Since I am human, I have an intrinsic motivation to understand. Since I am an anthropologist, I have an intrinsic motivation to understand other humans. Since many humans seem more and more motivated to hand their intrinsic motivation to a machine, I am now intrinsically motivated to not only understand how AI operates and what its effects are, but who the humans behind the technology are and to what they might put AI to use.

Since I am also a university professor, I am faced with the topic of AI almost every day. I have noted three common ways of how academia relates to the issue so far:

a) AI is the future and everything will be great

b) we are doomed and we can’t win against AI

c) who cares about AI ?

So I have started to gather texts on AI, particularly those written by scholars or by journalists engaging with academic literature. The result (so far): AI is stupid and as such maybe not so different from humans after all. But: it feeds off our knowledge and it learns from our mistakes. It also gets better in duping us, luring us in and making us believe that there is indeed ‘someone’ on the other side. There is not.

Here is my list of collected texts (tbc.) which I enjoyed reading and which I recommend to everyone, whether you are a) b) or c).

Order on fair use

Shutdown resistance in reasoning models

Expressing stigma and inappropriate responses prevents LLMs from safely replacing mental health providers.

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?

Why we fear AI: On the Interpretation of Nightmares

Writing is thinking

Surface Fairness, Deep Bias: A Comparative Study of Bias in Language Models

Geoffrey Hinton’s speech at the Nobel Prize banquet, 10 December 2024

Echte Emotionen. Generative KI und rechte Weltbilder

Assuring an accurate research record

Lawyer caught using AI-generated false citations in court case penalised in Australian first

Why Even Try if You Have A.I.?

Statelessness Studies In An Age Of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges, Opportunities & Setting A Future Agenda

Help Sheet: Resisting AI Mania in Schools

Against the Uncritical Adoption of ‘AI’ Technologies in Academia

Putting ChatGPT on the Couch

Large Language Muddle

When Knowledge Is Free, What Are Professors For?

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory

What Machines Don’t Know

Kritik der Digitalisierung. Technik, Rationalität und Kunst

Nature: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written fully by AI

to be continued …