AI is to Writing as Cheez-Whiz is to Cheese (File under “cranky rantsmanship”)

 

Hear me out. I promise you that this is written by a real person, and possibly a Cassandra.

Exhibit A: A long time ago, I had Feelings about the incessant cheerleading for Twitter that first the media, and then colleagues, were going on and on and on about. (That was in the Before Times, before Twitter became Evil X.) My academic compatriots all but posted signs saying "Twitter will save the world, or academic discourse anyway." Now we are all on Bluesky, which alarms right-wing pundit Megan McArdle, she of the "If you're old and poor, sucks to be you" school of economic growth, because there is no profit in it for her, but for a time it did seem that Twitter could be great, and Bluesky, pace McArdle, might get there yet. 

But the point was, the cheerleading was too much, as it had been for other tech that was supposed to transform teaching. 

Exhibit B: Enter the MOOC. Remember them and the quaint old days they represented? They too were going to transform education in all the best ways--turning us into glorified tutors for the MOOC 'n' Bake classrooms we would all be grading for--not teaching, just grading, because that is why everyone wants to teach. UCLA is already going there: an AI + MOOC combination that will transform the world. 

Now to Exhibit C: AI and writing. I've already complained about the mind-numbing effects of reading AI-generated prose and the lengthy knuckling under that the MLA has done in bowing to our new environment-destroying overlords. 

But now I'm seeing professional writers (no names, of course) embrace it as an idea factory. All they have to do is clean it up a bit to mimic their voice and bingo, there's a Substack or blog post. 

I read a few, and the whole "idea factory" thing? Not so much. If that's what ChatGPT 4.0 or Claude or Grok or any of the other idea factories generate what you  consider ideas, then okay. Whatever helps to monetize the site. You do you. If your idea of writing is tweaking some very anodyne non-content, then go for it.  

But all AI-generated prose, in a perfect world, would have a disclaimer: "AI wrote this, so decide whether you want to spend 3 or 5 or 10 minutes of your only precious brain life in reading it." 

Oh, and is it good for your brain to use AI to write for you? Maybe not.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/202506/how-chatgpt-may-be-impacting-your-brain 

If you want to eat Cheez-Whiz, it definitely has its uses. But don't pretend that it's a true aged cheddar like you'd eat with fresh apples. 

Same goes for AI writing.

 

Random bullets of summer research and writing

 

It's (mostly) summer, and I hope your writing is going well. 

(I hope that that does not sound too much like the ubiquitous email "I hope this finds you well", which I became aware of as a curiosity in 2010 and 2016 and now, according to the interwebs, is the hallmark of the AI-generated student grade-grubbing email.) 

For the past few weeks, I've set aside the big project and have been writing on a subject because I feel like it. 

It was a heady feeling. "Guess I'll write on this minor literary figure along with this major one," my brain said one day, and, since I'm now committed to writing something every day and have a goodly streak of days strung together, I went along with it. 

Some thoughts: 

1. It is sometimes just plain easier to grab a dozen books on the subject off the shelf and leaf through them or check the index to see if there's anything about, say, dragon scales or some other specific item. Easier than what? Going to the university library site, and then logging in, and then authenticating, and then searching, and then authenticating again, only to find that you'll have to order it anyway.

2. And if the book is there: trying to read it from the palm-sized square of text you can actually see after all the crufty frames and so on block the rest.  Or searching at HathiTrust, Internet Archive, or other often reliable repositories, only to discover that the minor literary figure's biographer has pulled it from the archive, apparently in fear that someone will read it sometime. 

3. The only drawback with the real (not virtual) books is that I really do need a book wheel, since building a book fortress on either side of me is suboptimal for finding things. 

In life news:

1. Not news exactly, but I have planted lots of kinds of thyme for a scent garden, and it is sturdy enough to walk on and smell the waves of lemon thyme, spicy orange thyme, etc. Between that, brushing my hand over the lavender to release its scent, and smelling the intense fragrance from my neighbor's lilacs, which is much stronger in the evening, all of this is a pleasant way to "touch grass," as they say, and calm down from the world news. 

2. It is somebody's job to keep track of whether my classes will fill in the fall (one already has), but blessedly, it is not mine.

Edited to add: So many apologies to people who commented! I thought this site was posting comments when it wasn't--sorry. 

Random bullets of another semester ends, and spring is here

 

How's everyone doing? The Economist cover says it all, really.

• Teaching.This semester is all done & in the books, except for grading. Based on all of your comments a long time ago (2011! We were all so young!) I'm providing a summary comment along with the rubric and telling them to contact me if they would like more inline detailed comments. 
• I kept a chart this semester of who actually looked at the extensive feedback I gave, since Canvas allows you to see whether the student clicks back in to see the comments. You'll be completely shocked to learn that the rate of looking at the feedback was about 30%, about the same number that ever looked at the Panopto videos, etc. 
• It didn't change whether I gave comments or not, but it did make me a little more understanding about why they still can't tell whether to put quotations or italics in a title, etc., and that I could save my breath--well, my iPad handwritten comments--because they weren't paying attention to it anyway. 
• I have been lurking over at the r/professors subreddit, which is teaching me (once I ignore the bitterness) all about tools: tools to gamify, like Kahoot (not doing that), tools to grade (not doing that, either), tools to catch AI (many of which seem sneaky to me). But there seems to be (again, ignoring bitterness) a sense that students are struggling with basic thinking & reasoning concepts, with reading even short materials, and with speaking up for fear of failure. With an online class, it's hard to detect those things.
• Speaking of which: I have 100% in-person classes in the fall and am the only tenured person in the department to be teaching 100% in person. I didn't ask for this, since I do like to teach online as well, but I'm kind of excited about it, since the experience a couple of years ago with the old-school methods (writing papers in class, working on revising them in class, exams in class, class discussion, etc.) was great. 

• Writing and Research. I've been writing faithfully every day, though it's all notes circling the new project rather than actual paragraphs I could put into the new book project. That time is coming, though.
  
• Conferences. Going to conferences is surreal. Budgets are being slashed, academe is under attack (you're saying "tell me about it!") but in the conversations I overheard, everyone keeps talking as though nothing is happening--"And after this fellowship, I've applied for X," "Are you going to Germany for Y conference?" etc. Loads of themes about environmental justice and the anthropocene and pious hand-wringing over climate change, all while we are burning up the atmosphere flying to these things when we could be doing them over Zoom. I confess to laughing out loud when a colleague brought up flying to a European conference about something something climate change and said "Are you kidding? No academic who goes to an in-person conference gets to preach about climate change without a raised eyebrow from the rest of us" or something to that effect. 
• Service. Still showing up in person for stuff, and often the only civilian (i.e., non admin) there. 
• The rest of it. Trying to walk in the woods, and read real books, and spend time by the water as much as I can.

Edited to add: I'm trying to comment on your blogs, but Wordpress, etc. is hurling so many obstacles that I'm not sure the comments are showing--sorry. 

Still hanging in there

 It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that there are distractions in the country & in academe right now (waves hands in the direction of everything) as we swing between rage & despair & fight on as best we can. 

Anyway, here’s some non-news content: 

Regular life

• After a —let’s just say “weather-filled”—winter, it looks as though spring is going to be here at some point, so hooray! There’s something in the sky right now, some unfamiliar light—could it be the sun? 
• We can’t hibernate for February any more, but it is only 28 days, and this is the last of it. I couldn’t hibernate, anyway: the birds and the squirrels rely on my filling the feeders.
• One of my cats has discovered that he can climb onto the hammock, which is one of those that swings wildly, and he is extremely proud of himself, as indeed he should be.
• I’m listening to Dan Jones’s The Plantagenets and keep thinking “well, it could be worse, like the winter of 1314 worse, so keep moving.” Oddly, this gives me some hope: if they got through it, you can, too. 
• Since vaccines have been available, I’ve had them all—but I am also older than dirt and experienced a lot of diseases before there were any vaccines for diseases except for smallpox, TB,  and (later) Polio. Both kinds of measles, including one with a high fever during which I hallucinated voices; scarlet fever; mumps; chicken pox; shingles (yes, as a child)—you name it, I had it. My point is that seeing these come back is only one of the worst things that this kakistocracy has visited upon us—is plague next?—but it’s also one of the most pointless.

Teaching life

• We’re now, what, 4-5 years post-Covid, but I don’t think the students have recovered. I’ve tried to scale up the assignments a bit but received pushback that it was too much. Bear in mind that what I’m assigning for grad and undergrad students is about 2/3 of what I used to assign 10 years ago, but they seem to be really suffering under the workload, so I accommodate as far as possible. 
• I order books, but it seems that they will not buy the books. Would I rather have them have a chance at reading the materials, or would I rather have them buy the books & lose out if they don’t? I scan & OCR them & post them & hope that this makes reading possible for them.
• Lest I get a swelled head about making a difference with my awesome video lectures and extensive feedback on papers, I’ve checked to see the viewership of both. About 1/3 of the students watch the lectures, and about the same number actually look at the feedback I give. I guess making a difference for those who care is enough, right? 
• On the other hand, some students have reached out to say that they appreciate either the feedback or the lectures, so that’s a win.

Research life

• I’ve been writing most days, although it’s almost all reading & writing, making notes and working through ideas rather than creating finished prose. It’s kind of exciting, since the writing itself seems to generate the ideas—not a new concept, of course, but it seems to be working.
• I’ve also made progress on the collaborative project and can see the light at the end of one of the tunnels, anyway. 
• Conferences are coming up. They’re kind of the “return to work” version of academic life, but apparently virtual conferences can’t slake academics’ relentless thirst for travel and spending money in search of community. The COVID-era virtual experience wasn’t enough, apparently. 

I hope you’re all hanging in there!

Welcome to 2025!

Undine: "Welcome to 2025! New year, new me! This is going to be the year when I get so much writing ---"

Covid enters the chat, with a positive test line so reddish-purple that it looks like a murder scene.

Oh, well, eventually I will feel better. 

In the meantime:

• The fires and the political scene are terrible, but you already knew that.
• Reading actual books instead of doomscrolling through the now-canceled WaPo & NYTimes is better for mental health.
• Columnists like Jennifer Rubin have quit and have now gone to our old friend Substack. While I admire that in principle, it's the whole cable & streaming services thing all over again: you pay for cable, and then you pay extra for Hulu, Apple+, Netflix, etc.
  
• Teaching is going well, and if Covid 1.0 taught us anything, it's that we can hop on Zoom for a class or two if we are not too sick to teach but too sick to risk infecting others.
• Everyone on my social media counts the number of books that they read in a year and then posts it at the end of the year. I've never done this & don't remember seeing this before. Questions: Does everyone keep track like this? Should I start doing this? 

Hope your new year is going well!

 

Waning days of 2024

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and (nearly) Happy New Year! I mostly wanted to post in order to give you this peaceful picture to ring in the new year.

Academics think of the new year as beginning in the fall (because of classes), but I'm hoping this will be a new start. Herewith some wishes for myself and anyone else who would like them: 

1. For having a better work-life balance.

2. For finding new interests (crafts such as paper-making? more focus on local history?) and new sources of joy.

3. For finding more time for what matters. I've canceled both the New York Times and the Washington Post (sorry, Carolyn Hax) for their relentless cheerleading of guess-who. Anyway, I find more of WaPo's actual news reprinted in my local paper, since their digital format is all silliness and Trump. 

4. For spending less time on teaching, however fascinating I find it.

5. For getting unstuck and unstalled on one writing project and finishing a major part of another project.

6. For being outside more and using my standing desk adapter thingy (not a real standing desk) to stop the fidgets when writing. 

I wish you all joy, happiness, and peace in the new year!

Brave new AI world: UCLA comp lit course to be fully AI (except the grading, of course)

 https://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/comparative-literature-zrinka-stahuljak-artificial-intelligence?fbclid=IwY2xjawHCkWJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHevSkyx0i5RjId-pd4g4_W-cs4zgTUOz19XwrxVpLU7LD2jt9E4FEkX7Jw_aem_LRrvJbHS0TFgq9uokRfYFw

So here we are: some kind of highly monetized tech company called Kudu is going to take Professor Zrinka Stahuljak’s comp lit course materials and turn them into a fully AI-driven course—except for the grading, of course, which will be left to Teaching Assistants. 

Benefits to students? Consistency across multiple sections. 

Benefits to Teaching Assistants? They get to work on the students’ writing (autocorrect wants to make this “writhing,” and I kind of get it).

Benefits to the Professor? No additional work except for submitting grades. She doubtless has tenure and is not worried about her job. 

Any downsides? 

1. Well, the TAs are going to be stuck reading writing that is likely to be about 95% AI generated (ChatGPT, Claude, Google Notes or whatever) and maybe 5% from Chegg or Course Hero. And they will get to track it all down to report to Academic Standards.

2.  If you were a student, would you put forth your best effort, knowing that everything was canned and your professor was never going to look at any of it? If your professor was like the Karl Marx God in the clouds in a Monty Python skit, who, once having generated content, just says “Get on with it!”? Look, I teach online often, and one of the hardest but most rewarding parts is talking to students as real person to real person. What if you remove even that layer of connection?

3. Who’s going to answer their questions? AI. 

4. Oh, and the textbook that will generate all the AI? Is it OER? Oh, you sweet summer child; of course it’s not. It’s going to cost the students an additional $25 per semester. 

5. If this is the wave of the future—the MOOC of the future, if you will—what about intellectual property? 

Questions:

1. Is this going to cost the university more than simply having a course in D2L, Canvas, or Blackboard? 

2. Since Kudu is compensating the professors, how does this affect their employment with the university? 

3. Cui bono? Kudu and the University’s bottom line, probably. But what about the students? What about the connections that teaching a humanistic subject is supposed to foster? 

4. Out of state tuition at UCLA is 43K a year. Would you send your kid to be taught by a bot? Call me when Bezos and the other billionaires and millionaires send their students to be taught by nonhuman objects instead of people.