I stumbled upon an interesting thread on Bluesky this mornign regarding how university teachers handle the use of AI in their teaching. Well it was mostly interesting as regards the levels of capitulation disguised as attempts to police AI, often through verbiage like “teaching students how to use AI responsibly”.
However, no ”responsible use” of explicitly biggoted plagiourism machines, generating lies based on fictive references, using massive resources to the detriment of climate and exploiting labour can actually exist. That is like advocating for Trump’s “responsible use” of the Republican party. It is by its very nature ethically untenable and thus also irresponsible (albeit convenient to the user).
I realize that I find myself on the far end of the AI-spectrum, refusing to even test (let alone play with) a LLM, and perhaps that is why I find the breathless admiration and uncritical ”this is the future we must embrace” position of the other end of the spectrum to be completely a-historical, unethical and, frankly, offensive.
I realize there is a bunch of AI at work behind every-day services we all use online and even at work. But there is a principle difference between those and the toys people mess around with to create images, video and text, flooding the internet which was already drowning in shit with even more shit.
The universities that are capitulating to AI and encouraging its use – even making people use AI as I´ve heard from several colleagues – with arguments in line with ”people use these things anyway, let’s teach how to do it responsibly” are (aside adding a huge dimension to their staff’s work-load without paying for it) failing their obligation of critical thinking in the face of fads, legitimising their lack of critical thinking through empty references to “the future”.
I realize I myself can’t stop this development, probably noone can, and I also realise that there are much fewer people truly critical compared to those thoughtlessly ”embracing the future”. However, I’d rather go down as a principled luddite, refusing to play with unethical technologies and through that actively train them to replace us. You don’t have to help the robots!
We’ve banned plagiourism in universities, despite ”students using it”, we’ve banned cheating on tests and assistance from others despite it being a hopeless endevour as ”students will find innovative ways to cheat” anyway. Why universities are uncritically swallowing this load of bullshit machines is beyond my comprehension.
Tl;dr:
There are no “ethical” or “responsible” ways to use generative AI, which is at its core exploitative, biased, and detrimental to the environment. Universities should stop playing with them and treat them as other means of cheating = through a general ban.
Best regards,
Your luddite curmudgeon.
Gunnlaugur Magnússon 