David Nelson

Panel 1: Text: “Imagine an alternate universe in which people don’t have words for different forms of transportation, only the collective noun ‘vehicle’.” Illustration: a stick figure stands next to a much more detailed motorcycle, which a speech bubble saying “Woah! Sweet vehicle!” Panel 2: Text: “They use that word to refer to: cars, buses, bikes, spacecraft, and all other ways of getting from place A to place B.” Illustration: A car, a school bus, a bicycle, and a space shuttle, all with a stamp that says “vehicle” on them.

Panel 1: Text: “Conversations in this world are confusing.” Illustration: A speech bubble coming from the left: “Can you drive a vehicle?”, A speech bubble coming from the right: “Definitely!”, A illustration of a car crashed into a tree. Left speech bubble: “I thought you said you could drive!” Right speech bubble: “I can! I’m just used to ones with two wheels!” Panel 2: Text: “There are furious debates about whether or not vehicles are environmentally friendly… even though no one realizes that one side is talking about bikes and the other is talking about trucks. Illustration: Left speech bubble: “Vehicles produce so much pollution!” Right speech bubble: “That’s an exaggeration! They are actually very green!”

Panel 1: Text: “There is a breakthrough in rocketry, but the media focuses on how vehicles have gotten faster so people call there car (‘car’ is crossed out and replaced with ‘vehicle’) dealer to ask when faster models will be available.” Illustration: A TV news report with a picture of a rocket ship and a chyron saying “Breaking: Vehicles reach 1000 mph!”. Below that is a drawing of two stick figures talking at a car dealership. One says, “So I can take this to space, right?” Panel 2: Text: “Meanwhile, fraudsters have capitalize on the fact that consumers don’t know what to believe when it comes to vehicle technology, so scams are rampant in the vehicle sector.” Illustration: A stick figure with a mean smile and a sparkle next to his eye pats a car that has plane wings taped to it. A speech bubble says, “Oh yeah! You can fly this baby across the ocean!”

Panel 1: Text: “Now replace the word “vehicle” with “artificial intelligence” and we have a pretty good descriptor of the world we live in.” Illustration: One crowd of people say “AI is bad for the environment!” Underneath them is a large box that is labeled “Size of AI people are concerned about”, another crowd of people says “AI is used for climate research!” Underneath them is a much smaller box saying “Size of AI used for climate research”. In the foreground there is a person watching the debate with several question marks above it. Panel 2: Credits. “Text from AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvin’s Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor. Art by Ayla Taylor. www.aylataylor.com”

A silly little comic based on the opening section of AI Snake Oil by @randomwalker.bsky.social and @sayash.bsky.social.

you still have a good 10.5 years at least before most of your DNA stops replicating reliably effectively. But the metabolic slowdown in the mid-40s is a bastard. And PM is a cruel trick that nature ascribes - really rough to watch your loved ones go through it.

Opinion | 40 Iranian Doctors and Nurses Describe a Massacre We surveyed medical workers across 14 cities and 11 provinces in Iran about their experiences treating wounded protesters.

This is so well done

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

I played Shaboozey's "A Bar Song" for today's class intro music and nobody recognized it and now I am quite sad. @tressiemcphd.bsky.social

Working with a colleague on a "challenging conversations" coach bot for students, and I am happy to see some empirical support for their choice of Claude to serve as a realistic partner.

The Bullshit Benchmark Explorer - models calling out ridiculous requests. Go Claudes! petergpt.github.io/bullshit-ben...

Dunno Anna. Writing instructors are world renowned for skinning their fingertips à la Se7en and laying waste to entire schools via pestilence.

AI-Mediated Feedback Improves Student Revisions: A Randomized Trial with FeedbackWriter in a Large Undergraduate Course Despite growing interest in using LLMs to generate feedback on students' writing, little is known about how students respond to AI-mediated versus human-provided feedback. We address this gap through ...

When we assume students will either largely use AI for all written work or we believe we should never allow or encourage them to do so, we miss out on human-AI combined writing support studies like this. arxiv.org/abs/2602.16820

It will be interesting to see whether local models overcome the historical bottleneck of DIY tech barrier to entry, or whether AI permeates the Internet of Things and cloud remains dominant because of consumer lethargy. I am hopeful, but not overly optimistic.

AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: an RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting - Scientific Reports Scientific Reports - AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: an RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting

Been chewing on this paper for a while. Never extrapolate studies conducted solely on Harvard students to any other environment. Also, highly metacognitive learners are likely to prefer studying with a practice machine than with peers in controlled circumstances.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Ma'am, I hope this is not out of line. You look stunning in that ensemble.

There is a dissertation to be written on what Gemini SHOULD be able to, but cannot, do.

and where is this "process" for vendor selection?

That's......10 admins, only 1 active faculty member who traded their line for an online growth admin leadership opportunity. I assume there was no concomitant initiative around faculty and/or student development?

Damn! That looks....appetizingly otherworldly

Ad copy is always superlative and pithy, but my god this reads 100% chatbot saccharine sycophancy.

Part of our research center. They are helped by soft grant money.

We charge about $12k to rent that for a year

As individual academics let LLMs alleviate more authentic tasks, the "minimum viable product" becomes a scaffold we will increasingly accept. Posters at conferences? Peer reviewed pubs? The transition to automated grading will be lubricated markedly by these small, but real, work gains

Yusuke Satai's excellent analysis of conference "hallucitations" illustrates how tasks we view as inauthentic are likely to be outsourced to machines. Students feel the same way. The solution? Increase relevance of coursework in tandem with students.

www.arxiv.org/pdf/2601.18724

If we could orchestrate a collective ovation to this from the students in my lab over Bluesky we would do so. Thank you for fantastic writing and adding another weekly must-read site to my current AI folio.

Good that the participants will be exposed to different perspectives , particularly since we are years away from actually knowing how well our hunches will hold up.

Thi's paper on Trust as Unquestioning Attitude has been vital in my students understanding of how they view algorithmic technologies. I am so appreciative he has provided a similar source for "de-skilling" which has been my students' chief concern about AI in higher ed.

Thank you. I use your paper on trust as unquestioning attitude during week 6 of my learning in the AI era class. Is the @shannonvallor.bsky.social paper the 2014 one or is there something newer that you assigned?

"It’s like a forest fire. If the fire is only five acres big, that’s different from responding to a fire that is 5,000 acres big. Unfortunately, we may now find ourselves in the 5,000-acre scenario when it comes to disease outbreaks.”

I had two motivated smarties who built an entire website in two days and it prompted us to start a lab on student perceptions around AI. We currently have 12 projects and 30 students at varying levels of involvement. What happens to discussion when those students arent in our normal classes?

Really good episode. @anetv.bsky.social has a lot of excellent ideas that get far too little attention so thanks for sharing her new work with us

I am slightly suspicious it is economic. The increase in spam sales emails emails from CHE makes me think they need more revenue and they’ve tapped the existing trad HE admin market. Money to be made from other audiences maybe?

Particularly given the raft of guest essays they have published over the last 9 months lamenting the supposed lack of these things on campuses. Today's essay from a BYU president about how academia is "truth-seeking without character building" and "excellence without a soul" was a hoot.

Does Bournemouth routinely put ayahuasca in the visiting team's water in the locker room?