Of course it would be weird to talk about your car (absent self-driving mode I guess) driving you to the store or your lawn mower mowing the lawn because those are things where a human is actively engaged in the work. The language gets a little weird when humans are mostly passive in the process.

There are absolutely objections I can see to ascribing agency to LLMs, but this seems a little silly. We talk about technology doing things all the time. A Roomba vacuums/sweeps the floor even though it's doing so based on inputs from a human and not its own agency.

(Definitely one of those times where I especially value my background in education and the humanities!)

This is such an important point. I work in software development and AI is genuinely revolutionary for the industry (in ways that should also evoke caution, honestly), but people who think that expertise is irrelevant now and AI can do All the Things are either scammers or fooling themselves.

I don't disagree with any of that and honestly it amazes me that Big Tech has shot themselves in the foot so badly by cramming AI into everything. It's been almost as bad as the inclusion of IoT in everything. There are so many poor use cases that some people wrongly think there are no good ones.

Some anti-AI folks on here are genuinely irrational in their opposition. That isn't remotely to say that all opposition (on here or otherwise) is such or even a majority of it, but I have argued on here with absolutists who say that it can do nothing well, which is simply ludicrous.

Seeing people say that it can do nothing well (and I have argued with people saying that) annoys the shit out of me and it almost always comes from a place of ignorance.

Absolutely same. I retain a moderate amount of skepticism around AI (I think it does very few things well enough to justify the hype, let alone its use) but developing with AI tools has changed my mind on its usefulness in at least that context (with some serious caveats).

"The days of moral victory are over." - Zohran Mamdani

Woke 2 plays to win.

There we go, now this conversation is easier because it's over.

That isn't what their policy is in the least. Jesus.

Honestly, if even policies as minimalist as this are unacceptable to you, just say that you oppose all use of AI and let's save time talking about the nuances. I won't even fault you for it; there are principled reasons for such a stance.

And again, I would note that AT's policy for using genAI here is very restrictive! Basically any sense in which LLMs perform poorly is removed and all responsibility falls to a human to decide if the input is worth taking or not. That's about as responsible as you can get.

What's the difference? Grammar and style check functionality is practically the textbook use of a language model; the only real difference is small vs large. Your favorite spell check has been using similar tech on a small scale for a while but not calling it "generative AI."

How do you know that AT considers people who can only produce visuals through genAI "creators" either? This is just a presumption of bad faith.

The thing is that this has been true for a long time. Thinking that liberal arts degrees are impractical is received wisdom that collapses under the slightest scrutiny. This claim is only "counterintuitive" if you have bad intuition about higher ed, and, accidentally and on purpose, most people do.

I have tons of issues with the RCC, but the idea that the dogmas of Catholicism align neatly with Republican ideology is laughable. There's overlap, for sure, but on subjects like immigration or the death penalty they could not be less in sync.

These are people who do not situate their theology historically but rather politically. To evangelical Protestants, the Catholic Church are fellow travelers for opposing abortion and queerness, which is the "deep respect" part, and now they're offended that the Pope isn't playing his role in that.

For the love of fucks, just let kids read.

I left in 2014, before book bans really took hold in a systematic way across the US, and of course I had the benefit of teaching in Illinois where statewide book bans would be unthinkable (we actually have since banned book bans!). But it still happens all over and that thought makes me sick.

But I decided I would take a risk, so I required students to return a parental consent form that gave examples of works in my personal classroom library. Not one student in five years returned a form with a denial of consent and I never had a parent come to me with objections. I was lucky.

I already knew even then (17 years ago!) that there was some danger there because I had books with some mature content. I had plenty of banned books, works like the Persepolis graphic novels, queer books from authors like Alex Sanchez, and of course lots of classics (e.g. Catcher in the Rye).

I'm always horrified to see book bans propagated so widely (my sorry excuse of a Congresswoman is sponsoring one at the moment), but I'm sorry to say that as a former English teacher I'm not surprised.

I entered teaching full-time in 2009, and I brought with me a fairly extensive classroom library.

I admit that I'm a little more torn on the use of genAI for visuals, but it does mean that AT is not displacing creators - it's just permitting the use of genAI as a tool. Creators don't have to use it. Again, that seems fine unless you take an absolutist position.

It's a fine policy unless your stance is "no AI ever on principle." The use of genAI in writing/editing is a perfect example: Using AI in those cases is really no different from the grammar or style check that exists in most word processors. It's intentionally minimalist with human accountability.

God the writing is fucking awful as well. Rotten thinking to the very core.

It's a good position. Anyone using AI for professional purposes needs to understand that you still own the output, whether it be a journal submission or code or legal document. To use a different analogy: Using autocorrect is okay, but you're still on the hook for errors if you didn't proofread.

For better or worse, I think this seems right. That means that candidates who are going for a low-conflict, "focus on bread and butter issues" campaign are likely not meeting the moment.

It's especially striking given their boss is famously teetotal.

I swear that I did not think about this ahead of time and it was completely spontaneous, but without a beat I replied, "Just lucky, I guess."

And that response was apparently good enough. 😂😂😂😂