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Luddite, or Cantankerous, or Naysayer, or Devil’s Advocate, Backward, or …
Photo: Ludd, drawn here in 1812, was the fictitious leader of numerous real protests. Granger Collection, New York. The question is, To be or not to be or not to be … (from Hamlet, spoken by Hamlet) To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The […]
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Who Ya Gonna Get to Hammer Nails and Wire up your Internet?
I know, I know, every time I get onto the Zoom Doom thing with the Chronicle for Higher Education, the entire experience is dirty beyong dirty. Today, it was more bizarro people yammering about “talent search challenges for getting people to go into higher education.” Three women went into their experiences recruiting and screening potential […]
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Geoffrey Hinton, AI, and Google’s Ethics Problem
Talk about the dangers of artificial intelligence, actual or imagined, has become feverish, much of it induced by the growing world of generative chat bots. When scrutinising the critics, attention should be paid to their motivations. What do they stand to gain from adopting a particular stance? In the case of Geoffrey Hinton, immodestly seen […]
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In the Eye of the Polarizing Storm(s)
It is indeed a tale of many cities, worlds, perspectives, and then we have beliefs and morals. Add to that alternative and ulterior modes of realities, and we have a virtual Babel’s Tower of conflicting, contradicting and confusing form of “discourse,” or debate. Never mind the Matrix angle of things! In today’s Western Culture (sic), […]
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Anxiety as Socialism: AI Moratorium Fantasies
Rumours and streaks of hysteria are running rife about what such artificial intelligence (AI) systems as ChatGPT are meant to do. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy recently showed himself to be ignorant with terror about the search bot created by OpenAI. “ChatGPT taught itself to do advanced chemistry. It wasn’t built into the model. Nobody programmed […]
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Libelled by the Bot: Reputation, Defamation, and AI
Cometh the new platform, cometh new actions in law, the fragile litigant ever ready to dash off a writ to those with (preferably) deep pockets. And so, it transpires that artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, for all the genius behind their creation, are up for legal scrutiny and judicial redress. Certainly, some private citizens are getting […]
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Listening to the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Note: I am not attacking people personally, or their right to opinions. However, I have been in this rodeo since 1983, academia, with the deans, chairs, provosts, VPs and presidents, and plethora of others, who hands down (not all) got it wrong about the value of and reason for education, K12 and higher ed. This […]
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The Cell Phone Is a Pair of Red High Heels
It is comical how easily one can be ignored for pointing out that new technology is dangerous and fetishistic. So-called “smart” cell phones are a prime example. For years I have been pointing out their dangers on many levels. To say most people are devoted to them is an understatement. Maybe it is an exaggeration to say […]
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ChatGPT: Boon for the Lazy Learner
Inside the beating heart of many students and a large number of learners lies an inner cheat. To get passing grades, every effort will be made to do the least to achieve the most. Efforts to subvert the central class examination are the stuff of legend: discreetly written notes on hands, palms and other body […]
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Distract, Divide, and Conquer
Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness. These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford […]
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