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…
“The author talks about [topic]” is filler. Your professors want your college-level ideas.
The A.V. Club’s AI-Generated Articles Are Copying Directly From IMDb
I’ve enjoyed human-written A/V Club articles in the past. I see no reason to seek out articles written by bots that copy existing material word-for-word and add no value. The company G/O, mentioned in the clip below, owns the A.V. Club and is behind the shift to bot-authored articles: “A/V Club [sic] licenses content from…
Return to Grace #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 14) Kira supercharges Dukat’s clunky freighter to fight Klingon raiders
Rewatching ST:DS9 Played for laughs, Kira gets many inoculations as she prepares for a diplomatic mission to a Cardassisan outpost. Her pilot is none other than Dukat, who has been demoted and ostracized after acknowledging his half-Bajoran daughter, Ziyal, who now lives on his clunky freighter. Dukat smugly flirts with Kira at dinner, clearly enjoying…
Oh dear, George Lucas! Why the Star Wars universe is going from bad to worse
Though I always preferred a different franchise, I loved the first Star Wars trilogy. The other trilogies? Not so much. And I haven’t followed any of the Star Wars TV shows, but the Shakespeare reference in this review of Ahsoka really caught my eye. Ouch! More pressingly, it’s just exhausting to sit through yet another…
Crossfire #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 13) Odo’s feelings for Kira complicate his job
Rewatching ST:DS9 Odo meticulously arranges his office in preparation for a routine meeting with Kira. For her, it’s an enjoyable part of her workday, but Odo looks like he’s nervously preparing for a date. Quark complains that Odo makes too much noise shape-shifting into various creatures in the quarters above his. First Minister Shakaar arrives…
‘New York Times’ considers legal action against OpenAI as copyright tensions swirl
Be careful of the parts of news stories that rely on ifs and coulds and maybes. Having said that, this is fascinating exploration of what’s at stake. It’s a fact that OpenAI’s business model involved training its large-language model on copyrighted material, without acquiring legal permission to do so, and without any mechanism to share…
What if Generative AI turned out to be a Dud?
I’m sad thinking of all the students whose academic careers and personal intellectual growth will suffer because they depend on generative text software — whether or not they get “caught” for plagiarism. In my mind, the fundamental error that almost everyone is making is in believing that Generative AI is tantamount to AGI (general purpose…
How to Keep Students Writing in the Age of AI Tools
In a writing-intensive class, students need to write extensively to the point that the teacher cannot possibly grade all of it. — Edutopia via NCTE Good advice from an article by Kara Douma, reprinted by NCTE. I need to hear that. The referees don’t score every practice. The coaches don’t give you feedback after…
Tom Jones, librettist for “The Fantasticks,” dies at 95
I was so glad to see my daughter in this show at The Theatre Factory a few years ago. Flashback!
How do I cite generative AI in MLA style? | MLA Style Center
We ask students to cite encyclopedia articles, dictionaries, news interviews with experts, and in-person conversations. A generative text-generation tool that scrapes published work and uses a statistical model to emulate a response that mimics the way the humans in its database have responded to similar prompts is formally something like a conversation, and the MLA’s…
The Visitor #StarTrek #DS9 Rewatch (Season 4, Episode 3) Old Jake Reflects on the life-changing disappearance of his father
Rewatching ST:DS9 On a dark and stormy night, a man gives himself an injection, and a rain-soaked young woman shows up at his door, on a quest to ask the famous writer Jake Sisko why he stopped writing years ago. We flash back to young Jake tagging along on the Defiant ostensibly to see a…
My meeting was cancelled, so I spent the morning assembling a cabinet for a Little Free Library & student publications display by the elevator near my office. #Humanities @eye.contact.shu @setonianonline
Newly acquired technology for teaching writing in the age of AI. (Not for high stakes testing, but rather in-class self-assessment.)
Bing’s AI chatbot helped me solve a technical problem, then showed me manatees, then denied showing me manatees
I was searching for how to change the default font in the WordPress editor, but the answers I was getting were overwhelmingly for how to change what the user sees in published posts, which I already know how to do. Bing’s response was right on target. It probably helped that I knew the specific name…
Hospice/Honeymoon
“Hospice.” Once the word is uttered aloud, there is a seismic shift. You will feel it. Like a (very short) thread through the eye of a needle, swiftly in and swiftly out. The air itself becomes thin, steely. At the periphery of your vision, an immediate dimming. The penumbra begins to shrink. In time, it…
Proofreading matters. (For the record, Blanche actually said, “We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty.”)
I make mistakes on my blog all the time. But I’m not CNN. (Check out the line under the photo.) Yes, that’s right… that blue box is missing an important word.
The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains Himself
As Mike Edwards notes, “AI doomers will eagerly tweet this article, unaware that it’s not about the dangers of LLMs: it’s about *information literacy*”
In a cringe-inducing court hearing, a lawyer who relied on A.I. to craft a motion full of made-up case law said he “did not comprehend” that the chat bot could lead him astray.
Not sure whether I should be proud or embarrassed…
As part of a journalism lesson about brand names, I just wrote this sentence: The term “Winnebago Vista” is a rollicking road trip for the ear, and no oath was ever minced with more tangy intensity than we find in the fricative phonemes of “Cheez-It.” I’ll probably murder that darling tomorrow, but right now I’m…