So my kid had an assignment in school where the teacher told them to input all sorts of PII, including address, email, and phone number into AI to generate a resume. My kid refused (natch) and received a low grade because of it.
Fuckhead is about to learn a lot from this software engineer about policy, PII, and teaching kids poor internet hygiene. I suspect the school superintendent will feel the same way.
@FeloniousPunk why on earth not just use made up info? Just as easy and will teach about ai (which I guess we are stuck with so kids need to learn) and then could expand the lesson to include safety! (all IT lessons should focus on safety first for kids anyway)
Nov 13, 2026, 7:19 PM@Tattooed_Mummy Formatting a resume is hardly a job for a chatbot, though. the whole thing is silly.
@xinit @Tattooed_Mummy @FeloniousPunk Resumes are read by LLMs, so an LLM writing them makes perfect sense.
@Virginicus @xinit @Tattooed_Mummy @FeloniousPunk Having tried Cowrite's resume ai, can personally confirm it's shit and that writing by hand is not only more effective but the process of thinking through it helps me be concise and targeted in interviews.
So no, having it write is pretty shit.
And no, even just LLM eval isn't all that helpful and misses lots of keywords that simply reading through the advert and noting down manually does better on.
@wild_cube @Virginicus @xinit @Tattooed_Mummy @FeloniousPunk The process of thinking through what I'm writing about is what makes writing worth while to me. I'll sometimes write things up for myself just for the thought process. It's often hard work, but that's because thinking something through is hard but necessary work.
Outsourcing writing to a machine either means you don't think things through, which is really bad, or that the writing wasn't worth the bother, equally bad.
@oclsc @Virginicus @xinit @Tattooed_Mummy @FeloniousPunk Agreed, and it's the same process with coding. Boosters like to talk about how it's all planning and architecture blah blah blah but most of the time people figure this out through the process of actually doing the coding/writing. And if it's not worth it ... yep, already seen that lol, with hare-brained ideas from execs that make no real-world sense.
@wild_cube @Virginicus @xinit @Tattooed_Mummy @FeloniousPunk Quite so! I'm a programmer. The coding goes faster, and the result is better, when I plan things out in advance.
I don't often have the discipline to write a brief user manual (I'm a old-guard Unix guy so that means a traditional manual entry) before I leap into coding, but when I do, that makes the process better too.
A general case for all the above: if you can't explain something to someone else, you don't really understand it. Writing it down, even just for yourself, requires explaining it to someone else. At least if you take writing seriously.
And there, I think, is the root of the problem. Taking writing or coding or any other work seriously is hard, and people keep looking for short cuts. Too often the short cuts also short-cut the thinking and planning that make the result any good.
@Tattooed_Mummy @FeloniousPunk the kid took a principled stand by the sound of it, and bualadh bos to them for doing so.
@FeloniousPunk Holy fuck. Speaking as a teacher, this person is not only a dumbass but a liability.
@FeloniousPunk Following up on former comment: I taught technical communications at the college level. One of the curriculum requirements was resume and cover letter writing. And I specifically told my students to RESTRICT PII in both. The employer doesn't need your physical address until you are hired and you have to pay taxes. Do NOT include your picture. Consider getting a burner phone for job searching. Get an email just for job search correspondence, independent of a personal/school email, in case Workday gets hacked again.
BUT! Jeezus goddamn christ don't put your PII in an LLM!
Nov 13, 2026, 7:25 PM*HR has infected the chat*
@FeloniousPunk wtaf
@FeloniousPunk No wonder school systems get ransomwared all the time.
Nov 15, 2026, 12:51 PMRound of applause for good parenting.
I have a course proposal where I have students use the AI platform of their choice to make an anti climate change and pro environment poster for comparison.
That's the extent I would ever assign it and even now I'm rethinking it.
@chu @FeloniousPunk will they get bonus points if they point out the irony of using AI to dice climate change vs denialism?
Nov 15, 2026, 12:58 PMThe point of the assignment is to show them the bias of AI and the full extent of the bullshit.
The comparison discussion will make it clear. I'm not doing to give AI business.
@chu @FeloniousPunk ok sorry, probably could’ve guessed that based your server name
Nov 15, 2026, 5:13 PMI teach communications. I added this element because I thought it's important for this generation to understand how the tools work even if I'm against using them myself. I figure they need to understand comm strategies and how to navigate a world filled with this kind of bullshit. But they need to understand the bullshit first.
Nov 15, 2026, 8:51 PMI suspect the school superintendent will feel the same way.
Sadly, I'm not so sure they will.