Reflections on critique, criticism, and how we should engage in discussion about AI

This piece builds on earlier reflections I’ve shared about responsible, transparent and learning-focused use of AI in SACE assessments, extending that thinking into the wider question of how we gather trustworthy evidence of learning. A few weeks ago, in a curriculum meeting, a HASS (Humanities and

When it comes to the future of assessment, I think it's all right for faculty to create buckets. ---------- Bucket 1: Short-term changes that get us thorugh the day, the week, or the month. We can revise assessments by grounding them in other modules or in-class activities, using multimedia, or including a synchronous component. Maybe these end up being band-aids. That's all right. Band-aids are useful. ---------- Bucket #2: Long-term changes These are things like shifting to process-focused assignments, creating a culture of transparency, or shifting to alternative assessment. I think they'll have longer shelflives. But they take a while to set up. ******************** We can't do everthing all at once. I think it's perfectly all right to do small changes that get us through the semester, and recognize that we'll need bigger, more systemic changes down the road. That's what I talked about during my keynote at San Diego Community College District. We talked about how to manage those buckets. It's a key part of the conversation, because on surefire way to create change paralysis is to say "change everything about what you teach, right now."

Is artificial intelligence an existential threat to humanity? Jon Stewart and Jordan Klepper interview guests Mark Cuban, Carole Cadwalladr, Yuval Noah Harar...

Greetings from early September, when fall classes have begun.  Today I’d like to share information about one of my seminars as part of my long-running practice of being open about my teaching…

Research on 74,000 educator conversations shows how faculty use Claude for teaching, research, and building interactive learning tools.

By Hannah Rozear and Remi Kalir Duke University students and faculty now have access to a new AI Ethics Learning Toolkit, developed by Duke Libraries and the Center for Applied ...

GPT-5 is now here and freely available to all.

Over- and under-hyping of AI.

As artificial intelligence becomes integrated into all corners of higher education, addressing ethical concerns is crucial to responsible implementati

Responding to criticism in the moment and after the fact.

This week I was on a panel at the Generative AI in Libraries (GAIL) virtual conference. Along with my fellow panelists Andrea Baer and Emily Zerrenner, I joined moderator Sarah Appedu to discuss the cognitive dissonance that we recognize between the widespread exhortations to adopt GenAI tools in libraries and the harms that we see

[Recorded March 25, 2025] Chatbots based on large language models (LLMs), like ChatGPT, answer sophisticated questions, pass professional exams, analyze texts, generate everything from poems to computer programs, and more. But is there genuine understanding behind what LLMs can do? Do they really understand our world? Or, are they a triumph of mathematics and masses of data and calculations simulating true understanding? Join CHM, in partnership with IEEE Spectrum, for a fundamental debate on the nature of today’s AI: Do LLMs demonstrate genuine understanding, the “sparks” of true intelligence, or are they “stochastic parrots,” lacking understanding and meaning? FEATURED PARTICIPANTS Speaker Emily M. Bender Professor of Linguistics, University of Washington Emily M. Bender is a professor of linguistics and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington, where she also serves as faculty director of the CLMS program, and adjunct professor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering and the Information School. Known for her critical perspectives on AI language models, notably coauthoring the paper "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots," Bender is also the author of the forthcoming book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want. Speaker Sébastien Bubeck Member of Technical Staff, OpenAI Sébastien Bubeck is a member of the technical staff at OpenAI. Previously, he served as VP, AI and distinguished scientist at Microsoft, where he spent a decade at Microsoft Research. Prior to that, he was an assistant professor at Princeton University. Bubeck's 2023 paper, "Sparks of Artificial General Intelligence: Early experiments with GPT-4," drove widespread discussion and debate about the evolution of AI both in the scientific community and mainstream media like the New York Times and Wired. Bubeck has been recognized with best paper awards at a number of conferences, and he is the author of the book Convex Optimization: Algorithms and Complexity. Moderator Eliza Strickland Senior Editor, IEEE Spectrum Eliza Strickland is a senior editor at IEEE Spectrum, where she covers artificial intelligence, biomedical technology, and other advanced technologies. In addition to her writing and editing work, she also hosts podcasts, creates radio segments, and moderates talks at events such as SXSW. Prior to joining IEEE Spectrum in 2011, she oversaw a daily science blog for Discover magazine and wrote for outlets including Wired, The New York Times, Sierra, and Foreign Policy. Strickland received her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Catalog Number: 300000014 Acquisition Number: 2025.0036

How the “opinionated” chatbots destroyed AI’s potential, and how we can fix it

Generative artificial intelligence provides both opportunities and challenges for higher education. Existing literature has not properly investigated how this technology would impact assessment in higher education. This scoping review took a forward-thinking approach to investigate how generative artificial intelligence transforms assessment in higher education. We used the PRISMA extension for scoping reviews to select articles for review and report the results. In the screening, we retrieved 969 articles and selected 32 empirical studies for analysis. Most of the articles were published in 2023. We used three levels—students, teachers, and institutions—to analyses the articles. Our results suggested that assessment should be transformed to cultivate students’ self-regulated learning skills, responsible learning, and integrity. To successfully transform assessment in higher education, the review suggested that (i) teacher professional development activities for assessment, AI, and digital literacy should be provided, (ii) teachers’ beliefs about human and AI assessment should be strengthened, and (iii) teachers should be innovative and holistic in their teaching to reflect the assessment transformation. Educational institutions are recommended to review and rethink their assessment policies, as well as provide more inter-disciplinary programs and teaching.

A wonderful return call with the author of 'Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in Education'

See the 2025 Skills on the Rise list, LinkedIn’s data-backed ranking of the 15 skills to invest in right now.

I’m facilitating AI roundtables at my department’s Symposium and I’ve invited faculty members from across disciplines to share what they’re doing in their classes. I’v…

I had the privilege of moderating a discussion between Josh Eyler and Robert Cummings about the future of AI in education at the University of Mississippi’s recent AI Winter Institute for Teachers.

About two-thirds of teachers report regularly using tools for detecting AI-generated content. At that scale, even tiny error rates can add up quickly.

If we thought smartphones were damaging to young brains, the risks posed by rampant artificial intelligence are far greater. Unchecked, it will rob children of the ability to solve problems and think for themselves

I’ve written a lot, on and off, about the importance of developing critical AI literacy, but I realize now that it is not enough, and I’ve recently started thinking about all of this wi…

AI Resources September 2024 Susan D. Blum sblum@nd.edu Teaching with AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson (Johns Hopkins, 2024) More Than Words by John Warner | Hachette Book Group 2025 Future-Ready Teaching with AI, Aaron Blackwelder ...

One man secretly hands off more and more of his life to an AI voice clone. Today, we feature veteran journalist Evan Ratliff who - for his new podcast Shell Game - decided to slowly replace himself bit by bit with an AI voice clone, to see how far he could actually take it. Could it do the mundane phone calls he’d prefer to skip? Could it get legal advice for him? Could it go to therapy for him? Could it parent his kids? Evan feeds his bot the most intimate details about his life, and lets the bot loose in high-stakes situations at home and at work. Which bizarro version of him will show up? The desperately-agreeable conversationalist, the crank-yanking prank caller, the glitched out stranger who sounds like he’s in the middle of a mental breakdown, or someone else entirely? Will people believe it’s really him? And how will they act if they don’t? A gonzo journalistic experiment for the age of AI, that’s funny and eerie all at the same time. We have some exciting news! In the “Zoozve” episode, Radiolab named…