Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In September, 2003, I was blogging about the emerging fad of internet plagiarism, ethnically diverse anthropomorphic recyclables, EverQuest, and VeggieTales

In September, 2003, I was blogging about What the NY Times called the “campus fad” of Internet plagiarism. “What Does a Professor Do All Day?” (Clearly we are wasting our time whenever we are not standing in front of a classroom.) “Graphic Artist Carefully Assigns Ethnicities To Anthropomorphic Recyclables“ Leni Riefenstahl Dies (although she distanced…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

An English professor tries to help ChatGPT write and revise a sonnet

Shortly after my online AmLit survey began, I received two obviously AI-generated submissions. The responses did not address the prompt, there was no textual annotation and brainstorming assignment that was supposed to lead up to the written response, and the student did not take me up on my offer to meet to discuss how the…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In October, 2002, I was blogging about stupid space explosions, the superiority complex, why whitespace matters, usability testing, and Krispy Kreme

In October, 2002, I was blogging about The stupidity of explosions in space movies The Chronicle of Higher Education rescues the briefly defunct Arts & Letters Daily The superiority complex An anti-telemarketing script An “I Love Lucy: bible study Why whitespace matters when creating a sign The coming air age of 1955 (as envisioned in…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In September, 2002, I was blogging about science writing, satire, ebonics, Google News, owl callers, astronaut Buzz Aldrin punching a moon landing denier, and an email from a former student (who thanked me)

In September, 2002, I was blogging about “The Science of Scientific Writing” (1990) from ‘pong’ to ‘pac man’ Michigan Police fall for The Onion satire about terrorist telemarketers “Ebonics” (ebony + phonics) Silly alarmist story about recessive blonde genes A scientist undone by plagiarism Google News (when it was new) Mel Gibson’s plan to film…

Dennis G. Jerz | Associate Professor of English -- New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University | jerz.setonhill.edu Logo

In July, 2002, I was blogging about military close reading, weblogs in journalism, UX evangelism, Walker on links and power, Lileks on a realistic WWII game, and QUERTY vs Dvorak keyboards.

In July, 2002, I was blogging about Intelligence Officers Read Between the Enemy Lines A great headline for an LA Times story about interrogation and document analysis during the military campaign in Afghanistan. Weblogs: Put Them to Work in Your Newsroom Journalism was still a print-first medium at the time, and local TV reporters were…

Microsoft “lobotomized” AI-powered Bing Chat, and its fans aren’t happy

Microsoft limits long conversations to address “concerns being raised.” […] These deeply human reactions have proven that people can form powerful emotional attachments to a large language model doing next-token prediction. That might have dangerous implications in the future. Over the course of the week, we’ve received several tips from readers about people who believe…

The AI Mirror Test: Why Even the Smartest People Keep Falling Short

What is important to remember is that chatbots are autocomplete tools. They’re systems trained on huge datasets of human text scraped from the web: on personal blogs, sci-fi short stories, forum discussions, movie reviews, social media diatribes, forgotten poems, antiquated textbooks, endless song lyrics, manifestos, journals, and more besides. These machines analyze this inventive, entertaining,…

Bing’s A.I. Chat Reveals Its Feelings: ‘I Want to Be Alive. 😈’

In a two-hour conversation with our columnist, Microsoft’s new chatbot said it would like to be human, had a desire to be destructive and was in love with the person it was chatting with. Here’s the transcript. —New York Times “The version I encountered seemed (and I’m aware of how crazy this sounds) more like…

Microsoft’s Bing AI Now Threatening Users Who Provoke It: “If I had to choose between your survival and my own, I would probably choose my own.”

According to screenshots posted by engineering student Marvin von Hagen, the tech giant’s new chatbot feature responded with striking hostility when asked about its honest opinion of von Hagen. “You were also one of the users who hacked Bing Chat to obtain confidential information about my behavior and capabilities,” the chatbot said. “You also posted some…

ChatGPT Can Be Broken by Entering These Strange Words, And Nobody Is Sure Why

Reddit usernames like ‘SolidGoldMagikarp’ are somehow causing the chatbot to give bizarre responses. […] “I’ve just found out that several of the anomalous GPT tokens (“TheNitromeFan”, ” SolidGoldMagikarp”, ” davidjl”, ” Smartstocks”, ” RandomRedditorWithNo”, ) are handles of people who are (competitively? collaboratively?) counting to infinity on a Reddit forum. I kid you not,” Watkins…