AI is the final blow for Mickey Mouse degrees

Damian Pudner has an interesting CAPX piece on what he sees as the inevitable failure of Tony Blair's ambition for 50% of young adults to enter higher education.


AI is the final blow for Mickey Mouse degrees

• Tony Blair's ambition for 50% of young adults to enter higher education has resulted in a bloated, expensive sector
• AI is threatening to demolish the economics of university education
• Taxpayers should not be expected to bail out failed institutions

Ever since Tony Blair set his ambition for 50% of young adults to enter higher education, successive governments have promoted university as the route to prosperity. The result is a bloated, expensive sector that has spent decades expanding on the assumption that more students, more degrees and more universities must somehow be a good thing.

The whole piece is well worth reading as another reminder of the lasting damage Tony Blair managed to cram into his time as UK Prime Minister. 

Politicians need to accept the Blair-era experiment of mass university education has run its course. AI could administer the final blow to institutions that have spent decades expanding their costs and inflating the price of their qualifications.

Universities have spent decades teaching economics while apparently believing its most basic principles don’t apply to them. They’re about to receive a rather expensive lesson.

Soft skills and qualifications

Civil Service goes back to in-person interviews amid flood of AI applications

The Civil Service is ramping up its use of face-to-face job interviews to sift candidates after a deluge of applications completed using AI chatbots.

Senior Whitehall bosses have ordered an overhaul of recruitment over concerns that the standard Civil Service application forms are easy to complete with chatbots.

Civil Service hiring managers report a remarkable increase in the number of applications filled out using ChatGPT, which can use online guides to complete the “perfect” form.

Applicants are also using AI to complete hundreds of applications for different roles, increasing the number of candidates each manager has to read at the early “paper sift” stage.

Since 2019, aspiring officials have been assessed using the “success profiles” model, which asks them to demonstrate their use of nine Civil Service “behaviours”, which include “seeing the big picture”, “making effective decisions” and “working together”.

More technical jobs may also require applicants to complete a test, but most roles are assessed mostly on soft skills and qualifications, and assessors are initially not even allowed to know which university a candidate attended.

Maybe we have a clue to Swamp Folk culture here.

seeing the big picture
making effective decisions
working together
soft skills and qualifications

It's weird though. The Civil Service generally projects a sense of -

not seeing the big picture

not making effective decisions
not working together

Presumably soft skills are mostly about evading responsibility, so qualifications may as well be solidly technical - it's worth a try. No climate science of course. 

The limits of human bandwidth

Whitehall chief: ‘For the first time in history, public service is no longer constrained by the limits of human bandwidth’

After 172 years in operation, the civil service is at a point where it needs to ‘reimagined arguably in the most fundamental way since its formation’, according to Antonia Romeo...

“AI presents us with the defining opportunities and challenges of this generation, and therefore also for the state,” she said. “The sheer scale of that change is difficult to fathom: AI’s capabilities continue to improve at an exponential rate. But what is clear is that, from policymaking to direct service delivery, the use of AI will radically rewrite all of the domains in which the civil service operates. The traditional model of the state administering siloed services to the public is no longer sufficient. We are now delivering services to a public with tech-enabled tools and capabilities unimaginable to previous generations.”

Whatever 'the limits of human bandwidth' are supposed to be, other than a chilly and unconvincing digital analogy, we are certain to have problems with government enthusiasm for AI. 

More and more aspects of daily life will be sucked into the Machine and the obvious consequence seems inevitable - the limits of citizen bandwidth will be reduced.

But we already know that.

Current and future civil servants were advised that “jobs will change”.

But, while “there are obvious areas where AI can help automate tasks.. [and] we need to equip civil servants with the most relevant frontier models for their work”, Romeo stressed that “AI won’t replace the need for human creativity, interaction, or decision making”.

Two Dealmakers

Burnham insists he can strike 'win-win' deal with EU

Andy Burnham has stated his belief that a "win-win" agreement can be struck with the EU, which could be "more like the Brexit that people thought they were voting for in 2016".

The Prime Minister indicated that restarting discussions on future UK-EU ties has assisted progress on several pacts ahead of next week’s summit.


Criminal rakes in so much in benefits he can make regular donations to Labour Party

A serial offender has admitted he rakes in so much in benefits that he can make regular donations to the Labour party...

His monthly income — equivalent to a taxable salary of £60,000 — was revealed as he was sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court after admitting burglary...

He also donates £100 a month to the Labour party, as well as to a donkey sanctuary and the Humane World for Animals charity, he said.

Gregor Fisher's Steak Pie

 

Even after all these years

Even after all these years, the language used at COP31 speeches still surprises me. How does an adult with a modicum of self respect stand at a lectern before global media and an audience of other adults yet emit the kind of twaddle we get every year? 

Where is the self-respect in this fairly typical Guardian piece? I've extracted some of the twaddle, but it's all twaddle and it's demeaning for anyone, any institution, any government taking it seriously. Yes it's grotesquely dishonest and many COP31 attendees won't take it seriously, but that's demeaning too. We are all lessened by it. 

‘The world we know is over’ without urgent climate action, leaders tell COP31

Failure to provide an overwhelming response to the climate crisis
the president of the embattled Marshall Islands has warned,
an impassioned speech at Cop31
overshooting the 1.5C Paris temperature target
waves eating away their shores
floods that destroy towns, schools and hospitals.
“It’s time to wake up,” said Heine
governments who had “not tried hard enough”
The UN tells us
we are heading for 2.6 degrees
Let me be plain: overshoot is not a new target

Finally we have this desperate nonsense from António Guterres -

“We need an extraordinary acceleration,” Guterres said. “Our planet is heating up. The clock is winding down. It’s make or bake time.

“Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs,” he added. “And that won’t happen on its own. The dinosaurs did not have a lobby – fossil fuels do.”

Burnham commits to something he can't alter and doesn't understand

Burnham commits to 2050 net zero target and working with others to reach theirs

Andy Burnham has said “Britain is back and ready to play its full part” in tackling climate change in a “new era” of leadership over the next decade as he addressed the UN Cop31 summit in Turkey.

Amid accusations that his Government is deprioritising the green agenda, the Prime Minister recommitted to hitting its 2050 net zero target and to working with other countries to reach theirs.

Attending the annual climate gathering for the first time as Prime Minister on Thursday, he warned that the “climate crisis is upon all of us now” after a “not normal” summer of extreme heat, wildfires and drought.

“The climate crisis is not a distant threat; it is upon us all now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere,” he said.

As far as Team Burnham is concerned, this isn't about the global climate and an imaginary catastrophe. By 2050, Burnham will be 80 years old and 2050 may as well be the next century or the realm of the Magic Faraway Tree. 

It's an opportunity to be seen up there on a global bandwagon which still rumbles along even though it only has three wheels. Nobody knows where it is going anyway, apart from more expense, futility and global racketeering.