This post is a powerfully depressing essay by James Marriott, published in his Substack. Here's a link to the original. Here's an overview of his argument: More than three hundred years after the reading revolution ushered in a new era of human knowledge, books are dying. Numerous studies show that reading is in free-fall. Even … Continue reading James Marriott — The Dawn of the Post-Literate Society and the End of Civilisation
This post is an essay by Joel Stein that appeared recently in the New York Times. Here's a link to the original. It's purportedly about the issue of how much authors are going to get paid for all the material that artificial intelligence systems are hoovering up from the world's literature. The answer to this, of … Continue reading Joel Stein: What Should I Get Paid When a Chatbot Eats My Books
This post is an essay by Clay Shirky that was recently in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a link to the original. Here's the case that helped him crystalize his thoughts about the impact of AI on student learning: Earlier this semester, an NYU professor told me how he had AI-proofed his assignments, only to … Continue reading Clay Shirky — Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It?
This post is an essay by Christopher Mims, which was published recently in the Wall Street Journal. Here's a link to the original. He's presenting an argument I find compelling about how artificial intelligence is not really thinking -- at least not in the way that humans actually think. Here's how he puts it: There’s something … Continue reading Christopher Mims — We Now Know How AI “Thinks” — And It’s Barely Thinking at All
This post is a review by Phil Christman in The Bulwark of a new book by John Warner -- More than Words: How to Think about Writing in the Age of AI. Here's a link to the original. In this essay, Christman and Warner explore a view of writing that I've been thinking about for years: … Continue reading Against the AI Writing Machines
This post is an essay by Alva Noë that was recently published in the online magazine, Aeon. Here's a link to the original. Noë is a philosopher at Berkeley who is addressing a key issue that is often misrepresented in the conversation about artificial intelligence. The central point is computers can't think. The computers that drive … Continue reading Alva Noe — Computers Can’t Think
This post is an essay by Elizabeth Steere that was recently published in Inside Higher Ed. Here's a link to the original. For teachers worried about students who turn in AI produced essays, she provides an analysis of 50 some essays she generated using ChatGPT using prompts from past assignments she's deployed in her own teaching. … Continue reading Elizabeth Steere — Anatomy of an AI Essay
This post is an interview with Steven Pinker that appeared in the Harvard Gazette. Here's a link to the original. Pinker points out the downside of AI. The core problem is that it's not based on knowledge of how things work but on a massive ingestion of text. This allows AI to figure the probability of … Continue reading Steven Pinker — Will ChatGPT Replace Human Writers?
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 