Michael Gavin

LLMs will never be able to make you feel embarrassed that they don't like you. This, in the end, is the real meaning of personhood and the problem of other minds.

Ugh! Reviewing for a journal and had my first encounter today with an AI-generated submission -- fake quotes, fake sources, completely vague argument, the whole nine yards. So poorly done. What a waste of my time!

Also, of course, left unsaid here is that there's much more to personhood than mere legal status. AI just ain't people, my friend. We were all comforted on this score long ago by Walt Whitman's "Song for Occupations"

Annual Voltaire Foundation Lecture on Digital Enlightenment Studies: Mikko Tolonen on Books as Objects, Data and Meaning: A Computational Approach to Eighteenth-Century Book and Intellectual History 9 May 2025 Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, 17:00–19:00 Annual Voltaire Foundation Lecture on Digital Enlightenment Studies Mikko Tolonen (University of Helsinki) Books as Objects, Data and Meaning: A…

📆 Save the date! 📆

Mikko Tolonen @tolonen.bsky.social (@helsinki.fi) is going to give our Annual Voltaire Foundation Lecture on Digital Enlightenment Studies!

9 May 2025, Blackwell Hall, Weston Library, 17:00–19:00.

More information:
tinyurl.com/3cjmx4zj

hesitate to make predictions, but... seems like once the base models cross a certain threshold, there will be so much to do in terms of building applications that the $$ incentives to train new models will recede, and it'll be back on universities to come up with the next big-$ innovation

We had a visiting speaker come in last month and explicitly say that universities won't be able to keep up bc research in the field is too resource intensive. sounded true, or at least likely. but there's also a huge middle ground between building new LLMs and working with students

that's tricky. I have always struggled getting majors to enroll, and for my nonmajors the literature presents more obstacles than I expected. after several false starts I rebranded the course "Math 4 Shakespeare" (just what it sounds like) and have gotten great responses from nonmajors. good luck!

undergrad or grad? are you more training future colleagues who might write quant theses or more offering a fun interdisciplinary class to a bunch of future doctors and engineers?

Thrilled to say @ucdpolitics.bsky.social is making a permanent hire at Assistant Professor in any field across politics and international relations. Details here: my.corehr.com/pls/coreport... Join us!

If not for the sunk cost fallacy, how could anyone make it through middle age?

Collaborating with brilliant RSE colleagues, co-authors and friends has been a joy.

The Beastie Boys’ ‘So What’cha Want’

-by The Muppets

I’ve been there and had the exact same realization

When AI summaries replace hyperlinks, thought itself is flattened | Aeon Essays In creating anonymous summaries, AI flattens out all the fascinating architecture of thought that makes the internet hum

My essay on links, AI chatbots, and Alexander Pope's Dunciad is up at Aeon today! aeon.co/essays/when-...

.@zentralwerkstatt.org and I co-wrote this piece on why you are (probably) doing AI criticism wrong as a humanist and why we, in Critical AI Studies, need to do better methodologically than 'So I asked ChatGPT a question and now I have thoughts...'
Now available on arXiv at doi.org/10.48550/arX...

Opportunities Find opportunities to join UCL History in academic, research, teaching and learning, admin and other capacities below.

Funded PhD Studentship @UCL History and @wellcomecollection.bsky.social on project titled 'Translating Monstrosity: Constructions of Difference in #earlymodern England and France'. Deadline Jan 31st 2025. Project & application info: www.ucl.ac.uk/history/oppo.... #histmed #histsci #HSTM #bookhistory

Yes but only bc authors are cagey af and too clever by half. Honestly I’d trust an LLM to represent the ideas and intentions accurately over abt 90% of authors 90% of the time. Like if you ask me about my book I’ll spout mostly nonsense

Colourful frescoes of verdant foliage, trees, fruits and birds

From 2,000 years ago ~ remarkably-conserved frescoes from the Villa of Livia, wife of the Emperor Augustus. The villa was rediscovered in 16C just outside Rome & was probably part of the dowry Livia brought to her marriage in 39 BC (Palazzo Massimo Museum)

Reading the new Computational Humanities collection and found this footnote. lol. that was me!

Ps: can I include this in my annual review under “recognition”?

The joy when someone cancels their meeting with you so you can get more marking done!
(Seriously, it's an unexpected gift)

#AcademicSky

Book Details - University of Minnesota Press The first book to intervene in debates on computation in the digital humanities Bringing together leading experts from across North America and Europe, Compu...

Computational Humanities is now available! (OA version this winter.) Thank you to the amazing contributors, co-editors extraordinaire @dmimno.bsky.social and Jessica Marie Johnson, the team Minessota, and series editors @laurenfklein.bsky.social and Matt Gold!

www.upress.umn.edu/978151791598...

Periodic reminder that Journal of Open Humanities Data is a thing. I've published in and reviewed for this title. Very good way to present your dataset to the world.

openhumanitiesdata.metajnl.com

Where the streets are paved with…bones! An example of animal bone (cattle & sheep) flooring from Park End Street in Oxford - 12 examples of bone flooring have been found in the county of Oxfordshire! 17th cent. On display at Museum of Oxford!

Me, me, me! I have a book on the 17th cent origins of English literary criticism, a second book on computational methods, and now editing a big collection on global language policy and international relations.

Hard to know if it's just the influx of new joins or the new visibility offered by "starter packs", but I'm encouraged by finding lots of once-familiar names and faces now on here-- as well as new ones!

It was the best. Super simple syllabus and you did such a great job cultivating a sense of intellectual community.

Welcome to the other side! Your graduate seminar on American lit was one of the best classes I ever took. I'll never forget it!

Really rewarding paper to read, pressuring the norm of uncritically using cosine similarity as a proxy for semantic similarity.

Rewarding, but also makes me sweat a little.

arxiv.org/pdf/2403.054...

Carreg Cennen. Spectacular.

Generative AI exists because of the transformer The technology has resulted in a host of cutting-edge AI applications — but its real power lies beyond text generation

Was it this one on generative AI, LLMs and the transformer from the FT? If not, it’s an excellent read anyway.
ig.ft.com/generative-ai/