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Chomsky on Generative AI: “it’s basically just a way of wasting a lot of the energy in California”
This is an extremely interesting conversation with Noam Chomsky about the limitations of large language models: “if the system doesn’t distinguish the actual world from the non-actual world then it’s not telling us anything”. He distinguishes sharply between a scientific contribution and an engineering contribution, suggesting that it fails to make either. Gary Marcus builds…
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Flow into the knowledge that what you are seeking finishes often at the start, and, with ending, begins
Want the change. Be inspired by the flame where everything shines as it disappears. The artist, when sketching, loves nothing so much as the curve of the body as it turns away. What locks itself in sameness has congealed. Is it safer to be gray and numb? What turns hard becomes rigid and is easily…
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And I can see your eyes already know
And I can see your eyes already know I can see your eyes already know This disguise just makes us old
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I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone
I am much too alone in this world, yet not alone enough to truly consecrate the hour. I am much too small in this world, yet not small enough to be to you just object and thing, dark and smart. I want my free will and want it accompanying the path which leads to action;…
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Developing a research agenda consistent with Ikagai
I’ve thought a lot recently about what I want to do in the next stage of my research, most recently through the (surprisingly helpful) research performance review my employer requires every year. It’s clear to me I’ve spread myself too thin in the past and often got bogged down in projects I’m vaguely interested in…
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You became like smoke I tried too hard to hold
And you never ended up coming home, you just Became something like some smoke that I tried too hard to hold
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He stumbled into faith and thought
He stumbled into faith and thought “God, this is all there is?” The pictures in his mind arose And began to breathe And all the gods in all the worlds began colliding on a backdrop of blue Blue lips Blue veins He took a step, but then felt tired He said, “I’ll rest a little…
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Chat-GPT: what are Mark Carrigan’s main arguments?
I’m pretty confident this is broader, though shallower, than I would have been able to write if I had asked myself the same question. It’s interesting that ‘big data’ or the ‘platform university’ don’t figure in here despite how much I wrote on them, though there are topics here which I guess I have spent…
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In digital realms, where thoughts take flight
I was delighted with Chat-GPT’s recent poem about me: In digital realms, where thoughts take flight, Mark Carrigan’s mind, a beacon of light, Sociologist, scholar, wordsmith revered, In academic circles, his voice is heard. Through cyberspace, his insights unfold, On social platforms, his ideas take hold, Unveiling the power of connection and thought, With every…
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We are what we are
I have frequently found myself at Manchester Art Gallery over the course of a strange and transitional year in my life. I keep coming back for The Memory of Our Will Will Wash The Dirt From Your Feet by Mark Titchner; I’ve yet to articulate why I’ve found this work such a reliable source of…
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The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some…
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To see all sights from pole to pole
We who pursue Our business with unslackening stride, Traverse in troops, with care-fill’d breast, The soft Mediterranean side, The Nile, the East, And see all sights from pole to pole, And glance, and nod, and bustle by; And never once possess our soul Before we die. – Matthew Arnold
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Anscombe on the descriptions under which actions are performed
I’ve been meaning to explore G. E. M. Anscombe’s Intention for years, partly due to the influence it had on the critical realist idea of concept-dependence and my hunch that something might have been lost from the original source material. The notion as I first encountered it was that action is performed under certain descriptions…
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Well this has got to die, this has got to stop
That some attachments may not survive the choice for authenticity is one of the most agonizing realizations one can come to. Gabor Maté, The Myth of Normal, Pg 476
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Chat-GPT as a bullshit engine
This is a brilliant podcast with Dan McQuillan whose book I’m reviewing for LSE Review of Books in the near future. I was particularly taken with this line: It’s literally making stuff up and it has no idea what it’s making up, therefore it’s a bullshit engine. It’s a bullshit engine in that it makes…
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The unintelligent agency of generative AI
This is a useful overview by Luciano Floridi of how “the staggering growth of available data, quantity and speed of calculation, and ever-better algorithms” mean that large language models (LLMs) are able to “do statistically – that is working on the formal structure, and not on the meaning of the texts they deal with –…
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To fail as a human being is to accept somebody else’s description of oneself
From Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony and Solidarity pg 28: To fail as a poet – and thus, for Nietzsche, to fail as a human being – is to accept somebody else’s description of oneself, to execute a previously prepared program, to write, at most, elegant variations on previously written poems. So the only way to…
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Our own half-articulate need to become a new person, one whom we as yet lack words to describe
I’m reading Rorty’s Contingency, Irony and Solidarity seventeen years after I first read it as a masters student in philosophy. It was the book which almost immediately made me give up on any aspiration to become a philosopher, moving into sociology before eventually ending up in education. I’m much less persuaded by the overarching argument…
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Focusing on the process rather than the outcomes
This piece by James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, expresses something I’ve discovered over the last but struggled to articulate: process matters more than outcomes. His counter-intuitive claim is that setting goals can often get in the way of achieving them which is a claim I increasingly agree with. In my own case I’ve set…
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👨🏫 The world’s a stage and we play a character, I found him 👨🏫
I was put here to do something before I’m lying in that casket I’d be lying on the beat if I said I didn’t know what that is The world’s a stage and we play a character, I found him It took me 20-something years and a bunch of shitty soundchecks
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How right-wing think tanks laid the foundation for the coalition’s agenda
I wanted to recover this piece I wrote for the popular Liberal Conspiracy blog back in 2010 now that site has gone offline In recent months it has become ever more common to see the interventions of think tanks reported upon within the mainstream media. While most political actors were left transfixed by the playing…
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An idea for spotting chat-gpt written essays
Suggestion for coping with generative AI: automate the checking of student reference lists against Google Scholar. If the reference doesn’t exist then there’s prima facie grounds for inferring it was hallucinated by chat-gpt. Is there another explanation for this? It’s such a simple identification mechanism that could be done with a basic python script. There…
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Call for Participants Globalisation and Commercialisation in the Social Sectors
Globalisation and Commercialisation in the Social Sectors Date: 16th May 2023 Venue: King’s College London Department of International Development Service provision in social sectors such as healthcare, social care and education is most often considered within a national boundary, reflecting the origins of these sectors in an era in which the nation-state was the pre-eminent form. However,…
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Trying to exist in superposition
Nothing is what I’ll take Everything in its time Yeah, nothing is what I’ll ask for Everything I will make Ready the fucking drums Get ready to feel it shake It’s better than being numb And better owning mistakes
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This is the garden. Now you better start sowing or there won’t be a harvest
Have opinions but have no resolve or conviction Just keep your head down Breathe the fumes and indulge your addictions Routine is healthy, ignore the affliction The cost to the soul and the constant constriction Don’t consider too closely, have no intermission Keep throwing your fists in slow repetition Most of us manage, what makes…
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Learned societies and national conferences
Learned societies need to rethink models for organising events; national gatherings don’t have structural significance they once did, nor are they structurally viable under these macroeconomic conditions. Some are mitigating this around the edges but major work needed. Media system in which academic gatherings happen has completely changed from when nearly all learned societies were…
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Post-Human Futures now out in paperback
I’m delighted to learn the book I edited with Doug Porpora during the pandemic has just been released as a paperback. The introduction to the book is available online here if you’d like to get a sense of whether the book is relevant to you.
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🌼🌿 Spring is coming 🌼🌿
This spring as it comes bursts up in bonfires green, Wild puffing of emerald trees, and flame-filled bushes, Thorn-blossom lifting in wreaths of smoke between Where the wood fumes up and the watery, flickering rushes. I am amazed at this spring, this conflagration Of green fires lit on the soil of the earth, this blaze…
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Generative AI and the Future of Education: A New Era of Possibility
I asked Chat-GPT to write a blog post about generative AI and education in my style Artificial Intelligence (AI) is changing the world as we know it, and nowhere is its impact more apparent than in the field of education. In particular, Generative AI, a branch of AI that involves creating new content that has…
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Baa Baa Land
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I remember you well from the Chelsea hotel but that’s all, I don’t think of you that often
You told me again how you preferred handsome men Oh but for me you would make an exception And I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best I can’t keep track of each fallen robin I remember you well from the Chelsea Hotel But that’s all I don’t think of you that…
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The books ChatGPT thinks I already wrote and which I now think I should write
I am fascinated by the plausibility of the intellectual inferences it has made while hallucinating books which don’t exist:
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ChatGPT: “Write me a poem about the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu”
His theories were complex, his ideas profound, A lens through which society could be found, He spoke of habitus and fields of power, And how they shape our thoughts in every hour.
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ChatGPT and the student digital learning experience
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A song about C Wright Mills written by Chat-GPT
(Verse 1) He saw the world with a critical eye And never shied away from asking why His name was C. Wright Mills A sociologist with analytical skills (Chorus) C. Wright Mills, C. Wright Mills A man with a mind that never stood still He wrote about power, and the elite And how society’s problems…
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The Homework Machine
This is brilliant from Shel Silverstein (1981) shared by Neil Selwyn on Twitter:
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The charter for AI
I recently discovered this initiative from the House of Lords described here by Antony Giddens. I’m looking forward to exploring these principles in great depth:
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The genealogy of the simulation hypothesis
Until reading Reality+ I hadn’t realised how the simulation hypothesis is a moderation iteration of Putnam’s Brain in the Vat and the Evil Demon proposed by Descartes. It’s interesting to realise that a Cartesian problematic still has this amount of influence within analytic philosophy and wider culture.
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Generative AI spam
This is an interesting development with WordPress’s usual superb spam filter: What happens to online communication if generative AI can persistently beat spam filters?
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Using AI to reduce grading workload and increase student feedback
It’s interesting that word count and grading time are taken as the relevant metrics here. When I’m marking, I couldn’t agree more with these. But with a quality assurance hat on, it’s easy to see how this could go wrong.
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The new digital divide: the generatively rich and the generatively poor?
What will premium models of generative AI mean for social inequalities? I’ve been assuming that the baseline technology will become ubiquitous because it’s a vector through which tech giants will fight for consumers amidst an unprecedented downturn. But this short aside in a thoughtful piece on WonkHE makes me wonder if this could be the…
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The Digital Sociology of Generative AI: Five Speculative Propositions
The slides from an initial presentation I did in Cambridge last week. It’s very much a work in progress:
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Generative AI as engines of radicalisation
Anxieties over how generative AI may contribute to radicalisation tend to be related to the production of deep fakes and other forms of deliberate propaganda. This piece by L. M. Sacasas (following widely reported examples of disturbing interactions with Bing’s chatbot this week) has left me thinking back to Heroes: Mass Murder and Suicide; a…
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When I was young I was invincible
When I was young I was invincible I found myself not thinking twice I never thought about no future It’s just a roll of the dice But the day may come when you got something to lose And just when you think you’re done paying dues You say to yourself “Dear, God What have I…
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On becoming mid career and post-disciplinary
A few months ago my colleague Louis Major suggested that we were both now mid career. I was slightly resistant to this idea but it came back to me recently when I realised that my two main programmes of research (digital scholarship in a changing university and the social ontology of digital agency) are coming…
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Every single body bleeding on its knees is an abomination
And that every single body bleeding on its knees is an abomination And every natural being is making communication And we’re just sparks, tiny parts of a bigger constellation We’re miniscule molecules that make up one body You see the tragedy and pain of a person that you’ve never met Is present in your nightmares,…
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Teaching Associate in Digital Sociology at Cambridge Sociology
I thought this job might be of interest to some people reading my blog:
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The wonder of cats
This time last year I walked into a cat cafe after a soul crushing few days away from home. This glorious creature immediately jumped onto my shoulder – literally the moment I walked through the door – and remained there for the next hour. I love cats ❤️
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I’ll fight you till I win
Face like a plate of raw meatScreaming I can’t be beatHalf dead, ready to dropTruth is I just wanted it all to stop No matterHow many times I shatterHow many times I breakIt’s not the end till the end comesAnd when it comes it will be too lateSo MoveI’ll fight you till I winI’ll fight…
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And if I see you, how it changes me
And if I see you, how it changes meAnd if you see me, how it changes youChanges youAnd if I see you, how it changes meAnd if you see me, how it changes youChanges you One reveals oneself in the look that receives the other into oneself; in the same act with which the human…
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There’s poetry inside this city if you listen enough
I feel a sense of wellbeing this time in the morning Wear my heart out on my hoodie while the city is snoring Drunks falling off the sidewalks, get issued a warning Distant sirens, they crescendo like a symphony calling This it the Britain I know, this is the Britain I love There’s poetry inside…
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The ontological implications of generative AI
One of the obvious questions raised by the impending ubiquity of large language models concerns the feedback loops likely to ensue. To what extent will future iterations of GPT be trained on outputs from past iterations of GPT? Even if there was an intension to avoid this the diffusion of the consumer-facing technology makes it…
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Large language models as a corporate pissing contest
This is an excellent interview with Timnit Gebru about the current hype surrounding generative AI. She describes the rush towards ever increasing large language models as a corporate pissing contest driven by executives scared of being left behind: And then the higher ups be like: Why are we not the biggest? Why don’t we have…
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The most incredible sky I’ve ever seen in Manchester
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📍Building the Post-Pandemic University: Imagining, Contesting and Materializing Higher Education Futures
Out in July 2023 from Edward Elgar. Full information here. I’m excited this project I’ve been working on with Hannah Moscovitz, Michele Martini and Susan Robertson will be released soon. It’s the main outcome of the Post-Pandemic University project which we initiated in June 2020 and ran until late 2022. This is how we describe…
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Coming soon: Building the Post-Pandemic University
I’m excited this project I’ve been working on with Hannah Moscovitz, Michele Martini and Susan Robertson will be released soon. It’s the main outcome of the Post-Pandemic University project which we initiated in June 2020 and ran until late 2022. This is how we describe the project in the introduction: This book is the result…
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Defending the Social
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Post-horror and the epistemic chaos of platform capitalism
It occurred to me yesterday that the epistemological chaos of platform capitalism now figures in popular awareness to a sufficient degree (albeit mediated through epistemically lazy liberal tropes) that its outgrowths now figure in horror films. See the Knock at the Cabin which tells the story of an affable family’s idyllic rural retreat being ruined…
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You’re young until you’re not
No, this is how it works You’re young until you’re not And you love until you don’t And you try until you can’t You laugh until you cry And you cry until you laugh And everyone must breathe Until their dying breath No, this is how it works You peer inside yourself You take the…
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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on creativity and routine
Most creative individuals find out early what their best rhythms are for sleeping, eating, and working, and abide by them even when it is tempting to do otherwise. They wear clothes that are comfortable, they interact only with people they find congenial, they do only things they think are important. Of course, such idiosyncrasies are not endearing…
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Here’s Lookin’ at You Kid
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I’m going to the river where the current rushes by
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The concept of cathexis
I’ve long been drawn to psychoanalytical theory but I find it quite difficult. One of the problems is that these theorists rarely give examples beyond their case history, which tend to be opaque if you’re struggling with the underlying conceptual framework. The other is concepts tend to be used in different ways. I nonetheless routinely…
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Generative AI and the future of assessment: an open discussion at the Manchester Institute of Education
This is an internal event we’re organising at the University of Manchester but I’m sharing it here to gauge interest in a subsequent public facing event: Since it was launched in November 2022, ChatGPT has enthralled millions around the world with its uncanny ability to respond to queries in a conversational manner. Its apparent capacity…
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We might be dead by tomorrow
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Deflating the concept of ‘surveillance capitalism’
I thought this was an interesting critique by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow in their Chokepoint Capitalism, arguing that the concept of ‘surveillance capitalism’ suggests a break with (past) capitalism whereas we are instead seeing a familiar modus operandi undertaken by new commercial actors: This is the true heart of “surveillance capitalism”—not the idea that…
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Gabor Maté on the reality expressed through depression
I thought this was an immensely powerful image in a remarkable book which is full of them. In The Myth of Normal pg 220 he argues for a view of depression as a defensive responsive to an unliveable tension between our self-expression and attachment needs. He argues for recovering the objective conditions which created emotions…
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Some thoughts about generative AI and the future of education
A few more thoughts which were swirling around in my mind as I’ve been thinking this through: So what do we do in the near term? I’ve not watched these yet but I’ve seen Charles Knight make some interesting comments about this on LinkedIn. The video below is one of a series which I intend…