For student essays with some but less than 20% of content flagged as potential AI Turnitin lets me know this but not a) which bits might be AI or b) what percentage it is. What we do with that not very clear information is anyone's guess.

they have designed these machines to simulate human agents and they are constantly pitching the idea that these machines really *are* agents, but when one of these machines kills a person they say “you can’t hold them to account, they’re just machines, read the instructions”

It’s a subset of 5) but is the British state and its policymakers able to perform a basic google/social media search right now? Doesn’t massively make me up for injecting AI into its veins.

Having had a day to think through everything about El-Fattah, here's where I stand. Yes, it's possible to believe all of these things at once! In fact, it really shouldn't be that hard.

That time of year when I’m getting in the recycling bin a lot to physically trample down the deluge

Every pedagogical argument I see is essentially "You could use it to do something you already do but you will also have to do a lot of setup and double check everything it does."

But I can a) not use it, b) not encourage it, c) not pay any attention to central pushes towards its inevitability, d) devise assignments to minimise it (this is a ballache, sure). So just as I can’t actually stop crime in the wider world I can make sure I don’t teach embezzlement 101 or whatever

One thing that I’ve become increasingly certain of over the course of this year: As an academic, I do not have (and never will have) a responsibility to teach students to use Gen AI ‘ethically’ (as if that were possible). The idea that academics should be doing this is a blight on the sector.

On the plus side lifting the child benefit cap has probably paid out big for the Dyson family

👇 This sums up underlying problem with actually existing Brexit. The ways you actually maximise the benefits of Brexit run against the electoral coalition for Brexit, are not popular enough with Remainers, just end up with 'you're divorced, but you refuse to join Tinder or move out of your home'.

Undergraduate dissertation *literature reviews* on topics connected to terrorism now need a) full ethics committee approval and b) to be deposited in a secure folder somewhere (god knows where) on the OneDrive

I unashamedly love The Great Escape but it also essentially leaves on the table the if anything even better movie of “ok, you’ve now escaped from the camp, but are hundreds of miles from safety and are in Nazi Germany. What now?” They really rush through that bit. I want 105 minutes of that.

If this guy had googled “Edited Volume” there would be no problem

Catching up on it and the Gladiators in Celebrity Gladiators putting in an absolutely holiday level of effort

Made the mistake of logging into work email and it’s just automated IT systems which are supposed to make things #easier asking students to pointlessly repeat pointless tasks and to email me if they’ve got any questions. The e-bot 5000 doesn’t even do its own busywork

Experimental evidence that students are more likely to contest grades when they are delivered by an evaluator with a female-sounding name. "These findings suggest that women in evaluative positions face disproportionate resistance when delivering negative assessments."

Could the idea of making Rupert Lowe the King instead be "mainstreamed", ask the online racist right!

DEI some white people into this one for me would you lads

These guys are all about 12 and their only previous job not explicitly as far right edge lord is like Editor at Conservative Futures Council or similar. #realbritain #builtupalotofcache

Anyway. They spent the last decade telling us STEM degrees were the future and the Humanities were worthless then they spent hundreds of billions of dollars to build a glitchy Humanities robot.

Dear Random House in this new biographical manuscript due 2027 I will radically revise our understanding of one of one of the twentieth century’s leading figures using a new analytical tool

Sleep well, Wellington. Better be bringing it tomorrow.

Beating up nauseating YouTube influencers can be a great way to pay for UK public services.

Only been to one US wedding so my answer on the cultural difference front will always be the gap on toilet doors

I’ve done #hashtags the right way this year

Finally. One nation not afraid to stick up for itself and say "no" to Panettone, the curse of modern Christmases.

Not peace and goodwill to all cats

It's bonkers they haven't done this already

Marking season and Britian is back

One of the cheap interventions I would like Jacqui Smith to do to save the sector is to re-educate managers in how accounting works. They have all taken some truly bananas MBA training that is about salamislicing & destroying your own institution through internal competition and it shows.

People who don’t believe there is such a thing as societal decline also have to answer why every day you go to the supermarket and more and more perfectly edible and enjoyable cheese is being ruined with pointless bits of dried fruit inside it.

£65 of Christmas beef fillet landed. Woke’s days are numbered

His music is not my music, but the Chris Rea thing is saddening. If you grew up in the 80s and 90s he was the soundtrack of those endless car rides to carpet warehouses and garden centres with your Dad. Rea is the same age as my parents. There's no denying we're entering this chapter now.

After doing a reading of the Jolly Christmas Postman and getting 6/7 year old children to take notes on key plot elements they’ve moved on to actively mocking undergraduate students who sit in lectures taking no such notes, imagined bored faces and all. This is the real indoctrination.

Weekly Twitter log in. I’ve written a book on British-Irish relations in the c.20th and give the question of Eire’s neutrality in WW2 about 1% of the attention of this guy.

I’d think this about most higher educational pedagogical “innovations” but inertia/financial incentive not to change course are powerful things

Encouraging undergraduates to *start* with AI, robs them of the skills they need to begin learning how to be a history detective. And when you move up to the graduate level, AI doesn't have access to actual archives. And it cannot produce new knowledge. *YOU* have to do that.

It also robs students of learning *how* to research.

Just going to start wading into other disciplines I know nothing about because why not.

They lost me at eClass

Christmas pantomime ticked off. Once again not chosen as the hapless dad picked out for crowd work by the pantomime dame. Mission successful.

One thing that absolutely definitely happens for real in the academic job market is that when you do not get a job, the Dean calls you and explains why you didn't get it. This is extra-super true when the explanation is something legally actionable on its face.

This has been the world’s worst kept secret forever.

One of the reasons I like marking pre-Christmas and then coming back to it in the pre-New Years lull is that the pre-Christmas tone is very much "for the love of God can you just write better???" Subsequently, it gets reined in/more detailed analysis added in that second go around.

god I hate that I am spending so much time/energy trying to "AI-proof" (not that that is even possible) my coursework and assignments because I actually think an education where students learn the critical skills they need is necessary It feels so consuming at times, and I DON'T have the energy

Hundreds per job, really. It would be interesting/sad to know how many are self selecting out of even applying for the meagre pool that is left.

THERE ARE NO JOBS IN ACADEMIA! NO JOBS! DOZENS OF HYPER QUALIFIED APPLICANTS PER JOB!

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