I’ve been using a combo of project plan/annotated bibliography and critical reflection for assessment stopping points but AI is still seeping in. And it’s a huge amount of effort on 70 student modules

I don’t want to be cruel but marking work produced by AI, even just used for ideas or structuring, is embarrassing to read. Shallow, vapid and hackneyed. Even the non-hallucinated references are poor quality or not quite on the right subject

Academics of the world, do with this info what you may. Even better, uninstall it from your devices 🧪

My university: "Copilot is Microsoft's AI-powered productivity service that uses large language models (LLMs) to help you create content, analyze information, summarize documents, and complete tasks more efficiently." Microsoft: LOL

Nigel Farage is appearing at a Reform UK rally in Norfolk this evening. Like shooting fish in a barrel etc etc

💫REMINDER💫 This is coming up on the 16th of April! Not to be missed for discussion of the dynamics of educating about and against fascism in the study of the past. Link below to book!

Great to see that the folk from @a-rfa.bsky.social are representing archaeology as resistance against the far right at this event!

Similar issues here at the University of Concrete

I’ve said it before and I’ll no doubt say it again. Universities are roughly 1000 years old. They predate most operating models including capitalism and have lasted for a reason. Installing insecure, helpless managers who ape business methods results in bad businesses, not good universities.

Leeds Castle is advertising an AI avatar of Eleanor of Castile, and I'm presuming that's a live interpreter out of a job. One to cross off your Easter holiday trip list.

Here we go. Same management consultants ruining our universities one by one.

Desperate need of good news? Beavers are good

"Across social media, people have expressed that Sora is yet another example of techies manufacturing supply when there isn’t even a demand." r.i.p. sora lol from 2025: www.wired.com/story/the-bl...

James Orr: full-time Associate Professor at Cambridge… & Head of Policy at Reform UK When one role is already full-time, how much time does the other get? Perhaps students & colleagues are getting the leftovers ... or perhaps Policy at Reform needs no time😉

Or as our Head of Digital said last week, ‘the future of HE is process and tech-led, not academic-led’. And he meant it as a good thing.

I’m am on leave this week, and today I was supposed to be in Ħaġar Qim being awed by Maltese prehistory, but as I’m also a reluctant unpaid carer I am, in fact, about to visit my local Lidl to do my mums shopping & make sure she’s ok. One more (expensive) change of plan to add to Eldest Child woes

For some reason "AI is just like watching Netflix" is back in my feeds so I took that as a sign to update my data tracking for Netflix. The company's energy use rose 1% from 2021 to 2024. Compare that to: Google: 71% Nvidia: 88% Meta: 96% Microsoft: 119%

Imagine thinking that this shit is antiracist action that helps Palestinian people and protests against genocide. It isn’t. It’s being an antisemitic arsehole, addicted to whataboutery and owning people online

I’ve already seen people call the attack on Jewish ambulances a “false flag”, saying every Jew should personally come out and condemn Netanyahu if they don’t want consequences, that the ambulances only serve a “Jewish area” that is a segregated “mini Israel”, posting memes etc. Stop!

As the article points out, universities are currently reorganising programmes, curricula and learning conditions to foster exactly the kind of disengagement which correlates with greater misuse of AI, and then redesigning assessment to focus on unseen exams. What a miserable prospect.

Horrifying news this morning. Ambulances ffs

'When we looked at the survey data in Trained to Stop Learning (from 1,055 students across 52 providers, weighted for gender and level of study) we found a clear gradient between intellectual engagement and AI use.' 1/3

That Matt Goodwin/AI-hallucinated book is a perfect example of the illusory truth effect: “Cognition studies demonstrate that repeatedly encountering inaccurate statements or misinformation increases the likelihood that the information will be seen as truth (Vellani et al 2023” (me, 2025)

🚨What you won't read in the British media: on X, journalist @twelves.bsky.social has looked at Matt Goodwin's new book, Suicide of a Nation, and found that is packed full of fake quotes and material that appears to have been made up by AI.

Applicant Day at work, and I’m tasked with a talk about AI and creativity. I’m always pleasantly surprised by how very anti-AI sixth formers actually are

Interested in the nexus between algorithmic bias and right-wing extremism? Take a look this paper based on my most recent research project: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Fuck that for a game, no chance

The wholesale failure of the mainstream so-called "AI ethics" project is because it is instead a successful process of creating industry stooges, who walk amongst us, hollowing out future colleagues and posturing provocatively about the inevitability of the future theintercept.com/2019/12/20/m...

‘Best case scenario’ here is that a man with realistic ambitions to be Prime Minister will record himself endorsing your support of base anti-semitism in return for £76.

I’ve concluded that my new hair style makes me look like Keith Chegwin. This was a big mistake.

After going on huge building spending sprees in the last 10-15yrs, the UK HE sector is now flogging off and mothbolling parts of its estate. This sometimes include architecturally significant buildings. www.nottinghampost.com/news/notting...

'The surging number of redundancies in UK higher education could undermine entire research fields as networks of collaborators disappear, according to an academic whose project fell through when a colleague’s job at another institution was put at risk.' 1/2

ICMYI: I broke down everything we know about what, specifically, Anthropic's Claude is & isn't doing inside Palantir tech used by the US military. For the story, I carefully reviewed every relevant demo & report that Palantir & the military have ever released: www.wired.com/story/palant...

Week 8, then a few glorious weeks of catching up on admin, before the downhill run to all that lovely, delicious marking. Can’t wait

An important reminder about how colonial-type exploitation is at the centre of the AI revolution: https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-workers-who-train-ai-are-fighting-back/

From Woodcut Media, who specialise in colourisation docs, this goes out in 2 parts starting tonight in UK. The thing is, if you think this is how to present archaeology in 1920s Egypt, you haven’t understood history, archaeology, photography, or the politics that underpin them. 🗃️📜🏺📷📸

Why do universities insist on this kind of nonsense? There must be at least a 20 year history of failure of these kinds of ventures, does no one do any viability research? Are all HE decision makers nitwits?

Excellent post

Six hours of teaching today. I no longer wish to engage in the world of work in any format or field. Please let me expire here in peace

'Ninety-five per cent of students now report using AI in some way, up from 92 per cent a year ago and 66 per cent in 2024. Generating text is still the most popular use, though this has dipped slightly in the past year from 64 per cent to 56 per cent.' 1/2

Keep returning to the thought that this parasitic activity creates mechanically recovered information, and the eventual AI outputs are the equivalent to cheap sausages. All dust, lips and arseholes

Data centres burn huge amounts of power but provide very few jobs. Are we covering the countryside and using up power connections to enable bitcoins to be mined? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Spent a wonderful afternoon with my digital storytelling students & the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts education team, learning how to really look at objects before creatively retelling the object stories. I love this part of my job only

Apologies for the trauma dump. Medical misogyny makes me riled

My personal favourite example of medical misogyny was being forced to have a uterine biopsy awake, without even being offered the option of anaesthetic. Told I was making a fuss when I cried. No one would do that to a kidney or liver without anaesthetic, but women don’t feel pain properly, right?

Good to see some mainstream journalism questioning the economic hype around AI. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

I’m organising a Faculty panel on AI in Arts & Humanities, hence request for opinions. I’m also aware I’m coming at AI from a critical digital media perspective, which means I may not have an entirely balanced perspective (Neo Luddites unite!)

Monday morning Bluesky people, any more thoughts on AI for arts and humanities in HE?

'The systems now being woven into education are shaped by a remarkably small group of people. Not “the internet” as the source of training material. Not “society” influencing the way we use these tools.' Fascinating that this comes from within Jisc. 1/3