my conspiracy theory is that the CEOs will apply baseball’s wins above replacement (WAR) metric to knowledge work. There will be a metric at some point that compares your work to an LLM‘s (type token ratio, etc). And if your work isn’t distinctive enough, they’ll fire you.

Simplest sentence or paragraph revision exercise that works for AI or non-AI. Eliminate all uses of the word "and". Rewrite to make the text argumentative. That's it. It works surprisingly well.

me at the end of class: here's a little speculative exercises; imagine you wake up from cryosleep in 2085. what's the kind of tech-society r/ship you'd like to see around you? students: no AI I honestly think students' views are missing from the 'should AI be integrated in classrooms' discussion

My students yesterday said that all of their profs should ban gen AI use and insist on in-class, blue book exams/papers. Meanwhile, our entire business school redesigned its curriculum to integrate AI into every class. A nightmare all around.

I don't think people should be able to take loans out on their unsold stocks. (This is how the rich become ultra rich because they never pay taxes on either)

For each additional moral–emotional word in a social media post, the number of shares increases 13% Our new meta-analysis finds robust evidence of moral contagion (N=4,821,006) The moral contagion effect is even stronger in larger, pre-registered studies (17%). academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ar...

I want to start a podcast called the “rhetoric referees” where you just call out dumb podcast takes that go unchallenged.

I'm tired of socialism for corporations but they get to keep their profits. I hated the 2008 bailouts. I still hold a grudge.

Adequate: Rewriting the Logics of Success in Rhetoric and Composition, edited by @timothyoleksiak.bsky.social and me, is available for pre-order with a 40% discount with code OLBA26! There's a ton of brilliant writing in here. Please buy it and encourage your library to buy copies too!

Sort of starting to believe that we really do need academic metrics that punish publishing too much

I am teaching Benjamin's "The work of art" this week. I'm irrationally excited. I'm ready to update every passage in the context of GenAI and social media. “How does the cameraman compare with the painter? To answer this we take recourse to an analogy with a surgical operation.”

When working construction, I once lost feeling in both hands for a month after jackhammering in a basement while standing in 18 inches of ice water in January. I made a vow that my kids would never work a job that broken their bodies.

Maybe 20 pieces of candy in the past 48 was too much

a DH project ive wanted to see done (not do it myself) would be to correlate the rise of robot fiction with the rise of thinking animals. I have seen this pattern bit it’s only my impressions

This sounds cynical—but represents a huge advance over empty “AGI” speculation. It’s a political question, not a technical one. Without social equality models *cannot do* many kinds of work (eg, negotiate agreements or manage workers). So they will only be human-equivalent if we decide they are.

I periodically get upset that Bezos spent 100 million on his wedding but the media just shrugged, even celebrated it

My neighbors put up Christmas lights today. I dislike the way capitalism has made every moment in a holiday season.

8 prices of candy, one bag of chips (fun size), and a cookie. I have a tummy ache. happy Halloween!

I believe it’s content analysis

I think a really useful to interact with LLMs is to think of your audience as a vector space.

For those of you doing ML, do you find the model cards useful in any way? What would make model cards more effective?

I love the awkward in-progress prose of students writing out proposals for their final projects. it may be unvarnished prose but there are ideas ready for polishing.

Karpathy starts by saying human supervision is needed only because models aren't yet capable enough. But if you look closely at the obstacle ("I want to learn... and become better as a programmer, not just get served mountains of code that I'm told works"), it doesn't go away "when we reach AGI." +

There is more plot and character development in the first 6 chapters of the Count of Monte Cristo than any *season* of a tv show I've seen in the past ten years.

The perplexity web browser is the end of online education.

Last Friday I gave a keynote at the University of Kentucky, titled, “A Spectrum of GenAI Use in the Classroom.” I’d love to bring this discussion to other institutions as well as with anyone you think might be interested.

When you watch children learn, when they're screaming because it's so hard, or they shake because they don't understand, and you hug them and you talk and together you all stop for snack and then the goal finally happens, you realize that learning is not training a model.

I'm thinking of turning my blog essays into a book. Would you be interested in reading a collection of essays from it?

So I know there are lots of problems in the world but HADES 2 IS NOT ON PlayStation?! I'm crestfallen.

I got into a heated 1 hour conversation with a colleague (and my best friend) about whether topic modeling was a LLM. I said it was not. But wow it took me longer than it should have to articulate why.

"Disproportionate Voices: Participation Inequality and Hostile Engagement in News Comments" "...the top 10% of frequent commenters account for nearly half of all comments in news comment sections (50.11%), while the least active half (bottom 50%) contributes only 14.99% of total comments..."

Lebron James is starting his 23rd season next month. He's been playing basketball since George W. Bush's *first* term. His son is in the NBA. An incredible feat.

My students and I talked about this today. I said it's like a crystal ball/fortune teller aura.

My newest blog post is up: "Seeking human traces in AI writing" (2600 words) I appreciate you taking the time to read it. Let me know what you think. meresophistry.substack.com/p/seeking-hu...

“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.” ~Hector Berlioz

He only drinks it at work.

Everyone once a while I peek into my spam email report for a chuckle. This morning, I saw someone trying to sell me a "microgravity reactor." 🥴

Not enough people in the national media realize that the late night shows are actually youtube channels to most people

Apparently to turn off google AI results you just add "-AI" after your query. I never knew this!

Offspring: can we listen to sandstorm? Me: I don’t know know that song. can you sing it? OS: ripping your pillow tight Me: Enter sandman? OS: yes that’s the one. [I have never played this song for my kids]

I am in need a new keyboard. There are literally too many options. I want a mechanical without bells and whistles. Recs?

People really don’t know how to deal with the immoral and corruption just straight up being out in the open.

Sriracha isn’t nearly as good as it used to be.

I have made the decision to finally read the count of monte cristo

Just reposting this because I shared the blog post a bit late last night. Please share! Let me know what you think.

My newest blog post is up: "Seeking human traces in AI writing" (2600 words) I appreciate you taking the time to read it. Let me know what you think. meresophistry.substack.com/p/seeking-hu...

I think a lot about how the 90s concept of selling out morphed into hustle culture. www.youtube.com/watch?v=anJE...

In zotero, you can highlight a passage, copy it into word, and it will appear with the citation style you have assigned.

All of these qualitative studies will be useful (truly)

Driving my kindergartener around in the car. "Dad, what did the first song ever sung sound like?"