I understand why this movie is well-regarded, and if I were watching it from the perspective of someone seeing it for the first time in 1991 (which I couldn’t have, because I was 3 and from a no-R-rated-movies Mormon family), I might have different thoughts.

Instead, though, I noticed all the obvious ADR, I learned the context for all the lines I already know from playground conversations and pop culture osmosis, I shrugged at the over-the-top action, and I thought about how much more banal the threats of AI are these days than Skynet and a T-1000. It was a real meh for me.

Look, I’m biased, but it feels like a self-own for a “school picture day” flyer to use an AI-generated approximation of a school picture instead of an actual photograph?

The day after proudly announcing that Copilot Premium had been activated for all faculty and staff (no action required from us!), a university office has developed a form letter for how to disable it. Or at least my colleague and I got the same answer verbatim.

Got an AI-generated flyer from kiddo’s Kentucky school today that put a Texas flag in the artwork, and I have questions.

So much going on here. I think Boxer’s comments are some of the most important.

Nudifier technology is educational technology, and we can’t talk about generative AI in schools without talking about this.

Amazing reporting.

Stories like this worry me for the future of scholarship.

As I’ve said before, there’s something Ellulian in all of this AI/AI detection arms race. The creation of a different climate strikes me as more important than the utility (or problems) of any given tool.

Missed the original story, but wow.

This story is full of twists and turns, and what I think is most important is how generative AI creates a new environment.

I think students using generative AI to cheat is super dumb. I also think that using AI detectors is super problematic. Independent of what did or did not happen here, I’m struck by the way that the mere existence of these kinds of technologies creates a multilayered climate of suspicion and distrust.

I want to disagree with some of what Doctorow says here, but that’s precisely why I am bookmarking it. I want to make sure that my opposition to generative AI is principled rather than reactionary, and his defense of certain uses of it is something I need to keep in mind.

I always pay attention to Josh’s perspective on things, and this post really stood out to me.

Love this headline, hate the story.

For my entire career, I have resisted demonizing students and have sincerely believed in the need to adapt assessment to context rather than police student behavior. Yet, this kind of thing is untenable:

Eighteen students suddenly dropped the course, while nine others didn’t even attend the final exam. Of those 27 students, El País noted, “22 had scored a perfect 100 in the midterm exam.”

When Musk brags about Grok not being “woke” or whatever, he is signaling that he’s implicitly okay with this kind of edge case.

Some insightful comments here. I don’t know if they capture the whole picture of what’s going on here, but I think they’re an important part of it.

Important update on Grok nonsense.

Pretty compelling example of digital labor issues (both subtle and explicit) related to AI. Surely letting Google shape our questions and provide all the answers won’t be an issue?

I concede that appeals to the environmental costs of AI sometimes feel knee-jerk and lacking nuance. However, you can always count on Musk to provide a clear example of the harms of AI, and this is a particularly compelling one.

20,000 accounts is a hell of a “bug.”

Don’t love the idea of AI as coparent, but gendered divisions of labor also suck.

“Scale” and efficiency aren’t always good, and digital blackface is a good example.

Digital labor is, imo, the fundamental problem with AI, and I think this story shows why: It’s not just the AI use here that’s exploitative, it’s kind of everything.

Check this guy out:

He compared the current era of AI to the Tower of Babel, saying society must “avoid the ‘Babel syndrome,’” which he defines as “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.”