i personally have no problem with people including AI gen’d code without attribution so long as they stand by it and own the consequences of what they submit. after all, we all know by now how much cajoling and insisting it takes to get any AI gen’d code to do what it’s actually requested and intended to do.
the only exception being contexts that explicitly prohibit it.
i got my first industry job through interview performance, but in later job transitions my university affiliation ended up playing a major role because certain employers are extremely focused on certain feeder schools, at least for periods of their existence often through founder bias or because it buys a certain kind of harmony based on shared experience and shared world-view.
has this story not been told many times before in scifi icluding gibson’s “neuromancer” and “agency”? agi is when the computers form their own goals and are able to use the api of the world to aggregate their own capital and pursue their objectives wrapped inside webs of corporations and fronts that will enable them to execute within today’s social operating system.
while the model companies all compete on the same benchmarks it seems likely their models will all converge towards similar outcomes unless something really unexpected happens in model space around those limit points…
I wouldn't be surprised if those undeleted chats or some inferred data that is based on it is part of the gpt-5 training data. Somehow I don't trust this sama guy at all.
maybe those who fight for it have better information.
for example they realize that once they achieve tenure, the amount of work truly required to retain the for-life annuity is risibly low so they can go on to do just about whatever else they want or “consult” for extra dollars as needed.
My workload has only steadily increased once I got tenure. The nature of the work changed, but the "Kick back, relax and enjoy your zero effort forever job" is a fantasy of people who don't actually know what they're talking about.
i’ve personally known a number of tenured professors who’ve systematically shirked all responsibility after their tenure event. they’ve been willing to live as semi-pariahs within their peer group though.
even when required to teach they simply repeat classes they’ve taught many times before making no effort to optimize for reviews.
i don’t doubt your experience but i wonder how much it has to do with not wanting to endure your colleagues’ and departments’s disapproval vs actual threat to employment.
and fwiw, i’m not saying it has to be this way just that it can be this way due to the structure of the system. similarly there are many corporate situations in which one can scrape by for extended periods of time, but there is rarely a “for life” clause. even so, it hasn’t prevented the university system from helping to catalyze all the amazing discoveries we all benefit from in society every day.
fwiw, i agree with most of the points in @Fomite’s response below. the people i’ve known fall into a perverse version of his “ego” point.
they felt that when they got tenure they “won” and their “ego” was strong enough to allow them to ignore the disapproval of their peers for not doing the conventionally expected things. they felt that they knew better in their hearts what the discipline truly needed and that the rat-race of establishment approval wasn’t it. so they turned inward. which is not necessarily the healthiest path imo.
I mean, there are definitely people who coast, because there are people everywhere who coast.
But the vast majority of tenured professors I know don't do so, for one of the following reasons:
- I can't get fired, but I also don't need to get paid. My position has a non-trivial soft money component to it, and it's actually low for my field, which ranges from 50% to 100% soft money depending on the institution. A double-digit pay cut is motivation for most people.
- There are still promotions to be had, and those promotions are really the only way to get a raise beyond cost of living increases. At my institution there are two steps beyond Associate Professor with Tenure, and both of them are not obtained by phoning it in.
- Ego. It's hard to understate this one. Most academics are smart, determined people. There are other easier, more lucrative jobs. But there's a sense of purpose and ego that channeled them to the career they're in. Said ego is usually not fed by being in the doldrums. That's not how you get awards and invited to talks, and recruited elsewhere, etc.
Sure, the stick of "You could get fired" isn't there, but there are also ways to make a tenured professor whose coasting's life less pleasant. But even if not, I don't think it's nearly as common as the popular imagination (or this thread) think it is. Most people I know only really take their foot of the gas in the last few years of their careers, often well past retirement age.
my kid attends a school in which they’ve given up on lectures. each “class” is basically a proctored mini self learning test from a booklet that’s a mix of content and exercises to work through individually. a teacher is around to answer questions and grade the booklets.
many kids fail to make the transition from spoon-feeding to self-learning, but those who do then begin to realize that they can go as fast as they are able and need not follow the herd. they also develop a strong sense of whether they’ve understood each booklet or not. it leads to a competition for learning fast AND well because there are also traditional proctored checkpoint exams from time to time plus kids do the ordinary standardized tests to calibrate.
i feel it’s an excellent system that prioritizes learning over conformity though it is obviously not a candidate for mass adoption because many kids wash out after making no progress for a while.
the only exception being contexts that explicitly prohibit it.