Marco Bertamini

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

Bartolomeo Colleoni, a 15th century condottiero, was said to boast about having three testes, but it may just be a story linked to the three balls on the coat of arm. His statue (by Andrea del Verrocchio) is in Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo, one of the most beautiful places in Venice.

Exited to be in Tübingen for this symposium with an amazing group of vision scientists: summerschool.lizhaoping.org

"And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed."

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions (1973)

If thousands of us stand up and say "I support #PalestineAction", what is the government going to do? Lock us all up for "terrorism" offences?
This is where we show them how solidarity works.
My latest with the great @doubledown.news

Zadie Smith and Ian McEwan among 380 writers and groups to call Gaza war ‘genocide’ Letter also signed by Hanif Kureishi and Russell T Davies urges ceasefire and unrestricted distribution of aid

Our letter condemning the genocide in #Gaza and calling for an immediate ceasefire. A great crime is being committed, and we cannot stand by.
www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

A long long time ago, in a far away galaxy... the US used to tax the rich

I'm very honoured to have given the Geoffrey J Burton memorial lecture on the topic 'On the appearance of shapes in the visual periphery'. Unfortunately this is the only picture I have.

Our final keynote of the day is from Prof Marco Bertamini (Uni of Padova) on the phenomenal appearance of shapes in the visual periphery #AVA

A tweet by Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25 ) reads: "He’s threatening media companies who are critical of him. He’s talking about sending Americans to foreign prisons. He’s signing executive orders to investigate former staff members who spoke out against him. Don’t you see what’s happening here?"

I see it. I have lived it. 83 years ago, the U.S. government turned upon a group of its own citizens and residents and sent them to internment camps without due process. I was there among them. American fascism is back. It is here. It is now.

PhD position opening in Padova. It is a multidisciplinary project in Experimental Aesthetics and Psychology of Art.
www.bertamini.org/lab/MIRACLE....

The looming shutdown of the Department of Education is about control, not reform. As @teacherscollege.bsky.social faculty warn, dismantling education stifles critical thinking and undermines democracy. When politics dictate learning, society pays the price. #AcademicFreedom #EducationMatters #USPol

The so-called school choice and voucher systems were set up to further starve down already cash-strapped public schools. The goal: To widen the chasm between the rich and the poor. #AcademicSky #EduSky

Sky must stop funding hate speech CW: Homophobia, hate speech Sky launched its programme for Pride 2024 with a ringing declaration the company was “proud to celebrate LGBTQ+ stories”. But while it was posting shiny videos claiming to ...

Demand that Sky stops buying ads and funding hate on GB News. Join @GoodLawProject now to increase the pressure: goodlaw.social/c9g8

Stand Up for Science rallies will be held in DC and state capitals on March 7th. Share with friends. Sign-up here to get email updates with details: www.eventbrite.com/e/stand-up-f...

Applied Vision Association meeting in Liverpool on the 28th of April www.theava.net/meetings.php...

PhD Position: Neural Mechanisms of Imagery and Perception at the Donders Centre for Cognition | Radboud University Do you want to work as a PhD Position: Neural Mechanisms of Imagery and Perception at the Donders Centre for Cognition at the Faculty of Social Sciences? Check our vacancy!

A PhD position is open in @peelen.bsky.social Lab at the Donders Institute - please spread the word and consider applying if you are interested about how imagery and perception relate to each other www.ru.nl/en/working-a... - plus we are fun people to work with ! :)

Systems Vision Science Summer School & Symposium:
Aug. 11-22, 2025 Tübingen, Germany

The Third edition of Systems Vision Science (SVS) summer school is designed for everyone interested in gaining a systems level understanding of biological vision.
summerschool.lizhaoping.org/application

Oxford scientist resigns from Royal Society over Elon Musk’s continuing fellowship Prof Dorothy Bishop said fellowship was ‘a contradiction of all the values’ of UK’s national academy of sciences

Prof Dorothy Bishop resigns from Royal Society over Elon Musk’s continuing fellowship. Fellowship is "a contradiction of all the values" of UK’s national academy of sciences

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

This may be of interest mainly to those in Italy, however on Monday (Sept 30) we inaugurate a new Centre for the Study of Perception and Art (CARPE)
www.dpg.unipd.it/en/carpe

Great idea, thanks Rebecca!

Testing if this works...

Trying to make a starter pack for researchers in #perception science

Please share ! Will be adding more folks as I learn how #academicsky works !

go.bsky.app/V99fSBK

The psychology of perspective and Renaissance art : Kubovy, Michael : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive xiv, 192 p. : 27 cm

archive.org/details/psyc...

zotero would be my recommendation.
Certainly avoid mendeley at all costs, because than you would become just a prisoner of Elsevier and their data mining, proprietary control etc.

The 10th annual workshop on Visual Preference (VPDVP) took place in Rome (June 14-15). The videos of the talks are now available: www.bertamini.org/lab/vpdvp.html

Do *not* give Elsevier your data when they ask you stuff like this, even if it is *required*.
Their main business is now data analytics, and they sell your information for profit.

eiko-fried.com/welcome-to-h...

Twitter is awful, I moved over here on BSky, let's hope for the best