iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

We’re getting this stuff pushed on us daily as university educators with zero empirical evidence it helps learning and lots of anecdotal evidence it’s actively harming learning environments

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

In the learning context there does not seem to be any benefit. As a method for some things you’re already familiar with, as an automation tool, sure

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

So it’s not that AI itself creates a frictionless environment in that it is efficient and doesn’t generate more work but that it is frictionless for students who don’t ”have” to struggle to piece together an answer, which is so core to past paradigms of learning.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

Working hard sucks so we’ll always take shortcuts. Talking to colleagues in departments like math or computer science they’re seeing similar issues: students are increasingly not taking the time to struggle over, situate or contextualized concepts or research problems/arguments

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

It also lacks the feeling of uncertainty — a math professor recently was telling me how they always had problems to solve and no solution key so they had to sit with the uncertainty over whether they had the right idea or did things correctly until they got to class

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

Of course LLM generated text is an issue but the bigger problem is depending on chatbots for the bety QA function you mention that’s so often touted by ed tech as the ideal use. Again it gives you easy answers but they lack the context you’d get thinking through them, finding them, struggling at it

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

So they’ll do things like ask a chatbot what methods they should use and then try to implement those with absolutely no context and in cases or situations that are often not be appropriate.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

The issue is that many students aren’t taking the time to learn and investigate things from the ground up, as a process.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13h

I’m not sure whether your whole thread was directed at me but I am a researcher in AI and teach MA digital humanities students at Uppsala University. We’re very much on the front lines of this. Technologies obviously create many short cuts and LLMs do so in novel ways.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 10/10/2026

I’ve seen some critiques of the study design on this paper which were convincing but I think a lot of people have latched onto this bc it seems to show what many are experiencing: a struggle free learning environment is bad and a frictionless lifestyle isn’t serving us well arxiv.org/abs/2604.04721

arxiv.org

AI Assistance Reduces Persistence and Hurts Independent Performance

People often optimize for long-term goals in collaboration: A mentor or companion doesn't just answer questions, but also scaffolds learning, tracks progress, and prioritizes the other person's growth...

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 07/10/2026

This is complex — and likely a bit fragile — but very cool. Actually less interested in the ostensible end goal (Pangram for Ideas) and more in the problems you have to solve to get there (separating ideas from style, and learning to recognize more/less predictable ideas).

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Lukas R.A. Wilde @lukasrawilde.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Finally out, this was a lot of work... a very timely treasure box of perspectives on all things AI, the result of all our work here at NTNU in the last 2-3 years. completely open access: "Humanities Perspectives on AI: An Interdisciplinary Introduction" www.scup.com/doi/book/10....

scup.com

Humanities Perspectives on AI | Books

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 21/09/2026

Ugh I hate this new spam landscape… I’m also getting many generated messages from promoters and “book clubs” and ppl pretending to be well-known journalists or podcasters… it’s extremely tiring

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 21/09/2026

I'm so so very tired of getting a constant stream of emails re my new (not yet out!) book that begin like this 🫩 I guess I'm just going to have to set up an email filter for the phrase "I recently came across" and "especially caught my attention"

An AI-generated spam email that reads: Dear Amanda,

I recently came across Digital Photography After AI, and I was immediately struck by the way you approach AI-generated images not simply as a new technological development, but as something that forces us to reconsider what photography itself means. The question of whether an image that looks indistinguishable from a photograph should be understood as photography at all creates a fascinating starting point for examining the boundaries between image-making, technology, and representation.

What especially caught my attention was the historical scope of the book.

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 20/09/2026

i'm tired of seeing “escalating ai capabilities” reported as if it is a fact. let's be clear this claim does not rest on transparent, well-defined, independently validated metrics, but is inferred from model behaviours elicited by humans and measured through opaque, poorly designed evaluations

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 20/09/2026

Was sorry to miss you in Stockholm! Hope you’re feeling better! I have bought two copies of this book (bc I keep ordering books and then forgetting I’ve already ordered them 😅 but a great duplicate to have!)

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Karen Gregory @karengregory.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

"The workers of Amazon Mechanical Turk have been part of the AI economy for more than two decades. They helped build the infrastructure that made today’s technology possible, often without recognition, security, or a meaningful voice in the systems they helped create."

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Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

We got a live demo of the shirt that is designed to fool certain people detection systems. Read more here: www.404media.co/this-digital...

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Celeste Labedz @celestelabedz.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

"Creating the third-largest university plant collection" may seem celebratory, but remember: this is happening because Duke administration decided to axe the herbarium as a cost-cutting measure. Natural history collections are a precious scientific resource, and too many are at risk of being lost.

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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

I think what I find really depressing about AI in higher education is how so many people didn't even wait for the evidence/research before we decided on telling students "how to use AI responsibly" which often includes things like checking grammar, and obviously, we shouldn't have been

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 28/08/2026

There’s plenty wrong with Swedish academia but one great thing is that junior colleagues (phds, postdocs, etc) are actually treated, paid and union represented as the workers and colleagues they are.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 28/08/2026

I know it’s rage bait but i finally caved and read it. What an embarrassing take. But it reminded me how US academics—not just admins—incl. many purportedly leftwing ones often don’t see PhDs & postdocs as valued colleagues doing work. It’s not a hobby, friendship or a favor they’re doing you smh.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 27/08/2026

Sweden’s moderates party is getting dunked on for doing the AI slop version of Reagan’s Morning in America ad vm.tiktok.com/ZN8NnFwLN/

vm.tiktok.com

TikTok - Make Your Day

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 27/08/2026

He’s mostly worried a jobless underclass disenfranchised by AI will start a revolution though

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 18/08/2026

Yeah I thought it might work in relation to that assignment

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Emanuel Maiberg @emanuelmaiberg.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

We put a tracking device in a shipment of rare books acquired by an anonymous buyer. It ended up at an Amazon facility where the company scans books for training data and destroys them in the process: www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

404media.co

We Tracked a Shipment of Rare Books. It Ended at an Amazon AI Training Facility

We placed a tracking device in a shipment of rare books to see which AI company was buying it, and found an Amazon facility where Amazon scans and destroys books.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 13/08/2026

Not going to repeat what others are saying about how dumb the rationale for this is. How are we still doing this sort of rage bait in 2026? But it does maybe serve as a good way to discuss what humanities writing is/does w/ the MA students ey @matti-lamela.bsky.social @merisamartinez.bsky.social ?

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 12/08/2026

Yeah haha systematic only in the non-humanities sense. Scientistic gloss in lieu of critical thinking. And thanks!

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 12/08/2026

I think there’s not enough questioning of research practices in general when forming these interdisciplinary departments or fields incl in AI studies — leads to some misunderstanding I think

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 12/08/2026

I’m in a depart w/ an information studies PhD program that has a lot of interdisciplinary DH ppl. I think since systematic reviews are common in LIS so students don’t question it. People entering interdisciplinary humanistic AI studies from a computer science background may be doing the same

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 12/08/2026

Yes totally agree with this! It's something that's been bugging me in the quasi-humanities department I'm part of since I started. The more humanities-oriented students think they need to be doing systematic reviews, even when it just doesn't make sense for the research questions

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 03/08/2026

Don’t use AI to write your emails ppl (i have seen it from academic colleagues recently too ick!) It’s embarrassing and everyone can tell

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 03/08/2026

So it’s clear spam filters of the future will just be Gen AI text detectors and everyone will be writing emails in the most casual language possible

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 03/08/2026

Now the book promotion scammer emails im getting are impersonating well-know culture figures and journalists from quality venues and like niche high culture media, so I’m sorry in advance to anyone real that i unintentionally ignore going forward! 🫩

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Dot Porter @leoba.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Do you use digitized medieval manuscripts in any capacity? Do you have opinions about the metadata that describes them? We want to hear from you! Please take a moment to fill out our very short survey. Please repost and share with anyone you know who might be interested! forms.gle/sBPXAnoRhwe1...

forms.gle

Digitized Medieval Manuscripts: Metadata Preferences

A brief survey about what metadata formats people prefer to go along with their digitized medieval manuscripts. The results of this survey will be used to consider what metadata we make available thro...

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 31/07/2026

I don't think it's *bad* to try to get people to see something's a deepfake. But, yeah, this is likely to be more annoying than effective. Honestly I don't know what should be done that would be effective though.

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 31/07/2026

"EU rules aim to stem the flood of this deceptive content: starting from Sunday, artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look authentic must be labelled." So more pop-ups then? Return of the 90s internet but now bluntly bureaucratic www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

theguardian.com

AI labels to be compulsory on authentic-looking content under EU rules

Companies must ensure people know when they are interacting with artificially generated images, audio and text designed to look real

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My IRL friends call me Chris @christyceeck.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

"A study done in Phoenix done by Arizona State University found data centres can increase air temperatures by up to 4 degrees Fahrenheit in downwind neighbourhoods. The waste heat given off by one data centre as it cooled itself exceeded the amount produced by 40,000 households."

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 31/07/2026

RIP Raoul Vaneigem 1934-2026 A good run for a radical leftist and an influential legacy

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

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Amanda Wasielewski @amandawasielewski.com · 28/07/2026

This is worth a read for academics too. As much as LLMs suck for higher ed and teaching has gotten so much worse bc of them, having to tacitly support mass delusion around AI in the corporate world is apparently at death of Stalin levels h/t @agri.bsky.social

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