@gregconvertito
Philosophy adjunct. Political philosophy, Marx, Latin America, and some other stuff. he/him https://gregoryconvertito.wordpress.com/ Series editor of @apaphilosophy.bsky.social Teaching and Learning Video Series. Not expressing the views of my employer.
This is a basic and crucial point for any discussion of LLMs’ use in teaching research or writing. Whether it can ape us, fool us, or get facts right or wrong is, in the end, irrelevant. The LLM is not the thinker we are trying to encourage; the LLM is not the writer that we are trying to improve.
Anyway, yes, most discussion about LLMs in the classroom assumes they should be there, only asking later whether they help achieve prior teaching goals; as far as that has been studied, the answer is often “no.” We’ve started with infomercials and only asked intelligent questions as an afterthought.
Believing in "AGI" and being a serious person worthy of consideration and respect are incompatible.
"AGI" as an idea is akin to the New Age morons who believe in crystals and other pseudoscientific nonsense, or thinking the hocus-pocus of "traditional" medicine is worthy of any respect at all.
Much of this (clearly AI-generated) post is terrifying and probably true re jobs. LLMs are going to unleash all economic hell.
But to claim that "knowledge is essentially free now" is nonsense. New knowledge cannot be synthesised just from all that is. True new knowledge has a labour cost.
As Kids These Days™ rediscover CDs, a good project would be a CD liner notes archive. High resolution pictures and descriptions & transcriptions of album art, lyrics, thanks, track personnel, all of it. Get living artists to comment on their choices and process. Think it'd be kind of dope.
I found that this is wrong. Democracy actually is a powerful motivating force for a critical slice of the population *if they perceive a real threat*.
I call this the "legibility" theory of democratic backsliding: the more legible the threat, the more likely it is to prompt effective pushback.
My review of "Citizen Marx" by @brunoleipold.com and "Marx's Ethical Vision" by @vcwills.bsky.social is out. Good books both. With @histmat.bsky.social
www.historicalmaterialism.org/8313-2/
A great book that everyone should read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_...
bsky.app/profile/lutz...
Not that I am supposing either party involved in this transaction cares much about the problems with (1).
This is all so bleak.
Perhaps I am wrong, but I can only think of two ways this can be done: (1) giving away your secure credentials by just typing them into third party software; or (2) linking a third party application through Canvas, which your instructor and/or IT department will be able to detect.
Please, if you are interested in writing for the series, reach out to me. We’re always looking for people who use video resources in interesting ways to teach philosophy. @apaphilosophy.bsky.social
The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.
Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.
This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.
Thank you @whatremains.bsky.social for this great contribution to the series!
I wrote about Deleuze, Timothy Speed Levitch, and the ideology of common sense for the APA Teaching and Learning Video Series.
blog.apaonline.org/2026/02/18/c...
Excited to announce February’s post in the @apaphilosophy.bsky.social’s Teaching and Learning Video Series: Eric Aldieri’s approach to pushing students beyond ‘common opinion,’ with a clip of “now-infamous New York City tour bus guide Timothy ‘Speed’ Levitch.” blog.apaonline.org/2026/02/18/c...
Keep in mind that some teachers are already teaching kids to use AI in ways that aren't that far removed from this -- and or because school policies are encouraging it.
It's usually phrased something like "students may use AI in the writing process as long as the final product is theirs."
Not really in the sense demarcated in the passage. Otherwise everything excluded would be included.
Also very funny in that it is not even an example of knowledge of “the strategic components of the art of war”…?
One reason I believe this is that AMLO’s term in office was marked by the dissolution of independent agencies and the aggregation of their power to the executive. The opposite of what is described here as a set of possible solutions to our current constitutional crisis. bsky.app/profile/libe...
As some of you may know, I’m writing a book on the history of high school English in the United States, and I’m excited to share a new article from that project—“High School English and the Making of American Readers”—out today in American Literary History! 🧵
academic.oup.com/alh/article/...
I forgot that “Spike is a modernizing technocrat” is basically the plot of Buffy s2.
I'm pretty sure I know. They aren't. We're not going to really be able to make a lot of progress in dealing with the implications of this tech unless and until we get rid of all this "woo-woo" talk about LLMs. Anthropic pushing this line is PR, unserious.
retweeting this because I really believe that comparison of our current political situation with the recent trajectory of Mexico is instructive, both in the similarities and the divergences.
Damn I’m gonna have to watch the new show, aren’t I.
youtu.be/vvtp-dKfbco?...
Those were formative in their different ways, but others I really loved:
- Critical Views/Critical Values (art crit class in the theater dept)
- Morality and Literature
- Linear Algebra
- Abstract Algebra I & II
- the lab sections of Physics I, II & III (which is where I acquired stats competency)
Ok, five classes I took in college:
- Analysis II (math)
- Europe Since 1715 (history)
- Adorno (philosophy)
- Marx (philosophy)
- Mobility and Sustainability (anthropology)
Microsoft and Blackrock have "have largely given up on organic adoption [of AI] by consumers. They have moved on to a new dream of forced adoption mandated by government and managerial coercion."
Fascinating piece here on what Davos can teach us about the AI industry by @mattseybold.bsky.social
I have just had a strange realization: I believe my tenth grade modern global history teacher had read a bunch of Robert Dahl.