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Reposted by Dan Isbell

Linguischick @cocchino.bsky.social · 9h

We're hiring! UT Linguistics invites applications for a position in computational linguistics to begin next academic year 2026-27 (rank of tenure-track Assistant Professor or Associate Professor with tenure). apply.interfolio.com/175156

Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

apply.interfolio.com

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

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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Reposted by Dan Isbell

Language Testing @langtestjournal.bsky.social · 11d

Free access until September 9, 2026!

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 9d

intelligibility is strongly associated with comprehensibility. We used archived test data representing a wide range of proficiency and diverse L1s (e.g., Spanish, Vietnamese) and large samples of listeners to obtain independent intelligibility measures (transcription) and comprehensibility ratings.

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 9d

Very excited to have our new study examining the relationship between intelligibility and comprehensibility in L2 English speech published in BLC (@cambup-linguistics.cambridge.org). Our data suggest speech that is < 65% intelligible is largely incomprehensible and above that..

The relationship between intelligibility and comprehensibility in second language speech | Bilingualism: Language and Cognition | Cambridge Core

The relationship between intelligibility and comprehensibility in second language speech

www.cambridge.org

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 10d

www.wired.com/story/done-w...

Done With Duolingo? Where to Go to Get Serious About Learning a Language

To really speak and understand a new language, you need to interact with humans.

www.wired.com

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

James Medlock @jdcmedlock.bsky.social · 15d

How it started // How it’s going

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 16d

This is potentially quite disastrous for online panels. Chalking up one more in the column of "things that the availability of GenAI makes worse"

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 16d

"Elite colleges have convinced us that scarcity equals quality, that a lower acceptance rate means a better education. But their own behavior shows that many of their decisions are more about manipulating the market than academic or any other kind of excellence." 🎁🔗
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/22/o...

Opinion | The College Game Is Changing. It’s Still Rigged.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

Lynne Murphy @lynneguist.bsky.social · 17d

Stefan Fatsis on the current state of American lexicography www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Is This the End of the Dictionary?

Obsolete (adj.): no longer in use or no longer useful

www.theatlantic.com

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 18d

People updating R and re-downloading all packages?

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 18d

*please share widely*

My department (Second Language Studies, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa) is hiring a corpus linguist who conducts research on second languages. Great place to teach (2/2 load) and do research! See link for more details:

go.hawaii.edu/mGc

Assistant Professor (Second Language Corpus Linguistics)

Title: Assistant Professor (Second Language Corpus Linguistics)Hiring Unit: College of Arts, Languages & Letters/Department of Second Language StudiesLocation: University of Hawaii at ManoaDate Posted...

go.hawaii.edu

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

Viola Wiegand @violawiegand.bsky.social · 18d

Just discovered that Susan Hunston's new book "Pattern, Construction, System: A Unified Approach to Grammar and Lexis" is out in OPEN ACCESS! 🤩
www.cambridge.org/core/books/p...

#corpuslinguistics #appliedlinguistics #linguistics #patterngrammar

Pattern, Construction, System

Cambridge Core - Grammar and Syntax - Pattern, Construction, System

www.cambridge.org

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 23d

My data privacy on Facebook is apparently worth $38.36.

Will donate 100% of this lavish settlement to my department's student association.

Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 25d

In Korea, it's not uncommon to see older folks protesting or otherwise engaging in public political speech. But that demographic skews conservative and they're often waving US flags. I wonder how the Georgia incident will impact Korean domestic politics.

Christopher Mims @mims.bsky.social · 26d

"Asking us to build factories and invest then arresting and detaining. Is this what an ally does?"

-- Protest sign at airport where South Korean workers, including engineers with work visas, were returned

www.wsj.com/world/asia/c...

Protester at airport in South Korea holds up a sign that reads, in Korean:

‘Asking us to build factories and invest then arresting and detaining. Is this what an ally does?’

Credit: Dasl Yoon/WSJ

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 25d

wrote on charlie kirk for the newsletter this weekend

Opinion | Charlie Kirk Didn’t Shy Away From Who He Was. We Shouldn’t Either.

www.nytimes.com

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 26d

New article on changes to South Korea's National English Curriculum and the growing global influence of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR).

My co-author, Kitaek Kim (Seoul Nat'l), was directly involved in the revisions, and lead author (and SLS PhD student) Joonhee Kim assisted.

The influence of CEFR in South Korea’s 2022 National English Curriculum: A focus on grammar | English Today | Cambridge Core

The influence of CEFR in South Korea’s 2022 National English Curriculum: A focus on grammar

www.cambridge.org

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 26d

@langtestjournal.bsky.social has made our article "A survey of English language proficiency tests in international student admissions at US research-intensive universities" free to read/download for 1 year! Mahalo!

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · 29d

Expose on an alleged IELTS cheating scandal in Bangladesh. Two arrests related to selling exam content from the paper-based version of the test.

www.daily-sun.com/post/825063

www.daily-sun.com

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · Sep 8

We now get to commiserate with Bayesian statisticians and the use of "priors" among the pundit and tech bro classes.

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · Sep 8

Our study on academic outcomes for students admitted with different tests at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa:

www.altaanz.org/uploads/5/9/...

www.altaanz.org

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · Sep 8

New article on English language testing in admissions by @timeshighered.bsky.social. A study I recently published is linked

www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/are-st...

Are standards slipping on English language testing?

Financial strains and the emergence of digital testing have led to concerns that anglophone universities are admitting students whose English is not good enough to allow them to succeed. But are tests...

www.timeshighereducation.com

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Reposted by Dan Isbell

Mike Frank @mcxfrank.bsky.social · Sep 8

The Item Response Warehouse is a new data resource for psychometricians interested in developing methods using bigger and more diverse sets of instruments: itemresponsewarehouse.org

New paper out now at BRM: doi.org/10.3758/s134...

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Dan Isbell @danielrisbell.bsky.social · Sep 7

I also know many students are using GenAI not just for R code help but for *stats* help, which worries me. You've just got to read good books, google and read StackExchange, and talk to peers and mentors who can help you. We all make mistakes, but GenAI might be the Sex Panther of stats help. 4/4

a man in a suit and tie is saying that 60 % of the time it works everytime

ALT: a man in a suit and tie is saying that 60 % of the time it works everytime

media.tenor.com

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