Chegg To Initiate Business Review Amid AI-Shift in Education Tech (cnbc.com) 31
Online-education company Chegg said it is conducting a business review and exploring alternatives such as selling the company or taking it private as it continues to lose subscribers to artificial-intelligence-enabled rivals. From a report: Chegg and other virtual-learning companies have ceded ground to generative-AI companies such as ChatGPT, which provides free alternatives to the homework help that Chegg charges $19.95 for to its subscribers. Although Chegg built its own AI products, the company has faced scores of canceled subscriptions. The business review comes as the company swung to a loss in the fourth quarter, with revenue falling 24%, and guided for lower-than-expected revenue for the first quarter. In November, Chegg said it would cut its workforce by an additional 21%. Chegg's shares have fallen 99% since its peak in 2021.
You posted this same tripe last night at 8 (Score:2)
Y'all posted this same tripe last night at 8.
Will the last person departing Slashdot turn off the light? This place seems devoid of life. Just the same people arguing the same tired arguments, driven by a torrent of bot-selected posts.
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It is our same old chromosomally challenged slashdot.
dude, you have a UID of 174064 (Score:1)
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Yep, I know. But back then the dupes didn't show up in the same page.. now they do.
Is it too much to hope for no dupes? (Apprarently it is.)
The really cynical part of me wonders if they get paid by-the-post. Judging by the dupe activity, I'd argue "Yes."
My hypothesis is Bird paid for 2 posts, so they got 2 posts.
Re: dude, you have a UID of 174064 (Score:2)
Yes, they definitely did sometimes show up on the front page at the same time.
from WikPed (Score:5, Informative)
Chegg, Inc., is an American education technology company based in Santa Clara, California. It provides homework help, digital and physical textbook rentals, textbooks, online tutoring, and other student services.
Experiences may differ (Score:5, Insightful)
an American education technology company
That's what they'd like you to think. In my experience it's a commercial cheat site helping students to avoid getting an education. However, it has now largely been superceded by AI which can provide the same half-wrong answers to questions instantly and for free.
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Yep a cheating site that played itself up as a "remote learning" company and got a lot of investment when covid happened.
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Two wrongs don't make a right, but I'm having a hard job sympathizing with a cheating company here. It is rather ironic that they cheat enablers are being put out of business with a bunch of cheats.
I'll take the win (Score:2)
Two wrongs don't make a right
True, but in a world where wrongs seem to be rapidly multiplying I'm happy to take one wrong cancelling out another as a win. Plus, unlike a cheat-site, AI technology is a tool that can be used for either good ir ill. There is really no upside to a cheat site at all.
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That's fair.
The Corn Site? (Score:2)
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Chegg Sues Slashdot for Trademark Abuse (Score:3)
Due to over duplication of reporting news stories...
Die cheating facilitator (Score:5, Informative)
Students using Chegg used to be the bane of my life as a CS prof circa 2018-2021. My assignments were immediately posted there and "solved" often with kooky solutions that many students would hand in as if they were the first people to discover the cheating site. It galls me to see Chegg described as a site that "helps with homework." The way forward in CS education is very unclear to me, but Chegg is not something that should be mourned in any way.
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What if kids learn best in a completely different way than your institutions provide?
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There's learning, and there's getting someone always to do your work for you but taking all the credit.
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Did you just describe how to become President?
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We all lern diffruntly. Cheating at CS because it's hard is not going to make you a good computer scientist. Or programmer.
Cheating Stops Learning Regardless (Score:2)
What if kids learn best in a completely different way than your institutions provide?
Then, whatever that way is, it would still be harmed by a cheat service that did all the work for the students. Learning only happens when you engage your own brain, if you engage someone else to do it for you they are the ones learning, not you regardless of whatever learning method you are using.
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The way forward in CS education is very unclear to me
Lots of small assignments. Live programming in class. At the extreme, let the students watch lectures at home.
In brief, do homework in class, and classwork at home.
Re: Die cheating facilitator (Score:2)
I love this idea. Canned lectures at home, and guided work and Q and A in class on the school's hardware. All you need at home is a phone or tablet.
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Schools that do not address this problem of cheating are risking their reputations. I know other profs who are in the same boat, hey maybe you're a friend of mine IRL? It's the same everywhere, many students don't do the least amount of work necessary and then complain when they get bad grades. Complain, whine, begrudge, shit-talk, write letters to profs about how they'll be cast out by their family if they don't succeed in CS, and if they get bad grades their grandmas will die of shame.
You can't report an
Lovemaking useful Google search (Score:2)
In other news (Score:2)
Slashdot sued for excessive dupes.
Re: dupes (Score:2)
No more than usual
Chegg Hail Mary: Losing to ChatGPT, so Sue Google (Score:3)
Chegg’s claims of “damages” are at best disingenuous. From an academic integrity standpoint, its business model was ethically dubious long before Google’s AI came along, and now it’s scrambling to compete with faster, free tools that students actually want to use.
One possible result is that the suit never makes it out of the early stages, either because the court finds that Chegg hasn’t adequately shown how Google’s use of AI-generated snippets rises to a clear violation of antitrust law, or because the company can’t establish the necessary link between this alleged misuse of its content and the erosion of its revenue. Another possibility is that Google and Chegg reach a settlement, maybe involving some kind of attribution requirement, licensing arrangement, or minimal monetary compensation, especially if Google wants to avoid protracted legal battles that draw further scrutiny to its business practices. The current US administration has Google squarely in it's sights, and Google really doesn't need this extra attention.
If the suit does move forward, Chegg still faces the challenge of proving damages—particularly since it has publicly acknowledged losing new customers to free tools like ChatGPT rather than blaming Google alone. This alone, IMHO, sinks this lawsuit. Even if there is some infringement question over how AI Overviews are trained and presented, courts haven’t yet pinned down a universal standard for what constitutes “fair use” or what qualifies as illegal monopoly power with regard to AI-based content. There’s always a slim chance that the suit becomes a test case for how search engines handle AI-driven answers, but right now, it seems more likely that Chegg will have trouble clearing the fairly high bar of showing actual harm caused by Google’s specific implementation of these summaries.
As for Chegg itself, I’ve never been able to see it as anything more than a glorified shortcut for lazy-ass students, a pay-to-pass service dressed up in the veneer of “student support.” It’s hard to muster sympathy for a company whose bread and butter involves enabling academic cheaters, so I won’t be shedding tears if their traffic and revenue slip even further. In the end, whether Google’s AI Overviews hurt them or not, Chegg’s business model has always skirted ethical lines, and I can’t help but feel they’re now crying foul only because someone else is offering free shortcuts that rival their paid ones.