Artificial Intelligence and the Humanities

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BidenPresident

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Socrates is a dramatic persona Plato puts forward as worthy of emulation. This emulation consists in serious lifelong engagement in the activity of self-articulation, the activity of bringing oneself into a more determinate form by bringing oneself into words.

We give a more determinate shape to our views about important matters by bringing them into the space of words. This activity requires fidelity to our actual outlook, but it also alters that outlook by finding words for it that we are prepared to live by, hence setting the stage for another, more adequate articulation.

https://dailynous.com/2023/08/23/the-ai-threat-the-humanities-and-the-value-of-self-cultivation/
 
"For one thing, it seems too flip a response to potential damage to intellectual culture. It’s not as if each student who uses an LLM affects only their own education. Rather, one’s use of it can affect other students’ sense of fairness, their sense of what’s acceptable, and perhaps their sense of whether cheating with an LLM is “rational,” given their aims. Cheating may be contagious along multiple vectors, and sufficiently widespread, it turns higher education into charade."
 
It will be interesting to see how universities approach the problems Generative AI is going to raise in the classroom. I'm genuinely curious how it will all play out.
 
My university might cut humanities. I’m frustrated, angry — and afraid.

The jobs of almost 200 faculty members at West Virginia University, where I teach, are now on the line. The university plans to dismiss 7 percent of its faculty and eliminate 32 majors. The humanities — and the English department — seem to be at the top of everyone’s target list.

I also sense a push toward a set of educational values that would make our population more pliable, agreeable and passive. So busy trying to make a living that we don’t have time to think. We cut liberal arts at our own peril. West Virginia University’s president, E. Gordon Gee, says that what is happening on campus is part of a larger trend taking place across the country. I hope he’s wrong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/23/west-virginia-university-budget-cuts-humanities/
 
BidenPresident said:
The jobs of almost 200 faculty members at West Virginia University, where I teach, are now on the line. The university plans to dismiss 7 percent of its faculty and eliminate 32 majors. The humanities — and the English department — seem to be at the top of everyone’s target list.

I also sense a push toward a set of educational values that would make our population more pliable, agreeable and passive. So busy trying to make a living that we don’t have time to think. We cut liberal arts at our own peril. West Virginia University’s president, E. Gordon Gee, says that what is happening on campus is part of a larger trend taking place across the country. I hope he’s wrong.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/08/23/west-virginia-university-budget-cuts-humanities/
Click to expand...

This story is terrifying! Eliminating the humanities is the worst possible idea, even if the humanities don't bring in all the majors and grant funding. The most sobering line in that article was: "...we seem to be turning everything that celebrates our shared humanity into a business."

Truer words never spoken. And a real shame.
 
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