seems super relevant that the silicon valley rationalists are absorbing all of the same source material and ideas that L. Ron Hubbard did before he launched scientology....
anthropologist of sci & tech. Prof @Yale. author of "Placing Outer Space" and VR book "In the Land of the Unreal". tech criticism with good vibes.
5,222 followers 919 following 614 posts
view profile on Bluesky
seems super relevant that the silicon valley rationalists are absorbing all of the same source material and ideas that L. Ron Hubbard did before he launched scientology....
I only give feedback (no grads) for grad students. They are printing out their reading reflection and then annotating in class if they want to update their ideas based on discussion. And now I’m just getting used to writing comments by hand, which I don’t think I’ve ever done!
I’m doing this as well. Though I will say marking by hand is much slower than on a screen. But if my students are okay being comfortable and readjusting, I will follow suit
perfect illustration of why i hold the stance on GPT that i do! I grew up in the age of spell check/grammar check and have absolutely cognitively offloaded the catching of these kind of mistakes to my writing software. Tempted to delete and repost out of vanity, but it's too good of an example....
i'm just so sad whenever i get a GPT-generated email from a perspective graduate student (complete with a robot's explanation of why my work is so compelling).
Gemini delivering news at the same speed as the pony express.
"This is both a clear-cut moral abomination and a logical culmination of modern surveillance capitalism. It is the direct result of tech companies producing products that seek to extract attention and value from vulnerable users, and then harming them grievously. It should be treated as such"
"If your books were uploaded to LibGen/fed into the LLMs, add your name to the potential class action lawsuit by tomorrow." Details: LibDem database: www.theatlantic.com/technology/a... Attorney form: www.lieffcabraser.com/anthropic-au... (This information comes via a reliable Discord source.)
important read for folks in higher ed. This is the experience of so many of our incoming students. But also take heart that there are many students who don’t want LLMs to be core to their education.
Juxtapose today's rollout of this bullshit prize with today's NYTimes Kashmir Hill article.
The idea that you should be able to rake in money experimenting on everybody’s teenagers, vulnerable friends, struggling siblings, lonely parents and every other lost soul in the world simply by arguing for your own inevitability and potential is abhorrent to me.
soft launched to a few students in my grad seminar the fact that we are going full analog (course reader that they purchase from the local print shop!) and they were both excited and nervous. It's going to be a fun semester of highlighting and marginalia. Looking forward to rediscovering lost arts!
Just wow. Well, I’m sure current over investment by universities in AI will turn out differently.
Nor will there be admissions next year in anthropology?!?!?
Check out this 6-year STS postdoc opportunity at the University of Vienna! #STS jobs.univie.ac.at/job/Universi...
Anyone want to buy two reserved-seat tix to @rilokileyofficial.bsky.social in New Haven on 9/3? Asking face value, $150 for the pair.
it's a relief to see the bubble starting to deflate. Curious if we'll see a hard pop, or just an slow and ugly decline.
On the Hard Fork episode a few weeks ago when the hosts responded to their critics, Newton said that if this thing doesn’t cure cancer he’ll be very mad. The tone was that he /assumed/ it would and so all the negative trade offs are worth it. But Warzel argues the much more likely future.
“The technology may still do an excellent job of making our educational system irrelevant, leaving a generation reliant on getting answers from a chatbot instead of thinking for themselves, without the promised advantage of a sentient bot that invents cancer cures.”
honestly, i'd be happy with them being honest about the work and learning they were doing. I'd be super disappointed if the policy was 'all AI is good and okay' and would set up the discussion to heavily discount that from happening. But if they came up with a policy and stuck to it, i'd be happy?
I'm not, however, teaching an undergrad course this semester, so i won't get to try this out. And by the time i'm back with undergrads in a classroom, i know a whole new strategy will be needed. Hope all the instructors out there have success with your policies this term/year. God speed!
I'd then have them write it up and sign a pledge to the policy (a la UVA honor policy). This would really only work with a seminar, but after the total failure of my absolutist policy last semester my strategy would be to try for bottom up cultural change.
What i would do for an AI policy this semester: Have students come up with a typology for the ways AI is used (from brainstorming to writing to editing - and i'm sure at this point they know better than I). For each use, given the learning objectives of the class, is it acceptable or not.
Save 30% on #NewBook "Interface Frictions" by Neta Alexander, which explores how ubiquitous design features in digital platforms such as playback speed, autoplay, and night mode, reshape, condition, and break our bodies. buff.ly/qGM7NVC
probably Professor McGonagall if that counts?
I’ve been working on a paper about the hubris of mid-century sci fi writers and editors… for no reason whatsoever
Beware illusions of understanding
Feeling inspired to get back on here after a really really fun #ASA2025 so making my obligatory “I am on the job market” post! I study the power politics of bodies, borders and babies w/ a current focus on trans reproduction. Read more at Carlosariego.com
Fun news!!! I spent a week in Chile w Debra Fisher exoplanet hunting around Alpha Cen in 2009. She came up empty handed but great to see that there might be something there after all.
Just imaging the different direction AI coverage might have gone if, following Roose’s chat with ‘Sydney’ he has actually done the reporting of the sorts detailed here rather than stayed in the delusion. Great illustration of illusions of understanding.
Omg
I have sent ScienceDirect the following questions and asked them to take down their harmful AI feature. Let’s see what they answer.
Mechanical Turk: 21st century spectacle edition.
AI is undeniably useful in completing school-related artifacts more quickly and efficiently, but that utility is sometimes the opposite of learning. This is why I believe we need to focus at the level of experience and only then ask how AI might be used inside that experience.
The assumption that generative AI could be a "valuable partner" is unevidenced and the example activity is critical thinking work that could better be done in the absence of AI. It's thinking of something you COULD do with AI. Rather than what students SHOULD do to learn.
Adding up all of the extortion money that higher ed is paying and wouldn’t it be nice if that could just be funneled right to public media. Sigh.
It still mostly lives in a google doc and my mind. But I will find it a home!
oh yes. it's why my "short little paper" on an essay about utopia by Ursula Le Guin is now about occult practices in LA in the 1930s and 40s.
pleasantly surprised that AI results are now cordoned off to their own tab - which is not the default tab - on chrome. i imagine this is temporary while they make the tool, you know, not spit out absolutely incorrect information. but i'll enjoy the reprieve.
I'm contemplating returning to the "course packet" model, where students buy a bound bundle of the course readings from the local print shop. This is for a grad seminar. Any drawbacks i'm not considering? For students who need accommodations, i will get them the PDFs.
Love the cover!!
and the only vague evidence they offer is a study done by their own company, which as we know from the tobacco industry is worth less than the pixels it's printed on. infuriating BS
Back in the summer of 2023 I wrote a post on Anthrodendum called "Salvaging what is good." This was an attempt to sow some seeds in the ruins of Twitter (thanks @clmorgan.bsky.social for the inspiration). Here's my attempt to pick up that thread again: anthropologia.org/2025/07/21/a...
Omg
He’s where it allll begins
It is very hard to write agains the grain ... and very worth doing! Molly and I take the approach of foregrounding the techno-optimist critiques and then taking an orthogonal step so that the work can't be dismissed. Important to do both in the cover letter to the editor and the text itself....
ooooh
If you are wondering, i began with ideas about ursula le guin, outer space, and california. i have ended up with a substantial detour into the occult, scientology, its relationship with cybernetics. given the whiffs of conspiracy coming off of these topics, perhaps GPT would have gotten me there....
I remain convinced by @mjcrockett.bsky.social and my argument, that no matter how sophisticated the user, using these tools makes one highly susceptible to an illusion of exploratory breadth, where you think you are exploring the full corpus of knowledge on a topic, but it is only a slice.
What i love about learning is immersing myself in a sea of information that doesn't make sense and slowly figuring out how to not drown. The joy is the moment when you realize you are floating effortlessly. I don't yet see how that kind of understanding comes from these products.
Put aside the fact that i personally would not trust this product to lead me in a good direction, clearly many (including my students) already do trust it as an oracle, precisely because it confidently tells them it is synthesizing based on 'widely recognized information'.
Maybe i could have started with my initial query input to the LLM and through a conversation i would have gotten to the present question. And maybe it would have taken a couple hours, instead of a couple weeks.
The second epistemic risk (and epistemic loss) concerns the process and joy of discovery. i've had a blast doing this research, and i zigzagged to what feels like a generative connection and set of questions. I'm not quite sure how i would have gotten here if GPT was my first stop.
The first epistemic risk is devaluing who produces knowledge. When i asked GPT for sources, it responded "My response was based on a synthesis of widely recognized information." Any product that treats knowledge in this way has no business in our industry of knowledge production.
There are 2 epistemic risks that this encounter draws out (risks that, without my collaboration with @mjcrockett.bsky.social, i would not be able to so easily identify and articulate).
i check in with ChatGPT sometimes to see where it's at as a research tool. I asked it some questions about a current project. i was at first dishearteningly impressed. It found the main stuff i found (in minutes as opposed to weeks). But, within 6 prompts it was hallucinating. I have thoughts...
Love the knowledge navigator shout out 🧮
A new Annual Review of Anthropology piece on the "Anthropology of Science" (by Langlitz and Dan-Cohen) raises a question I have long wondered about - why is there no dedicated journal for this domain of inquiry? Should there be? What could it look like? Why would it matter?
Ooof, that spot on quote
i've ruined a lot of dinner parties with non-STS folks with observations like this...
That awful fine line of really listening to what someone is telling you and feeling confident that you have a piece of the puzzle that they don’t. With the students I am really trying to validate and understand how they are thinking about AI (and then smashing it a bit with my critical hammer)
Constantly thinking about the above excellent point from www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
"[Students] did not lobby for the introduction of laptops when they were in elementary school, and it’s not their fault that they had to go to school on Zoom during the pandemic. They didn’t create the A.I. tools, nor were they at the forefront of hyping technological innovation."
Gave my third talk to high achieving high schoolers about AI and learning. Several articulated how trapped they feel into using LLMs — to keep up with others or bc the curriculum is such that they aren’t learning anyway so why bother pretending. I’ve loved giving these talks and it is breaking my ❤️
I can’t believe I have to wait a couple years to read this!!!! Can I pre-order now ;)
Regarding the "AI for Good" conference presently going on, here's a short passage from "In the Land of the Unreal" (pg 9). This idea is drawing directly from Magalhães and @couldrynick.bsky.social's article “Giving by Taking Away.”
This was such a fun conversation - grateful for Kensy's excellent questions and a space to share my ongoing project with @lmesseri.bsky.social!
the images don't quite show what is happening, but as soon as the mouse touches the "link" icon, it gets bumped out of the way making it very likely that you will accidentally click on the AI companion icon.
Disgusted by this Zoom UI: when i mouse over the link icon to copy a zoom link, it is replaced by an "AI companion" link. Google was doing this with gemini for awhile as well. This is just nasty UI design, tricking people to click on a feature that they (I) don't want.
just posted today - Warzel wrestling with the fact that he is still there and knowing he shouldn't be. Other journalists like him are implicitly addressed (lemme know if you want gift link). www.theatlantic.com/technology/a...
nostalgia for hope as a reasonable design spec <3 I hope you find the book helpful! i think it will definitely be up your alley (just based on the post i read of yours) and hopefully just 'yes and' you in the direction you are heading...
The empathy machine stuff started out somewhat earnestly but quickly got co-opted by big tech (and then discarded when it didn’t meet bottom line). What if it never blew up and was always a niche artistic/activist tool? Would our assessments be different? Just musing…
I draw similar conclusions to you in my writing, especially the point that these technologies have the best chance of delivering their empathy promises if and only if they are situated in community. OTOH, I sometimes find myself feeling nostalgic for the very hope that tech can be good…
ah, so that's how you quit the gym.
Nooooooooo (but good one)
Amazing.
did it ever 'work' tho? ;)
i often use metaverse/VR esp b/c there were quite a lot of edtech partnerships in this space. but i also am biased on this front and i paid a lot more attention to it then most, so am never sure if it is a good example or not...
To be sure, we have a lot going wrong right now in the US.... but i do think that most people have kettles (electric or stove top). Could be regional - in the northeast, we still have some colonial lifestyle ticks :)
...i use a kettle. what do people use in stead??
Mercifully
Torture is a fun one! (“Fun”)
good ones!
I loved "Woodworking". I stayed up all night finishing it (a couple nights ago). And i've already recommended it to several people. 💕
i hear you. A few years ago i finally started dropping image links into the comments for my future self...
i love this example, thank you for sharing!
Whenever i challenge audiences by saying 'AI is not inevitable' someone pushes back and asks me to name a technology that was sufficiently developed but people rejected. I have my list that i trot out. what's on yours? I'm still looking for the real 'a ha' response to this comment.
even tho gmail's 'never delete anything' free email service was a bait and switch, it was really helpful today when i had to find an invoice for a bed frame from 2014. so... there's that.
"Indiana Jones and the Disappearing Job Market"
i've read a lot of essays on AI and higher ed. hands down this is my favorite to date. it's nuanced and rich and provides moments of inspiration while painting a very real picture of what we as educators face.
"[Students] did not lobby for the introduction of laptops when they were in elementary school, and it’s not their fault that they had to go to school on Zoom during the pandemic. They didn’t create the A.I. tools, nor were they at the forefront of hyping technological innovation."
"students are wired to find the most efficient path possible to good marks." Such a good summary of the governing ethos in higher ed. How do we re-center learning as the point of college?
"He then transcribed Claude’s points in his notebook, since his professor ran a screen-free classroom." devastating. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...
And this is something that students need to internalize as well. They are sometimes shocked at what i consider to be academic dishonesty and what they think is an okay use of a tool. I am not reading their essays to learn about the subject. The essay is an assessment of their learning.
"This should give researchers in the field cause to interrogate how, where and by whom their research will be applied. Regulators and policymakers bear ultimate responsibility .... But researchers have power too, and should not hesitate to use it. The time for these discussions is now"
killer title! (literally, i guess)
I read Thiel's 1995 "The Diversity Myth" (as a service to the academy) and that was exactly my impression. It's a well researched, thoughtfully argued, rich book. But it's premises are so off key! It represented the best of a liberal arts education operating in an utterly pretend world
Exactly. And using AI for knowledge production will lead to scientific monocultures, as @mjcrockett.bsky.social and I argued (more than a year ago) www.nature.com/articles/s41...
I put together a short document for those wary of the AI mania in schools. Four of the main arguments for teachers using AI tools and introducing kids to AI as early as kindergarten are addressed--with thoughts and rebuttals and links to sources. Hope it's helpful. drive.google.com/file/d/1urCM...
![Argument: “AI won’t replace teachers, but it will save them time and improve their effectiveness.” Adding edtech does not necessarily save teachers time. A recent study found that learning management systems sold to schools over the past decade-plus as time-savers aren’t delivering on making teaching easier. Instead, they found this tech (e.g. Google Classroom, Canvas) is often burdensome and contributes to burnout. As one teacher put it, it “just adds layers to tasks.” “Extra time” is rarely returned to teachers. AI proponents argue that if teachers use AI tools to grade, prepare lessons, or differentiate materials, they’ll have more time to work with students. But there are always new initiatives, duties, or committee assignments—the unpaid work districts rely on—to suck up that time. In a culture of austerity and with a USDOE that is cutting spending, teachers are likely to be assigned more students. When class sizes grow, students get less attention, and positions can be cut. AI can’t replace what teachers do, but that doesn’t mean teachers won’t be replaced. Schools are already doing it: Arizona approved a charter school in which students spend mornings working with AI and the role of teacher is reduced to “guide.” Ed tech expert Neil Selwyn argues those in “industry and policy circles…hostile to the idea of expensively trained expert professional educators who have [tenure], pension rights and union protection… [welcome] AI replacement as a way of undermining the status of the professional teacher.” Tech firms have been selling schools on untested products for years. Technophilia has led to students being on screens for hours in school each week even when their phones are banned. Writer Jess Grose explains, “Companies never had to prove that devices or software, broadly speaking, helped students learn before those devices had wormed their way into America’s public schools.” AI products appear to be no different. Efficiency is not effectiveness. “Speed a…](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:jpjyorpadryoa6vnwwsnnyq5/bafkreigrcdai56b6rnuqchhubqnmxpd4bj5j2dxecaejnr3l4pxwbcej2i@jpeg "Click to view full size")
