This quote: “writing requires an unending effort at something resembling authenticity. Most mistakes come from not being yourself, not saying what you think, or being afraid to figure out what you really think.”

Everyone involved in committees and policymaking around genAI in universities should be required to listen to at least one episode of Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 with @emilymbender.bsky.social and @alexhanna.bsky.social before every meeting. www.dair-institute.org/maiht3k/

My very limited understanding of the technology had me believing that hallucinations were the wrong concept because (1) everything LLMs do is repeat statistical probabilities, and so have no grounding in reality or truth, and (2) LLMs are not beings and do not perceive and so do not hallucinate. 1/

Beautiful piece!

If we want to stem the problematic use of A.I. in K-12 and higher education, we need to understand why students use it. The latest from me and @ehutt.bsky.social.

Luddites unite! "As we train our sights on what we oppose, let’s recall the costs of surrender...We condone platforms that not only urge children to commit suicide, they instruct them on how to tie the noose. We hand over our autonomy, at the very moment of emerging American fascism." ⚒️🤖⚒️

My latest Substack piece, “The False Precision of Grades: What are we really measuring?” Do grades really capture student learning? I briefly dig into this and the illusion of precision in grading… echoesoflearningandteaching.substack.com/p/the-false-...

💛🚫🤖 No AI Gods, No AI Masters 🤖🚫💛 I am massively excited to share the backstory ACADEMIC SHENANIGANS behind our Open Letter (& so this paper below too) — and as always big thanks to my co-authors {@irisvanrooij.bsky.social & @marentierra.bsky.social}: www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/no-ai-g... 1/n

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

This new book, The Ungraded Classroom, edited by Carlo Ricci and Gina Riley (with a foreword by @susandblum), has just been published! It has many examples, beautifully and honestly presented, of ways educators have included ungrading in their classrooms. www.amazon.com/dp/B0FQHZKJZ...

This is exactly the right way to think of this; precisely what I'm saying, yes

In my experience, using an LLM only works if you know how, when, and where to correct the LLM when it returns non-factual or counter-factual information. You need the very expertise that many people are attempting to "outsource" to the LLM to avoid believing the AI slop. This is not a good system.

Amen! Schoolishness = artificial

I have a half-baked morbid idea for some class exercises to have students use LLMs. Scenario-based (dark academia?) 1.) Student pretends they are an executive at a health insurance company.

These are desperate attempts to embed AI technologies into schools and recruit lifetime users and I urge my fellow educators to see these attempts as such and refuse to be bought by Big Tech and this fascist government.

This by @eryk.bsky.social

Since tomorrow is Labor Day and school is in session, I'd like to argue (again) that teaching about GenAI should include discussion of the extractive, exploitative labor conditions that make the technology possible. 🧵

“With our new virtual servant program, you can have the blackness and the subservience that you need without the uncomfortableness of having to talk to an actual black person”

"A fellow human is not designed to make you feel good about having interacted with them, or to convince you of their utility, or to persuade you to bring your thoughts and problems to them instead of someone else; a fellow human is not designed at all." defector.com/butlerian-ji...

New curriculum resources from @jbpleasa.bsky.social just added to our site! Read about them here: www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/new-cur...

Ungrading comrades- I am putting together a presentation for faculty on #ungrading and am looking for examples to share from other faculty who practice ungrading/alt grading. If you have a syllabus or examples to share of how you do this, I’d love to include it as samples! Thx 🙏

LLMs are purely statistical engines that operate on purely formal objects (character strings). We can “train” an LLM to distinguish true from false or fact from opinion or warranted from baseless just as soon as we can figure out how to reduce semantics and epistemology to syntax (which is never)

Yep, using this quote for syllabus day #academicchatter

I truly believe traditional grades (already problematic) only exacerbates the transactional problem of education when coupled with AI.

THIS. I think a not-insignificant reason that people are buying into AI hype is because they believe it will allow the to avoid tricky issues we’ve never solved: insufficient mental health services, toxic professional and academic cultures, unsustainable productivity expectations… just slap AI on it

I can't dedicate the time required to research it myself, but OpenAI and the other big ones hide the numbers so that doesn't help

This. Is. Perfect.

What’s your AI techbro pitch of this ‘magical’ technology 🤣@dbuckedu.bsky.social @thetattooedprof.bsky.social @drsepinwall.bsky.social @tressiemcphd.bsky.social @kevinmkruse.bsky.social @biblioracle.bsky.social @hypervisible.bsky.social @audreywatters.bsky.social @roxanegay.bsky.social

AI tech bros: This, but make it education

Techbros pitching AI #AIhype

I spent seven years writing a book on this and she just… said it in three succinct paragraphs to politico.

The banking concept of education for pedagogical, financial, and techno-fascist control

is your workplace trying to force ai on you? is a family member giving ai too much power in their life? are you sick of billionaires destroying the environment and making life worse for everyone? here's a list of resources 10+ pages long to help you fight back: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

re: generative AI I have finally fully and accurately explained my problem with how it’s marketed and used. And now, you can use it, too.

Unfortunately I couldn’t make the session but I did watch the recording! I appreciate all the concerns and ideas shared. People like to say GenAI is a tool. Writing is also a tool, one of the oldest of humankind. A tool for thinking, feeling, and being in the world. The tool of writing is

"Those of us working in higher education need to consider the valuable skills and literacies that post-secondary education offers that are not easily found or learned in the workplace, on the internet, or in the context of everyday life." Louder for those in the back please.

“In the world that college students are about to enter, a 19th-century lettering scheme is about as useful in promoting excellence as a quill pen.” www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

I just finished @biblioracle.bsky.social’s More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI. Thank you for writing this book. As a writer and educator, it really resonated with me on so many levels. I especially enjoyed the way you described LLM output compared with actually good writing

The answer was not the point. The answer was never the point. The process of searching is the process of learning.

Yes. “People are doing things. You will meet them when YOU start doing things.” Lots of information and resources in this one. open.substack.com/pub/sherrily...

Letter from the SSE/SSB/ASN councils on the scientific understanding of sex and gender, pls RT

The budget shortfall at Sonoma State, an HSI, is 8 million, leading to layoffs of 25% of faculty and shuttering programs. The system is paying 17 million to OpenAI. We always say budgets are moral documents. This is why.

Different Critiques of AI in Education blog.mahabali.me/educational-... #EduSky #AIinEducation

Just finished @jessifer.bsky.social’s book and it’s giving me life! #Ungraders if you haven’t read it yet, do yourself the favor and it will help you get inspired. Let your humanity be a counter friction against the mechanization of teaching and learning ✊ pressbooks.pub/thegrade/

🚨Our paper on ungrading is out!🚨 In this @jamielevdan.bsky.social and I address why traditional grading is antithetical to a socially just classroom & give how-to suggestions for matching how we teach with what we teach. 1/7 #ungrading #academicsky jsepajournal.org/index.php/js...

Just saw 4 more articles that used final & final exam grades as statistical measures of improvement. Please - for the love of all research everywhere - STOP using grades as a measure of anything. Grades can’t be combined statistically b/c they have too many embedded factors - some defined some not

What academics (and all learners e.g., everyone) need is time and space for deep thinking and that seems to be the thing AI is trying to drive out

With all due respect to Adam Grant, with whom I often agree, grades reflect neither effort or learning. They are truly subjective. And comparing high grades to Olympic medals reserved for only a few reinforces the problematic notion of grades as gate-keepers…

‘There will never be enough computing power to create AGI using machine learning that can do the same [as human cognition], because we’d run out of natural resources long before we'd even get close,’ — @olivia.science www.ru.nl/en/research/...

“We don’t need AI to relieve us from the burden of grading, not when there are so many effective—and decidedly human—strategies available through ungrading. Investing in students and investing in learning does not need to look like letting teaching become automatable.” This