"If you take at face value what the AI executives themselves have been saying for the last decade, that an AI powerful enough to make humans go extinct is nascent, then acting with force to stop it would be a rational action." www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/why-the-ai...
This weekend I gave a presentation to a group of mostly college-aged folks and had a little line at the beginning of my slides that described it as an "AI-free presentation made by a human, for humans" and I had to pause for clapping at that part
you love to see it
Midlands historians have a hard time sometimes convincing people that slavery ran just as deeply through our economy as through Colston's Bristol, say. But here we are: inherited wealth from enslavement in the family history leading to urban change.
Appreciate the emerging genre of ex-Vice Chancellors publicly appalled at just how venal, self-serving, and useless today's crop are. It's just a shame the idea of a university "run democratically by the staff" now seems so incredibly distant in the English-speaking world.
"When the university was run democratically by the staff, it was supremely successful at soliciting donations... [then] the council of lay, external, non-executive trustees changed the royal charter twice, to disempower the academics and to empower themselves." www.theguardian.com/education/20...
It's true, but I do recall at least one entry for hat-based history of political thought: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
was just saying this. it doesn’t matter that I’m doing well right now. my field is gutted and my job could disappear next year, next month, etc. and theres a bunch of guys with money going “all according to our plan to make thinking work obsolete”. the mood is grim!
Open-ended teaching-and-research history jobs in a great department? In this economy?! Way to go Warwick!
Screenshot of an index-in-progress, with entries for various elements in the life of James Aitken, revolutionary saboteur.
Indexing... 👀
Actually now I think of it Andrew also has a beautiful voice that I'm jealous of. Truly, these are the guys you want on the radio.
Not really a podcast guy but I always enjoy Drafting the Past. Andrew Edwards and Rick Bell were both on great episodes recently with their American Revolution books. (Seriously, you should tune in for Rick's voice alone!) draftingthepast.com
What happened to Mayar Yahia Square? Read John's thread on the shady tactics and ongoing grip of British and Birmingham car culture.
The UK betrays the promise of a university: that students will be mentored in scholarship by people who are actively engaged in it. Unlike a secondary school, in a university the frontier between what is known and what is not is moving, and students can see that movement and participate in it.
"Passionate, provocative, and deeply humane, Cutterham's urgent reinterpretation of the American Revolution restores sabotage, solidarity, and working-class dreams to the center of a world-changing upheaval." Richard Bell, author of The American Revolution and the Fate of the World. "Tom Cutterham uses the picaresque life of arsonist James Aitken to tell a ripping good yarn about labor, class, radical ideas, and the American revolution. A vivid and well-researched transatlantic history from below." Marcus Rediker, co-author of The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. "In this beautifully-written gem of a book Tom Cutterham tells the story of James Aitken, a Scot who sought to sabotage the Royal Navy in Portsmouth in the name of American independence. In so doing Cutterham makes a larger argument about class and the roles played common people, like Aitken, in making a new, revolutionary, world. In Cutterham's hands James Aitken emerges as a subject worthy of Broadway musical or a Netflix series. The 250th anniversary of US Independence will see the publication of many books on the American Revolution. Empire Ablaze stands out from the crowd and deserves the widest possible audience." Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History, University of Edinburgh
Listings for *Empire Ablaze* now include some very kind comments from brilliant fellow historians. www.versobooks.com/en-gb/produc...
How to park (Porsche drivers' edition).
A more-forthright-than-me colleague writes: bsky.app/profile/hpsv...
But if you want to know why the decade is so interesting, I wrote about recent scholarship in the JER a couple of years ago: muse.jhu.edu/article/948034
Hamilton (the musical) has this problem too. The whole 1780s skipped over in a single number! earlyamericanists.com/2016/01/05/a...
The 1780s, truly the awkward unwanted stepchild of the American Revolution! (And of course, the most interesting bit...)
I gave a talk about the English Revolution, the Atlantic World, and the midlands-born Puritan, Edward Winslow. Normal eighteenth-century service will resume shortly! buttondown.com/cutterham/ar...
In the next question, about how you critically evaluate the products of "AI," the answer implying deepest understanding also includes the notion that "I can use AI to deepen my own critical thinking."
A multiple choice question, which reads: "Which of the following statements best describes your understanding of AI?" The possible answers are, (a) "I have little or no understanding," (b) "I have a basic understanding of AI, data, and common AI tools, and can interact with AI at a basic level," (c) "I can use various AI tools effectively in my teaching, writing good prompts, understandin their limitations, and critically evaluating outputs," and (d) "I have a strong technical understanding of AI and can customise, fine-tune, and integrate AI tools into my teaching workflows."
Here's a question in my university's AI-in-teaching survey which is going to force everyone who doesn't use it in their classrooms to say they have no more than a "basic" understanding of it. What's the betting the analysis will conclude, "people who don't like AI also don't understand it?"
What do presidential rankings measure? Overall "Great Man" fame, expansion of the office, and success in war and imperialism. What if we reoriented US history around its greatest legislative accomplishments that did the most for the nation's people? Presidents should serve those legislative goals.
"Historians often act as if they’re simply providing background for other people... to make normative arguments. But I think it’s OK for historians to sometimes be more vigorous in making arguments themselves about how to think." www.thenation.com/article/cult...
One week until our exciting event with Eliga Gould! Please do come along if you’re on campus!
A **new** and **permanent** job in US Politics at the RAI.
An exciting opportunity to help design and launch a new one year Master’s program in US politics, and join our intellectually vibrant (and fun) multidisciplinary dept dedicated to the study of the US and its place in the wider world.
Yep, see you tomorrow afternoon!
Grace, have I told you how James Aitken claimed to have conceived his plan to burn down Portsmouth dockyard in an Oxford pub? Surely one for the walking tour!
The danger to my job from AI isn't that AI can do my job, it's that my job is made even more precarious by the way AI is shaping ideas of the value of work. It can't do my job, but it can be part of convincing people (incorrectly) that my job isn't necessary.
