Eric Hayot

Photo of syllabus section “Use of Large Language Models (LLM or 'AI’)”: “The use of LLM tools (i.e. of generative 'artificial intelligence') such as ChatGPT is not allowed in this course, but more importantly, it is not necessary: the above assessments are specifically geared towards encouraging your own spontaneous thinking. It would be significantly more effort for you to try and generate your weekly 250-350 words about the specific texts in our course reader with an LLM than to simply take that same time to write down your personal, original reactions to the text. It will make our seminars infinitely more rewarding to hear about each other's own thoughts - not the 'most likely' thoughts that a machine might spit out. There will be no way to use LLMs on the university computer for your paper, so I also encourage you to take Assignment One seriously as practice for your own spontaneous thinking and writing.”

these are my LLM guidelines for the course - grateful for everyone who’s shared their approaches on here and especially for the ideas shared on the against-a-i.com website by @annakornbluh.bsky.social @ehayot.bsky.social and Krista Muratore

Some significant %age of quantitative work is just rediscovering stuff that humanists (or indeed ordinary people) already know (b/c we read literature, understand history, do ethnography, etc.), but which doesn't count as "real" knowledge b/c not quantified or experimentally "proven." Sigh.

use, license, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publicly perform, and publicly display, Your Content (in whole or in part) for the purposes of operating and providing the Instructure Properties.”

“Instructure does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, you grant Instructure a fully paid, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right (including any moral rights) and license to ...

One of my favorite bailiwicks from Chris’s recent work, which he reiterated with tremendous force yesterday:

Literary studies has an extensive record of producing knowledge that influences society, our research has always been generative, but is better now than it has ever been, despite austerity…

Toward the Higher- and Secondary-Ed Alliance! - Public Books The influence of K-12 policy and pedagogy on higher ed can perhaps be seen best in the trickle-up effect of the standards of the Common Core.

I wrote about the divide between high school and college English, and what we might do to bridge it, for @publicbooks.bsky.social—part of an excellent roundtable on higher ed under Trump organized by @dennismhogan.bsky.social

www.publicbooks.org/toward-the-h...

something something complex joke about aerodynamics of the V formation...

"I went through partners like shit through a, well, me, I guess..."

Ooh ooh... is the answer to the physician one "a shaman"? Or is that unfair to shamans?

This is actually a fun game. Every school bus driver needs to identify a person who has had their driver's license revoked they admire... Every optician needs to identify a naked mole rat they admire...

Very good summary of AI/education situation, from progressive educator Alfie Kohn, with lots of useful links:
www.alfiekohn.org/article/ai/

Eric Hayot and Paula Krebs: It's not about Palestine, DEI or trans athletes We are facing a defunding of knowledge production in this country. This isn’t only a problem for academia. Many local economies, like Pittsburgh’s,...

Higher ed drives economic growth and innovation, and it’s under attack. Read the new op-ed from @paulakrebs.bsky.social‬ and @ehayot.bsky.social‬ and tell your legislators that research, teaching, and innovation are important to you and your community. www.post-gazette.com/opinion/gues...

Large Language Muddle | The Editors The AI upheaval is unique in its ability to metabolize any number of dread-inducing transformations. The university is becoming more corporate, more politically oppressive, and all but hostile to the ...

This is a fabulous, useful piece of writing and thinking.

www.nplusonemag.com/issue-51/the...

Eric Hayot and Paula Krebs: It's not about Palestine, DEI or trans athletes We are facing a defunding of knowledge production in this country. This isn’t only a problem for academia. Many local economies, like Pittsburgh’s,...

Who benefits from attacks on higher ed?

Certainly not the US economy.
Certainly not the states where higher ed is the major employer.
Certainly not the American people.

excellent work @ehayot.bsky.social and @paulakrebs.bsky.social
www.post-gazette.com/opinion/gues...

There's even great data on this, despite all the talking points & revealed preferences of everyone, including many university leaders, for participating in the collective societal push to convince parents & students that the liberal arts are bad choices for students' career & salary prospects.

He might but pretty sure the bit would have thousands proposing to you, so, even-steven.

I need AI glasses to tell me what your AI glasses are doing.

Here’s my bottom line on the firehose of AI higher ed discourse: for the vast majority for us it’s over. “It” here is not “college” or “teaching”’per se; rather, “it” is the transactional underpinning of those endeavors. Let me explain: 🧵

The LLM was this bad at correcting my misinformed take on ancient writing systems. Now do a topic involving human rights or democracy. Why would I encourage the use of this? See the work of @annakornbluh.bsky.social and @ehayot.bsky.social at against-a-i.com (end of 🧵)

back up now, weirdly. Maybe Eze broke it.

@poorlydrawnarsenal.com do you know if something has gone wrong with the Arsenal Catch-Up feed? Somehow it's blank for me after working for months...

I will say that Nelson Weiper has absolutely KILLED for me in multiple iterations of Football Manager--fully endorse this move!

But where are you going to get your steel, Adrian? WHERE????

Playing around with some graphics.

thanks to everyone sharing and contributing!

thousands of individual visitors this afternoon already suggests how much we need to work together, carry one another, take heart in solidarity. and the students want more too.

AGAINST AI

against-a-i.com

Teachers! And everyone else struggling with course and assignment prep for the fall: a website with resources, readings, assignments, and background on Gen AI and its classroom use/implications. With the great @annakornbluh.bsky.social

AGAINST AI

teachers!

excited to share a new website at this late date of Aug 15 to try to help us collectively prepare for back to school in the interpretative humanities classroom assaulted by the AI grift, so we don't have to go it alone.

take a look, share, + most importantly: CONTRIBUTE
against-a-i.com

"Each of the last seasons." Not "last season," about which I would have had no complaints.

This would be interesting and the kind of thing written by a smart person if it weren't simply wrong. Arsenal league points in 20-21, 61; 21-22, 69; 22-23, 84; 23-24, 89; 24-25, 74.

Unless maybe "Each of the last seasons" means something else in your language. :-)

What's especially frustrating (but sadly typical, in the new normal) is that the U of Chicago doing this (as with things done by Penn, Columbia, Brown) basically gives a permission structure for all other universities to follow suit.

Like you, sick to my stomach about what this means.

Subject of my current book...going to be about 60k words tho.