out these AI features because, um, professors, um, at least at the moment, are still kind of discouraging it. But we might see a shift in the next few years. I mean, I know Stanford is beginning to have a course about, um, learning to use AI tools in like software development and engineering. I think that's the number one, um, I guess breakthrough with these AI tools is that the accessibility and barrier into building something like a project or, um, software in general has gone down a lot, and especially with a lot of courses, like with like, um-Claude and like the developer docs, for example, it's been really helpful in teaching folks who don't come from like computer science background, like in political science or in like psychology, um, or even something like math, um, be able to build their own, um, projects on the side from like ideation to like a working prototype that's on a website or some kind of, um, app deployment, um, within the span of like a few days.

Speaker 6:28 Yeah. I, I've seen that a lot at, at my university, um, where students who, uh, you know, don't typically, uh, have the, the confidence to go and build with, um, you know, raw code have now, you know, started using the terminal, for example, which is, which is incredible to see. Um, and, you know, Claude Code, for example, makes that so much more accessible, so much, um, friendlier, which, uh, which I think has been one of like the most crazy changes, uh, so far. Like myself even, I don't have a computer science background-

Speaker 6:57 Yeah

Speaker 6:57 ... but I'm comfortable in the terminal now-

Speaker 6:59 Mm-hmm

Speaker 6:59 ... which is crazy. Um, and I've seen it within societies as well. So we have a number of societies at LSE, uh, and, um, they each have like an Instagram page. Pretty basic, easy to put together, but now we're seeing societies have websites, uh, and these websites have a load more information.

Speaker 7:15 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:15 And they're building them with Claude Code because it's just so much easier now.

Speaker 7:18 So seems like the AI transformation for students has already happened.

Speaker 7:22 Yeah.

Speaker 7:22 Um, and we have mixed feelings about it. One thing, uh, that you all share is that you all are Claude Campus Ambassadors.

Speaker 7:28 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:28 Um, and you are each leading a student organization called the Claude Builder Club on your campus.

Speaker 7:33 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:33 Um, so first of all, maybe can one of you like give a quick summary of what it means to be a Claude Campus Ambassador and then the club that you're leading?

Speaker 7:41 Yeah. I mean, as Claude Campus Ambassadors, um, our number one job/role is to be the point of contact of engagement between what, um, Anthropic and Claude is offering, and between that and students.

Speaker 7:58 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 7:58 Um, and basically being a facilitator for that, um, on campuses.

Speaker 8:01 Cool. Um, and since it's a club about builders, um, what, what are people building? What are you seeing happen at your clubs?

Speaker 8:07 A lot of cool things have been built. Um, I'll reference an example from a recent Vibethon I did. I think a lot of the most fun ideas is not the most technically savvy ones-

Speaker 8:16 Yeah

Speaker 8:16 ... but the ones that really start with human emotion.

Speaker 8:18 Yeah.

Speaker 8:18 So one that was really cool was there's, um, called the Princeton Prospect. There's like kind of a bucket list of people that, um, things people would like to do before they graduate, and kinda gamifying that through a leaderboard. And the best part of it actually was, um, the, they, the winning team, they were just a bunch of freshmen, and they were all roommates, so they just came into this for fun. And with that human insight, were able to build out something that resonated with everyone, and that was something really cool that I enjoyed seeing them build.

Speaker 8:45 I think one cool tool that, uh, my friend and I built was, um, this place where you could basically put in your lecture slides, and it gives you sort of like professor annotations down the side of each slide. So it's, it's so cool. I've been using it so much for, um, you know, just revising through content, uh, in preparation for, um, end of term exams, and it's so good because it kind of preempts my questions, and so I've prompted it such that it knows that, you know, I want to know the definitions of, of certain things on the slides. The slides can sometimes be a bit abstract and missing context, so adding in the context on the side.

Speaker 9:18 Did you get a good grade in the class?

Speaker 9:19 I don't... We'll see. [laughing]

Speaker 9:23 [laughing]

Speaker 9:23 [laughing]

Speaker 9:24 [laughing] Um, I think one f- uh, one of my favorite things that, uh, someone has built with AI is this site. It's an app called Course Hero, and we have this challenge where like the most like amazing, fun classes, like when it's time to register for classes, they just run out so quickly.

Speaker 9:39 Yeah.

Speaker 9:40 And you can like wait weeks and weeks to get like a seat in that class.

Speaker 9:43 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 9:44 So, um, what they, what, what they did is they built this AI, and you can like just input the course that you want, and then it's gonna alert you the moment a seat is open in that class-

Speaker 9:54 Mm-hmm

Speaker 9:54 ... so you can register for it.

Speaker 9:55 Oh.

Speaker 9:55 Yeah.

Speaker 9:56 We have that at our school.

Speaker 9:57 Yeah. Instead of you like going back and checking every day, class searches-

Speaker 9:59 Yeah

Speaker 9:59 ... this class available.

Speaker 10:00 You get a notification that you can jump on.

Speaker 10:01 Yeah, just go-

Speaker 10:02 That's cool

Speaker 10:02 ... jump on, and you get a seat.

Speaker 10:03 I need that.

Speaker 10:03 Yeah.

Speaker 10:03 Yes.

Speaker 10:04 I love that.

Speaker 10:04 I need that.

Speaker 10:04 Your next project idea.

Speaker 10:05 There you go.

Speaker 10:05 No, exactly. [laughs]

Speaker 10:07 Yeah.

Speaker 10:07 It's actually funny. We have, we have like a, a shortage of seats at, uh, at university, at my university.

Speaker 10:12 Yeah.

Speaker 10:13 I'm talking about like actual seats, like in the library, for example.

Speaker 10:15 Uh-huh.

Speaker 10:16 Um, and so again, my friend built this amazing tool that basically scans, um, all, all of the data so that you can get the, the data on, you know, which classrooms are free.

Speaker 10:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 10:25 And so it, it basically points all the free classrooms and tells students, you know, if there are no seats in the library, then go to these ones.

Speaker 10:31 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 10:31 And again, like non-technical student building this, which is insane, unheard of, but-

Speaker 10:35 Yeah

Speaker 10:35 ... you know, this is, these, these are some of the possibilities.

Speaker 10:36 That's cool.

Speaker 10:37 Yeah.

Speaker 10:38 That's cool.

Speaker 10:38 I've seen in the past few, um, hackathons or entrepreneurship classes where, um, a lot of students have been looking into like healthcare use cases, mixing, um, computer vision with a cloud API-

Speaker 10:52 Mm-hmm

Speaker 10:52 ... to, um, interpret, uh, a person's like emotions for like a mental health use case, um, like signs of stroke, um, via like a camera on like someone's phone or s- like a separate like medical device, um, or even signs of like dementia, for example. And all of them has been really interesting.

Speaker 11:14 It's so cool that people are spending their time doing that in school, 'cause that is kind of the magic of being a student, is you do have time to just-

Speaker 11:19 Mm-hmm

Speaker 11:19 ... work on ideas and-

Speaker 11:20 Yeah

Speaker 11:20 ... try new things and come up with projects that are just for fun or just a side project.

Speaker 11:24 Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 11:25 Yeah.

Speaker 11:25 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11:26 Cool. So

Speaker 11:27 let's talk about learning with AI.

Speaker 11:29 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11:29 Um, I think one of the more tricky parts of this is that, you know, AI can be a tool to help you learn about anything you wanna learn.

Speaker 11:37 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11:37 Um, but it can also be used as a crutch to maybe prevent learning if you lean on it. So I'm curious how you each personally balance that and how you see students balancing it, and if you see students at your university balancing it well.

Speaker 11:50 I think initiallyWhat we noticed was that, um, even like amongst our course mates, at first it was just like whatever the AI gives you, that's what you put. And then it's-- over time, attitudes have started to change, where like, let's just put a little more effort in... Not even just, let's just put effort in what we're putting together because let's say you have a group project, and there are like four or five people on that group project, everyone gets a different part. And if everyone just does the first thing that AI gives them, that's not gonna produce a very good project at all.

Speaker 12:20 I think one thing about AI and education is that it's very telling of students' motivations, like why you're at university. I think students, you know, you can typically group three objectives f-for university. The first, I would say, is to learn, to, you know, to deepen your understanding in your chosen topic. I would say a second objective is to, uh, you know, position yourself for a career, you know, get a good job. Um, and I think the third is the social element of university, where students are coming to, to network, to have fun, enjoy themselves. I think, like, those are the three broad objectives for students. Um, and every student weights those differently. Like, some students prefer, you know, they're coming to learn.

Speaker 12:59 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 12:59 Um, and they don't really care about the social aspect of uni. And there are other students who, you know, they're coming because they wanna get a good job, and they wanna enjoy university, and they don't, they don't really care about the learning really. Um, and I think AI, and especially how students use AI, is very telling of those motivations. You know, there are some students who are using it to complete work for them, you know, to do it on their behalf. Uh, and those are typically the students who want to save time and want to, you know, put their efforts and motivations towards other things, which is fine. Um, and there are some students who, you know, are staying away from AI or using it proactively. They're using it in ways that reinforce their learning, that make them better, make them stronger, and those are typically the students that want to, they want to learn themselves. They want to depth, you know, have, have some depth to their, to their knowledge. And so I think that's what AI is revealing, like, why you're really at university because we have the tools now, to be honest, to get through university without actually learning much. It's our responsibility now as students to, you know, use this tool to, you know, achieve your own individual outcome. If you want to learn, you can, and if you wanna bypass, you know, a lot of the exams and assignments, you can pretty much do that. And I don't think there's gonna be any sort of like rules or regulations that come in place that can change how students use AI because, like, fundamentally, I, I don't see how that would be possible. And so I think the responsibility is in the students' hands. It's like you're in control.

Speaker 14:17 Yeah, definitely. I actually agree, and I think a lot of for how I use and approach AI is, like, intention. I think even before I actually start prompting or asking it to do stuff, I like to think about, am I asking it to, for example, directly complete a task for me, or is it more of like something that I'm brainstorming, and I'd like to think about it from different perspectives? And I think that piece is like I'm starting to see a lot more happen because I think AI is very good as, like, a catalyst for especially implementing and building things, but the intention, I think, really comes from the students themselves.

Speaker 14:47 I really resonate with that. I think when these AI chatbots start coming out a few years ago, um, either because of the technical limitations back then or just, uh, how little we understood about AI at the time, the typical workflow was just you ask, uh, the chatbot a question, you get an answer, and you do that maybe like fifty to a hundred times-

Speaker 15:10 Yeah

Speaker 15:10 ... um, across different conversations.

Speaker 15:11 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15:12 Now, I think people are becoming smarter and, and like you said, are becoming more intentional-

Speaker 15:16 Mm-hmm

Speaker 15:16 ... with how they're using AI. We're starting to have, like, more extended conversations across talking about one specific topic. Um, I've started, like, when I'm studying, I'll have, um, projects on Claude where, um, I would have one for each class, upload like the syllabus and a bunch of different course content I take in for each project and have a bunch of, um, conversations, um, acting as like individual files in like a folder, for example.

Speaker 15:43 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 15:44 And, um, with these chatbots being able to, in recent years, uh, manage context better, manage memory better, um, be a much more helpful assistant and I guess, um, conversationalist, um, when like working with me on a specific task. You wonder how long it'll take before the societal aspect of things are gonna catch up to how fast the technology is evolving. Right now, like one example is that, um, in like CS classes, I know a few professors who do say like, "Hey, um, if you do use AI, like you can put a disclaimer in like your assignment and also describe like how you use it-

Speaker 16:23 Mm-hmm

Speaker 16:23 ... in like each like homework or, or lab assignment." But there isn't really like a integrated like framework thinking about like using AI, um, in the class as part of the curriculum. And I think we're still kinda waiting on integrations like that into like education, um, that we may see in the next like five years.

Speaker 16:44 So you feel like in general, your professors and the administration might be a little bit behind the students in terms of AI literacy and adoption?

Speaker 16:51 Mm, not quite.

Speaker 16:52 Yeah. I think they're still, they're still adapting, um, to it, and I think naturally students are more like the fastest adopters because-

Speaker 16:59 Yeah

Speaker 16:59 ... um, we're just reacting to like what's out there and, um, we access information a lot quicker because we're like native to the internet.

Speaker 17:09 Yeah.

Speaker 17:09 Yeah.

Speaker 17:09 I have to say, I've seen some, like, pretty cool advancements in some of the courses, um, at my university.

Speaker 17:15 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 17:16 So we have a course called LSE 100, and, uh, every first-year student has to take it. And when I did it two years ago now, um, there was no, uh, I mean, we had AI, but, uh, there was no guidance on how it should be used for this course. My brother now actually is in first year, and he's doing the course at LSE, um, and he's told me it's completely changed. So they basically give you guidance on how to use Claude. So they say, "You should, um, have a conversation with Claude. Uh, give it a persona." So they're giving guidance on, on, on... to students on how to actually use these and, and use Claude for ways that aren't just direct outputs, you know, like getting the answers for your problems-

Speaker 17:51 Mm-hmm

Speaker 17:51 ... but actually a conversation with it, and then they ask for the, um, the conversation log.Because they wanna see, you know, how are you interacting with it? Are you asking, you know, good questions back, and is, is it a good conversation? And then they film a video instead of, uh, putting a-an essay together.

Speaker 18:06 Mm.

Speaker 18:06 So now it's a video of yourself. And so you're encouraged to use AI, but now in, in terms of, like, the marking, you know, you can't, uh, use it irresponsibly.

Speaker 18:15 I have also noted that that for some of my classes, like the machine learning class I was taking this semester, they have their own chatbot, actually, they built to specifically answer student questions, and if they wanna refer to lecture notes specifically, it's pretty helpful for it. I do think, however, that this is more of a band-aid approach because it doesn't really prevent students from just going to other types of AI tools that is not the school one, um, to just ask for answers and advice.

Speaker 18:39 Yeah.

Speaker 18:40 Yeah.

Speaker 18:40 University is, is, is a one-size-fits-all right at the moment-

Speaker 18:43 Mm

Speaker 18:43 ... where, you know, you have one lecturer for potentially two, 300 students in a class.

Speaker 18:47 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 18:48 And those students all learn, you know, uh, in different ways. Uh, and so AI is acting more as a, as a personalized tutor if you prompt it in the right way-

Speaker 18:57 Mm-hmm

Speaker 18:57 ... and if you, you know, encourage it to do so. And, uh, a-and I've seen the learning mode, um, from Claude where, you know, it's asking questions back to you. It's, uh, it's more of a, like a progressive development of, of understanding-

Speaker 19:09 Mm-hmm

Speaker 19:10 ... which is good. Um, and there are students that are using it, but I think, you know, it's about finding the students that, that, you know, want to learn and want to progress because there are, there are many students that, you know, if one AI tool goes away from, like, giving direct, uh, output or giving direct answers, we're gonna see just a shift of students to-

Speaker 19:30 Mm

Speaker 19:30 ... to, to the other.

Speaker 19:30 Tina, were you gonna say something about this as well?

Speaker 19:32 Um, yeah. I think I was gonna piggyback on what Zane said, uh, 'cause at my school, Arizona State University, we're super pro-AI. Um, our career management center, they built, like, a prompt bank for us for prompts that we can use to, you know, work through different scenarios and roles. They also built, like, for our sustainability class as well, the professor built her own bot as well. And we actually-- Uh, there's a new class that they introduced called Artificial Intelligence, Chip Strategy, and the Future of Work, and it was taught, like, for one semester, but people were like, "Yo, we need this class." And now it's taught, like, the whole, uh, fall and spring.

Speaker 20:12 This is all very positive [laughs] .

Speaker 20:14 [laughs]

Speaker 20:14 Which

Speaker 20:15 is great, but I know that it's not all positive. It's not all roses. So, uh, I, I'm curious, what are things that you are, uh, seeing that are not on the right track or things that you're afraid of or, or things that scare you?

Speaker 20:26 I mean, cheating is, like, the top three use case, if not, like, top one in universities. But without a doubt, it just comes, um, from, like, what we discussed. You put in, um, a prompt or some input in chat, um, gives out an output, um, and a lot of students, um, what they started off doing, and a lot of them are s- still doing, um, is just taking that output and, you know, submitting it in an assignment.

Speaker 20:50 Exactly.

Speaker 20:50 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 20:50 I think, I mean, if you look at the interface, it's waiting for a question.

Speaker 20:54 Yeah.

Speaker 20:54 Uh, we're given the questions from, from the university. It's never been easier to take that question and put it into the chatbot-

Speaker 21:00 Mm

Speaker 21:00 ... and get the mark scheme pretty much.

Speaker 21:02 Yeah.

Speaker 21:03 And so it's just so easy-

Speaker 21:05 Mm-hmm

Speaker 21:05 ... uh, to get the answer, and you really have to be strong as a student to, to go and, and work on that problem by yourself and, and do it yourself.

Speaker 21:11 Yeah. I think, um, a bit more of a nuanced take, I have also noticed that for even students who are using AI to build their own projects and, for example, to try out different types of, I guess, technical implementations, there's been a really strong sense of ownership shame that I've noticed. Whenever AI even gets mentioned that, "Oh, when I was building this project, I used AI a little bit." Just because, like I said, I think the line between of how much the human is using the AI versus how much is the AI actually just controlling the whole project is very blurry right now.

Speaker 21:42 Mm.

Speaker 21:42 So especially at the Vibethon when I was, for example, asking the winners, like, "How did you use Claude in your projects?" I had seen a lot of them build out, brainstorm, think through, and, like, really iterate with Claude. But when I asked them that question, a lot of them just defaulted to, oh, Claude just, like, was very helpful, and they did everything, which I think right now, like, there's a lack of vocabulary and frameworks to, like, regard these types of AI usages, which I also think is what's causing a lot of this polarization effect, where schools are just either completely banning it, but students are still using it regardless. Hence, a lot of the cheating and just, like, not really being intentional or using their brains when they're interacting with AI, which I'm a bit skeptical about the direction of this just because I think students are now required to be the resilient ones in the age of AI, where they really need to be skeptical of every single time they use it without guidance from schools and institutions. So I feel like if s-institutions or school can't really adapt to this quick enough, there is a danger in it just kind of skewing and going into a more polarized direction.

Speaker 22:44 I will say, though, um, the sentiment and, like, how we interact with AI among students is changing. I think, like, as university students, we, we naturally do want to use our brains and, and use it for something, um, that's interesting to us. In the past couple years, yes, people have just been pasting in questions as, like, prompts and taking the outputs, um, to submit as, like, deliverables or assignments. But people are beginning to be more interested in, like, doing something more with that, like, taking more ownership of, um, their, maybe their assignments, but even more importantly, like, I guess, projects on the side or things they want to make or, or explore. And I think a lot of students just kind of need that little push to see what's available and, and what's out there. And back to the point about cheating, I think a lot of students are also realizing that AI is pretty bad at cheating in context because there's all these patterns that started to come up like, oh, there's, like, a lot of em dashes, or AI has a specific voice-

Speaker 23:44 Mm-hmm

Speaker 23:44 ... or tone, or it doesn't actually understand to the level of, um, what you know about the class, which could be a whole conversation about how students actually know more than they think they do.

Speaker 23:57 Yep.

Speaker 23:58 Um-

Speaker 23:58 Mm-hmm

Speaker 23:59 Yeah, I, I, I agree, and I think students are evolving. You know, with AI, I think when it first came out, everyone's very excited. Students, you know, were using the outputs directly. Uh, but now, like Mark has said, you know, people-- students are being more, um, you know, intentional with their prompts, so potentially, you know, writing a little bit longer prompts, you know, directing Claude a little bit better than before. And, and I think that's just because we're getting more used to it.

Speaker 24:23 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 24:23 Like, myself as a student, I must have spent like thousand-plus hours like talking to Claude now. Like, I know what it or, you know, how it responds.

Speaker 24:30 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 24:30 And I'm learning more about the tool, and as a result, my interactions with it are getting better.

Speaker 24:35 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 24:35 And like you said, we're students, you know, we want to use our brains.

Speaker 24:39 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 24:39 The, the majority of us, you know, want to be intellectually stimulated. Uh, and, and so I think we're, we're moving to, to a time where students do genuinely use AI tools to benefit themselves and to actually, uh, you know, go further rather than kind of limit themselves, I guess, by, by just relying on its output.

Speaker 24:59 Yeah. Um, I think, um, when it comes to, like, cheating, for example, you know, you've got that first level of you, you ask, you ask a question, you get your output. But in my instance, the, the final boss is, "Can you present to us what you think?" You gotta put together a presentation, ten minutes, 15 minutes, defend your position, and the AI is not gonna be there, you know, at that time to speak for you or to give your ideas. So in that way, I feel that, um, there's that, like, first level of, like, using it, like you mentioned, like maybe, but then you get to a level where you need to, in our case, explain what, what do you mean and everything. So it's not so much a case of like, um, yes, there's that level of, like, people are cheating, like, doing just, like, small quizzes, but then in our instance as well, you actually have to always defend your position, so you have to know what you're talking about.

Speaker 25:55 Let's talk about after college, entering the job market. Um, first of all, maybe we can do, like, a thumbs up, down, middle. How does everyone feel about getting a job after graduation?

Speaker 26:08 Eh.

Speaker 26:09 Like, constantly just like this.

Speaker 26:10 Okay.

Speaker 26:11 [laughs]

Speaker 26:11 Okay.

Speaker 26:12 Yeah.

Speaker 26:12 Okay.

Speaker 26:12 [laughs]

Speaker 26:13 Um, tell me more.

Speaker 26:15 Okay. Well, I guess, like, the good ones, I think, is, like, just having AI to be, like, a better, like, companion for, like, practicing for interviews-

Speaker 26:23 Mm-hmm

Speaker 26:23 ... brainstorming, tailoring the resumes, et cetera. Unfortunately, the downside is that also companies are obviously using AI a lot more, which involves a lot of hire views. I have basically been talking to, like, a screen this entire recruiting cycle, um, which is great, but also can feel a little less human because I don't feel like there's, like, no chemistry, like, talking to a screen. Um, I have-

Speaker 26:47 Are you doing, are you doing interviews with like a-- like you're talking to a robot?

Speaker 26:51 No-not where it's explicitly-

Speaker 26:53 Yeah

Speaker 26:53 ... but it's just, like, kind of a question on a screen for me, and then I'm just, like, talking to myself.

Speaker 26:57 Okay.

Speaker 26:58 Um, and I have also heard just a lot of anxiety about companies also using AI just to screen candidates.

Speaker 27:04 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 27:05 And I think this also has just not been great for, I guess, like, both my self-worth and also just, like, trying to figure out what the best, like, interviewing strategy or even, like, what jobs to apply to, 'cause now it just feels so much more random than before.

Speaker 27:19 Yeah.

Speaker 27:19 Um, I'm curious, what do you guys think?

Speaker 27:21 I agree with you, especially, like, the screening job candidates. Um, it's so painful because you can realize, like, from the entire, "Hi, we would like to invite you to apply for this job," right up until you submit your, your CV. You've put time together, tailored your application, everything, and then 15 minutes later, "Sorry, we regret to inform you-"

Speaker 27:39 "For you." [laughs]

Speaker 27:41 [laughs] When did you have time-

Speaker 27:43 Yeah

Speaker 27:43 ... to, you know-

Speaker 27:43 Exactly

Speaker 27:44 ... to review-

Speaker 27:44 The AI-generated email

Speaker 27:45 ... the AI-generated email?

Speaker 27:46 Yeah.

Speaker 27:47 So that's, like, I think the really, like, big downside of that.

Speaker 27:50 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 27:51 The upsides really are that, um, AI fluency has become a major... Like, for example, consulting firms now, I know the top four consulting firms, they used to hire generalist MBAs, but now they're looking for MBAs who've got AI fluency.

Speaker 28:06 Mm.

Speaker 28:07 So if you understand, like, how do you apply AI to different industries, then you're like their number one candidate.

Speaker 28:12 Actually, back to, like, Chloe's point-

Speaker 28:14 Mm

Speaker 28:14 ... I have had an AI, like, interviewing me before.

Speaker 28:17 Really?

Speaker 28:17 Oh.

Speaker 28:17 And, and it was, it was so nice.

Speaker 28:19 [laughs]

Speaker 28:19 It would give, it would give responses like, like, "Your response was super invigorating-

Speaker 28:24 [laughs]

Speaker 28:24 [laughs]

Speaker 28:24 ... and informative and exciting. And then, "Let's move on to the next question."

Speaker 28:28 Oh, man.

Speaker 28:28 Yeah.

Speaker 28:28 Did you get the job?

Speaker 28:29 No.

Speaker 28:30 [laughs]

Speaker 28:30 [laughs]

Speaker 28:31 But, but it was because, um, I didn't qualify. I think they were looking for, like, rising juniors, and I was a rising senior.

Speaker 28:38 Okay.

Speaker 28:39 Oh.

Speaker 28:39 [laughs] So I still got auto-screened. [laughs]

Speaker 28:42 [laughs]

Speaker 28:42 Yeah.

Speaker 28:42 But, um, it wasn't as bad as I thought, I guess.

Speaker 28:45 Yeah.

Speaker 28:46 Um, traditionally, like Chloe said, like, there's hire views right now where, like, they take a recording rather than, like, an interactive conversation.

Speaker 28:53 Yeah.

Speaker 28:53 I actually kinda enjoyed, um, having a nice interviewer [laughs] .

Speaker 28:56 Yeah.

Speaker 28:57 As an AI. [laughs]

Speaker 28:58 [laughs]

Speaker 28:58 I agree. I agree.

Speaker 29:00 Okay. Uh, speaking of, um, you know, uh, interesting uses of AI, um, Merriam-Webster named slop the word of the year.

Speaker 29:10 [laughs]

Speaker 29:10 Um, so I'm curious what AI slop means to you all, and how do you see it, uh, impacting the people around you on campus?

Speaker 29:17 I think, so AI slop for me is when I receive an output from Claude or any other AI tool that I know that if I had just used my own brain, like, I could've come up with something better than that. Like, that's kind of slop for me when... So I think just going back to job applications, when I'm asking it to, you know, help me write a cover letter, for example, which is a major use case for a lot of students, and it gives me a cover letter which is so generic, like, every other student is applying with this. And it's like, this is not gonna get me the job. Like, that's, you know, the AI slop.

Speaker 29:45 I think it's really funny that, like, AI responses can be so generic that it's its own voice at this point.

Speaker 29:51 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 29:51 Um, it's, like, a common, like, meme, I guess, for, for AI to have a lot of em dashes and, um, certain soundbites. Like, "You're absolutely right."

Speaker 29:59 Mm.

Speaker 29:59 Or, like-Like, let me think about that. Or, or it has this like two-sentence structure that it keeps giving me whenever I try to write-

Speaker 30:06 Mm-hmm

Speaker 30:06 ... like letters or, um, scripts for example, where, where it's like you're not reinventing the wheel, like you're building the next Tesla. [laughing]

Speaker 30:15 [laughing]

Speaker 30:15 Yeah.

Speaker 30:16 Yeah. Um, honestly, it's everything you guys have said. Yeah. Um, and then like you get, you get the feedback, you get the output, and then it's up to you. You know, some people, if you work with them in a group, sadly, they'll just paste that, and you could see that at the end. Uh, would you like Claude to keep? [laughing]

Speaker 30:34 Mm.

Speaker 30:34 Oh. [laughing]

Speaker 30:35 Yeah. That's, that's-

Speaker 30:36 Claude can make mistakes. Retry.

Speaker 30:37 Claude can make mistakes.

Speaker 30:38 Yeah.

Speaker 30:38 Retry.

Speaker 30:38 Yeah.

Speaker 30:39 Yeah. That's my definition for AI so far.

Speaker 30:41 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 30:41 So you mentioned group projects.

Speaker 30:42 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 30:42 And I think this is a big thing, right? When you have a group of four or five at university, and you have maybe a 5,000-word report due, how do you guys go about it? Because at my university-

Speaker 30:53 Mm-hmm

Speaker 30:53 ... there is, there is sometimes some students who, like, don't want to use it.

Speaker 30:57 Mm.

Speaker 30:57 And I remember one, like, one student was saying like, "I'm gonna do this project before you guys get your, your grubby AI hands on it."

Speaker 31:03 Mm. [laughing]

Speaker 31:03 And I was like [laughing] , "Okay."

Speaker 31:05 [laughing]

Speaker 31:05 Um, but like some students really-

Speaker 31:06 Did he use that term? He said [laughing] grubby AI hands.

Speaker 31:10 Grubby AI hands.

Speaker 31:10 Oh, man. Oh, my gosh.

Speaker 31:10 Like, some students feel really strongly against it, and when you're working in a group-

Speaker 31:13 Hmm

Speaker 31:13 ... you know, you have to take into consideration other people's thoughts.

Speaker 31:16 True.

Speaker 31:17 Um, but yeah, what, what are your guys' thoughts on that?

Speaker 31:20 I can go first 'cause we do a lot of those 5,000-word, uh, kind of projects, like maybe, uh, create a business case out of this business dilemma. And how we do it, like how we've recently started working on it is we'll take the paper or the question, and we'll like create an outline. We'll maybe ask AI, "Can you create an outline for this paper for me?" Like, what should be in this paper and stuff, and then we divide it amongst ourselves.

Speaker 31:43 One thing I like doing a lot, um, is yes, using the outline-

Speaker 31:47 Mm

Speaker 31:47 ... and for like this example of like a 5,000-word report amongst like four people, like split it into different sections and then for each person covering, um, each section, it's up to you in how you want to, um, use AI, whether you use it or not at all. Um, and what I like to do personally is have a lot of like bullet points or just like, um, thought dumping into Claude and, um, working with it to kind of structure my thoughts-

Speaker 32:13 Mm-hmm

Speaker 32:13 ... of going from random like bullet points or, or one-off, um, phrases into more of an outline and then into paragraphs that I can kind of manually edit the wording of-

Speaker 32:24 Yeah.

Speaker 32:24 ... so it's more like my voice and tone. And then one thing I, I really like asking Claude actually, um, is to give the context of who is usually reviewing my work.

Speaker 32:37 Yeah.

Speaker 32:37 Um, for a job application, for example, it's like-

Speaker 32:39 Mm

Speaker 32:39 ... um, this, um-

Speaker 32:41 Nice

Speaker 32:41 ... VP or like recruiter.

Speaker 32:43 Mm.

Speaker 32:43 And then like in a class, it's like a professor or a TA, and ask like-

Speaker 32:47 Yeah

Speaker 32:47 ... "Hey, um, here are some criteria. Rate my work, uh, score out of 10," and I would do that maybe like two to three times.

Speaker 32:56 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 32:57 Um, and it would always give me reasons about like why it graded, like, uh, gave me a score-

Speaker 33:02 Mm-hmm

Speaker 33:03 ... a certain score.

Speaker 33:04 That's a good idea.

Speaker 33:04 Yeah.

Speaker 33:04 And what I could work and improve on. Um, a lot of times I like the feedback. Sometimes I think some of the feedback is a bit overzealous-

Speaker 33:13 Yeah. [laughing]

Speaker 33:13 ... or, or ridiculous.

Speaker 33:14 Yeah. [laughing]

Speaker 33:14 And in newer models like Sonnet and, and Opus, uh, 4.5, there's [laughing] , they're starting to, um, give like a bit of urgency whenever I ask it to evaluate my work too much. Almost like they're calling me out for overthinking.

Speaker 33:29 Mm.

Speaker 33:29 Mm.

Speaker 33:29 Um, after maybe like the third try of like-

Speaker 33:31 [laughing]

Speaker 33:32 ... this like evaluation, they'll be like, "It's ready to ship." Like-

Speaker 33:34 Yeah.

Speaker 33:34 Yeah. [laughing]

Speaker 33:35 "It's ready to go."

Speaker 33:35 Nice. Nice.

Speaker 33:36 Yeah.

Speaker 33:36 Are there AI slackers in group projects, like people who you can tell are not turning on their brains for the project?

Speaker 33:42 With their grubby AI hands. [laughing]

Speaker 33:44 [laughing]

Speaker 33:44 [laughing]

Speaker 33:45 I mean, definitely. I think something that is most helpful for me is like, obviously besides alignment and just like being very intentional when you're using AI, a lot of face-to-face time actually.

Speaker 33:55 Yeah.

Speaker 33:55 So what I like to do when I work on a group project is just block out a time chunk, sit down with my group-

Speaker 34:01 Mm-hmm

Speaker 34:01 ... and we just talk about it as we work through it.

Speaker 34:03 Mm.

Speaker 34:03 I think very often it's easy to feel like you're alone when you're just working on a pr- group project on yourself-

Speaker 34:08 Yeah

Speaker 34:08 ... which is what makes AI so tempting 'cause you're just like, "Oh, what if I just had someone write it for me?"

Speaker 34:13 Mm.

Speaker 34:13 But if we... we're all forced to, let's say, sit down and talk together, like if someone had a problem and work through it, I think that definitely helps a lot with the more human piece of working together.

Speaker 34:22 Yeah.

Speaker 34:22 Nice.

Speaker 34:23 Agreed.

Speaker 34:23 Okay, I'm gonna shift us to some rapid-fire questions. Um, so each should be like one to two sentences maximum.

Speaker 34:30 Okay.

Speaker 34:30 So, uh, my first question is, uh, what is a tip that you have for students right now who are navigating this whole world of AI in education?

Speaker 34:39 Learn it. Learn it. Learn how to use it. It's only to your advantage if you understand how it can optimize your career, or if you decide to be an entrepreneur, how it can optimize your business.

Speaker 34:51 If you're trying to learn new concepts or revising for exam, start a new project for every class you're taking in university. Um, try and paste in all the relevant files, and perhaps you already have existing conversations where, um, you've worked with Claude to go through certain assignments. And set the writing style to concise mode. Um, that's been most helpful for me to get a quick rundown in an efficient manner of like every concept, um, I need to cover for an exam.

Speaker 35:25 Substack and open source materials. There are so many cool people out there who know the best or newest ways to use different types of AI tools, and what I found most helpful is just soaking that up like a sponge and then applying it to my own projects.

Speaker 35:38 Nate Jones on Substack, he's pretty good.

Speaker 35:41 [laughing]

Speaker 35:41 Um, my tip would be, uh, use the styles. So, uh, you mentioned it briefly, the, the concise mode. The learning mode is fantastic. If you want to augment your own brain and augment your s- your own skills, use the learning mode. It will ask you questions back, be confident in your replies back, and you genuinely will get a better, better output than just leaning on, on, on Claude by itself.

Speaker 36:02 All right, next question. Um, how do you, in one sense, personally draw the line? Um, how do you draw the line between using AI as a tool and using AI as a crutch? How do you-- where do you find that balance?

Speaker 36:15 If I was in a room like this and I can't explain or defend what I've built-

Speaker 36:22 Yes

Speaker 36:22 ... even if someone asks, like, a super critical or specific question, I think that's the line where you kind of don't really understand what's going on.

Speaker 36:30 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 36:30 That's good.

Speaker 36:30 I totally resonate with that. It's a mix of, like, the ownership and intentionality. If you can't really explain what you've done-

Speaker 36:39 Mm-hmm

Speaker 36:40 ... along with also including what AI's role was in your work or what you're doing, then that's a line for me.

Speaker 36:46 Yeah. That's another line for me as well. Like, I should be able to explain it like I'm explaining to someone in fifth grade, um, whatever the output is, and I should be able to present it as well, even at a graduate level, anything that I prepared, so that's my line. Anything I create with AI, I should be able to give that lower level and that upper level explanation.

Speaker 37:09 Yeah, I agree with all of you. I think if you're not comfortable with, with the content that you've produced-

Speaker 37:14 Mm-hmm

Speaker 37:14 ... at the end of the day, like, is that really yours or are you just stealing that content from, from Claude? And so just feeling comfortable having some sort of, like, feeling of ownership that I've produced this work, that's the line for me. You know-

Speaker 37:29 Yeah

Speaker 37:29 ... there are, there, there have been times where I've submitted pieces which are, like, fully AI, and it's just like, "This is not gonna take me anywhere" [chuckles]

Speaker 37:37 Yeah

Speaker 37:37 ... at the end of the day. Uh, but you learn that, and I think that's the biggest thing with students is that it takes time to, to learn those feelings, and you kind of have to give it that time. Like, a student might have to submit something one hundred percent AI to realize that actually this was not beneficial for me.

Speaker 37:52 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 37:52 And I think universities need to be conscious of the fact that students will learn, and you've got to trust the students, right?

Speaker 37:57 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 37:57 At the end of the day, they will-- they wanna, you know, they, they live their own lives and, you know, you wanna set yourself up. You have that equality between students, um, and we'll figure it out. Like, we'll figure out what works, where it's good, where it's not.

Speaker 38:10 Yeah.

Speaker 38:10 Yeah.

Speaker 38:10 Like holding space. [laughing]

Speaker 38:13 I feel like that's a fantastic place to end. I, I just wanted to say, you know, the we'll figure it out mentality. This whole time I, I kind of expected this conversation to, to shift into doomerism- [laughing] ... um, and it, it never quite did. I think, like, a-a-all of you are, um, you know, thoughtfully positive about the future in a way that I, I think is really exciting and, and really, um, encouraging. Um, so thank you all for, for being here, for being honest. Um, and, uh, yeah, I really appreciated this conversation.

Speaker 38:39 Thank you.

Speaker 38:39 Thank you for having us.

Speaker 38:40 Thank you for having us. [outro music]