@janerosenzweig.bsky.social with a thread here demonstrating yet again that AI is a tool of cognitive automation. It’s not helping students think. It’s a substitution for thinking.

Jane Rosenzweig@janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 19h ago

This is like a "choose your own adventure book". If you choose option A, it will do the next step for you, etc. This is not writing. This is producing text for a grade. Writing has value as a way to figure out what you think and why. If students see this possibility in a product that is/5

I liked Nolan’s film, and I liked Wilson’s review of it.

Great thread. “ChatGPT is bullshit” thesis remains substantively undefeated. doi.org/10.1007/s106...

ChatGPT is bullshit - Ethics and Information Technology

Recently, there has been considerable interest in large language models: machine learning systems which produce human-like text and dialogue. Applications of these systems have been plagued by persistent inaccuracies in their output; these are often called “AI hallucinations”. We argue that these falsehoods, and the overall activity of large language models, is better understood as bullshit in the sense explored by Frankfurt (On Bullshit, Princeton, 2005): the models are in an important way indifferent to the truth of their outputs. We distinguish two ways in which the models can be said to be bullshitters, and argue that they clearly meet at least one of these definitions. We further argue that describing AI misrepresentations as bullshit is both a more useful and more accurate way of predicting and discussing the behaviour of these systems.

doi.org

Alex Wild@alexwild.bsky.social · 5d ago

The short version is: after a month the AI has not given me any good reasons to trust it, and I am honestly freaked out by the confidence with which it weaves completely wrong facts into prose, and the confidence with which it writes and professionally formats entire sections of bullshit.

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

Never lose sight of the fact that their pitch is “become intellectually dependent.”

Dylan Roth@dylanroth.bsky.social · last wk.

“We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.” - Sam Altman. I will never stop thinking about how nakedly evil this is, and it has framed every single AI headline I’ve read since.

Uh, did Emily Wilson's Odyssey takedown crash the @lrb.co.uk website?

I sometimes really do not like that my best revisions tend to come from rewriting a draft with pen and paper.

Man… www.404media.co/ai-companies...

AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop

ISBNdb, a company that sources printed books for AI companies to turn into training data, tells clients “the optics problem is real.”

404media.co

Just comical with that disallowed goal back there. What is VAR for if not to review such crucial, borderline decisions. More fuel for my argument that VAR is not built in service of accuracy at all, but for other ends altogether: www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/what-var-t...

What VAR tells us about AI

FIFA's semi-automated refereeing system promises neutrality but brims with bias. It's widely despised yet embraced by elites. It is, in other words, a lot like AI.

bloodinthemachine.com

This month in the @apaphilosophy.bsky.social blog’s “Teaching and Learning Video Series,” Luce de Lire on thinking about AI with Rosa Wernecke’s “Before the Drop” and Zach Blas’s “Contra-Internet Inversion Practice #1.” blog.apaonline.org/2026/07/15/a...

AI Pedagogies of Contra-Technological Resistance | Blog of the APA

Societies carry existing violences and discriminations into the technological apparatuses they produce. Never mind how we use those machines, we are complicit. In this post, I suggest introducing stud...

blog.apaonline.org

Blanche’s answer here translates to “I do not believe in the fourth amendment.”

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 3w ago

KLOBUCHAR: Do you agree that it's unacceptable for federal agents to forcibly enter someone's home without a warrant and drag them onto the street without checking that they even have the right person? BLANCHE: Well, it depends on the circumstances. It's not a black and white answer

Ran into my elementary school custodian today and (1) he’s still the custodian at my elementary school and (2) he’s exactly as cool as I remember.

Sitting in 2 diff hospitals for over 2 weeks with a close family member has further radicalized my republicanism. The patient advocate’s office should be vested with more power. And philosophically, we need to further theorize “impersonal” and “structural” domination. Because that’s what’s going on.

On a more serious note, a large proportion of my students appear not to believe that tasks that were completely routine 3-4 years ago are even possible without offloading cognition to an LLM.

Amy Mode Activated 🪷 ᓚᘏᗢ ಇ.@activateamymode.bsky.social · 4w ago

Kids today have lost the fine art of bullshitting a 10 page paper from a single Funk & Wagnalls entry or from reading only the CliffsNotes. 🤣

A recent scandal at Brown University gives us a better sense of what this kind of cheating looks like in one particular class—and just how much it may be substituting for actual learning.

Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered an in-person final; scores fell 50%

AI cheating leads to "a failed society," professor says.

arstechnica.com

retweeting this because I really believe that comparison of our current political situation with the recent trajectory of Mexico is instructive, both in the similarities and the divergences.

Gregory Convertito@gregconvertito.bsky.social · 11mo ago

My review of two recent public-facing books on the recent Mexican political situation is now out in The Latin Americanist. It reviews @franciscobaezr.bsky.social’s “Populismo neoliberal” and José Ramón Cossío Díaz’s “Los futuros de la militarización en México.” 1/3 dx.doi.org/10.1353/tla....

to repeat a point, the underlying political theory of the unitary executive is the president as tribune — an instantiation of the sovereign will of the people. it is a Bonapartist vision of the executive and it cashes out in the idea that the executive branch must follow the president's will.

I would watch this. @alexwinter.com

Matt Loar@matt.loar.name · last mo.

Bill and Ted's Eurostar Pass

I keep seeing "all authors use AI, the real issue is they're being forced to be sneaky about it" headlines. Full stop No. This is a lie peddled for normalization. It's schoolyard-level pressure tactics "C'mon, all the cool kids are already doing it. We won't tell. It's fine. We're on your side."

Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, an expert on digital surveillance, says local leaders must assess the effect on civil liberties far more thoroughly: “These are pretty basic questions and yet are rarely asked before new police technology is purchased.”

“Everything, Everywhere, All at Once Surveillance”: Your Questions Answered - Bolts

A legal expert on digital surveillance answers questions from Bolts readers about how police track your personal data, and what public officials could be doing to restrict it.

boltsmag.org

The resurgence of political violence we are witnessing is very bad.

Lynda Lopez@lyndab08.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Alderman Byron Sigcho Lopez of the 25th Ward released a statement and footage of men detonating a bomb near his home in Pilsen last night.

Since life is keeping me busy I don't have time to do much writing and what not now, so just to keep my blog active I fired off a quick post about the latest report on the humanities. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-...

i've already made similar sounds to liam about this, but one other thing: the report notably does not reckon at all with the sort of work in philosophy that meets its abstract description of the Problematic Scholarly Tendencies, but is widely (though controversially) considered to be high quality

@lastpositivist.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Since life is keeping me busy I don't have time to do much writing and what not now, so just to keep my blog active I fired off a quick post about the latest report on the humanities. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-...

"It's a republic, not a democracy" say the people cheering for gladiatorial combat in the capital city in a mixture of patriotic fervor and celebration of the ruler's birthday.

Amazing: KPMG wrote a report describing the successful use of AI by businesses. But the case studies turned out to be AI hallucinations. giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

KPMG report contained AI hallucinations on benefits of . . . AI

Bogus case studies on UBS and transit systems exaggerated adoption of the technology

giftarticle.ft.com

So grim. In the 1990s I visited China. The faculty there couldn’t believe I designed my own courses. They kept asking the same question in different ways thinking I hadn’t understood. I assumed that China would come to adopt Western freedoms, not US would adopt central control.

Kathleen Bachynski@bachynski.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“The Auburn University Board of Trustees on Friday gave itself complete control over course offerings, curriculum, degree requirements and academic credentials while eliminating shared governance at the Alabama land-grant university… The policy leaves many questions unanswered”

😢

I'M Almost Certainly Not I Wasn'T Listening

Alt: Rupert Giles: I'm Almost Certainly Not—but to be fair I Wasn't Listening

static.klipy.com

Good opportunity for me to admit that the unnamed professor in this piece was Jason Brennan sweettalkconversation.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/t...

The Paradox of Commenting

There is a literature, or at least a batch of memes, holding that voting is not an ‘instrumentally rational’ activity, since casting a ballot is costly and one’s vote is unlikely …

sweettalkconversation.wordpress.com

Amanda Marcotte@amandamarcotte.bsky.social · 2mo ago

What I always find weird about it is that it takes less energy to vote than to make up excuses for not voting. But I also find people will spend more time arguing why they shouldn't read an article than it would take to read it. People are weird.