Even the most rebellious poets follow more rules than they might like to admit. A good poet understands grammatical norms and when to break them. Some poems rhyme in a pattern, some irregularly and some not at all. Poetry’s subtler rules seem hard to program, but without some basic norms about what a poem is,…
Many are wailing that this technology spells “the end of high school English,” meaning those classes where you read some books and then write some pro forma essays that show you sort of read the books, or at least the Spark Notes, or at least took the time to go to Chegg or Course Hero and grab…
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…
Today I met a class of English majors who love writing, and who expressed concern that AI writers will put them out of a job. Human- and machine-generated prose may one day be indistinguishable. But that does not quell academics’ search for an answer to the question “What makes prose human?” […] “Think about what…
Artificial intelligence has been deployed to handle facial recognition, recommend movies, and auto-complete your typing. The news that CNET had been using it to generate entire stories, however, sent a ripple of anxiety through the news media for its seeming threat to journalists. The robot-brained yet conversational ChatGPT can produce copy without lunch or bathroom breaks and…
YouTube commenter Bob Hepple writes, “Two minds about this. On the one hand – wow! OTOH – my mental imagery (of the original 1977 Crowther and Woods Adventure game, I never played Zork as such) is so strong and precious that I kinda hate watching someone else’s version. Much like how I hate the LotR…
Apple has quietly launched a catalogue of books narrated by artificial intelligence in a move that may mark the beginning of the end for human narrators. The strategy marks an attempt to upend the lucrative and fast-growing audiobook market – but it also promises to intensify scrutiny over allegations of Apple’s anti-competitive behaviour. —Guardian Similar:The Ascent…
This was probably the wealthiest, most powerful group I had ever encountered. Yet here they were, asking a Marxist media theorist for advice on where and how to configure their doomsday bunkers. That’s when it hit me: at least as far as these gentlemen were concerned, this was a talk about the future of technology. Taking their…
Businesses still fret over these issues, and against a tight labor market, more companies are making self-checkouts the norm. But the machines failed to live up to their promises. This week, Walmart’s CEO said that thefts “are higher than what they’ve historically been”, which many staff and customers link to self-checkouts. On top of that,…
Mars rover captures first sound of dust devil on red planet. Similar:Visiting the #scienceofpixar exhibit @kaminsciencecenterStudents are trusting software like this to do their work.A former student working in SEO shared this. I miss Google classic.Googling Is for Old People. That’s a Problem for Google.What have my students learned about creative nonfiction writing? During class…
Today’s college students may be very good at using apps, but even power users of social media often struggle with basic computer tasks. Four final projects in a row have been published as private files that I can’t access, or they were uploaded in some proprietary format using a tool my school-issued MacBook doesn’t recognize.…
The public disintegration of a platform that millions of people used every day has been painful to watch. Now that Google’s search results seem almost completely colonized by AI-generated crap, it will be harder for me to listen in on and learn from a wide range of everyday people sharing their opinions and talking to…
I kept a journal from Feb 3 1983 (the day my freshman high school English teacher assigned a journal entry as homework) through about 1992 (when I was busy in grad school, though I did write long emails to my fiancee). As I was wrapping up my dissertation, I started blogging in 1999. At no…
Political tensions alone could be a major source of conflict, according to Michelle Hanlon, the co-director of the Air and Space Law Center at the University of Mississippi law school. For one, there still isn’t a globally shared vision for what the future of the moon should entail. Just over 20 countries have signed the US-led Artemis…
CBS News is halting its activity on Twitter over Elon Musk’s turbulent and potentially devastating moves following his takeover of the company. “In light of the uncertainty around Twitter and out of an abundance of caution, CBS News is pausing its activity on the social media site as it continues to monitor the platform,” Jonathan…
Similar:The Ascent #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 9) Odo and Quark bicker their way up …Things Past #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 8) Odo confronts his reputation as a…Trials and Tribble-ations #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 5, Episode 6) Trivial Time Travel…Couples in successful relationships always use these 6 phrases: ‘You’ll grow stronger both…Students…
Instead of World War II-era plane debris, the team discovered a modern-looking aviation structure. After consulting with an outside expert and completing a second dive in May 2022, the TV film crew presented the evidence to former NASA astronaut Bruce Melnick, who suspected it was a piece of the Challenger. Based on that information, the…
I used to spend a lot of time on Twitter. I’ve deleted the app from my phone, and check it a couple times a day from my laptop. I’ve been reading more news and fewer tweets. I followed a Twitter bot that reminds me to go do something else that’s not scrolling slack-jawed through tweets.…
After reviewing 22 AI essays I asked my students to create, I can tell you confidently that AI-generated essays are nothing to worry about. The technology just isn’t there, and I doubt it will be anytime soon. […] The students in this class were mostly juniors and seniors, and many were majors in rhetoric and…
When I started my blog in 1999 (by adding a date to a “Link of the Day” archive I had been maintaining for a year or so), I coded everything in HTML, by hand. This was before Facebook, before YouTube, before Wikipedia, and around the time that the domain google.com first went live. Most of…