Question of the day. Is the whole beautiful mass of free and open Internet knowledge now to be considered as the satanic mills of AI Gen Big Tech? At their mercy, to do with as they please.
Closed out the paperwork for the Spring term yesterday and, with my first post-semester deadlines approaching, I'm realizing that I seriously under-budgeted the amount of time I would need to stare into near space.
Fun things that can happen at a conference: tomorrow there will be a heated discussion about the correct way to remove a foreground from an extragalactic observation - the sort of life and death fights you have in astronomy 😅
But guess how many experts in the actual observation and foreground modelling are present at this conference:
ZERO.
So chairs are likely going to be thrown for nothing...
I feel increasingly angry/frustrated at how academic conferences insist we 'join them on XTwitter' to follow the conf. Why should we have to do that? Why arent they providing an open social web alternative? Why are they so beholden to private monopoly Big Tech? This happened recently for the Networked Learning Conference, an initiative that claims to be dedicated to open networks of learning. How can they possibly think it is ethically acceptable to only use XTwtr?
Academic associations: when you are looking for graduate students to do work for a conference, perhaps don't offer an honorarium equivalent to less than minimum wage in 12 out of 13 provinces and territories.
That's not even counting the unknown (uncompensated?) time for the mandatory orientation session.
#ProfessorConfessions#AcademicChatter so here at the end of three 10 week quarters and an intense school year my level of exhaustion and irritation is on them, then I get this spam complaint email..
University Suspends Students for AI Homework Tool It Gave Them $10,000 Prize to Make
Emory University gave students a $10,000 entrepreneurial prize for their AI startup, then suspended them and accused them of cheating when they built it.
Applied for a job today. In industry. I'm moving out of academia after 6 years as a casual. Working at the university is stressful, I am looking forward to having a more secure working arrangement #AcademicChatter
The unfolding tragedy of the deconstruction of university learning and teaching. Behold, a post in r/professors about the chatgpt wasteland of student submitted work.
As the semester has ended for most folks, I want to remind all disabled students about the US Office of Civil Rights. If you were discriminated against for your disability or denied an accommodation, you have 90 days since the incident to file a complaint.
If I had a nickel for every academic jackass who thinks student disability accommodations should be resisted or refused, I'd never have a penny of debt again in my life.
Stop asking how to get around or refuse accommodations for students with disabilities. Just stop. Obey the law and honor the accommodations. Simple.
🧬💡 When’s the best time to upload a manuscript to BioRxiv? Many researchers opt to do so when their paper is under journal review. What’s your strategy? Do you wait for initial peer reviews, or post as soon as you’re ready to share your findings? #Science#AcademicChatter#OpenScience
Today in my Astro Sci-Comm class we tried something new: we watched clips of 4 astronomers, & discussed the wildly different speaking/presenting styles. Of course I chose these to be VERY different in style. Only 1 was a chaotic train wreck (spoiler, it was me from +10yrs ago) #astrodon#academicchatter#astronomy
Damning report on @BBCRadio4 this morning about the financial situation of UK universities. As Id been told by others involved in UK digital policy, the general attitude is to digitise almost any aspect of UK HE that can be automated, and employ #AI tools to achieve this. To me this is almost a death knell of UK HE standards. No one attends university to learn with a bot, least of all to pay high fees for the pleasure. #bbc#highered#academicchatter