Phillip A. Brown

"Mickey Mouse proves that a creature can still survive even when it has thrown off all resemblance to a human being. He disrupts the entire hierarchy of creatures that is supposed to culminate in mankind." -Walter Benjamin (1931)

If someone fools a reader into thinking a given text is produced by a human when it is produced by AI, that is not an earth-shaking call to reorient the field of the humanities, that is an example of one human being tricking another human being. Which is a bad thing, and it's okay to say it's bad.

It is also just fundamentally not independent as these are programs created by humans to make these texts and must be both prompted by humans to produce the text and the text must be read and recognized by a human. AI is an ongoing human choice, not some disembodied force. (2/3)

“Language and Image Minus Cognition”: An Interview with Leif Weatherby by Robin Manley

The premise of "AI can produce text independently of human creativity that cannot be distinguished from human-created text" just fails on multiple levels for me. AI does not produce text independently of human creativity: it mimics human-created texts. (1/3)
www.jhiblog.org/2025/06/11/l...

Postscript: This is how the Big Tech works, and we've seen it before. People shocked and awed by these AGI projections should remember that fanciful projections have been used time and time again to manipulate stock prices and facilitate the lucrative acquisitions that the tech economy is based on.

which is... just not how things work, and genuinely insulting to pass off as a serious projection. Again, we have been given absolutely no concrete reason to think that the massive leap between LLMs and AGI is remotely close to happening, if even possible, let alone in two years time. (4/4)

Their forecasts are not based on actual research but on "models" that are purely speculative exercises. Their forecasts are based on premises like "a company builds a super powerful data center and then trains its AI on AI research to make it capable of advancing AI research." (3/4)

We are still waiting for any realistic description of what a transition from LLMs to genuine human-like artificial intelligence (AGI) would look like. The dates and graphs seem convincing on first glance, but when you actually read the paper, there is no indication that this leap is imminent. (2/4)

Since this video is making the rounds, it's worth a reminder that the "paper" this is based on is speculative nonsense that is purely intended to generate a market for the authors' consultancy services. (1/4) #AcademicSky #AIRefusal #AIResistance #AIinEdu www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KVD...

“If it should turn out to be true that knowledge…and thought have parted company for good, then we would…become the helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous.” -Arendt

I mean an answer that doesn't ultimately rely on tautologies or circular "it should be because it is/will be" type thinking, or empty keywords like "tech literacy" (which ultimately reduces to the same thing).

Something that really bugs me about AI-in-education discourse is that skeptics are automatically placed on the defensive. We're expected to answer "Why not?" when I don't think we've been given a sufficient answer to "Why?" from the other side.

Thank you!

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Recently “paying attention” has become the measure of political merit, *how much* you “pay attention” determines your level of merit, and not appearing to pay attention, or attending to the wrong things, gets you scolded as “complicit,” etc. Without regard to actual politics in any case.

4. Trust the process. You'll end up where you were meant to be, and if that's not in graduate school for the time being, you'll learn something from the experience.

3. Forget about "safety schools." My results didn't line up at all with my advance assumptions about probability. There's no way to de-risk the process so don't waste an application (and the $80) on a school you wouldn't be thrilled to attend.

2. Consider "optional" written responses as mandatory.

Related, 2.b., go through the online applications for each school well in advance so there are no surprise elements that aren't listed on the department webpage when it's time to submit. (learned this the hard way).

For people applying to Ph.D. programs in English/Humanities this year, my advice 1 year after my experience.

1. Cast a wide net. Wider than you think, and as wide as you possibly can. Of the schools I applied to, my finalist/waitlist rate was 25%, acceptance rate 8%.

#AcademicSky