After years of teaching community college and working with AI, I’ve concluded that comparing their intelligence is like comparing apples to artificially generated images of apples. AI can instantly calculate complex derivatives that make calculus students weep, yet it confidently insists that Abraham Lincoln was the first astronaut to walk on Mars. Meanwhile, community college students might take 20 minutes to figure out how to connect to the schools network, but at least they know that playing computer games during lectures is a bad idea – most of the time.
The real entertainment comes from watching them tackle open-ended problems. AI will generate a 50-page manifesto explaining why 2+2=5, complete with fabricated mathematical proofs and citations from nonexistent experts. Students, on the other hand, will write “idk, Google it” on their exam and consider it a job well done. Both approaches are wrong, but at least the students’ version comes with a refreshing dose of self-awareness and a money-back guarantee – try getting a refund from an AI that hallucinates your entire project specifications. Though I must admit, neither one has figured out that “debugging” doesn’t mean hitting the same run button repeatedly while hoping for different results.
Of course, both can try to write code that contains both python and JavaScript in the same function, or duplicate the same method/function in different locations in their code. And don’t get me started about both simply copying code from the internet and pretending they didn’t.
The winner in this battle of wits? Probably the bottle of single malt whisky in my desk drawer.