Sign in

AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project

@ncaaupgip.bsky.social
111 followers 193 following 69 posts

Grant-funded initiative of AAUP NC, interrogating the use of AI in the university. AI is not inevitable. substack.com/@genuineintelligencenc www.aaupnc.org/projects/genuine-int… Instagram: @ncgenuineintelligence

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Join us Friday, 10/2, for a critical AI teach-in with the wonderful Andrea Reyes Elizondo @altibel.bsky.social! She'll be helping us think about the importance of reclaiming our reading and writing skills from generative "AI." Learn more and access Zoom link here: www.aaupnc.org/projects/gen...
aaupnc.org
AAUP NC - Genuine Intelligence Project
The Genuine Intelligence Project
155
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jeff VanderMeer @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
They quoted me in this New Yorker piece about AI today. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...
“Let’s say there’s a world or time line I exist in where A.I. has been subject to regulation. It is ethical. It has no footprint environmentally,” the novelist Jeff VanderMeer, a prominent critic of A.I., told me over the phone. “With those guardrails in place, would I read an A.I. book? All I can say is no. And the reason is, in part, because I want to read something coming from a particular mind.” Using A.I., he said, “feels like a betrayal of the whole point of why you’re a writer.”
114107192643
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
So exhausted to read this on the day before I have to have a department-level conversation about why we all need to adopt generative AI... www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/h... Why are universities aligning themselves with products that are being used to undermine the role of experts in our society?
A screen shot of text from an article about a MAHA summit, featuring RFK's remarks about AI and experts: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/health/maha-summit-kennedy-vance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.FFE.VU26.T_6I0lxMmVb-&smid=url-share
041
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Join us Friday, 10/2, for a critical AI teach-in with the wonderful Andrea Reyes Elizondo @altibel.bsky.social! She'll be helping us think about the importance of reclaiming our reading and writing skills from generative "AI." Learn more and access Zoom link here: www.aaupnc.org/projects/gen...
aaupnc.org
AAUP NC - Genuine Intelligence Project
The Genuine Intelligence Project
155
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
This week's newsletter: "Boosters and critics aren’t playing the same game. When I cite the profound violence and cruelty enacted by commercial AI companies, I’m not talking about something that could be outweighed by a language model that can do some cool stuff." substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
On “Breakthroughs”
Moving the goalposts, racing for arms, etc.
010
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Matt Ford @mford.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Ezra Klein asked Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang about AI making kids worse at math and reading. Huang’s reply: “Does it matter?” Then he said he doesn’t know his own address or phone number. “We’re going to lose some fine intellectual dexterity.” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...
So the message of this research out of China, where you were seeing a lot of kids using A.I. to help them, was that when they were using the A.I., they were getting things done faster. But it turned out that the skills they were learning were not holding, that their actual personal performance, at least in the way we traditionally measure it, was degrading.

What do you think when you hear that?

The last part — I completely agree. Try to get a kid to do long division right now. The multiplication table is starting to be forgotten. Doing square roots, my goodness. Basic math is being forgotten. Does it matter?

That’s my question for you.

Yeah. I don’t think it does. I don’t think it does.

But there must be some set of skills that matter.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But maybe not those. We’re going to discover new ones. Just maybe not those.

There are a lot of skills that don’t matter. My first confession, I actually don’t know my address.And I ——

I don’t really believe that to be true.

It’s completely true. Janine will tell you and Lori will tell you.

One day I had to pump gas — it was a few years ago. They needed my ZIP code, and I panicked. I didn’t know my ZIP code. I don’t know my telephone number. I forget these things. I can live with it.

But let me take the other side because I don’t want to fall into a thing where, because some skills can be safely offloaded ——

Yeah.

I also can’t get anywhere without a mapping system now. Never could, frankly. But I’m a big reader. And one of the skills I really value, one of the capacities I have that I really value is an attention span formed on physical books.

You’re a big reader. I’ve read about the kind of reading you do. And there is, prior to A.I., a lot of concern and noticing among college professors and others that the way people use the internet has probably shortened attention spans.
Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.Some skills can be safely given away. Others are valuable. They are capacities that are needed for that flexibility, for that creative thinking, for that focus. It can’t be the case that everything can be traded off.

Yeah. Well, I think that we’re going to lose some finer intellectual dexterity, but we’re going to be better systems thinkers.

Today’s engineers are far better systems thinkers than I was when I graduated from school. But I was a much better transistor thinker.

What do you mean by systems thinker?

They think of large systems. Today’s computers have trillions, hundreds of trillions of transistors in them. When I first graduated from school, the first chip I worked on had 200 transistors. I knew every one of them by name. No engineer does that today. Most engineers now work well above the transistor, well above the functionality, and they’re cobbling things together to do things.

So you need to think much more about systems and interactions of systems. So some of the lower-level knowledge is gone.
58854781502
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Joseph Shea @josephshea.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The "inevitability" of AI argument is such a copout. Its only inevitable if we stand back and let it become entrenched (or worse: encourage it) in our classrooms. Looking at you, UNBC.
052
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This Wednesday - "Teaching Critical AI Literacies," a workshop with Lauren M.E. Goodlad, editor of the interdisciplinary journal Critical AI. Wednesday, 9/23, 4:30 pm John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke More information: buff.ly/0el2U3a
032
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Please join us for a teaching critical AI literacies workshop with Dr. Lauren M.E. Goodlad on September 23rd at 4:30 PM at the Franklin Humanities Institute! @ncaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org fhi.duke.edu/event/lauren... If you can't make it in person, the event will also be streamed via Zoom!
fhi.duke.edu
Lauren Goodlad, "Teaching Critical AI Literacies" | John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute
Lauren Goodlad, "Teaching Critical AI Literacies"
032
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 18/09/2026
This is why I hate "just a tool" so so so much. You can make a calculator without access to every calculation. You can make photoshop without access to all photos. Someone show me a genai tool that didn't require all of our labour in its production. It's plagiarism software.
3540741432
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
if you need to "check everything" that an LLM spits out in peer review, aren't you just making MORE work for yourself? What is even happening, and why is adding more steps and labor somehow considered the "better" way to do peer review???
1648984
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Dare Obasanjo @carnage4life.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Two ideas from this article resonate 1. The “rogue AI agent” hacking incidents are more failures of test design and oversight than examples of runaway AI. 2. Focus on existential risk helps distract from concrete harms happening now from government misuse to companies using AI against workers.
722251
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Raina Bloom @mmelibrarian.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I LOVE this! I’ve been having conversations in recent weeks about how we need to stop throwing AI over the fence into other people’s areas of expertise in a needless quest for a use case
1448
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Futurism @futurism.com · 19/09/2026
It's a disaster in the making.
trib.al
MIT Report Finds That AI Is Leading to "Cognitive Surrender" Among Students
A new MIT report finds that students are offloading their thinking to AI -- right at the moment they need to develop it.
515976
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Ron Belmont @ronbelmont.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Well damn. If I'd known he was going to delete that so quickly, I would have taken a screenshot for posterity.
051
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Matthew Kenerly @mattk-fs.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Today, in Stop Fucking Using "AI":
031
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Nicolas Audebert @nshaud.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
I'm burnt out of discussing "AI". I don't care for the press releases from big companies. I hate having to comment immediately. I dislike "hot takes". I'm worried we, as scientists, are losing touch with scientific values. We've become customers, salivating at ads marketed to investors. 1/15
49135
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Part 2 of the newsletter is up!! substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
Pure Math, Applied AI: A Case Study (Part 2)
In the first part of this letter, I wrote about the possibility that OpenAI may have stolen an important part of their recent high-profile solution to the Navier-Stokes problem, though the theft might...
011
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
At my workshop for the wonderful Public AI Summit today, I asked participants why they teach writing. If we know why we're doing something, we can then ask "to what (writing) problem is AI the solution?" There is no AI replacement for thoughtful teachers.
A white board of sticky notes that answer the question "what are you trying to do when you teach/assign writing"?
05810
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
All of this coverage of AI Doomerism making you anxious? It's nonsense and you can go back to your more pressing concerns. If you want to learn more: buttondown.com/maiht3k/arch...
buttondown.com
What To Read To Stay Grounded Amidst AI Doomerism
Our recommendations for the anxious and perplexed By: Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna and Decca Muldowney There’s a subculture within the “AI” industry that...
414763
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
WOR$T GIRL IN ACADEMIA @medievaliste.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Once again, the median pay for an adjunct professor in the United States of America is $3,500 per course. Not per month, per course.
181270440
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Here's what I like about this: Instead of answering the question, what should we do about AI, these outcomes answer the question, what do we want our students to be able to do? Yes, implementation has new challenges now because of AI. And in some fields, what we want our students to be able to do/1
29125
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Cate Denial @cjdenial.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
There are humans directing the things other humans report "AI" is doing
0113
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Timnit Gebru @timnitgebru.blacksky.app · 17/09/2026
So while you're thinking about a super human, super "intelligent" alien being killing you, here's what's really happening. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08...
abc.net.au
Doctor forced to apologise after AI makes 'scary' error about illegal drugs
Artificial Intelligence is listening to many people's medical appointments, but it is not always hearing things correctly.
10415187
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Joseph Rezek @rezekjoe.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
BREAKING: Boston University's English department (my dept) recently voted to approve new learning outcomes for the English major, including an anti-AI provision that requires students to “craft and revise writing that is sustained, original, and generated without the assistance of AI."
bu.edu
New Learning Outcomes Announced | English
402366471
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Rebecca Solnit @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Noting the gap between the infected and the well, the Gates Foundation pledges at least $1 billion to help the uninfected join this exciting development in which Microsoft is so precariously invested."
1631360
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Also excited about our newsletter! substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
Pure Math, Applied AI: A Case Study (Part 1)
On the practical reality of LLM-assisted research
011
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
We're excited about this workshop next week! Hope to see you there! @aaup.org @ncaaup.bsky.social
142
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Left: washing machine with the words “Critical Washing” on it

Right: A quote: “"When we critique AI, we should do so with intellectual honesty and in a principled way. Utmost care is needed to avoid ethics washing, greenwashing, and generally — what we dub — critical washing. Critical reflection cannot be reduced to a mere ‘check box’ before unleashing AI technologies in our daily life after all (as has been done in other areas such as vaping and combustion engines). Researching and reflecting on the harms of AI is not itself harm reduction. It may even contribute to rationalizing, normalizing, and enabling harm. Critical reflection without appropriate action is thus quintessentially critical washing.”

—Suarez, Müller, Guest, & van Rooij (2025) https://zenodo.org/records/15677840
18442126
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 16/09/2026
this is just to control them, deskill them, impoverish them more
1321869
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The fallacy that University leaders pushing AI are falling into is thinking that the point of undergraduate research is to find things out. It isn't. What students find out is typically already generally known. The point of undergraduate research is to learn how to find things out.
351442412
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Dan Turner @ddt.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Must watch, yinz!
094
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Please join us for a teaching critical AI literacies workshop with Dr. Lauren M.E. Goodlad on September 23rd at 4:30 PM at the Franklin Humanities Institute! @ncaaup.bsky.social @aaup.org fhi.duke.edu/event/lauren... If you can't make it in person, the event will also be streamed via Zoom!
fhi.duke.edu
Lauren Goodlad, "Teaching Critical AI Literacies" | John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute
Lauren Goodlad, "Teaching Critical AI Literacies"
032
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
Between the PRs of (largely likely stolen) math breakthroughs, claims of "rogue AI" (actually cybercrimes by companies, but whatevs), and doomerist "whistleblowers", it feels like we've been subjected to a gish gallop of hype recently. >>
17984296
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I have consistently heard from students it that they use non university AI because they assume they are under surveillance in university systems. Would be curious to know the numbers on how many are using what universities provide. (But also: that $$ would pay for...a lot of writing centers!)
3206
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Kelly @broadwaybabyto.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The UK is voting on the Assisted Dying bill today. Most disability organizations oppose it. Safeguards have already been removed or rejected. Please listen to disabled Canadians. What was meant to be dignified quickly became coercive eugenics aimed at the most vulnerable.
16448209
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
Two points among many here: 1. Asking students to write without AI is not "trying to make AI go away" 2. If we accept that we can "AI proof" things in STEM but that writing is different, we'll end up giving up on writing--and all the learning that goes with it. www.chronicle.com/article/harv...
In reality, no one is “trying to make AI simply go away,” if for no other reason than that no such thing is remotely possible. Students do not lack opportunities, incentives, and guidance in how to use AI. However many papers students are asked to write without AI, they will still have every opportunity to fire up the chat and explore its ability to alleviate the burdens of every cognitive activity imaginable. Here is what our students no longer have opportunities to do: read long, difficult texts; think; write on one topic for more than 50 minutes at a time.
23810
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 10/09/2026
FWIW I don’t think that AI is an existential threat, nor on track to become one. I do however think that the leaders of the biggest AI companies, AI’s strongest boosters, and some of the folks who are most adept at using it to exploit others are actively hastening along OTHER existential threats.
492153416
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Xero Reynolds 41/100 on Patreon @artificer-ind.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Still patiently waiting to be "left behind" by AI rather than it chasing me across every damn space like a slasher in a low budget flick.
2116703285
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Here's the next installment of our AlphaFold newsletter! substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
What Was AlphaFold? (Pt. 2)
Or; some thoughts on automation, accuracy, accountability, etc.
000
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Jane Rosenzweig @janerosenzweig.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is the thing: the work of doing work that could be done by AI is often the "important work" that AI promises to save you the time to do. We know what this work is, as @profmarylewis.bsky.social notes below. But our students won't necessarily, unless they actually get to do it themselves.
13710
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
We're excited to support this petition which advocates for a national data center moratorium in the US. Please consider signing before September 24th! actionnetwork.org/petitions/co...
actionnetwork.org
Congress: Pass a National Data Center Moratorium
Energy-hungry data centers and the use of unregulated AI are spiking electricity costs, guzzling water unsustainably, driving more fossil fuel pollution, and worsening the climate crisis. We need to ...
022
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Turn out to protect Durham! Tuesday, 9/8, at 9 AM Durham County Commissioners' work session, 200 E Main St! @communitylandpower.bsky.social www.communitylandandpower.org/stop-data-ce...
This is a blue poster with white text that says Durham County Deserves a Real Moratorium! AI & Data Centers must be strictly regulated! Turn out to protect Durham! Tuesday, 9/8, at 9 AM Durham County Commissioner's work session, 200 E Main St. More details at bit.ly/stop-data-centers.
110
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Katie Slivensky @kslivensky.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Let me just say if you hand your kids over to AI instead of humans you are teaching them SO MANY AWFUL THINGS but chief among them is that they don't deserve real people caring about them. And I think that's the worst lesson any child could learn.
06721
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I wish those pushing generative "AI" adoption in the university on the basis of career readiness would listen to this information.
010
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Andrea Reyes E (she/her) @altibel.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Good morning to everybody except the person who ended their reply on a servlist with "Check AI Gemini for more." 🫠 Many do not understand that an LLM is not a search engine. Is the rest of the information they sent also from Gemini? We are book folk, we must do better!
static.klipy.com
No David: David Rose's Iconic Reaction
Alt: David from Schitt's Creek nodding in disgust/disagreement. Like: oh, darling, no....
1182
AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project @ncaaupgip.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Part 1 of this week's newsletter! If you, like me, are not a computer scientist or a structural biologist, but you still want to understand the conversation around AlphaFold, this one's for you! substack.com/home/post/p-...
substack.com
What was AlphaFold? (Pt. 1)
or, What We Talk About When We Talk About AI “Curing Cancer”
000
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Greg Pak @gregpak.net · 02/09/2026
Huge thanks and congrats to the @aimoratoriumnyc.bsky.social @comixaction.com and everyone who answered the call to demand @mayor.nyc.gov establish a moratorium on "A.i." in the public schools. We got a PARTIAL win today, thanks to you! But more needs to be done... 🧵 www.nytimes.com/2026/09/01/n...
nytimes.com
A.I. Is to Be Banned in N.Y.C. Elementary and Middle Schools
A new policy to be announced by the Department of Education bars younger students from using artificial intelligence, but stops short of a moratorium.
6815187
Reposted by AAUP-NC Genuine Intelligence Project
Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
chicago can do it too! “It’s perfectly possible to have a low-tech education and learn everything you need to know.” thanks to @ilfps.bsky.social blockclubchicago.org/2026/09/02/c...
blockclubchicago.org
Chicago School Board Candidates Sign Pledge To Ban AI Use In Schools
Illinois Families for Public Schools is also calling for school screen time limits and the appointment of a new chief privacy officer for Chicago Public Schools.
114637