This morning, after students submitted a homework assignment (a 200-word evidence-based argument paragraph), I asked them to annotate a printout of the instructions (including a rubric), had them peer-review their own submission, and then had them write additional annotations on the assignment sheet, in which they stated what changes they now realized they needed to…
It was not that hard to leave Twitter. I removed the app from my phone and followed a lot of journalists and professionals on Bluesky. I still checked Twitter on my laptop, but not every day. Then one day when X asked me for my password to log back in, I decided not to bother.…
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When I ask my students to use the library database to find scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles, some students stick with the search methods they’re already familiar with, and they submit works cited lists that include articles written by undergraduate interns, or articles from low-value pay-to-publish ecosystems like “Frontiers.” While I don’t read every article students…
What have my students learned about creative nonfiction writing? During class they are collaborating on a Google Doc that’s coming together very nicely before our eyes. Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…Midterm Grades Spring 2025: Posted!The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)MLA Citations: Your attention to…
Everyone who is reading this article in 2024 grew up in an era where a photograph was, by default, a representation of the truth. A staged scene with movie effects, a digital photo manipulation, or more recently, a deepfake — these were potential deceptions to take into account, but they were outliers in the realm…
If I ever share something that turns out to be disinformation, please let me know. WASHINGTON (AP) — The Kremlin is turning to unwitting Americans and commercial public relations firms in Russia to spread disinformation about the U.S. presidential race, top intelligence officials said Monday, detailing the latest efforts by America’s adversaries to shape public…
Chatbots are designed to give conversational answers and keep people engaged. Names and links to sources for answers range from nonexistent to hidden, though some companies are starting to make them more visible. Even when AI does include a source, it adds it after the fact, said Jevin West, a professor and co-founder of the…
I worked on LLMs, and now I got opinions. Today, let’s talk about when LLMs make mistakes. On AI Slop You’ve already heard of LLM mistakes, because you’ve seen them in the news. […] LLMs could be used to summarize sources. Something that’s fairly obvious in my journal club is that many researchers are…
I used to spend time in class teaching students about how your act of choosing to link from your blog to someone else’s blog was part of the formula Google used to rank its search results. The words you picked when you crafted your hyperlink was a way of conveying or withholding value. Tagging is…
Glenda Morgan does not sound that impressed with Google’s latest promises about AI and education. [T]hus far I am unconvinced that the kinds of tutoring currently offered via AI matches the concept of watching a student’s thought processes and identifying the core issues they aren’t understanding. Instead, AI tutoring today seems to consist of breaking…
Over the past couple of years, researchers at Jigsaw, a Google subsidiary that focuses on online politics and polarization, have been studying how Gen Zers digest and metabolize what they see online. The researchers were hoping that their work would provide one of the first in-depth, ethnographic studies of Gen Z’s “information literacy.” But the…
I was approached on LinkedIn with the opportunity to work to help train an AI, for an hourly wage that’s much higher than I would get for teaching an extra class at my university. I thought about it. I told myself it would help me do my job better if I have a clear sense…
Already facing scandal, the Washington Post‘s new-ish CEO and publisher, Will Lewis, has announced that the newspaper will be pivoting to artificial intelligence to turn around its dismal financial situation. […] The paper’s chief technology officer, meanwhile, announced to staffers that going forward, WaPo is to have “AI everywhere in our newsroom,” according to Tani. It’s unclear,…
I guess now we know why for the past decade or so Google doesn’t seem to be valuing what used to be magical about Google — the ability to rank pages so effectively and connect users to web pages that met their needs. That’s just not what’s driving Google these days. With AI search results…
Madi Hime is taking a deep drag on a blue vape in the video, her eyes shut, her face flushed with pleasure. The 16-year-old exhales with her head thrown back, collapsing into laughter that causes smoke to billow out of her mouth. The clip is grainy and shaky – as if shot in low light…
If you click “Yes,” the pop-up will install the “Bing Search” Chrome extension while making Microsoft’s search engine the default. If you click “Yes” on the ad to switch to Bing, a Chrome pop-up will appear, asking you to confirm that you want to change the browser’s default search engine. “Did you mean to change your search…
Looks like somebody’s webmaster accidentally preloaded a headline that would be easy to edit either way, and that placeholder headline got (at least briefly) published. Similar:My crowd simulation handles 2000 capsule NPCs at 130fps. I’m really pushing my coding skil…The Dog and the Oyster (Aesop Fable)More than a million people die on roads every year.…
No names in this single-source anecdote out of Hong Kong, credited to “Senior Superintendent Baron Chan Shun-ching.” The employee joined a video call with who he thought was the business’s chief financial officer. He was initially suspicious after a message from the CFO mentioned a ‘secret transaction’, suggesting it was a phishing scam…. However, after other…
Researchers had programmed the various large language models (LLMs) to act in what they termed malicious ways, and the point of the study was to see if this behaviour could be removed through the safety techniques. The paper, charmingly titled Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training, suggests “adversarial training can teach models…