Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.
Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).
Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.
Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia:
doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity.
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06.09.2025 08:13
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Why are scholars researching the far right still so reluctant to use racism as a defining concept?
It was problematic when racism was disguised under a thin veneer of twisted liberal discourses, but now it's pretty much in the open I'm surprised there still appears to be a reluctance
20.10.2025 10:45
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Première Guerre mondiale et pollution des sols
Déchets de guerre - photoreportage sur les conséquences écologiques et sanitaires des munitions enfouies suite à la Première Guerre mondiale
11.09.2025 10:33
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« Vous faites une caricature de la Commission nationale du débat public. La supprimer serait un véritable retour en arrière en matière de qualité du débat public. »
🗣️ @charlesfournier.bsky.social réaffirme notre soutien à la #CNDP, dont la mission est menacée par le gouvernement.
24.03.2025 15:49
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Pour la première fois, les salariés et les garants de la Commission nationale du débat public (CNDP) sont en grève aujourd'hui. Cette instance clé de la démocratie environnementale est menacée de disparition. La macronie envisage de la sacrifier. L'extrême droite n'en espérait pas tant.
25.03.2025 11:30
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Le regard de l'homme blanc sur les archives persiste - Analyse
Les archives sont porteuses de la violence du passé colonial mais aussi d’une potentielle postérité anticoloniale, à condition d’être radicalement réorganisées autour d’une exigence de justice et (…)
Les archives sont porteuses de la violence du passé colonial mais aussi d’une potentielle postérité anticoloniale, à condition d’être radicalement réorganisées autour d’une exigence de justice et d’accessibilité, expliquent @charlottemertens.bsky.social et @stephanieperazzone.bsky.social 👇
17.02.2025 08:30
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Couverture du livre
Résumé
À paraître aux @edladecouverte.bsky.social
« Le désir de nouveautés. L'obsolescence au cœur du capitalisme (XVe-XXIe siècle) »par Jeanne Guien :
www.editionsladecouverte.fr/le_desir_de_...
13.02.2025 09:21
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Sebastian Haffner, Histoire d’un Allemand.
À lire et relire, pour (tenter) de comprendre comment une société bascule dans la dictature :
12.02.2025 16:38
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Après la condamnation de Christophe Ruggia pour agressions sexuelles sur mineure lundi 3 février, la comédienne Adèle Haenel accorde sa première réaction à Mediapart, cinq ans après sa prise de parole qui a marqué les esprits.
Une émission à voir en accès libre sur Mediapart 👉 l.mediapart.fr/dej
04.02.2025 20:14
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On how borders and anti-migrant racism is deeply intertwined with the elimination of Indigenous people and the control of Black people
30.01.2025 13:53
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“The internalization of the border designates the ways in which bordering regimes exist within the nation-state. When a migrant or refugee or an undocumented person crosses the border, the struggle does the end once they have entered within the nation state because the border follows them everywhere
30.01.2025 13:36
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An Internationalist Front Against Border Imperialism
A CONVERSATION WITH HARSHA WALIA In this conversation recorded for The Funambulist podcast in April 2021, Léopold talks with Harsha Walia about the research deployed in her book, Border and Rule…
“borders delineate a legal milieu in which the various markers of racialization are explicitly or implicitly turned into laws that creates the conditions in which some will be deemed as law abiders or citizens, and others as criminal and/or undocumented” @thefunambulist.bsky.social
30.01.2025 13:31
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“Comme un pêcheur sait lire la mer et ne sort pas certains jours, comme un guide de montagne est plus prudent qu’un Parisien qui vient faire le tour du mont Blanc, il faut développer notre culture de l’aléa.”
29.01.2025 14:26
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Map of missing migrants
By compiling multiple sources of data, we reach the astonishing figure of 71,000 migrants who have died or been missing at the European border since the early 90s. A hecatomb caused by the migration policies of European countries.
24.01.2025 06:12
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Le parti de la presse et de l'argent
telex, 20 décembre 2024
Médias français : qui possède quoi ? 20ème édition de la carte du @mondediplo.bsky.social
www.monde-diplomatique.fr/telex/2024-1...
22.12.2024 07:40
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