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Reposted by Catherine Cronin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · Sep 6

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
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Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.

Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).

Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.

Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · Aug 27

We explore these dynamics in our workshop report: www.ias.edu/sites/defaul...

And we invite you to watch the public event which preceded the workshop: “RARE/EARTH: The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals and the AI Supply Chain” held at IAS on June 2, 2025 www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxVM...

RARE/EARTH: The Geopolitics of Critical Minerals and the AI Supply Chain

YouTube video by Institute for Advanced Study

www.youtube.com

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Aug 23

congratulations Tressie! so grateful for your light right now.

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John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · Aug 8

I wrote this thread because I sat at my desk and thought, "Fuck it, we're cooked." But then I remembered something I say in my book that "writing is feeling" and I managed to rekindle just enough spirit to get going on the work and that work will continue to stoke the fire. I want that for students.

John Warner @biblioracle.bsky.social · Aug 8

My philosophy for getting students writing is that writing needs to be a desirable alternative to outsourcing to the automated syntax generation machine. There's lots of hurdles to clear, but the start is to convey that writing is about more than words. www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-...

More Than Words

A veteran writing teacher makes a “moving” (Rick Wormeli) argument that writing is a form of thinking and feeling and shows why it can’t be replaced by...

www.hachettebookgroup.com

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Eamon Costello @eam0.bsky.social · Aug 8

Doing DEI when you can't use the D word, the E word, or the I word:

www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/doing...

Doing DEI when you can’t use the ‘D’, the ‘E’ or the ‘I’ word

‘DEI is dead, long live DEI!’ How to resist attacks on DEI, develop deep resilience and reimagine and reform your practice with kindness

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Reposted by Catherine Cronin

Electronic Frontier Foundation @eff.org · Aug 8

Sharing your location is a personal choice, “but when you do it through a platform owned by Meta, you should understand that information will also be used to target you with ads” & could be demanded by the government, EFF’s @mariotrujillo.bsky.social told @huffpost.com.

This 1 New Instagram Feature Is A Privacy Nightmare. Here's What You Need To Consider Before You Activate It.

Sharing this information can be fun, but experts warn it's also a gift to stalkers.

www.huffpost.com

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The Citizens @the-citizens.bsky.social · Jul 29

Tomorrow: Carole Cadwalladr meets author of 'Empire of AI' Karen Hao

12pm BST, Live on Substack

@carolecadwalla.bsky.social @karenhao.bsky.social

More here: citizensreunited.substack.com/p/next-week-...

Tomorrow: Carole Cadwalladr meets author of 'Empire of AI' Karen Hao

Tune in to find out how OpenAI became an empire, and what that means for the rest of us

citizensreunited.substack.com

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Alondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · Jul 26

Read this interview with a personal hero, Professor @daniellecitron.bsky.social: "we have essentially presumed that data collection is a good...We have long ignored this important inclination that collection itself is endangering our privacy and civil liberties" www.politico.com/newsletters/...

5 questions for Danielle Citron

www.politico.com

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 15

looking forward to listening! :)

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Bonnie Stewart @bonstewart.bsky.social · Jul 11

this came out this week. :)

my sabbatical research project on belonging. what an absolute privilege to spend a year focused on culture, place, & the intentional, relational use of digital tools...especially in the midst of the current force-fed AI speculation bubble.
www.uhi.ac.uk/en/media/new...

Belonging, place and digital practice – institutional insights from visiting fellow’s study at UHI

The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) is pleased to share the findings of a year-long sabbatical project led by Dr Bonnie Stewart, Visiting Fellow from the University of Windsor, Canada.

www.uhi.ac.uk

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 10

❤️❤️❤️

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · Jul 10

Good interview with @abeba.bsky.social

AI for good, with caveats: How a keynote speaker was censored during an international artificial intelligence summit

Q&A with Abeba Birhane on how she was censored during the AI for Good summit and how the industry can do better.

thebulletin.org

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 10

Enjoyed this conversation very much... @karenhao.bsky.social (author of Empire of AI) and @emilymbender.bsky.social & @alexhanna.bsky.social (co-authors of The AI Con) discuss how to challenge AI hype and tech industry power –– via @datasociety.bsky.social

datasociety.net/events/chall...

Challenging AI Hype and Tech Industry Power

Authors Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna, and Karen Hao discuss how AI serves as a powerful marketing tool for tech giants who have a product to sell and profits to rake in.

datasociety.net

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 9

oh Maria. sending you & Mol strength and love… and hope ❤️

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Joe Wilson @joecar80.bsky.social · Jul 8

Great summary of #oer25 what a great get together - will post when I get back from leave

Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 3

difficult to sum up #OER25, but I have tried my best. it was a joy to meet friends and colleagues, old and new, as well as sobering to truly face the challenges for open and higher education. warm thanks to all for the opportunity to think/talk/plan/be together.

catherinecronin.net/conferences/...

#OER25: Speaking truth to power

A later timing this year (June instead of April) for ALT’s Open Education Conference meant that for a few months last year, some wondered whether the conference would be held at all. Most ha…

catherinecronin.net

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 8

thanks Joe. enjoy that break! 😎

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Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · Jul 6

If you thought the free, online @civicsoftech.bsky.social conference keynotes - Audrey Watters and Chris Gilliard - were 🔥🔥🔥, you should look at the incredible sessions occurring on July 31 and August 1. Love to see all the ways folks embraced the theme "Communal Resistance to Artificial Systems".

2025 Conference — Civics of Technology

www.civicsoftechnology.org

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 8

wow! congratulations Lee 💫

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

a couple of hours before my keynote, I went through an intense negotiation with the organisers (for over a hour) where we went through my slides and had to remove anything that mentions 'Palestine' 'Israel' and replace 'genocide' with 'war crimes'

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.bsky.social · Jul 8

my keynote happening in a few mins. registration here to stream it

aiforgood.itu.int/summit25/reg...

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 7

so important – thank you @archive.org

sustaining the availability of cultural materials that "only memory institutions preserve without regard to commercial viability"

#OurFutureMemory

Internet Archive @archive.org · Jul 7

From @internetarchive.eu: "Internet Archive Europe proudly announces the launch of Our Future Memory, a global campaign dedicated to safeguarding the digital rights of libraries, archives, and museums worldwide." www.internetarchive.eu/protecting-t...

www.internetarchive.eu

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Clara Jeffery @clarajeffery.bsky.social · Jul 7

“The stunning reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere confirms the global climate system has entered a catastrophic phase>'

This is very very bad news: www.intellinews.com/southern-oce...

Southern Ocean current reverses for first time, signalling risk of climate system collapse

A major ocean current in the Southern Hemisphere has reversed direction for the first time in recorded history, in what climatologists are calling a ...

www.intellinews.com

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 3

difficult to sum up #OER25, but I have tried my best. it was a joy to meet friends and colleagues, old and new, as well as sobering to truly face the challenges for open and higher education. warm thanks to all for the opportunity to think/talk/plan/be together.

catherinecronin.net/conferences/...

#OER25: Speaking truth to power

A later timing this year (June instead of April) for ALT’s Open Education Conference meant that for a few months last year, some wondered whether the conference would be held at all. Most ha…

catherinecronin.net

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ALTUK.bsky.social @altuk.bsky.social · Jun 27

Following the conclusion of #OER25 this week, we are pleased to invite submissions for our upcoming online conference, “Speaking Truth to Power: Open Education and AI in the Age of Populism”, continuing the critical conversations sparked at the Conference. Learn more: buff.ly/nwHNPHY #altc #OER

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Catherine Cronin @catherinecronin.bsky.social · Jul 2

danah boyd’s work on social stenography so good at describing this. it was real :)

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ALTUK.bsky.social @altuk.bsky.social · Jun 6

Helen Beetham’s #OER25 keynote, “When speaking truth is not enough: repurpose, rebuild, refuse”, explores the deep links between the AI industry and the politics of populism. Learn More: buff.ly/E4uAGpq #OER #altc

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