Latest news with #WilliamLiang
Forbes
a day ago
- Forbes
What's Really Going On With AI In Schools? A High School Student's POV
There's a conversation about Artificial Intelligence happening in school administration offices and teacher social media circles. It's full of words like 'disruption,' 'guardrails,' and 'the future of work.' Then there's the conversation happening in high school students' group chats. It's about how to get the history essay done by 11 PM. The two conversations have almost nothing to do with each other. I recently had a chance to talk with William Liang, a high school student from San Jose, California, and frankly, he offered one of the clearest views I've heard yet on what's actually happening on the ground. This isn't just any student. William is a seriously impressive high school journalist, with published work in places like the San Francisco Chronicle and The San Diego Union-Tribune. He's living and breathing this stuff every day, and his message is simple: our school system is playing a game of checkers while its students are mastering 3D chess. The way we teach and test kids is fundamentally broken in the age of AI, and our attempts to "catch" them are missing the point entirely. Here's the first truth bomb William dropped, and it reframes the entire issue. We need to accept that for a huge number of students, an assignment isn't a journey of intellectual discovery. 'For most students, an assignment is not interpreted as a cognitive development tool, but as a logistical hurdle,' he told me. Think about that. It's a hurdle to be cleared as efficiently as possible. 'Right now,' he said, 'that mechanism is generative AI.' This isn't really about kids being lazy or immoral. It's about them being smart players in a game we designed. For decades, the system has screamed one thing above all else: grades matter more than understanding. When the goal is the A grade, and a tool exists that gets you there in a fraction of the time, why wouldn't you use it? As William put it, 'If there's an easy shortcut, why wouldn't we take it?' He sees it as a predictable outcome. When you have a high-pressure, competitive game where a growing number of players can cheat with a huge upside and a tiny risk, everyone else feels forced to cheat just to keep up. So, what about the teachers? The plagiarism checkers? The honor codes? According to William, it's mostly security theater. The whole enforcement system is, in his words, 'incoherent.' He explained that 'students are 'warned' all the time but rarely penalized because the enforcement apparatus is incoherent. Detection tools operate on heuristics, which include vocabulary uniformity, sentence structure, and semantic burstiness; however, students generally learn quickly how to avoid triggering them. Teachers are busy. They rarely follow up unless something seems egregiously wrong, and even then, they have little evidentiary protocol. And when they do think they've 'caught' someone, they're often wrong.' The anecdotes he shared are both hilarious and horrifying. He told me about a friend, who described a situation at his school. 'A guy I know who used AI to write an essay literally had the words 'as an AI language model myself,' and he kept it in and didn't get caught for it,' William recounted. Think about that. The AI confessed to writing the essay in the essay itself, and no one noticed. 'Meanwhile,' he continued, 'another person got flagged on an essay they spent a week writing and had to show the version history on the essay to prove he wrote it.' This is where things got really interesting. He argued that we're all using the wrong words. The line between 'using a tool' and 'cheating' isn't about academic integrity anymore. In the real world, it's about one thing: Can you get caught? 'The designation of 'cheating' doesn't rest on the method but on the detectability,' he argued. Because detection is basically a coin flip, the official labels of "legitimate" and "illegitimate" use just fall apart. If the old system is broken, the only move left is to change the game board itself. William's solution isn't more complicated software or another all-school assembly on academic honesty. It's one, simple, radical rule. I asked him what single policy he would mandate in high schools. His answer was: 'Teachers should not be allowed to assign take-home work that ChatGPT can do. Period!' Read that again. He's not saying 'no more homework.' He's saying that any essay, problem set, or report with a predictable structure that's done without supervision is now an invalid test of a student's knowledge. It only tests their ability to write a good prompt. The real work. The thinking, the analyzing and the creating, has to be brought back into the classroom where it can be seen. How do you assess real understanding? The old ways, it turns out, still work beautifully. "Drafting essays and solving math problems," he said. You just have to watch them do it. Think in-class essays, oral presentations, and group projects where the process is as important as the product. But here's the thing that makes William's perspective so powerful. He's not an AI doomer. In fact, he's incredibly optimistic about the technology. He just thinks we're focusing on the bad use cases for it. 'There is no inherent tension between embracing AI and preserving critical thinking or creativity, unless schools force one,' he insisted. The problem isn't the tool; it's the task. He asked me to flip the question. 'Imagine students had daily access to the greatest minds in science, literature, and art?' he posed. 'Students working closely with advanced AI will be like directly apprenticing with Ernest Hemingway, Isaac Newton, or Leonardo da Vinci. Why would we deny students this opportunity?' Now that's a vision. Imagine your kid getting feedback on their short story from a bot that thinks like Hemingway—a bot that could say, "Great start, but a master of prose would cut these three adverbs and find a stronger verb here." Imagine an AI tutor that can generate a thousand different math problems tailored to exactly where your child is struggling, offering hints 24/7. That's the right use of the tool. AI shouldn't be the thing that completes the assignment for the student. It should be the thing that helps the student complete the assignment better. He gave a perfect example: a good assignment could be grading students on a conversation they have with an AI chatbot on a complex topic. The AI is part of the learning, but the student is still doing all the critical thinking. The takeaway from William is a wakeup call. For anyone in a leadership position. A parent, an educator, or a business leader. It's time to get honest. Stop asking "how do we catch them?" and start asking "what should we be asking of them in the first place?" The students are already living in the future. As William put it, 'The biggest misconception surrounding AI adoption is that adults don't realize students are light-years ahead of them. I use ChatGPT more than Instagram, which is astonishing.' It's time for the rest of us to catch up.
Toronto Sun
24-05-2025
- General
- Toronto Sun
Runway lights were out as pilot tried to land at foggy San Diego airport before fatal crash
Published May 23, 2025 • 5 minute read Debris covers the ground after a small plane crashed into a San Diego neighbourhood, setting homes and cars on fire and forcing evacuations early Thursday, May 22, 2025. Photo by William Liang / AP Photo SAN DIEGO — The runway lights were out, a weather alert system wasn't working and there was heavy fog at a San Diego airport when a pilot who had flown across the country made the decision to proceed with landing but came up short and crashed into a neighborhood, likely killing all six aboard the aircraft, investigators said Friday. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account Investigator Dan Baker of the National Transportation Safety Board said officials will work over the next year to determine what caused the Cessna 550 Citation to crash just before 4 a.m. local time Thursday. The jet was carrying a music executive and five others. No one in the neighborhood of U.S. Navy housing died, but eight people were treated for smoke inhalation from the fiery crash and non-life threatening injuries. The pilot acknowledged the weather conditions for landing at the small airport were not ideal and debated diverting to a different airport while discussing the visibility with an air traffic controller at a regional Federal Aviation Administration control tower, according to audio of the conversation posted by This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The FAA had posted an official notice for pilots that the lights were out of service, but it's not known whether the pilot had checked it. He didn't discuss the lights being out with air traffic control, but was aware that the airport's weather alert system was inoperable. Ultimately, the pilot is heard saying that he'll stick with the plan to land at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport. 'Doesn't sound great but we'll give it a go,' he told the air traffic controller. The plane crashed about 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) from the airport. Baker said a power surge knocked out the weather system at the airport but the pilot was aware of the fog and an air traffic controller gave him weather information from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, about 4 miles (6.44 kilometers) north. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Music talent agent Dave Shapiro, and two unnamed employees of the music agency he co-founded, Sound Talent Group, were among the dead along with the former drummer for metal band The Devil Wears Prada. Shapiro, 42, had a pilot's license and was listed as the owner of the plane. The crash added to a long list of aviation disasters this year while f ederal officials have tried to reassure travelers that flying is the safest mode of transportation, which statistics support. Shapiro's aircraft took off from Teterboro, New Jersey, near Manhattan, at about 11:15 p.m. local time Wednesday and made a fuel stop in Wichita, Kansas, before continuing on to San Diego. That overnight schedule wouldn't be allowed for an airliner under federal crew rest rules, but those regulations don't apply to private planes. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Assistant San Diego Fire Department Chief Dan Eddy said the fog was so thick in the morning that 'you could barely see in front of you.' Former NTSB and FAA crash investigator Jeff Guzzetti said he thinks dense fog and fatigue after the pilot flew all night long were likely factors in the crash. 'This accident has all the earmarks of a classic attempt to approach an airport in really bad weather and poor visibility,' Guzzetti said. 'And there were other airports that the crew could have gone to.' He said pilots are required to check FAA posts called Notices to Airmen that alert pilots to any issues such as runway lights being out. 'It's fairly easy for the pilot to get that information and they are required to get that information before any flight they take,' Guzzetti said. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. The pilot also would have likely noticed the lights weren't working as he descended. Without lights, procedure dictated that he should have climbed and diverted to another airport, Guzzetti said. Fragments of the plane were found under power lines that are about a half block from the homes. It went on to lose a wing on the road directly behind the homes. Guzzetti said even if the plane had missed the power lines it may have still crashed because it was coming in too low in the fog. A terrifying wakeup The crash site shows more damage on the front side of homes, including a smashed stone landscaping wall and an incinerated truck that was parked across the street and shoved into the living room of its owner's home before catching fire. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Ben McCarty and his wife, who live in the home that was hit, said they felt heat all around them after being woken up by an explosion. 'All I could see was fire. The roof of the house was still on fire. You could see the night sky from our living room,' McCarty, who has served in the Navy for 13 years, told local ABC affiliate KGTV. Flames blocked many of the exits so they grabbed their children and dogs and ran out the back but the burning debris blocked the gate so neighbors helped them climb over the fence to escape. 'We got the kids over the fence and then I jumped over the fence. They brought a ladder and we got the dogs,' McCarty said. Meanwhile, fiery jet fuel rolled down the block igniting everything in its path from trees to plastic trash containers to car after car. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. McCarty's home was the only one destroyed, though another 10 residences suffered damage, authorities said. McCarty said his family used to enjoy living under the flight path so they could watch the planes pass overhead. 'Us and our kids would sit on our front porch and we'd look up and my sons would always be excited saying 'plane plane' watching the planes go by and ironically right where we were sitting is where that plane hit,' McCarty said. Now, he wants to move. 'I'm not going to live over that flight line again — it's going to be hard to sleep at night,' McCarty said. It could have been much worse Guzzetti said in his experience there often aren't deaths on the ground when a plane crashes in a residential area unless people are right where the plane hits such as in Philadelphia in January. At least 100 residents in the San Diego neighborhood were evacuated and officials said it was unclear when it would be safe for people to return. Thursday's crash comes only weeks after a small plane crashed into a neighborhood in Simi Valley northwest of Los Angeles, killing both people and a dog aboard the aircraft but leaving no one on the ground injured. In October 2021 a twin-engine plane plowed into a San Diego suburb, killing the pilot and a UPS delivery driver on the ground and burning homes.
