Random thoughts

I read a story from New Mexico State University the other day about researcher Jin Ho Yun, a researcher studying the impact of artificial intelligence on student learning. I am intrigued by his conclusion that “students who rely on artificial intelligence systems such as ChatGPT or Gemini may develop more superficial and passive learning habits compared to those who conduct traditional online research.”

We’ve all had experience with AI, from using it to make inquiries about basic tasks, to helping us clarify something on our minds, to interactions in various aspects of the business of daily life. For journalists, the topic of how to use AI in our work is a much-debated topic.

I’ll leave that one alone for the purposes of this discussion, though I have spent a lot of time researching and working through the ramifications of AI in the newsroom.

At the time of our move to Las Cruces a few months ago, I contacted our internet service provider to move our service to our new home. The first contact took place in August, and I am still dealing with the fallout.

What I thought would be an easy phone call turned into an ongoing battle to get service at an address at which we no longer live turned off, and more critically, to have the company stop billing us for non-existent service at that address, and to get our new service up and running.

I should say that we do have fully functioning internet in our new home, but until I walked into a retail location for this provider, numerous phone calls could not resolve the issue back in Utah. I’ve still not received final confirmation that it has been resolved.

It wouldn’t concern me so much except for the provider’s attempts to bill me for a significant sum of money for that non-existent service and the inability to get a response related to the actual amount they think I owe or how I can pay it. It’s just a string of cryptic texts and emails informing me that we do owe them something.

The biggest problem is that this company has turned over a huge portion of its customer service to AI, and even when I went into the retail location, the rep there told me I had to go through the AI-controlled phone system to resolve the issue of payment.

I thought I was getting pretty good at asking the right questions as prompts to get AI to get me the right information, but I cannot figure out how to tell this AI service that I really just need to speak to a living, breathing human. Sometimes, customer service is best handled by people.

“We can design learning environments that treat AI as a collaborator rather than a crutch,” Yun said. “The goal isn’t to reject AI – it’s to use it strategically and match the tool to the task.” 

That’s great advice not just in the educational setting, but in all aspects of life in which we think AI is the answer. 

And another thing…

As a sportswriter, I focus my writing mostly on high school sports and community teams, but I can’t help but notice the big national stories. At the moment, I’m having a hard time with all things NCAA athletics.

Because it took so long for the NCAA to address the issue of athlete compensation, the organization has gone way overboard in changing rules to free up its participants. To me, the result is chaos.

While I can understand a coach’s desire to pursue other opportunities in his career, I cannot believe that Lane Kiffin honestly believed he could accept a job at a rival SEC school prior to his Ole Miss team participating in the college football playoff and have his now former employer just go ahead and let him stay on the job to spend the next month recruiting his staff and players to join him at LSU.

The NCAA has a mixed-up calendar for recruiting that puts everyone in a difficult position in terms of timing with coaching hires, but how can a coach who has asked his players to be “all in,” spend weeks publicly negotiating with another school? It’s not just Kiffin and it’s not just the coaches.

I have never seen so many high-profile midseason firings of coaches. The athletic departments seem to want to be first to axe their coach, even coaches with years of success before a tough partial-season run, so they can start poaching a coach from another program in-season.

Hearing people ask Congress to step in adds to the comedy of the whole situation to me. You think that dysfunctional group is going to fix this?

At some point, personal integrity needs to show up and save the day. How long before the rules are relaxed so much that a star player on a mediocre team hits the transfer portal so he can jump to Alabama or Ohio State midseason and have an opportunity to win a national championship?