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Is College Still Worth It? How AI, Reading Habits, and Gen Z Are Rewriting Education and Work

Episode 48 · 5 November 2025 · 47 min

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Is College Still Worth It? How AI, Reading Habits and Gen Z Are Rewriting Education and Work

Is college still worth it? Randy Lorensen and Dr. John Oberg dig into new data on degrees, jobs and reading, then hear from three students, from high school to the end of college, about how they actually use AI in school and the job hunt.

Is college still worth the cost? Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen explore the shifting value of higher education, the rise of AI in classrooms and careers, and the changing ways young people learn. They’re joined by three students—from high school to college—who share how they’re using AI to study smarter, navigate busy lives, and prepare for a rapidly evolving job market. The conversation also dives into new research on declining reading habits, AI’s impact on professional roles, and what the future of learning might look like.

From professors debating AI in the classroom to students using ChatGPT as a digital tutor, this episode offers a multigenerational look at how education, technology, and opportunity are being redefined in real time.

AI and College Students, Jobs Most Exposed to AI, and Why Americans Are Reading Less

What you'll discover:

  • What a new Pew survey says about whether a degree is needed for a well-paid job
  • Why college is still a network, and the case for the liberal arts
  • Which jobs are most exposed to AI, and the unemployment rate for new grads
  • Are Americans reading less, or just reading differently?
  • How students use AI as a tutor, where schools draw the line, and AI checkers
  • The entry-level job market: 150 applications and no replies

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: Randy and John hold down the fort (Anthony is out)
  • [00:28] Pew Research: fewer Americans think a degree is needed for a well-paid job
  • [02:32] Who you know: college as a network, and the false binary
  • [03:40] Classical education and the value of the liberal arts
  • [05:28] Did undergrad teach us how to think?
  • [07:17] Is college worth it for every job?
  • [08:08] Microsoft research (via Fortune): which jobs are most exposed to AI
  • [09:04] The most and least exposed jobs, and why expertise still matters
  • [11:38] Unemployment for recent college grads
  • [13:36] The Wall Street Journal on Americans reading less for fun
  • [16:07] Reading vs. podcasts, and the novels that changed Randy's view
  • [21:00] Break: Premium Cabinets business opportunity
  • [21:36] Meet the students: John's son Vance, Randy's son Dylan and family friend Cole
  • [23:10] How they use AI for notes, textbooks and test prep
  • [26:42] What schools allow, and AI checkers
  • [27:44] AI as a tutor that takes unlimited follow-up questions
  • [31:14] The same learner with more time, and AI that learns how you learn
  • [33:00] AI for everyday curiosity, and counting macros
  • [34:42] School AI policies: every teacher is different
  • [37:25] Writing papers: where AI is frowned upon
  • [38:12] Have teachers raised their expectations?
  • [39:08] AI, robots and the fear of jobs becoming obsolete
  • [39:57] The entry-level job market: 150 applications and no replies
  • [41:54] Is anyone talking about this in high school?
  • [42:43] AI tools for job hunting
  • [43:54] How fast it has changed, and where they see AI going
  • [46:24] Takeaways: AI is everywhere, but no one's being asked to do more

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About this episode's guests

Randy and John are joined by three students: John's son Vance, a third-year college student studying international relations; Randy's son Dylan, a fifth-year college student; and family friend Cole, a high school student.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels. It hasn't been proofread, and the time markers follow the raw recording: they run about 10 seconds behind the published audio in the first half and about 35 seconds behind after the break.

Randy Lorensen [00:01]: Listeners, thank you for joining Tales of Abundance today. As always, I'm here with Dr. John. We're missing Dr. Marino is gone today, but the two of us, guess, are holding down the fort. So good afternoon, You're doing good. Well, let's start in current topics. And I was going to share just a headline, and this is from Pew Research. And it is a... Oops.

Dr. John Oberg [00:14]: Hey there, how are you?

Randy Lorensen [00:31]: Gotta be smarter than the thing there. All right. Is college worth it is the question. And the article, I won't read the whole article to everybody, but the real big takeaways, John, is four in 10 Americans say a college degree is not too or not at all important in order to get a well-paid job. And I mean, wow, that's, you know, I mean, that number is way up.

Dr. John Oberg [00:53]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [01:00]: from what it used to be, right? So.

Dr. John Oberg [01:02]: It's a big turnaround from a generation ago for sure,

Randy Lorensen [01:04]: Yeah, I mean, definitely if we go up here, I mean, I found this even more interesting. But 29 % of adults say that it's not worth it. 47 % worth it, but only if you don't have to take out student loans or take out loans. And then only 22 % think it's worth it if you have to take out loans. I I don't know exactly what the number was. a couple of decades ago, but it was a lot higher than that. So.

Dr. John Oberg [01:35]: Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, I've got friends that. their kids are through college and say they wouldn't do it again, they wouldn't send their kids to college. And I think that what you get out of college matters, right? And so I think there was a time where if you wanted a certain white collar job, you had to have a college degree to get that job. That was a thing for a time in our society. And I think that right now we're seeing a big shift in the landscape. But I do think there's a really huge value to college as well, and that is in the networks. think there's two really important skills that I think people should learn in college. the ability to think critically and to learn how to learn for a lifetime. And the second is to make networks of people that are going to help you personally and professionally in your career. I'm still, you know. Surprise isn't the word, but it's still notable to me that, know, I'm, gosh, 30 years into my career, and there are so many things that happen in my career as a function of who I know, not what I know. And college is the place that lots of people learn how to interact and build your network of people, and that's a really important skill set to have. So I think if people just kind of poo poo college and make this kind of binary choice, I think it's a... You know, it's a false dichotomy. It's not one or the other. There's some nuance here. And so is the college education as important as it needed to be in the past? Maybe not. Are there topics that I think we're failing to give children, like how to manage money in personal finance situations? Yes, I think that's a problem. Are we teaching kids how to network for the future? No, I think we could and should do better than that. Are we spending lots of time on some subjects that may teach kids how to learn but don't explicitly teach kids how to learn? Yes, I think that's problematic. And I think that we're leaning too much into what I would call kind of a classical educational model. Not classical with a big C, like classic education. That's an actual term of art in education. But are we leaning into the liberal arts maybe too much without knowing why they're valuable? We do have to have a reimagining, but poo-pooing college and saying, not worth it today, like I'm not ready to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Randy Lorensen [03:55]: mean, we've been talking a lot about AI. mean, how long before AI is able to teach? Again, I'm not saying it can bring all the wisdom of a professor and all the different things that, you know, that human touch brings, but just from a teaching standpoint, how long before it's better?

Dr. John Oberg [04:13]: I mean, you're saying just teaching as if teaching is only the information. I think that's where the real miss is. I think that a huge part of the teacher's job is to help people navigate group dynamics and the conflict that happens when they have those groups and getting people to problem solve through different projects at the collegiate level and helping people to, you know, putting... students in positions, they've got to learn differently and learn new ways of learning. And so I just, don't subscribe to the idea that if you can pass a test by finishing the math problem or, you know, that you have learned at the college level in the way that we want. And so I just, think that that used to be super clear, I believe, and executed 30, 40 years ago. And we got to this idea, not everyone. But there are people that are like, well, if I know the topic, that's enough. And I think that AI is going to make the topic as unimportant as the kind of basic math equation like the calculator has. I think we've got to elevate our thinking about what we're educating people to do and how they think.

Randy Lorensen [05:15]: Well, I love earlier what you said about teaching people how to think or how to learn, right? Let me ask, I don't think I learned that when I was in my undergrad. mean, you've taken, you have a lot more college than I do, right? But go back to your undergrad. Was your, did you, do you feel you learned that in your undergrad?

Dr. John Oberg [05:20]: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's some places I really, really did and there's some places I really, really didn't. Like one of the things I love about the scientific method when I was a biology student was they teach you the scientific method, which is really important. My experience broadly with engineers is that engineers have a very deliberate way of approaching problems that is systematic. And so I think that there are some things you can do to gain problem solving and learning methodologies that are really helpful. I didn't do a whole lot in the world of philosophy, but I have friends who studied philosophy who bring a particular approach to conversations and problems that I think, from my perspective, it's very interesting and useful as a way of learning. so I do think that the undergraduate experience in many cases does a nice job of that. I think there are a lot of classes where I was there to check a box. and those classes were not useful. I don't think they were helpful. I think colleges are doing a much better job today than when I was in college the first go-around at teaching people about the importance of learning and indoctrinating students into the college campus, which I think is probably helpful. So I do think a lot more of that is happening, but I do think there's a lot of college we should really rethink too.

Randy Lorensen [06:56]: One other question before we move to the next topic. In your companies, like you work, you own or partner in a bunch of companies, you advise a bunch of other companies, how many of them or what percentage do you think require a college degree? Or is it by job? Is it maybe some of them, you know, do for this job, but not for that job, I'm sure?

Dr. John Oberg [07:16]: Yeah, the world I work in is probably more than not because I work in healthcare and so I think more often than not a college degree is in some cases, strictly speaking, necessary clinically, right? In some cases, highly encouraged and in some cases, limiting for people who want to move up the ladder still because there's that kind of same old school, like that's a way of evaluating people. I do think in the future, companies are gonna get more... more intelligent about the way they view that degree situation. I think it's really hard to make it pencil out. Like going to get a $200,000 education to be an elementary school teacher, like I just don't know from a financial perspective if that makes a lot of sense.

Randy Lorensen [08:03]: Okay. All right. Let's move to the next topic. This is a Fortune article that you had shared and you want to talk about this? The Microsoft Research,

Dr. John Oberg [08:13]: Yeah, and really it was just about what jobs were exposed to AI. And this is about 40 jobs that are most exposed to AI. There was a research study a couple of years ago that came out about 700 different jobs and how AI impacted them. The thing that grabbed me here is just, you know, I think people should be thoughtful about ways AI is gonna impact jobs, where it's gonna help, where it's gonna hurt, what jobs are at risk. And I just think people, if they're trying to manage their career, like, you know. well, they should think about what it means for them. You know, in the same way that, you know, people who were making buggy whips a hundred years ago were needed to be thoughtful about how they were going to apply the trait of making buggy whips. And maybe they needed to change that particular skill set into something that was tangential, but more appropriate or applicable for the future.

Randy Lorensen [08:59]: All right, what jobs are the ones that are gonna take the longest or which ones are the most exposed, which ones are the least exposed part of the story?

Dr. John Oberg [09:08]: You know if I were working like in white-collar jobs where it's highly rote where you're doing it things over and over again like kind of low-level legal work paralegals and Title work in the legal world I'd be I'd be concerned I'd be concerned if I were in places where it's just You know interns used to have a lot of jobs where they're just doing a lot of data Gathering and data entry and then kind of low low level analytical work I think those are things that are concerning. I have some real concerns that if we don't teach people though how to be high level domain experts, if we just cut out those low level jobs, we're not developing the future of domain expertise. And I don't think that AI is going to be as effective as it could be without that high expertise user driving the charge. So I do think there's some potholes we're going to bump into here along the way.

Randy Lorensen [10:02]: Yeah, was just a couple of days ago, I was listening to somebody talk about on chat GPT, they are currently working on a new app product or whatever they want to call it. And they're targeting the banking industry and they are teaching it all of the things that that junior and even mid-level bankers need to know with the plan of in the next couple of years, replacing all of those jobs via, you know, like internal, like a specific chat GPT. I think they're I think their roadmap is they're going to keep doing that. They'll just go from industry to industry looking to where they can do that.

Dr. John Oberg [10:39]: And I think it's really, I think that's smart. It's good. I think that, you know, I've heard a lot of people though, talking about like healthcare. And so I think it's great to use AI to kind of move forward the healthcare conversation, but you still have things that where experts are needed, you know, and I think that there are some parts of law and taxation and where you still need the experts to come in and check over the top. But I'll tell you this, I'm in the middle of a legal thing right now where we're doing some contracting and the contracting is radically reduced because my lawyer exposed an AI. agent that his law firm uses to reduce fees for his clients and I am really grateful for that and I spend you know pairs of dollars per month using that legal AI and it keeps a little tab of how many dollars I've saved and it's all of his stuff feeding me the information and I'm really grateful for that.

Randy Lorensen [11:26]: fantastic. love that he put his arms around it. So better serve it. Yeah. All right. Let's move here. This kind of goes with the first topic a little bit, but this is a chart. What was this? What is this from? This is from the visual capitalist here. Give them their flowers for this. But, you know,

Dr. John Oberg [11:30]: Yeah, that's great. Randy, have you been searching for aura rings lately?

Randy Lorensen [11:47]: No, I have one though. They're probably telling me mine's old and I haven't worn it in year or so. They're probably telling me I need a new one, yes.

Dr. John Oberg [11:54]: I hope it's AI driven. The advertising is AI driven, I hope.

Randy Lorensen [11:57]: Probably. unemployment for new college graduates in this chart for people that are just listening, you see the unemployment go up in over the years, right? And it's for it starts in 1990. So the last was at 35 years and it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down. And currently it's at about 4 percent. But if there's a red line that shows for recent college graduates what it is and If you look at it, it's significantly less. And at all times, until very recently, it was less for recent college grads. And now it's up to 4.8%. So what, 20 % more or higher. And it looks like it's getting further away, not tightening the gap.

Dr. John Oberg [12:49]: Yeah, not surprisingly, if you graduated from college, you had a lower unemployment rate, but man, when did it flip? It flipped in 2020... two, three?

Randy Lorensen [12:57]: Looks like, I mean, it kind of looks like it flipped, yeah, like right here. What's that 21, 22, I think.

Dr. John Oberg [13:04]: Yes, 21, 22, 23. I mean, that's, I mean, super interesting.

Randy Lorensen [13:07]: But really since COVID, I mean, since 2020 is where it kind of, they went up together and then, yeah, flipped it. So, I mean, this is, you know, this is concerning. And later in the show, we're going to have three young gentlemen on that, you know, are in that, that we're going to be talking more about, you know, how they think about the jobs in the future and AI and some of that. But let's go over here. This is a Wall Street Journal.

Dr. John Oberg [13:13]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [13:37]: that wasn't the one I wanted to show here, sorry. But this is a similar article, but from ABC News, and I found copies of this in the New York Times and universities, but this is just Americans spend less time reading for fun and more times on screens. And I actually, when I started looking into this, I found three different studies that all had slightly different takes, but the conclusion to all of them is people are reading less, right? If you know here it says it's dropped 40 % in the last 20 years from a University of London and University of Florida, you know, study. mean, what about 3 % a year is how much it's been dropping. So, I what are your takeaways on this, John? What do you think the impact of that is?

Dr. John Oberg [14:24]: I'm just, I'm pretty deeply curious about this and what it means. think like, I wonder if like percent of time reading is the right metric or if it's percent of time learning, right? Because at the end of the day, if people are spending 20 % less time reading, but overall they're spending plus 5 % learning or let under negative 5 % learning, think those are like, I always wonder like, what's the right metric? And so I don't mean. I read a lot, I enjoy reading, but I also read on my screen. So how do you count that? So as a scientist, I have a lot of questions about how it's being measured. Let's assume for a moment that it's less reading more screens and learning time is equal. Cool, we're changing media. That's interesting to me. How does that impact the brain, dopamine, and screen addiction? That's concerning to me. If we're spending more time learning, which...

Randy Lorensen [14:55]: Right. Right.

Dr. John Oberg [15:17]: I would say that I don't know that that's my intuitive reaction that we are doing that naturally, but it's possible. I think my biggest concern is that things like that indicate an opportunity for a widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, and that's one of my biggest concerns. We've got to make sure that we're doing things that create an equal starting place for people. A friend of mine... He was really smart and he said you can create an equal starting place or an equal ending place and I'm a real big believer in equal starting places. And so I would want to understand that and how that creates a gap in starting places and then make sure we level that playing field for people so that we have better opportunity across the board.

Randy Lorensen [16:01]: Yeah, I'm like you, I'm curious, you know, cause I know myself, I'm definitely reading less, but I spend more time listening. If you combine the podcast time and sometimes if I'm watching something on YouTube, I think it's actually increased. Like to me, being able to just be at the gym and listening to a podcast and learning or a book on tape, you know, I don't know. wonder, I wonder if audio books are included as well. Right. So I wonder a lot about that.

Dr. John Oberg [16:30]: Look, and you and I are both writing a book and we both do a podcast. It's a heck of a lot easier for you and I to put podcast content out. I think that, I think this is true for both of us, correct me if I'm wrong. The content we put out in the podcast, there's a lot more like fact checking and we're a lot looser with how the content goes out. And there's a lot more speculation in my books. Like it's, it's well researched and we, you know, it is painstakingly written, even using AI to outline and do research. It's still a very, you know, to get to, to write a good book, it takes a minute, right? And so I think that reading my guess is that I'm mostly getting higher quality material than with podcasting, if I'm the author at least.

Randy Lorensen [17:14]: Yeah, I think there's something about reading a book that still does something to the brain. And I think we learn better and we travel. I think it even helps with different perspectives and empathy to some extent, right? Because I remember one time I read a book called The Hajj. I can't think of the author, but the same guy that wrote Exodus. Exodus was about the settlement of Israel. And he wrote. He was a Jewish guy and he wrote from the Jewish perspective, but he wrote this book called The Hajj that was from the Muslim perspective. And it was fantastic. Cause when I got done reading and I'm like, I have a couple of Muslim friends and I actually understand like things they did that to me were just weird. I realized when I got done, that's just cultural. That's how they're, you know, they're raised. And you know, like it just, it's different, right? And I think I gained a lot of empathy out of. just reading that book and understanding it from that perspective.

Dr. John Oberg [18:14]: Yeah, I read a book like that. It was historical fiction. And if you know me, you know that I don't read historical fiction ever. But this was a book about, you know, how Masons built massive structures in like, you know, a thousand AD to 1200 AD through generations of a family. And it kind of walked you from father to son to son. I think it was two or three generations that took you through and had you kind of really into that experience for that time period. And it was, it was like a thousand page book, which again I don't read thousand page books, but it really drew me in and had me have an experience that gave me, and I didn't take it as like a history lesson, I wasn't like well now I know history, but it did give me an experience about that time period that really opened my eyes to a new way of thinking and so I think that a well-written book can do that and it I think that's hard to do in a two-hour movie or even a you know 20 part TV series and so I hope that this doesn't lead us to you know reading being put to the side and I hope it doesn't lead to a place where the people that can have time to afford to read become a widening gap again between the haves and have-nots.

Randy Lorensen [19:23]: Was that book a Ken Follett book or Ken Fillet book? don't know how you say it. Pillars of the Earth or something.

Dr. John Oberg [19:27]: I know how say it either. think it was, was it pillars of the words or pillars of time? Yeah, was definitely pillars of something. I'm gonna look it up, hold on.

Randy Lorensen [19:32]: Yes. Yeah, good. But he's one of my favorite authors. used to read him a lot. I haven't read his stuff in years. So yeah, I was curious. All right. Because when you said that, was like, I think that's what he's talking about.

Dr. John Oberg [19:41]: Pillars of the earth. Yes, it is and I wouldn't have remembered it unless you had actually I think that's what it was and so Yeah, but again

Randy Lorensen [19:51]: All right, he has some other stuff you'd probably like that would fit into your spy, you know, that type of area. yes, Bang Bang, Bang Bang, shoot them up. He's got a whole bunch of those that are very good and a couple of spy books. Two of my favorite books I've ever read was his, A Place Called Freedom was a fantastic one that they read several years ago. All right, well, I think this is just worth keeping an eye on, right? People are reading less and...

Dr. John Oberg [19:58]: My wife calls those bang bang shoot ups, Randy. They're just like, yeah, yeah.

Randy Lorensen [20:20]: What are they learning? Is it making us dumber? I I guess that's really the question, right?

Dr. John Oberg [20:25]: Well, we're going to get into it now in a couple minutes, right? We've got kids right in middle of it, high school and college, late high school, middle of college, end of college. And we're going to hear from Cole and Van and Dylan, what's the lived experience right now? Not to say their lived experience is the same as everyone, but I think there is some representation. It'll be interesting to dive in with them here in a minute.

Randy Lorensen [20:30]: Right. Well, let's go to break so we can come back and talk about exactly that. So listeners, we'll be right back with Cole, Dylan and Vam.

Randy Lorensen [21:01]: Listeners, welcome back to Tales of Abundance. As always, I'm here with Dr. John Oberg. And today we have three very special guests, Johnson Van, my son Dylan, and a mutual friend of ours, Lou's son Cole, that John and I have both known for, I don't know, a few decades, I guess. And we've been talking a lot about AI lately. And it's been John and Anthony and I, and you're getting the 50, 60 year old man perspective. We thought we would take some people that are in the middle of it. using it in school, in college, getting, you know, nearing the job market to see what they're saying about it and what they're thinking about it. So quickly, do each one of just introduce yourselves real quickly. guess, Van, we'll start with you.

Vance [21:46]: I'm Vance. I'm a third year at [university]. I major in international relations and I've been using a ton of AI for work in school recently.

Randy Lorensen [21:56]: Okay, and we'll dig into more about what that is. Dylan, you wanna tell a little bit about yourself?

Dylan [22:00]: Hi there, my name is Dylan. I am a student at [university]. I'm studying kinesiology and like Vance, I've been using AI a lot more in the past couple years.

Randy Lorensen [22:13]: Call.

Cole [22:14]: Hi, my name is Cole. I'm a 16 year old and I go to [high school] and like them I've been using AI pretty much in the past year and a half or so for homework.

Randy Lorensen [22:26]: Okay, great. Van, tell us, you said you've been using it a lot. How are you using it? Tell us a little bit about how you're using it what you find useful.

Vance [22:35]: I find it extremely useful for helping me prepare for exams. That's probably one of my main reasons I use it. I will use it to take notes. I will use it to relay notes and simplify notes and also just simplify textbooks and more so just aspects of learning. It's a really good tool to simplify everything, explain it in a different way, a way that helps me learn better.

Randy Lorensen [22:57]: Okay, can we dig into that for a minute, Van? said you have it, okay, take notes. Do you have it, you record and then put the transcript in or how do you do that?

Vance [23:09]: Yeah, so you can either record or put a transcript in. Some professors will automatically have a recording and you can take that transcript and just have it put into AI and it simplifies it down to just a few bullet points.

Dr. John Oberg [23:25]: Are they doing that for live classes too, Van, where you have someone recording in a live classroom?

Vance [23:30]: There's usually, that's where they come from.

Dr. John Oberg [23:33]: Cool. What AI are you using for that? I'm curious, what's the tech?

Vance [23:38]: It's usually just Gemini or the OpenAI, Chachibit.

Randy Lorensen [23:44]: What about you said preparing for tests? Like how do you use it to prepare for a test? Give us an example or tell listeners a little bit how you do that.

Vance [23:50]: Yeah, so if my Spanish professor, he will email us out sometimes before exams little study guides, but there are times where he doesn't do that or he gets to do that. And so I will take what we do from the homework and I will put that into AI and I will have it. I will tell it, hey, I have a test that I am studying for. I need a study guide and it'll print one right out.

Randy Lorensen [24:18]: I love that, that's smart. That's smart, so.

Dr. John Oberg [24:20]: Have you tried talking to it in Spanish?

Vance [24:23]: No.

Dr. John Oberg [24:24]: That'd be pretty cool. I haven't tried either.

Randy Lorensen [24:27]: It works. I said something in Spanish the other day. I don't remember what it was. It was broken Spanish. it was my answering service. And I tested to see if it'd work in Spanish. And it wouldn't respond in Spanish, but it understood me. So it at least does that. So Dylan, tell us about how you've been using it.

Cole [24:32]: Okay.

Dr. John Oberg [24:41]: fun. It's cool.

Cole [24:45]: . .

Dylan [24:46]: I use it to help me save time a lot. A lot of my classes want me to read very long articles, analyze them, so I'll have ChatGPT do that for me. It'll give me like a simplified version, and if I need more, I can always ask it to do more or less, but I currently work about 30 hours a week on top of an internship, juggling social events and school, so. I would spend hours reading through those usually, but then in the last year and a half when it got really popular, I started taking advantage of that. And now I have a lot more time on my hands to do stuff like this or get a workout in and stuff like that. So it really just helps me analyze stuff, get things moving a lot quicker. And it helps me understand stuff because I can highlight stuff and be like, can you explain this in a simpler way? Can you explain this at like a five year old? And so all that really helps me move through school faster.

Cole [25:16]: Okay.

Dr. John Oberg [25:42]: Are there things your teachers want you or not want you doing with AI?

Dylan [25:47]: They don't want us putting the entire assignment in and just saying, do that for obvious reasons, but they do encourage it. But they also have made it known that they don't want us using it just to complete an assignment. They want us to use it to understand it, but they have made, they've made comments on the saying that like we've gotten a few, like a few students that have turned in something completely AI. So they don't want us using it for that, but.

Cole [26:04]: Okay.

Dylan [26:17]: helping us, they definitely agree with.

Randy Lorensen [26:20]: John, you teach at USC and I know you encourage AI to some extent, but do you use tools to search if people send stuff in and it's too AI or too much AI? Do you use tools for that?

Dr. John Oberg [26:31]: Yeah, for sure. We, yeah, we definitely have tools that search that on the backend, right? That tell you how much AI has been used. And in addition to all of the like regular checks where you go through for plagiarism, there's AI checking as well. Now we see how much of this likely came from an AI. And then, you know, it's also really obvious when someone has written something, if they're talking about it in class, you can oftentimes figure out quickly where they are.

Randy Lorensen [26:59]: All right, Cole, tell us how you're using it.

Cole [27:02]: Mine is very similar to Dylan in a way that I kind of use it to save time pretty much. So I'm a student athlete and I practice four times a week and like Dylan said on top of like the whole social aspect of it and everything and I'm involved in multiple clubs. And I go to a Catholic high school so instead of the typical six classes we have seven because there's a religion class and that's probably my most work intense class. So I use it just kind of as like a time saver. Like if I have like these little busy worksheets or just like things that teachers give us to do, like, cause there's no set lesson plan for the day, I'll use it on things like those. And especially in my classes, like right now I'm taking AP chemistry and I have a really hard time with that class. And instead of like having to go to like extra office hours that I don't have time for since I would have to get to practice, I can just on my own time instead, like, go to, I use Perplexity AI, I can just go to that and say like, explain this to me and then like, once it gives me the full rundown, I can like ask as many follow up questions as I want. can be like, well, why did this happen? Why'd you do this? So yeah, I would say I use it majority of the time as a time saver, but when it comes to certain classes that I don't have time to make office hours for, I can use it to kind of just dive deeper for those specific subjects.

Dr. John Oberg [28:28]: Do you think Cole, do you think you learn the same as before using AI? you learn better, worse, different?

Cole [28:35]: I would say it's pretty much the same. almost just gives me more time to learn because before AI, I wouldn't be able to go to office hours because I practice pretty much right after school. So I would have to run to practice, but, and then I wouldn't be able to go talk to my teacher or learn anything other than a YouTube video where obviously you can't ask follow up questions. So AI kind of, I'd say I'm the same learner, but it just gives me more time in a day to learn. Like now I can like, while I'm eating dinner at like 8 p.m. when my teachers aren't working or answering their emails, I can use it to like break down the subjects that I don't understand.

Randy Lorensen [29:13]: You know, I was thinking similar when you were talking about using it as a tutor. Does it make it easier to learn or more interesting and that you can, it can package the information better or in a less dry way or do you do anything with that?

Cole [29:27]: I wouldn't say that it necessarily makes the learning more interesting. It does make it a little bit more digestible at times because like, Sorry, I don't know if I'm cut out or not, but... Sorry, did I just cut out?

Randy Lorensen [29:45]: You did, you said it makes it more digestible at times.

Cole [29:47]: Yes, sometimes it'll make it like a little bit more digestible in the sense that like, whereas teachers like sometimes they'll only know one way to explain it because that's how they've taught their classes for years and years. AI can go into a bunch of different ways or maybe link videos or say, think about it like this, maybe try this. So I would say AI, not that it's a better teacher than any of my teachers, but that sometimes it can give me a bunch of different tools to learn something instead of just the one straight and narrow way.

Dr. John Oberg [30:20]: And so I asked a similar question to Dylan and Van, like does it make learning either more enjoyable or do you think you're a better learner or are you concerned that you're not a better learner in this new environment?

Dylan [30:34]: Sorry.

Cole [30:37]: Yeah, I agree. I think it's a mix. think that it, I think I'm the same learner in a sense. I guess I just get to be a learner for longer. Like instead of missing time because I practice to learn, can just now I can take that free time that I have like towards the end of my night and just go to perplexity or something and get it to explain it.

Dr. John Oberg [30:52]: Yeah. Dylan, how about you?

Dylan [31:05]: It makes it easier as in I can study when I want to, like Paul was saying. If I don't, there are some days where you're just really tired from juggling a bunch of stuff and you're sitting in class, you don't really feel like paying attention. It helps things make it easier if you want to, you just want to study later. And AI learns you, so it learns the way you want to write things and it like studies you, so that way you can. use it better, which is pretty interesting to me.

Dr. John Oberg [31:41]: Van same question, I want to hear Van's views, any different approaches, anything more enjoyable, less enjoyable, better or worse for learning?

Vance [31:49]: Definitely more enjoyable. I think it's just a different way of learning rather than more difficult, more easy. I definitely think it's more efficient in most aspects of learning. It's just faster.

Randy Lorensen [32:04]: Do you guys use it, do any of you use it much outside of school work, like for personal stuff of any kind? Are any of you finding uses that way?

Dylan [32:15]: I think very serious, very ridiculous questions.

Randy Lorensen [32:20]: Okay, so you just ask it questions that you're curious about or interested in Dylan.

Dylan [32:25]: Yeah, for example, the other night, um, I was just lying in bed and I was, wondered how fast does your blood like move through your body. So I Googled that and then I found the answers and like, it gave it to me in centimeters. So I was like, convert this to like miles per hour into chat GBT and it gave me an answer. So it's just stuff like that. use it. I don't even remember. It was like 0.22 miles an hour.

Dr. John Oberg [32:48]: What was it? Hahaha

Dylan [32:54]: It was something very slow.

Randy Lorensen [32:56]: Yeah. All right. Van, think I heard you say yes. So do you want to expand on that?

Dr. John Oberg [32:57]: Okay, alright.

Vance [33:03]: Yeah, I just a few nights ago had a conversation with my friend about diets and what kind of vitamins he eats and how he manages his whole dietary plan because he's in a very good shape right now and he tells me he uses AI because he can count all his macros without actually having to put it in individually so he can just type in the ingredients and it'll find them. and he's able to calculate all the calories he's eating, all that stuff, all the protein intake. It's pretty cool.

Randy Lorensen [33:38]: All right. Let's talk about your teachers, what they think about it. I think two parts to this question, what do they think about it now and how has it changed over the last year or two? Cole, think I want to start with you on this one actually, because I know from talking to your dad a little bit about it. I think that's going to be a different approach. So do you want to tell us how your teachers and your school thinks about it and how it's changed?

Cole [34:04]: So I would go as like, it's kind of like a spectrum. Every teacher is different. So for example, last year I was taking AP World History and it's a course with just like so much random information and like, there's this, there's this, there's this. And we were asking her, were like, how should we study for like our final exam? Like, what should we use? And she was like, well, it's kind of like, and the first thing she said was, here's this AI thing. And you asked it to like, prepare you a study guide for all the units and you kind of just copy and paste what you want it to tell you and then it goes through that way. So there's that approach where some teachers are using it as a study tool. And for teachers that appreciate AI, that's the main way they use it is like a use it to study for things to make you flashcards or whatever. But then on the complete opposite end, some of my teachers despise it. My language teacher, she, has a very strict no AI policy, no asking for help on anything. Like if you want help, message her. And one kid the other day, he used it for a homework assignment. And like Mr. Oberger was saying about all the checkers and stuff you can put it there, we have to submit our homework through something called writable, which looks for plagiarism in AI usage. And he got flagged pretty heavily. And he was suspended for three days off of just a homework assignment. So yeah. So some teachers either think that it's a good tool and that it can be used for good, but then you have the others that think that it's the worst thing that's ever happened.

Randy Lorensen [35:49]: Okay. Van, what do your teachers think about it how has it changed?

Vance [35:56]: I think like Cole said, there's a bunch of mixed opinions about it. I think as you get into college though, a lot of professors encourage you to use it to help you study. They all mostly see it as a tool unless you're taking a specific class in which you're not going to really need AI. But yeah, most of them just view it as a tool. But back when I was in high school, they all hated it. You immediately failed if you used it.

Randy Lorensen [36:22]: Dylan? Similar or different, anything different?

Dylan [36:27]: Pretty similar, a lot. Most of mine encourage it. College professors are more like personal and they are a lot more understanding. So a lot of them do encourage it, but like I said earlier, they're saying to help with the assignment and not have it do the assignment yourself. And we also have checkers and all that stuff.

Randy Lorensen [36:50]: Seems to me writing papers would be one of the big uses. I'm assuming that's an area where it's, shall we say frowned upon to use it. Is that true? Yeah.

Vance [36:59]: Yeah.

Cole [36:59]: Yeah.

Dylan [37:00]: Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [37:01]: That was pretty universal. that mean you don't use it at all? Like I tell students, if you want to use it for an outline or to figure out what topics need to go into the paper or how to get it organized, that just seems prudent to me. That way don't miss something that's critical.

Randy Lorensen [37:03]: Alright, I assume so.

Dylan [37:16]: Yeah, I use that. ask it to find sources and then I can check the sources and all that stuff, just formatting things. But for the most part, I can play around with paragraphs and be like, me this sound better. Then I use what they did, write it in the paper and just kind of back and forth with that.

Randy Lorensen [37:36]: I'm curious, have any of your teachers or professors raised their standards or their expectations, right? Have any of them really embraced it and been like, hey, this is what we used to expect now because you have AI, it's gonna be easier to do it, but I expect you to do more. Has anybody seen that at all?

Vance [37:58]: No.

Dylan [37:59]: Not that I remember.

Randy Lorensen [37:59]: now.

Cole [38:01]: Yeah, I know.

Randy Lorensen [38:03]: Let's move to jobs. you guys talk with your friends? Are you seeing around you, like, how it's impacting jobs and careers that people are going into? Or is that just something you're just trying to graduate? Anybody, anybody can lead with this.

Dylan [38:26]: I haven't seen it.

Vance [38:27]: Yeah, I definitely see how it's impacting jobs. There's a lot of people that believe that their sources of income are going to become obsolete just through AI usage. mean, can see people are building legitimate personal robots in which someone can control. You can buy it right now for $20,000 and it's a full functional robot. So it can definitely...

Randy Lorensen [38:29]: Van, Van, go ahead.

Vance [38:54]: see the ways that it'll take your job.

Randy Lorensen [38:58]: Is this, I mean, do you hear people on campus like worrying about this? Is this a topic of discussion or is it just like, we'll figure it out when we get there.

Vance [39:04]: yeah. Yeah, a lot of people in the computer science majors are very stressed out right now. A lot of them are trying to switch majors, at least from people I know. They're trying to get into something different or become even better at their craft, because if you're not one of the best, then you won't get money.

Randy Lorensen [39:24]: Dylan, what are you seeing?

Dylan [39:27]: I was gonna say I haven't seen it, but I know what's happening. I haven't heard a lot of talk, but I know the job market is really bad. I didn't mention this earlier, but I'm a fifth year. So I am starting to look for jobs and it's getting very difficult because a lot of my friends are my age. And I know one of my friends just sent in 150 job applications and she has heard back from nobody. So it's pretty worrisome and...

Cole [39:33]: you

Dylan [39:53]: It makes me think they probably have an AI filtering through stuff like that because of how many job applications are being sent in. So AI is everywhere and it's pretty interesting.

Randy Lorensen [40:06]: Didn't you tell me like last summer that some of your friends that were computer science majors were having a hard time finding like junior programming jobs or whatever it is they start out at?

Dylan [40:16]: Yeah, I mean my best friend Daniel, he's a computer science major and he's taking whatever he can get. Like currently he works at the library at school as an IT job just for his resume, but he's taking anything he can get because there's just nothing. His friends in the major are struggling very hard.

Randy Lorensen [40:40]: Cole, is this, I mean, is this being talked about in high school or are you guys just like, let us enjoy being a teenager for a while?

Cole [40:45]: I think right now the focus is definitely just graduate first. Obviously people talk about what they want to do in their older but I wouldn't say probably just because it's so it seems so far away but none of us have really talked about like what could AI do to our students but it's very interesting to hear like that job security is being threatened because of it.

Dr. John Oberg [41:10]: So Van and Dylan, are your friends talking more about what skills to sharpen and how to use AI as a differentiator in your career? Is that a conversation happening when your parents aren't around?

Dylan [41:28]: I don't think we've talked about that stuff. Just my friends and I talk about other things, so that hasn't really been something that's been brought up.

Vance [41:38]: Yeah, same here.

Randy Lorensen [41:42]: Where do you guys see it going in the future? Do you guys have opinions? Have you thought about where it'll be? And by the future, it could be two years, five years, 10 years. You pick the timeframe.

Dylan [41:55]: I see it changing every year. I have a lot of, I didn't mention this earlier, except a lot of my assignments are used with AI because of the professors. They're advanced. Do you have something called PackBack?

Vance [42:11]: I do not.

Dylan [42:12]: It's just like this external learning software where it like AI helps you write stuff and they encourage it through that. But it's changing a lot because that Packpack stuff is very new. Currently from my capstone class, I'm using this AI software to help me basically get a job. It scans my resume and goes through it, tells me what I need to do. I can do mock job interviews and it's pretty interesting to see how much AI is being used right now.

Randy Lorensen [42:54]: Anybody else have an opinion on where it's going in the future?

Cole [42:57]: Like Dylan's point of it changing every year. I think it was like, don't necessarily know when AI as a whole started becoming widespread, but at least in my school, freshman year, we didn't really use it at all. Like freshman year, we went through it kind of, I mean, obvious, like the normal modern way of high school. Like if you wanted to look, like you had to look stuff up and like. Nothing was very personalized, but I mean, like within the year, like from May to August, like Chattie Bucy specifically like kind of became known at our school and it like, I would say like it's night and day, the difference. Like freshman year, obviously we didn't have a lot of homework, but I had some upperclassmen friends who like, they were spending like hours, like four to five hours a night. doing homework on top of sports, on top of social things. But sophomore year for us, it just kind of came in and made it that much easier. And we always joke, like, we don't even know how we did freshman year without ChatGP. So I think it's just crazy to see how quickly it's grown. And I know my dad uses it a lot in his job, but I don't, to the point of where it'll go in the future, I don't see it becoming necessarily too harmful of a thing. You know, like the whole worry that like AI will take over and stuff. don't see it in that way at all. I think it'll just continue to develop this kind of like a helper, like a stepping stone to like maybe help you out on this. I think it'll just get more advanced on what type of like problems.

Randy Lorensen [44:46]: All right, Van, have an opinion. You don't have to have an opinion on this, but if you have one, you're welcome to share it.

Vance [44:52]: Yeah, just think it's going to, like the other two said, I think its application is just going to grow. It's just going to keep advancing. And what I mean by that is we see it now in social media. We see it in transportation. We see it in video games, just the use of AI. So I think we're going to keep seeing extended uses over those. And we're going to see eventual changes in uses and just more widespread.

Randy Lorensen [45:21]: John, do you got other questions for the future here?

Dr. John Oberg [45:24]: I'm actually really interested to see how things continue to change though. think it's going to be, we're at an inflection point. I think this is going to be similar, probably larger than what happened with the internet. And so I'm interested to hear that there's a perspective now and I think this particular technological development may be more far reaching than what the internet did for how we deal with things.

Randy Lorensen [45:48]: Yeah, I would agree with that. you know, my big takeaway, you know, and I guess I kind of expected, but when I asked if any of your teachers or professors had raised their standards or expected more, I kind of expected the answer and I'm simultaneously kind of surprised that none of them are taking advantage of that or, you know, at least there's not one of them out there. So I would hope that'll be one of the next steps as it continues to grow and allow even more. gentlemen, thank you very much. This has been great. And we appreciate your insights. We might call on you again in the future. I think it's good for people to hear something different than what John and Anthony and I have to say from, you know, some younger people that are about ready to go out and change the world. And listeners, as always, download, subscribe, tell your friends, go on social media, go to talesofabundance.com. There's, you can find all the episodes there and other tools. Thank you for listening. And Vance, Dylan, Cole, thank you for your time today.

Dr. John Oberg [46:49]: Thanks guys.

Dylan [46:50]: Thank you.

Cole [46:50]: Thank

Vance [46:50]: Thank you.

Cole [46:52]: you.