Category: Intelligent Artifice
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Active Learning in the Age of AI
It’s Not Just for the Birds Have you ever wondered what those chirpy zebra finches are saying to one another? Now we know. Thanks to the diligent and creative research by Dr. Julie Elie, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies interspecies communication, we humans can understand what other zebra finches have…
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Democracy in 3-D Glasses
In the stunning mural by Polish multidisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga, “Make Tofu Not War” (2018), exhibited currently at the Prada Foundation in Milan, one sees one set of images if one looks with the naked eye and something else if one looks with 3-D glasses. I took this selfie in 3-D glasses. Wearing these ironic…
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AI Is Not Neutral
Photo Credit: Stanford Professor Yejin Choi, Courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation On June 4, 2026, the Wall Street Journal announced that“Anthropic Urges Global Pause in AI Development, Flags ‘Self-Improvement’ Risk.” Further, WSJ reports that the “$1 trillion startup warns artificial-intelligence models are nearing capability to improve without human intervention.” The…
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AI Has No Sense of Humor (But some TikTok Comics Do!)
If you are finding yourself increasingly bored with or exasperated by the AI hype and the AI hysteria, you might want to check out social media satirist “Husk” who, on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram posts wickedly amusing satires of AI.* His typical set up is to ask a ChatGPT chatbot some seemingly harmless question that…
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AI Ate My Homework: Big and Small Solutions for Educators Now
I began my teaching career in what was the worst academic job market until the present moment. I was unemployed for three years, fired (technically, I wasn’t renewed) from my first job for hosting a women’s day that administrators felt crossed a political line. I subsequently worked various part-time jobs (including at Fermi National Accelerator…
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INTELLIGENT ARTIFICE: Announcing a New Blog Series on Thinking Wisely and Well With, Through, About, Around, and Despite AI
By HASTAC CoFounder and CoDirector, Cathy N. Davidson* Having posted two blogs on HASTAC about AI, I’ve decided to write an (ir)regular series of posts on this topic, entitled “Intelligent Artifice: Thinking Wisely and Well With, Through, About, Around, and Despite AI.” Neither an AI booster nor an AI hater, I think we need to…
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Auditing AI: A Great Book That Holds AI Accountable—And Shows How We Can Too
The Marquand House Collective, Auditing AI. MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, 2026. Auditing AI is the book I’ve been searching for–and I believe it will be useful for any and every reader who wants to move past hype and hysteria to really understand what tools we need to hold various AI systems accountable for what AI…
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“Artificial Ignorance” and Data Sycophancy
(Reposted and revised from “‘Artificial Ignorance’ and Data Sycophancy,” Feb 4, 2026) Artificial Ignorance A recent exhaustive study of AI use by computer programmers conducted by Judy Hanwen Shen and Alex Tamkin (“How AI Impacts Skill Formation”) shows that using AI may speed some aspects of your programming but, it, at the same time, “impairs…