From the latest story about how LLMs are destroying higher education:

Lee explained to me that by showing the world AI could be used to cheat during a remote job interview, he had pushed the tech industry to evolve the same way AI was forcing higher education to evolve. “Every technological innovation has caused humanity to sit back and think about what work is actually useful,” he said. “There might have been people complaining about machinery replacing blacksmiths in, like, the 1600s or 1800s, but now it’s just accepted that it’s useless to learn how to blacksmith.”

If only this 19-year-old Columbia suspendee had, at a minimum, done what he apparently did for every assignment and asked ChatGPT for information: “When were machines developed that could assist in metalworking, and have they made the crafts of smithing and metalwork obsolete?” But even asking that question — writing that prompt — would have required a measure of historical literacy, nay, a sliver of interest in history at all.

This (now former) student is an especially egregious offender, worthy indeed of becoming the framing device in a breathless New York Magazine story, but there is nothing remarkable about what he represents: it is the characteristic disease of “move fast and break things” culture. All that is prized is “innovation,” because innovation makes money fast and lets the innovator get out before he (and it is usually a he) is held accountable to clean up the wreckage. The destroyers do not understand, and do not want to understand, the things they are out to destroy.

Addendum: James Scott, of course, had the destroyers' number.