Sig Sønnesyn

The reductionist fiction of the homo economicus is why we can't have nice things.

"Human writing often includes some clunky phrases, like this passage from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, caused by the author's aversion to punctuation: 'As well ask men what they think of stone.'"

This is the stupidest g.d. thing I have read all day.

This should be mandatory reading for anyone considering investment in, or even engagement with, AI.

Summary of White House Briefings so far:

Reporter: Can you tell us what Plan B is?

Trump Regime: Plan B? We don't even have Plan A.

OpenAI makes changes to ‘opportunistic and sloppy’ Pentagon deal Sam Altman says company is working with defence department on provisions covering mass surveillance

Sam Altman grows a conscience. Well, part of a conscience. Part of a 'conscience', you say, what's that? A 'con' is part of 'conscience'.

spot (ut vulgo dicitur) on.

I would if I could! Looks fab!

This one hits hard.

Would it be more hipster to go where there are other hipsters, or somewhere that's not cool yet? Anyway, if you go to Bristol, come and say hi! You can even meet my teaching assistant in Medieval Latin, Magister Mulus (he may look like a cardboard cut-out, but heś just really fessus).

no, it simply isnt.
People are talking about capital using gAI as an excuse to conduct mass lay-offs, about students losing learning because theyre being lied to about gAI in education, about the mass theft of the work of artists and authors to train LLMs, about CSAM and nonconsensual sexual images.

If you're ever in the South-West of the UK, I'd be delighted to invite you to give that talk to our department research seminar (no title workshopping needed).

You can't... repeal... a scientific finding. At that point it's just called lying about it.

Jesse is a superb scholar – a brilliant choice to open a lecture series!

As a Norwegian, I am shocked – shocked! – to learn that our brothers and sisters to the east have stolen our most effective toponymic marketing buzzword to sell pisciform wine gum. They'd better be good, is all I'm saying.

My doomer-worry about AI is not that the LLMs become omnipotent and take over the world but that the wealthy and powerful use it as a means to consolidate power and marginalize or lay off skilled workers and also everything about our technological and political and social life gets worse

The Higher Education sector has to get out there and defend itself, on the front foot, fighting fire with fire. Its enemies are coming at it. But it's just asleep at the wheel.

Dear university administrators, politicians of good will, and the general public, we need the field of religious studies more now than we have ever.

Randulph Churchill read 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to his bride on his wedding night and apparently still got laid

this is an amazing sentence

Sede sedatives?

To cannibalise G. K. Chesterton's quip, it's not that the university as a model has been tried and found wanting, but rather that it has been found difficult and increasingly left untried.

Striking paper from researchers at Anthropic using a randomised control trial to look at the effects of AI use on skills acquisition.

TL:DR ‘We found that using AI assistance led to a statistically significant decrease in mastery.’
www.anthropic.com/research/AI-...

I feel obliged to remind everyone that there are plenty of countries where higher education is either completely free or cost a token amount of tuition money and that many of these countries offer top notch teaching and research. It’s a political choice.

Chillingly accurate. The only thing I might add is a recurring *Present suspiciously familiar process as bespoke package to deal with the unique problems facing this particular institution

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process:
*Talk of belt-tightening
*Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments)
*Travel budgets cut
*Promotion freeze (1/4)

Vosso

Introduction to Latin Palaeography

Next week’s course on Greek palaeography is sold out, but we still have some places on beginner and intermediate Latin 👇 #medievalsky @ies-sas.bsky.social

ies.sas.ac.uk/news-events/...

The old test in moral philosophy ‘what if everyone did that?’ is coming back to haunt us. LLMs only work because the information they are sucking up was not generated by LLMs. But as they drive more and more real researchers out of business they are building layers and layers on their own quicksand.

Why is it ok for mathematicians to spend whole careers working on proofs when we’re expected to turn them around within a week?