Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Michael Black

🎃 a frightful hoxgoblin 🎃 @kellenhoxworth.bsky.social · 1d

Higher Ed in 2025 is opening your mailbox to see that your institution has sent you:

1. A Center for Teaching and Learning call to integrate AI into your classroom; and

2. An Office of Academic Integrity email encouraging you to crack down on students who use AI to cheat.

17 160 600

Reposted by Michael Black

Carolyn Bertozzi @carolynbertozzi.bskyverified.social · 10h

My 14-yr-old and I were playing with Sora, gave it two prompts of things I/we had done that day 1/n

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 13h

The administration “is currently pressuring OpenAI and other AI companies to make their models more conservative-friendly.”

OpenAI is trying to clamp down on ‘bias’ in ChatGPT

GPT-5 is better at resisting liberal ‘pressure,’ the company says.

www.theverge.com

2 21 43

Reposted by Michael Black

Jake Wright @bcnjake.bsky.social · 12h

Or anything, really. Passing your grading off to AI is simply deciding that your students’ work isn’t worth engaging with. And if that’s how you feel, why on Earth are you in a classroom?

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · 1d

I strongly urge everyone to not just read this warning from @marcwatkins.bsky.social, but heed it, and be vocal and forceful pushing back against using AI to grade student writing. This must be anathema if we're going to have a world where learning means something. substack.com/inbox/post/1...

The Dangers of using AI to Grade

Nobody Learns, Nobody Gains

substack.com

1 16 57

Reposted by Michael Black

Dr. Mag 🌿👾 @nobugsnous.bsky.social · 2d

I wrote this blog about how feeling like a killjoy whenever I talk about GenAI.
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...

On Being a GenAI Killjoy

Maggie Fernandes, University of Arkansas Photo by Maksim Romashkin on Pexels.com At a recent teaching talk about GenAI refusal, an audience member asked Megan, Jen, and me this question: how d…

refusinggenai.wordpress.com

3 24 57

Reposted by Michael Black

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 1d

Just like so many forms of mechanization the LMS was supposed to save us time. Instead, in a classic case of More Work for Mother, it made more and more miserable work for us instead.

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 1d

I cannot even begin to express the joy of not having a million levers to pull and bleeps and blips and bloops to push all the time. I got rid of Canvas and set myself free.

5 26

Reposted by Michael Black

Laurasaurus @laurasaurus.bsky.social · 1d

It is frankly strange to be this obsessed with college if you no longer attend one and do not work in education. More people in legacy media need to be told that.

Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 1d

And who is the author of this op-ed? The billionaire CEO of an asset management firm who helped author the compact.

36 350 2K

Reposted by Michael Black

Jennifer Sano-Franchini @jsanofranchini.bsky.social · 2d

New post by @nobugsnous.bsky.social: On Being a GenAI Killjoy refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o... #RefusingGenAI

"We should always strive to be compassionate and understanding, but killjoy praxis compels us to ask: compassionate to whom?"

On Being a GenAI Killjoy

Maggie Fernandes, University of Arkansas Photo by Maksim Romashkin on Pexels.com At a recent teaching talk about GenAI refusal, an audience member asked Megan, Jen, and me this question: how d…

refusinggenai.wordpress.com

2 1

Reposted by Michael Black

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 2d

It is also remarkable how far what is essentially advertising copy has penetrated into ostensibly neutral, scholarly contextualizations even of critical studies — rote invocations of AI’s “power,” “potential,” and ubiquity, untethered to any specific sources or data, are just background noise now.

3 71 580

Reposted by Michael Black

Let the Right Hon In @danhon.com · 3d

Needless to say I think this is brilliant.

theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art

A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal

This is a comic about AI art.

theoatmeal.com

7 27 83

Reposted by Michael Black

☠️deadward niedermurder☠️ @niedermeyer.online · 4d

everything about the attempt to co-opt the language of social justice to promote AI personhood makes my skin absolutely crawl

that people are doing it in the current political environment, where the most basic human rights are crumbling before our eyes, is as bleak as it gets for me

14 95 520

Reposted by Michael Black

Dominic Pettman @dominicpettman.bsky.social · 4d

Going to tell me students this was Baudrillard.

4 13 74

Reposted by Michael Black

Karl (sad trombone noise enthusiast) @brainnotonyet.bsky.social · 5d

influence economies and algorithmic entertainment markets are sociopathy machines.

kate bush’s husband @airbagged.bsky.social · 5d

This is legit insane btw:

Roach man whose father died has zero self reflection or growth.

Says he will be happy to do it again because he has no actual skills and his audience fucking sucks

4 18 110

Reposted by Michael Black

Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 8d

🫡

How to Turn Off AI Tools Like Gemini, Apple Intelligence, Copilot, and More - Consumer Reports

AI features are crowding into Google search, Gmail, iPhones, Windows laptops, and other products. If you're suffering from AI overload, these settings can help.

www.consumerreports.org

48 5.4K 8.3K

Reposted by Michael Black

Aftermath @aftermath.site · 8d

Saudi Arabia’s strategy is working because of greed and cynicism, as evidenced by both the Riyadh Comedy Festival and the $55 billion sale of EA. @nathangrayson.bsky.social explains:

5 18 110

Reposted by Michael Black

Ryan Boyd @ryanboyd.bsky.social · 9d

I don't know how university leaders expect to sustain their institutions *even as class-reproduction machines* if they sell out to a dictator and crush their own core workers. Like, you have to put oil in the engine. You have to put gasoline in the car.

2 44 330

Reposted by Michael Black

Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 9d

If you believe AI is necessary to spark a child’s imagination, I’m guessing you haven’t met many actual children

Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 9d

I spoke to parents who are letting their young kids play with generative AI and tried to sort through some of the questions they have about it.

"I don’t know what this is doing to their brains," one dad told me.

Meanwhile, Sam Altman says, "Kids love ChatGPT on voicemode."

‘My son genuinely believed it was real’: Parents are letting little kids play with AI. Are they wrong?

Some believe AI can spark their child’s imagination through personalized stories and generative images. Scientists are wary of its affect on creativity

www.theguardian.com

4 13 58

Reposted by Michael Black

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 10d

I spent part of my day editing a very basic spreadsheet with some demographic data. Fifty-seven percent accuracy would actually increase my workload. It’s harder to hunt, find, and edit data than it is to just…enter it.

LAISSEZ LES BON QUESO ROULER @thequeso.bsky.social · 10d

Absolutely been said before but if you’ve got an AI agent that is 57% accurate you have an AI agent that is 0% accurate

Zoë “Baddie Proctor” Quinn @unburntwitch.com · 10d

4 43 420

Reposted by Michael Black

Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 10d

The Sora thing is so bleak and shows how far we've come from AI companies pretending they did not train on copyrighted material

www.404media.co/openais-sora...

OpenAI’s Sora 2 Copyright Infringement Machine Features Nazi SpongeBobs and Criminal Pikachus

The main use of Sora appears to generate brainrot of major beloved copyrighted characters, to say nothing of the millions of articles, images, and videos OpenAI has scraped.

www.404media.co

20 410 1.5K

Reposted by Michael Black

Charlie Warzel @cwarzel.bsky.social · 10d

feels like we're living through some kind of cultural gas leak

The Verge @theverge.com · 12d

Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Excel and Word

Vibe working is all about Office’s new Agent Mode.

buff.ly

130 1.7K 8.2K

Reposted by Michael Black

Alanna Smith @alannawrites.bsky.social · 10d

The language of non-consent around AI is really telling. "It's too late to be scared." "It's here whether we want it or not." "You'll have to learn to work with it." "You can't fight the inevitable."

All just variations of "you're not allowed to say no." Creepy technology made by creepy people.

The Guardian @theguardian.com · 10d

‘It’s too late to be scared’: readers on the controversial rise of AI ‘actors’

The birth of AI ‘actor’ Tilly Norwood has caused a backlash in Hollywood and has sparked conversation from Guardian readers

www.theguardian.com

49 1.6K 3.9K

Reposted by Michael Black

McSweeney's @mcsweeneys.net · 11d

"This technology that is ruining education has incredible potential to save education, if only I could figure out how to use it better to improve my students’ education."

I Need AI to Write Better Lesson Plans So My Students Stop Using AI to Write Their Papers

I care deeply about my students’ learning, but with all the new technologies available to help them cut corners, I worry that they’re not doing the...

buff.ly

1 36 130

Reposted by Michael Black

dorian @doriantaylor.com · 12d

soft drinks are inevitable, if you don't drink sugar water you'll get left behind

1 3 12

Reposted by Michael Black

Liz Jackson @lizjackson.bsky.social · 12d

Our latest for Thank You for your Feedback Loop. A story and an idea. I'm hoping @fractalecho.bsky.social can better explain. buttondown.com/TYFYFL/archi...

Screenshot of the Human Censored Design header with a blurb: The Microsoft Inclusive Design Toolkit popularized norms about disability inclusion that when teased out, become taboos. It doesn’t just sacrifice the one for the many. It also exploits misconceptions about representation in order to locate and select whichever one can be used to neutralize, undermine, bury, and censor the many. There are three primary methods embedded within Inclusive Design power grabs, and they often work together to achieve something more resembling Human Censored Design

13 21

Reposted by Michael Black

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 14d

“AI” isn’t a tool or technology or even a cluster of technologies with a misleading name. It’s the infrastructure at the foundation of a form of capitalism dependent on data brokering. We should be teaching our students about this and not teaching them about “responsible” use.

19 770 2.3K

Reposted by Michael Black

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · 14d

"AI is going to replace actual teaching & instructors & solve the problem of unplugging 20-25% of the entire budget of every research university in America" is an incredible revealed preference. I mistakenly believed we were trying to educate students & conduct actual research. How naive of me.

Mark Copelovitch @mcopelov.bsky.social · Jun 7

The fact that society does not seem to any longer value investing in education, at any level of it from K-Ph.D., does not mean that what makes for high quality teaching & learning has changed. It just means we're lazy & greedy, as a society, & don't want to invest in things or do hard work anymore.

6 91 440