Humans are mimetic creatures. The biggest damage (some call it influence) that LLMs will do is that next generation will be talking like an LLM. They might even normalize hallucination
AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
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Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#72Humans are mimetic creatures. The biggest damage (some call it influence) that LLMs will do is that next generation will be talking like an LLM. They might even normalize hallucination
We've already begun to normalize the belief that humans hallucinate as often as LLMs, and are categorically less reliable and less trustworthy than LLMs. The political and social ramifications of this are bound to be negative.
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#73Is hype cycle effect hitting hard on AI recently? The arguments aren't changing for years, and emotional components in them feel progressively toned down.
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> while we might learn from history - that that is not the reason to "do" history. If we don't learn from history, why do we do history? Is it a form of pure entertainment, i.e. of arts? If so, does that give more credence to White's argument? I have had a PhD colleague who genuinely believed that history ought to be (in the philosophical normative sense) contributing to national propaganda, thus of national interest…
That's a good point, beyond prediction, history does have utility for surfacing "shared stories" that bring people together. Let's not underestimate the real-world impact of such stories. Most big societal movements, both very good and very bad, have been fueled by shared history, or the making of shared history. What's tricky is that indeed such stories need not be factual to be powerful, just as long as they resona…
Oh, it's not just the "big stories". History is a pretty big flag that covers a lot of territory. At heart, history is about asking perennial questions like "where do we come from?", "how did the past shape us today?" and "how could the past inform us?".
This is true on an individual as well as a collective level, and goes well beyond academia. Consider genealogy & family history, local and regional culture and traditions, remembrance,... There is always a personal connection, and that tends to become extremely tangible in individual stories. Whether that's finding a lost relative, honoring one's culture, or just being able to empathize with the lives of people who are centuries gone and discovering that they weren't all that different from us today.
Historians do carry a big responsibility. That's why accountability is at the heart of anyone who does historical research on a professional level; or are motivated to spread their interpretation of the historical record well beyond a few listeners. That's why historians are instilled with a reflex to keep a pragmatic attitude and ask critical questions.
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#75The first comment on that article caught my attention: > I am a grad student in the philosophy department at SFSU and teach critical thinking. This semester I pivoted my entire class toward a course design that feels more like running an obstacle course with AI than engaging with Plato. And my students are into it. It would be interesting to take a class of students and set them an assignment to come up with assignme…
> Designing "ChatGPT-proof assignments" feels to me like a similar level of intellectual challenge. This is indeed true. But a challenge is that few professors are being given the time and training to help do this. When you are on a 4/4 and just keeping your head above water you don't tend to have enough time to adopt experimental pedagogies and completely replan your courses. And professors are largely being tasked…
How does making podcasts solve anything? Students can just read out what the AI writes into an audio recording.
Why is this problem being fretted over? In-class written and oral tests should be fine to assess students. If AI helps them learn or even cram the material, great!
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#76The first comment on that article caught my attention: > I am a grad student in the philosophy department at SFSU and teach critical thinking. This semester I pivoted my entire class toward a course design that feels more like running an obstacle course with AI than engaging with Plato. And my students are into it. It would be interesting to take a class of students and set them an assignment to come up with assignme…
> where all you got was the outline of the island As a blind person I can't help but notice that this "innovative" question design is inherently inaccessible to people like me. Yes, I know I'm not the norm. However, I can't help but notice that this avoidance of text based assignments is making accessible teaching even more impossible. Say welcome to a new generation of Digital Divide.
Maybe they could 3d print the outline to make it more accessible? Or perhaps the goal is to use the image file with the outline to find the island, something that could/should be achieved via code?
I wouldn't be surprised if a novel solution to the problem emerged from students with diverse abilities. I don't think that brute forcing the problem by comparing the image of every island on the planet vs the outline visually is the best path forward. Its probably something like, create a ratio of the size of each of the bays and then probe for values that fit those quantities on wikipedia.
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’d be bad if there was no alternative. But different people can get different assignments and that’s ok. Complaining about this is like me complaining about people drinking milk since I’m lactose intolerant.
> It’d be bad if there was no alternative. But different people can get different assignments and that’s ok. While there are possibly noble goals behind your suggestion, in practise this puts anyone outside the mainstream in the category of “other,” people to be managed separately. I’ll leave to your imagination how much work is often put into supporting these “other” assignments and how up-to-date they’re kept va th…
I think "everyone gets the exact same test" is a whole level of hell worse than "everyone gets a test that makes sense for their abilities and goals"
Are you just concerned about the administration side of things?
I think the GP here has a pretty reasonable outlook here
"Some people can't do some things the same way as others and that's ok, people are different"
Is the vibe I got from that post
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#78I'm pretty sceptical about the entire use of computers in education. For myself, I seem to be incapable of learning anything unless I read it from paper and write down notes in the margin or in my (paper) notebook. Obviously I use screens every day (being a programmer ...) but for actual recall of new material, I need to use paper. Also if I'm in a physical meeting or conference, I never have a laptop open, and I take notes on paper. This makes me doubt that you learn anything if laptops or tablets are involved. Nothing specific to AI, just my general observation.
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#79A lazy physics teacher can make every question a math question in disguise. If a physics teacher is worried that a better calculator will make their test trivial, maybe they need to teach physics instead of testing math. A lazy humanities teacher can make every question a writing question in disguise. If a better spell checker will make a humanities assessment trivial, then maybe they need to teach humanities instead…
I agree that professors can probably develop ai resistant evaluations. But there is minimal institutional support for this. Everybody is going it on their own. And the ai tools are changing rapidly. Telling a ntt faculty member teaching a 4/4 that they just need to stop being lazy and redo their entire evaluation method is not really workable. Iteration is also slow. You do a new syllabus to try to discourage cheatin…
I've been urging this kind of adaptation for the past couple years, with very little success. Switching to evaluation by only on-site work was simple to do, but creating new work forms has been largely a non-starter. Young professors are focused on their publication count and most old codgers (like me) have their eyes on retirement and hoping to escape before accountability hits the fan. When I offer to help explore restructuring their teaching materials, the typical response is glazed eyes and sudden awareness of the need to be elsewhere.
Re: AI makes the humanities more important, but also weirder
#80AI hasn’t destroyed the humanities, but it definitely made things more complicated and harder to teach.
I’ve seen students rely entirely on chatbots to write essays, and it really does make teaching harder.
As the article says, we need to find ways to make AI and the humanities work together, not just hold on to the old way of doing things.