I’m horrified, John, that UT is so pliantly willing to hand over the keys of education, of the stewardship of human knowledge, to the AI Imperium. And that they are encouraging their brilliant professors to be handmaids in the service of The Great Plagiarism (which is what the “large language model” is).
So I love your speech to the incoming frosh. I was trying to think about what I would say to them, though I ain’t no anthropologist so I may be way off- base. And it might not resonate with students at all. It might be too high-horse and highfaluting. But this is what I came up with:
Cultural anthropology is human beings trying to figure out other human beings… which, when you think about it, is a very human thing to do. It’s important stuff, for the future of our society, but anthropology – the process of it – can be fun, as well. So when we ask machines to do our anthropology for us, we are giving up that opportunity for a deeper understanding of our fellow human beings; we are giving up the chance that each of us might be able to come up with some original insights, or even solutions for the things that plague us; we are giving up on the joy that comes from personal discovery; we are giving up a bit of our humanity.
Yes, they University is incentivizing the use of AI, without any apparent engagement with the faculty who'll have to deal with all this in the classroom.
Yes, that's a good 'speech': right tone/stance, on target, and indeed, it can and should be fun!
Meanwhile, this is the 'subject line' of the email I got this morning, "Liberal Arts Is Our Brand." They're hawking merch before classes even start!!
It took me 15 years to get my BA -- with 10 years off in the middle -- and I object to the idea that one needs college to learn to think. Our mutual friend the late Michael B never graduated from high school, never went to college -- and no one who met him could doubt his independent thinking.
So much of what you say about memory also applies to literacy and even more to computers; I know how much I rely on the internet to check my memory, to look up words (I used to go to a dictionary), to check sources (I know which author said it and don't remember where they said it -- but the internet often -- not always -- knows) -- just this morning I looked up an A. A. Milne poem, one line of which I could remember.
The step beyond these capacities that so-called AI takes is to synthesize information. I'm not at all persuaded that it's very good at it. And even synthesizing information isn't the end of thinking: perceiving connections that nobody has perceived before -- that's where originality comes in. And AI -- I'm not aware that it has that capacity at all.
You mention hallucinations -- the problem, as I see it (and maybe this is changing) is that AI doesn't provide its sources. I hope that's changing. Because without providing its sources, it's worthless for scholarship -- worse than Wikipedia, which theoretically at least requires sources. My understanding is that AI doesn't provide sources because the companies that developed it don't want to acknowledge their source materials. So -- unless that aspect has changed, it's unethical from the get-go, top to bottom.
Yes, you're certainly right that thinking doesn't require a college degree. But we came of age at a very different time. I actually deleted a parenthetical qualifier that followed that sentence, specifying that "they don't learn to think in high school." Based on teaching incoming 1st year students for over 3 decades now, I'm very convinced of that. Kids today are very challenged in thinking independently, and it is a skill that has to be acquired, whether or not through formal education.
"In a culture saturated with more accessible and engrossing forms of entertainment, long-form literacy may soon become the domain of elite subcultures." Or of us old farts!
p.s. All that said, yes, it's here and we gotta deal with it.
p.p.s. The bland, prolix prose of the chatterbots puts me off. People are individuals; everybody's quirky; everybody's verbal tics and realms of personal associations are unique; encourage your students to write like people, not like computers. Urge them to show their passion.
I’m horrified, John, that UT is so pliantly willing to hand over the keys of education, of the stewardship of human knowledge, to the AI Imperium. And that they are encouraging their brilliant professors to be handmaids in the service of The Great Plagiarism (which is what the “large language model” is).
So I love your speech to the incoming frosh. I was trying to think about what I would say to them, though I ain’t no anthropologist so I may be way off- base. And it might not resonate with students at all. It might be too high-horse and highfaluting. But this is what I came up with:
Cultural anthropology is human beings trying to figure out other human beings… which, when you think about it, is a very human thing to do. It’s important stuff, for the future of our society, but anthropology – the process of it – can be fun, as well. So when we ask machines to do our anthropology for us, we are giving up that opportunity for a deeper understanding of our fellow human beings; we are giving up the chance that each of us might be able to come up with some original insights, or even solutions for the things that plague us; we are giving up on the joy that comes from personal discovery; we are giving up a bit of our humanity.
Yes, they University is incentivizing the use of AI, without any apparent engagement with the faculty who'll have to deal with all this in the classroom.
Yes, that's a good 'speech': right tone/stance, on target, and indeed, it can and should be fun!
Meanwhile, this is the 'subject line' of the email I got this morning, "Liberal Arts Is Our Brand." They're hawking merch before classes even start!!
It took me 15 years to get my BA -- with 10 years off in the middle -- and I object to the idea that one needs college to learn to think. Our mutual friend the late Michael B never graduated from high school, never went to college -- and no one who met him could doubt his independent thinking.
So much of what you say about memory also applies to literacy and even more to computers; I know how much I rely on the internet to check my memory, to look up words (I used to go to a dictionary), to check sources (I know which author said it and don't remember where they said it -- but the internet often -- not always -- knows) -- just this morning I looked up an A. A. Milne poem, one line of which I could remember.
The step beyond these capacities that so-called AI takes is to synthesize information. I'm not at all persuaded that it's very good at it. And even synthesizing information isn't the end of thinking: perceiving connections that nobody has perceived before -- that's where originality comes in. And AI -- I'm not aware that it has that capacity at all.
You mention hallucinations -- the problem, as I see it (and maybe this is changing) is that AI doesn't provide its sources. I hope that's changing. Because without providing its sources, it's worthless for scholarship -- worse than Wikipedia, which theoretically at least requires sources. My understanding is that AI doesn't provide sources because the companies that developed it don't want to acknowledge their source materials. So -- unless that aspect has changed, it's unethical from the get-go, top to bottom.
Best wishes with your school year!
Yes, you're certainly right that thinking doesn't require a college degree. But we came of age at a very different time. I actually deleted a parenthetical qualifier that followed that sentence, specifying that "they don't learn to think in high school." Based on teaching incoming 1st year students for over 3 decades now, I'm very convinced of that. Kids today are very challenged in thinking independently, and it is a skill that has to be acquired, whether or not through formal education.
Yes, it's a matter of literacy broadly https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/opinion/smartphones-literacy-inequality-democracy.html And literacy is increasingly class stratified.
"In a culture saturated with more accessible and engrossing forms of entertainment, long-form literacy may soon become the domain of elite subcultures." Or of us old farts!
p.s. All that said, yes, it's here and we gotta deal with it.
p.p.s. The bland, prolix prose of the chatterbots puts me off. People are individuals; everybody's quirky; everybody's verbal tics and realms of personal associations are unique; encourage your students to write like people, not like computers. Urge them to show their passion.
I assign students in my TechnoCulture class to interview a chatbot. It's remarkable how 'fluent' and persuasive the bots have become!