What should professors do about AI generated papers? When I returned to teaching from a sabbatical last year I noticed that the students in my general education history classes suddenly learned how to write. Were they using ChatGPT to write […]
artificial intelligence
“Some of the richest men in the world may be deciding the fate of humanity right now”
The quote in the title of this post comes from writer Garrison Lovely‘s recent Jacobin piece, “Can Humanity Save AI?” Here is a taste: One of the more influential ideas in x-risk circles is the unilateralist’s curse, a term for situations […]
Why good writing matters
Artificial intelligence cannot replace the act of writing. Here is a taste of Frank Bruni’s column at The New York Times: When my friend Molly Worthen, a history professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a […]
What is your AI policy? A Penn professor explains why he doesn’t have one.
Everywhere you turn these days professors are talking about how to handle students who use ChatGPT to write their papers. Over at The Washington Post, historian Jonathan Zimmerman explains why he doesn’t have a policy on the matter. Here is […]
College president delivers a graduate speech crafted by ChatGPT
After delivering a ChatGTP graduation speech, Wells College (Aurora, NY) president Jonathan Gilbralter said: “Before I end this address, I have a confession to make. I want to let you know that everything I just said was written by artificial […]
AI-generated obituaries?
Here is Eli Frankel at The Baffler: THE PITCH IS SIMPLE: drafting an obituary for a loved one can be a difficult and emotional task, so why not outsource the work to a computer? Recent advances in generative AI have […]
Joe Biden should use Fareed Zakaria’s recent column as the foundation for his 2024 presidential campaign
Here is CNN commentator Fareed Zakaria’s column at The Washington Post: The United States’ debt ceiling crisis is, once again, provoking the usual commentary about the country’s presumed dysfunction. But the truth is that this unprovoked madness, causing self-inflicted wounds, is taking place against […]
Reflections on A.I. in the wake of David Brooks’s comments last week
“A.I. is 100 times more important” than any other subject we’re talking about today, says David Brooks in last week’s PBS interview. I came in thinking that A.I. was, like, it’s kind of important, and then maybe it’s as big as […]
Coverage of AI and technology-gone-rogue at Current, Arena, and Way of Improvement
A wise reader, Stephen Kamm, remarked earlier this week after reading Elizabeth Stice’s essay this Monday: “A thoughtful piece, and we need many thoughtful pieces on this topic. I’ve adopted the “shut my eyes and pretend it doesn’t exist” approach […]
The moral consciousness of a chatbot
Artificial intelligence seemed to behave badly this past month. Tesla had to recall 362,000 of its self-driving cars for a software update after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that these AI-controlled vehicles were speeding through yellow lights, failing […]
What does artificial intelligence mean for writers?
I have largely ignored all of the debate over ChatGPT (“Generative Pre-training Tranformer), the artificial intelligence program used to generate prose. I have largely ignored it because I am not ready to come to grips with the fact that a […]