FireFighterDuck

AI in week 44 The model collapse is near, LLMs als de geest uit Aladdin, wanneer stoppen we met AI, en mijn worsteling met digitaal lesmateriaal | The model collapse is near, LLMs as Aladdin's Genie, when to stop t...

New week, new newsletter, filled with all sorts of AI critique, such as the (maybe?) coming model collapse, LLMs that serve you as Aladdin's Genie, when to stop the use of AI in education, and my struggle with digital textbooks.

English version here: www.felienne.nl/2025-44/#eng...

And both are soup °L°

As I was looking up some famous women in CS, I tried to find information on how Grace Hopper was excluded from the 1968 NATO conference on software engineering. Google was... less than helpful, it tried to deny the conference even happened!

The term "vibe coding" raises an important question: what exactly is coding? In my last newsletter I argue that coding is very narrowly defined, as just getting ideas already crystal clear in your brain into source code.

It might also be used by boomers and senior citizens who remember Dalli-Dalli °L° (specifically in the past tense "Das war Spitze!")

AI in week 39 New!! A newsletter in English! Scroll down, or visit my site and read this newsletter in English too! If you subscribed a long time ago and never received a newsletter before that's because there we none in English before, so welcome!! So Dutch readers, don't worry! This newsletter looks like

The last few months trying my hand at writing a newsletter I have been posting only in Dutch, but from now on my newsletters will also contain an English translation.

Don't miss the first English one, on hallucinations, the easy or unease of learning and how to use AI.

Text: Das ist kein angenehmer Post Bisher ging man davon aus, dass unser aktueller Kurs dazu führen wird, dass wir im Jahr 2100 eine Erderhitzung von 3°C erwarten (im Vergleich zum vorindustriellen Niveau). Nun gibt es neue Erkenntnisse: Bereits im Jahr 2050 wird es 3°C heißer sein als im Vergleichszeitraum wenn wir so weiter machen. Wie alt bist du im Jahr 2050?

Text: Was ist passiert? Es gibt neue Erkenntnisse - kommuniziert von der Deutschen Meteorologischen Gesellschaft und der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft: "Die Beobachtungslage (sowohl Luft als auch Ozean) zeigt, dass die Klimaentwicklung sogar schneller voranschreitet, als es das „Worst- Case-Szenario" des sechsten Sachstandsberichts der Vereinten Nationen (AR6 des IPCC) berechnet hat."

Wie sieht ein Leben in einer 3°C heißeren Welt aus? Alles entwickelt sich schneller als befürchtet (hier ein paar Beispiele): * häufigere und stärkere Wetterextreme führt zu mehr Ernteausfälle & Hungersnöte, Beschädigung von Infastruktur, (Hitze)Tote und Verletzte * schnellerer Meerespiegelanstieg führt zu mehr Lebensraumverlust * beschleunigtes Abschmelzen der Gletscher → herausfordernde Versorgung mit Trinkwasser

Wir leben bereits in einer1,3°C heißeren Welt Am Beispiel Hitzetage & Gesundheit In Berlin wurden für das Jahr 2020 23 Hitzetage angenommen. Ohne ambitionierteren Klimaschutz könnten es im Jahr 2100 48 werden. Bei Einhalten der 1,5-Grad-Erwärmungsgrenze würden dagegen 24 Hitzetage erwartet. Das sind die Auswirkungen einer ca 1,1°C heißeren Welt im Jahr 2020 In einer 3°C heißeren Welt, werden Hitzetage sehr viel häufiger auftreten und eine (Lebens)Gefahr für uns Menschen, allen voran Kindern, Älteren und Vorerkrankten.

Informationen zu den aktuellen neuen Erkenntnissen & dem Aufruf der Deutschen Meteorologischen Gesellschaft und der Deutschen Physikalischen Gesellschaft (die wissenschaftliche Perspektive).
Das ist diesmal ein etwas längerer Post. Weil die Lage ernst ist.

#szenarien #3Grad #medienklimakrise

"For academia, AI is part of a techno-utopian attack on the entire system. It’s not great new technology designed to help us avoid chores. As one of their sources writes, “When you outsource the thinking, you outsource the learning.”"

Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI (black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf. Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al. 2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
1/n

Babymetal et al. Day °L°

👋

°L°

Ich bin in 15 Minuten in Salzburg, kannst also schon mal deine Boxhandschuhe rausholen °L°

Schaut eigentlich das ARD-Management den eigenen #Brennpunkt?

Auszug Spiegel-Artikel: Als in der Personalversammlung schließlich ein Mitarbeiter nachhakt, ob denn das Kreuz an der Wand im Fraktionssaal dem Neutralitätsgebot entspreche, bedankt sich Klöckner höflich für die Frage und fügt hinzu: »Ohne das Kreuz gäbe es die offene Gesellschaft, wie wir sie heute in Deutschland haben, nicht.«

Mein Problem mit dem Selbstbild mancher Christ*innen in einem Satz, heute von Julia Klöckner.

Das ist nicht gut, aber zumindest pünktlich.

New blog post in honor of Rust's 10th anniversary: smallcultfollowing.com/babysteps/bl...

OC Brainrot so bad I drew Marmswys as a pony
#art #oc

guns out for #maidday !!
#art #ffxiv #oc #roegadyn

Happy #mermay
-
#ffxiv #wol #roegadyn

PhD Timeline xkcd.com/3081

Illustration of my original character CMYK-chan holding two spray cans in cyan and magenta. She wrote „#TransRights“. On one of the cans there is a sticker that reads „TERF repellent“

TERFs can suck my dick 🖕

Trans women are women.
Trans men are men.

Fuck Harry Potter.

Tariffs xkcd.com/3073

redraw of the "I've never smoked in my life" meme page from Way of the House Husband redrawn with my sona to say "I've never used ChatGPT in my life"

🧍‍♂️

Trans people are real and beautiful and also really beautiful

Pencil sketch of the Studio Ghibli character, Porco Rosso with a modified quote from the movie "Better a pig than a gen A.I. user!"

Better a pig than a gen A.I. user!

An artwork of my original characters. In the center is CMYK-chan in a fluffy sleep attire with a bunny sleeping mask and a big plush cat. She is surrounded by small chibis of her friends, also all in sleep attire: RGB-chan reaching towards her and then also Pantone-san, HKS-sama and RAL-chan being completely tuckered out. Grayscale is being squished by pillows.

CMYK-chans sweet dreams of friends 🩵🩷💛🖤

this drawing is pretty on brand for me cause dang do I love sleeping, being all snug and cozy and comfy ... #OCSky #originalcharacter #art

Cedrik, an original character with short golden curly hair, sheep horns and sheep ears, in a white robe and blue cape. He holds a lamb in his arms and looks slightly overwhelmed.

Lambs
#oc #art