But this is what people said about the printing press. And the internet. Less effort to spread the memes. Has it been a net negative? Maybe in some respects. Can you stop it? Probably not.

I think we need to move past recall as the test itself, and tasks as the gate we judge academic achievement by. These were only ever an approximate measure, which is why we still have things like thesis defenses.

But imagine the final being an interview with an agent that is designed to probe your mastery? From my experience so far it seems we could measure much more directly the educational outcome and also accelerate the learning at the same time. But this assumes those involved want to learn, which widespread cheating suggests is not the case. Maybe the real answer is that we shouldn’t attempt to force curiosity but instead cultivate it where we find it, allowing those who reject it to be redirected until they find something engaging.

For education I can’t imagine. You might have to resort to actual discussion in classrooms instead of homework, with the accompanying need for both more educators and higher quality therein. Which isn’t going to be easy when education is fully under regulatory capture (at least for K-12 in the USA)