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artificial intelligence

“I once believed university was a shared intellectual pursuit. That faith has been obliterated”

John Fea   |  March 7, 2025

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 […]

“Some of the richest men in the world may be deciding the fate of humanity right now”

John Fea   |  February 14, 2024

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

John Fea   |  December 22, 2023

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.

John Fea   |  August 30, 2023

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

John Fea   |  June 29, 2023

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?

John Fea   |  June 7, 2023

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

John Fea   |  May 26, 2023

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

John H. Haas   |  May 8, 2023

“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

Nadya Williams   |  April 26, 2023

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

Daniel K. Williams   |  March 2, 2023

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?

John Fea   |  January 17, 2023

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 […]