Michael Black
LightNews LightNews
banner
mblack.us
Michael Black
@mblack.us
130 followers 70 following 200 posts
I teach writing and study the history of computing.

https://mblack.us
Posts Replies Media Videos
Reposted by Michael Black
bencollins.bsky.social
talkin' about the AI bubble
November 20, 2025 at 6:56 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
johnrgallagher.bsky.social
Instead of trying out the teacher version of ChatGPT or worrying about the AI bubble, I'd love for you to read my 4,500 word (lol, what?!) blog post about AI and genre. I poured myself into it, literally.

meresophistry.substack.com/p/the-generi...
The generic abyss of artificial intelligence
A long, long, long blog post about AI and genre
meresophistry.substack.com
November 20, 2025 at 2:56 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
booksofm.com
If you use GMail, AI (Gemini) was turned on yesterday by default and now scans all of your content for machine learning. To turn off, go to Settings>General and scroll down. Uncheck the box for "Smart features."

There's other "Smart" add-ons as well, but that's the one that reads your content.
November 20, 2025 at 5:32 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
emilymbender.bsky.social
A little belatedly sharing this piece that I published in @chronicle.com 's Opinion Forum (sorry full text is paywalled)

www.chronicle.com/article/how-...
Screenshot of opening paras of my piece: Chatbots Are Antithetical to Learning By Emily M. Bender Across higher education, administrators, faculty, staff, and students are being inundated with claims that large language models (often marketed as “AI”) represent the future of both education and the workplace. They tell us that prompt engineering and so on are essential skills that students must master to be competitive, and that all of this tech will bring us unparalleled efficiency gains, allowing us to focus on “what really matters.” The reason for this messaging isn’t any actual scientific breakthrough but rather the desperation of tech companies to try to recoup their massive investment in so-called AI. Unfortunately, these calls are also frequently coming from inside the house, with university administrators and some faculty jumping on the bandwagon and singing the companies’ advertising jingles for them. But synthetic text-extruding machines are in fact antithetical to the mission of education. Writing is thinking and learning. Pushing a button to generate an essay-shaped object requires little thinking and accomplishes minimal learning. Sharing synthetic text with an instructor means missing out on genuine feedback and help with honing both arguments and authorial voice. When teachers value the polished but anodyne text extruded from these systems over students’ authentic voices, we reinforce harmful linguistic ideologies, including those that associate stigmatized varieties of language with lack of “intelligence.”
November 20, 2025 at 12:46 AM
Reposted by Michael Black
annieabrams.bsky.social
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but AP exams won’t fix the literacy crisis either.
November 19, 2025 at 3:45 PM
mblack.us
Starting to wonder if stuff like this is why I mostly play history themed spreadsheet simulators these days.
brendelbored.bsky.social Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 3d
Fortnite

Moe - The Simpsons
A picture of a PS5 displaying a graphic from Fortnite saying what is in the post
November 18, 2025 at 2:46 AM
Reposted by Michael Black
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
What this reveals is that for most people in charge right now “AI” is less useful as a technology than as a piece of language to shift a conversation in whatever direction they need it to go. In one minute it will propel a new economy; in another it’s the reason for a recession.
November 17, 2025 at 1:39 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
janerosenzweig.bsky.social
This below is in the context of computer science but we all need to be having this conversation about whether "using AI" in classes prepares you for future jobs or whether actually doing the thing yourself prepares you for a world in which you may or may not use AI. The idea that using AI to write/1
A degree in CS mostly prepares students to become computer scientists, just as a history degree mostly prepares students to be historians. The idea is not that every student will become an academic— few do—but that the initial training in this direction will prepare students for varied pursuits. When the world changes, Erat argues, the student who studied CS will have the creativity to “learn how to search, how to integrate things.” But for the student who just used AI to make programs, he said, “It’s going to be impossible.” Conversely, CS professor Lin Zhong thinks Yale’s core CS curriculum is “stuck in the 1980s.” He wants students to develop the AI expertise that they would need as professional software engineers. “If your student[s] don’t learn how to use [AI], they lose their job,” he said. Students in Zhong’s Computer Systems Design course earn extra credit for using AI creatively to do their homework.
November 16, 2025 at 5:24 PM
mblack.us
But [Google engineer in Education for AI] Phal wasn’t sure how this would work in practice. “I’m not an expert on how to teach,” he said. Phal thinks professors should view the potential of teaching with AI as “something transformative." 🙄🙄🙄
Inside Yale’s Quiet Reckoning with AI | The New Journal
Amid ChatGPT's rising popularity and a computer science cheating scandal, Yale students, professors, and administrators wrestle privately with the proper role of AI in education. What happens when eve...
thenewjournalatyale.com
November 17, 2025 at 1:14 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
olivia.science
Non-industry compromised scientists keep saying these models don't become safe, no matter what, but people keep thinking just because the concept of guardrails is mentioned it must work. By definition, it doesn't. This is not something open to discussion, unless you're a paid shill.
charleswlogan.bsky.social Charles Logan @charleswlogan.bsky.social · 4d
"Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model by default...tests repeatedly showed that the AI toy dropped its guardrails the longer a conversation went on, until hitting rock bottom on incredibly disturbing topics."
AI-Powered Stuffed Animal Pulled From Market After Disturbing Interactions With Children
FoloToy says it's suspended sales of its AI-powered teddy bear after researchers found it gave wildly inappropriate and dangerous answers.
futurism.com
November 17, 2025 at 5:18 AM
Reposted by Michael Black
flipperpa.bsky.social
This site brilliantly demonstrates the perils of relying on LLM generated content. It creates code to show a clock from nine popular models every minute. Changes within each model are alarming. Keep it on screen for 10 minutes, and tell me how you feel about relying on LLMs! clocks.brianmoore.com
AI World Clocks
The current time as rendered by 9 different AI models. By Brian Moore.
clocks.brianmoore.com
November 14, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
ali-alkhatib.com
here_we_go_again.webp
Anthropic tweet: We disrupted a highly sophisticated AI-led espionage campaign. The attack targeted large tech companies, financial institutions, chemical manufacturing companies, and government agencies. We assess with high confidence that the threat actor was a Chinese state-sponsored group.
November 14, 2025 at 2:58 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
sonjadrimmer.bsky.social
Keep the college essay.

You don't have to fulfill the prophecy that the college essay is dead because some jaded dudes in the Atlantic, New Yorker, and NYT told you so two years ago.

It's OK. You can keep the essay.
November 14, 2025 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
biblioracle.bsky.social
Allowing for the refusal of AI in our educational institutions is simply the right thing to do. If we can's support those freedoms, what are we doing? Congratulations on a year of vital work.
November 13, 2025 at 3:02 PM
mblack.us
"Before LLMs, a good cover letter signalled both candidate quality and commitment. After LLMs it signalled neither...Would-be employers no longer trusted quality applications to be from quality applicants and questioned every pitch they read."

😬
sarahoconnorft.ft.com Sarah O'Connor @sarahoconnorft.ft.com · 7d
Is AI making job recruitment less meritocratic? We're getting some v interesting research studies on this question now, and the news is... not good. @jburnmurdoch.ft.com & I dive in, in the latest edition of our newsletter The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/e5b7...
November 14, 2025 at 12:44 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
wolvendamien.bsky.social
A new state-by-state evaluation of the projected energy and water use of "AI" data centers in the US. Looks… real bad. Like, "undoing tech sector climate gains" bad.

Strongly recommends immediately ensuring any & all new "AI" data centers to run on existing & expanded renewables grids. Which… yeah.
Environmental impact and net-zero pathways for sustainable artificial intelligence servers in the USA - Nature Sustainability
The rapid expansion of AI server installations in the United States poses sustainability challenges in terms of water usage and carbon emissions. A study now quantifies these potential impacts and out...
www.nature.com
November 14, 2025 at 2:06 AM
Reposted by Michael Black
nobugsnous.bsky.social
A new post on Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies from @jsanofranchini.bsky.social, @rcmeg.bsky.social, and me: "A Year of Refusal"

refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/11/12/a...
A Year of Refusal
Maggie Fernandes, University of ArkansasMegan McIntyre, University of ArkansasJennifer Sano-Franchini, West Virginia University Photo by Francis Glenn Marciano on Pexels.com It’s been about a year …
refusinggenai.wordpress.com
November 12, 2025 at 4:56 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
cfshrc.bsky.social
Please join the Coalition at 1 PM (EST) on November 17th for “Generative AI as Feminist Methodology,” a Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda webinar.

Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Flyer for November 17, 2025 Glenn Advancing the Agenda Webinar on AI refusal with presenter profile photos.
November 12, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
joshuafoust.com
The calculator is a fun example to invoke because after they were recommended by the NACME in 1975 people resisted, but then research showed that raw computing wasn’t what limited student math comprehension. LLMs flip this: research shows that they directly attack student reading comprehension.
November 12, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
writnelson.bsky.social
The people who will most profit from this quality and connection-sapping technology being assumed to be inevitable, want you to give up on pushing against it today, by believing that fight is already over.

Don’t give in.
Don’t be fooled.
Don’t accept the thing already making our medium worse.
November 12, 2025 at 3:31 AM
Reposted by Michael Black
writnelson.bsky.social
We don’t use generative AI at Strange Scaffold and I can confirm that a *lot* of other studios are not—whether indie or AAA.

Get outta here with this normalization bullshit.
November 12, 2025 at 3:25 AM
Reposted by Michael Black
tommullaney.bsky.social
I'm seeing a lot of Gemini Certified Educators in my social media feeds. This is a good time to think critically about Gemini, how it is developed, and how it could impact (possibly harm) K-12 education. Be careful what you attach your name to.

www.criticalinkling.com/p/gemini-cer...
Before You Become a Gemini Certified Educator
Be careful what you tie your name to.
www.criticalinkling.com
November 11, 2025 at 11:39 PM
mblack.us
Heck yeah! Between my dissertation and book, I spent about 10 years digging through Byte, first in the UIUC stacks and later through the Internet Archive. Its a really fascinating archive for anyone interested in the history of tech comm or computing, more generally.
November 11, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
ceu---azul.bsky.social
The prospect of replacing people's already dwindling intelligence with an artificial one that they can control

has billionaires salivating
September 30, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Reposted by Michael Black
samleecole.bsky.social
this was making me nuts recently so I recorded all the times I had to bat away all the useless AI shit in acrobat. four times right after opening the doc, and some things I couldn't even clear
November 11, 2025 at 2:13 PM