Gwen Varley

LLM and chatbot use in the classroom means accepting that both students and teachers can openly appropriate work that is not theirs, and requires disclosing to society (a secondary audience) that thinking and integrity are not required. Using AI products to generate academic con- tent is against any conceivable set of rules we already have in place to regulate fraud and make sure that students actually, when following the rules, learn what they are expected to learn. Failure to see this buys into the hype and if retrofitted onto past cases brings up essay mills as a permissible educational ‘tool’ — clearly anti-pedagogical and utterly bizarre.

For more — and more in-depth — information, also read:

📝 Guest, O., Suarez, M., et al. & van Rooij, I. (2025). Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia. Zenodo. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

3/🧵 cc @olivia.science @marentierra.bsky.social

Against automated plagiarism Cite as: van Rooij, I. (2022) Against automated plagiarism. I’ve been asked, in various roles1, to give my opinion on the challenges posed by Large Language Models (LLMs)2, also known as &#82…

This is what I wrote on the topic in 2022:

📝 van Rooij, I. (2022) Against automated plagiarism. doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

2/🧵

Ethics of ChatGPT and AI YouTube video by gwenvarley

Do you find it difficult to understand why LLMs — like ChatGPT and the like — are a form of ‘automated plagiarism’?

Take 3 min and listen to this excellent explanation by @gwenvarley.bsky.social

youtu.be/1ON-FJHq9aM?... (h/t @olivia.science) 1/🧵

Thanks so much, I’m so pleased you liked it!

That’s really kind! I haven’t written on this subject, mostly just trying to nudge my students in the right direction :)

comprehensive answer to "Is it OK to use AI?" by @gwenvarley.bsky.social

an excellent one for students and those mired in the terminological and ethical disarray to start to think more clearly

Oh wow thank you so much!! Honestly I’ve been meaning to update/re-record this video because so many amazing resources and analyses have been published since I originally made it, including your fantastic paper on uncritical adoption of AI in academia

“We’re going to use the Box of Doom for this one.”

Our Land Trailer YouTube video by MetFilm Distribution

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A film about the Right to Roam campaign.

Preview screenings from March - April.
Cinemas nationwide from May.

Trailer: www.youtube.com/watch?v=est-...
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Ending this operation is not enough.

We need justice and accountability. That starts with independent investigations into the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, economic restitution for businesses impacted, abolishing ICE, and the impeachment of Kristi Noem.

seen in my neighborhood in south Minneapolis

Notice how the popular media narrative has moved on, while people on the ground in Minneapolis are still struggling and crying out that things are as bad as ever. This is how fascist regimes operate — overreach, recalibration, normalization. Get louder, not quieter.

the appropriate response to "if we win we will kill your children because we know when you win you will not kill our children" is to make that political party illegal

I've been to some countries where people live under military rule or autocracy. And without fail, one of the questions I get when they ask about life in the U.S. is whether it's true that Americans just let homeless people die on the street.

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained.

We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

A photo of Joan Amek

Am sad to see that the week my story comes out, one of Uganda’s trans leaders has died (likely killed)

Disturbingly detailed analysis of my first rewatch incoming

The current regime took a week to abolish USAID, which is three times as old and was not in the news every day for brutalizing children

‘In the end, you feel blank’: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI Women in rural communities describe trauma of moderating violent and pornographic content for global tech companies

‘About 80% of data-annotation and content moderation workers are drawn from rural, semi-rural or marginalised backgrounds. Firms deliberately operate from smaller cities and towns, where rents and labour costs are lower, and a growing pool of first-generation graduates are seeking jobs.’

Boromir from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, holding The One Ring. He thought he could use it for good, but everything done with the ring turns to evil. He was one of the mightiest warriors of middle earth, and he could not resist its powers. Others even mightier fell to the ring. Do you think you are stronger than them? The One Ring is generative AI.

Techbros seem to love Tolkien, so here's an analogy to help you understand what genAI is.

GenAI is The One Ring. You think your use is justified, b/c you don't have evil in your heart.

But it came from evil, it is intended for evil purpose, & anything you do with it will be twisted to that end.

DeLauro to pressing clergy: 'I will not vote to abolish ICE' The Connecticut U.S. representative found herself at odds with faith leaders.

“I would rather you vote for what is morally correct,” Davidson said.

“Don’t talk to me about my own morality,” DeLauro shot back.

“Don’t tell your constituents what they can and can’t talk to you about,” replied Rev. Nathan Empsall. “What you are voting for is not moral.”

DeLauro to pressing clergy: 'I will not vote to abolish ICE' The Connecticut U.S. representative found herself at odds with faith leaders.

“Renee Goodman [sic], Alex Pretti – there are no words,” DeLauro said.

“You said there were no words after the murder of those two individuals,” said Rev. Jack Perkins Davidson. “I think the words are ‘Abolish ICE.’”

www.ctpublic.org/news/2026-02...

Living in Minnesota right now means getting your heart broken every day, multiple times a day. Some days it also means having your faith in humanity restored. Please keep watching Minnesota, if you live elsewhere. Things are still dire.

Pursued by federal agents, suburban ICE observers remain resolved After a frightening pursuit by federal agents, suburban ICE observers say fear hasn’t stopped them from protecting their communities.

“If I am killed doing this, throw my body at the White House, martyr the shit out of me & raise hell. Do not be sad. Do not think I would do anything differently. I would do it over & over again — this is too important to sit down & shut up and not do anything.” www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Anyway, if you want to know why we live in the world we do, it has a lot to do with the fact that we live in a culture that is structured and predisposed across the board to protect privileged people and specifically white cis men who leverage abuse for gain or pleasure.

This is our culture.

It is rape culture, but also more broadly it is abuse and exploitation culture.

It is pervasive and it is the reason my career was wrecked and it is the reason Trump is president and it is the reason armed state abusers feel justified executing a mouthy woman in the street.

“Tell your children who the cowards were.”

'measles outbreak at the child prison' seems entirely avoidable, it's really the kind of thing that only happens if you do several unthinkably evil things on purpose all at once