{"id":193763,"date":"2026-03-07T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/the-chatbot-is-outdated-the-markup\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T14:25:22","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T19:25:22","slug":"the-chatbot-is-outdated-the-markup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/07\/the-chatbot-is-outdated-the-markup\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;The chatbot is outdated\u2019 \u2013 The Markup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/themarkup.org\/machine-learning\/2026\/03\/07\/california-colleges-spend-millions-on-faulty-ai-systems-the-chatbot-is-outdated\">&#8216;The chatbot is outdated\u2019 \u2013 The Markup<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/themarkup.org\/machine-learning\/2026\/03\/07\/california-colleges-spend-millions-on-faulty-ai-systems-the-chatbot-is-outdated\">https:\/\/themarkup.org\/machine-learning\/2026\/03\/07\/california-colleges-spend-millions-on-faulty-ai-systems-the-chatbot-is-outdated<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-07 03:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"themarkup.org\">themarkup.org<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Investment in AI Chatbots<\/strong>: California community college districts are investing millions of dollars in AI-powered chatbots to assist students with admissions, financial aid, and campus services.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Inconsistencies and Errors<\/strong>: Despite the investments, the chatbots still struggle to provide clear and accurate responses, leading to student frustration and reliance on unofficial social media channels for information.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Test Results<\/strong>: In tests conducted by The Markup and CalMatters, chatbots performed well on general questions but faltered with specific and nuanced inquiries, and even failed to correctly name current college officials.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>High Costs<\/strong>: Contracts for these chatbots can be expensive and last for several years, costing districts from $151,000 to nearly half a million dollars annually.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Efforts to Improve<\/strong>: District officials acknowledge the limitations of the chatbots and are working on technological upgrades, including the integration of AI that scrapes the college&#8217;s website to generate more reliable answers.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Student Perspectives<\/strong>: Students like those interviewed for the article report that they rarely trust the chatbots for critical information due to the risk of receiving inaccurate guidance.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Future Plans<\/strong>: The Los Angeles Community College District, among others, plans to transition to new AI chatbot platforms, aiming to modernize the technology with better accuracy and utility.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<p><strong>Cost Justification<\/strong>: District officials argue that the heavy use of these chatbots outweighs the drawbacks, as handling the same volume of inquiries by traditional means would significantly increase operational costs.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;The chatbot is outdated\u2019 \u2013 The Markup https:\/\/themarkup.org\/machine-learning\/2026\/03\/07\/california-colleges-spend-millions-on-faulty-ai-systems-the-chatbot-is-outdated Publish Date: 2026-03-07 03:00:00 Source Domain: themarkup.org&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mrkp-static-production.themarkup.org\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CC-CHATBOT_AH_MU_01-1200x628.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-193763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193763"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":193765,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193763\/revisions\/193765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}