Schlagwort: Uni

Prompting is the new Smoking.

  • 2025-09-08

We have been here before, both with entanglements of AI and statistics with industry corrupting our academic processes, and with so-called AI summers: hype cycles that pivot from funding booms to complete busts and cessation of research [...]

The foreseeable AI winter will take with it entire curricula, academic processes and practices, and educators’ and learners’ livelihoods. [...]

There is circular reasoning at play when we suggest and assume machines can think, reason, or argue like humans can, and therefore, treat them — and test them — like humans. [...]

The only argument from ignorance that science permits is caution, more research, and care as appropriate actions when something is truly unknown. [...]

Teaching about AI technologies should be just like how we teach ‘no smoking’ or the causal links between lung cancer and cigarette smoke; yet, we do not teach students how to roll cigarettes and smoke them. [...]

In thinking about implications for the design of learning environments and curriculum design, we first need to pause and think about what we really would like AI tools to do, or, put differently, what might be the added value of the use of AI tools in education — if any? [...]

AI users, on the other hand, are customers much more like the person buying the end product of woodwork than carpenters themselves. [...]

[W]ith the proliferation of AI products and their uncritical adoption in academia, we become unable to help younger generations of scholars in learning to uphold and to appreciate scientific integrity. As a result, we will be deskilling the whole academic profession, a direct threat to the ecosystem of human knowledge.

Guest, O., Suarez, M., Müller, B., van Meerkerk, E., Oude Groote Beverborg, A., de Haan, R., Reyes Elizondo, A., Blokpoel, M., Scharfenberg, N., Kleinherenbrink, A., Camerino, I., Woensdregt, M., Monett, D., Brown, J., Avraamidou, L., Alenda-Demoutiez, J., Hermans, F., & van Rooij, I. (2025). Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia. Zenodo.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17065099

Mehr brauch ich nicht.

  • 2025-08-01

Eiskaffee mit Hafermilch und eduroam mit IPv6.

Someone else’s hard disk.

  • 2025-03-10

Putting our sensitive data on someone else’s hard disk, under foreign jurisdiction, via vulnerable connections, was never an enticing proposition. While many Radboud colleagues opposed the move to Office 365 several years ago, recent geopolitical developments make it clear just how dangerous the current situation is, whereby we are at the mercy of a foreign government led by a whimsical leader, who can force a company like Microsoft to comply with executive orders, or fulfil governmental access requests to data.

Open letter to the Executive Board calling for digital autonomy and independence from Big Tech (2025-03-10)

Fellow or Follow.

  • 2023-03-13

All things considered, should we get rid of equal opportunity programs? Certainly not. But I think we should forsake the collective delusion that having an equal opportunity program is equivalent to being an equal opportunity employer. The discrepancy between public commitment and actual progress seems to stem largely from the conviction that, if put on paper, diversity will magically result in inclusiveness.

[...]

Ambiguous evaluation criteria and the sole dependency on one person for decision making about promotions should be banned.

[...]

We do not allow academics to give lectures without having acquired the necessary knowledge and skills – why do we allow academics to manage a diverse workforce without having acquired the necessary knowledge and skills?

[...]

Given the potential backlash, I did not take the decision to expose myself through this essay lightly.

Susanne Täuber: Undoing Gender in Academia: Personal Reflections on Equal Opportunity Schemes. In: Journal of Management Studies 2020.
Open access: https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12516

Anti-intellectuele impactverhuurschuur.

  • 2023-03-03

Laten we allereerst vaststellen dat de geschiedenis van academische gemeenschappen niet geschreven wordt door vice-decanen die een nieuwe procedure voor tentamenevaluatie met programmadirecteuren en examenadministratie afstemmen. Die geschiedenis wordt geschreven door precies datgene waarvan de bestuurders denken dat het er incompatibel mee is: protesten.

Willem Schinkel: Lof der platheid. Over campusprotest en academische gemeenschap

(also available in English)