FrançoisJul 11
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ

Hello & HAPPY FRIDAY, as promised an open letter by my lovely colleagues and myself. Everybody, feel free to sign this even if you are not NL-based and ‼️ share ‼️ (anonymous signature is poss):

Open Letter: Stop the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia

https://openletter.earth/open-letter-stop-the-uncritical-adoption-of-ai-technologies-in-academia-b65bba1e

Jun 27 at 11:42amWeb
Show threadDan StowellJun 27
@olivia I work on AI research (not GenAI). Is the intention of this letter to be about GenAI? If so, I would be really grateful if your wording could clarify that. In its current form, I can't sign it, even though I do want to stop the uncritical adoption of LLMs.
Show threadSamuelJun 27
I also struggle with that naming, but I learned to accept that this is the general view for people outside of my "bubble".

I tend to not call any of my work as "AI" as part of that process of acceptance, to help create a distinction in my head. At this point, it feels more important to push back on the "industrial AI".

CC: @olivia@scholar.social
Show threadOlivia Guest · Ολίβια ΓκεστJun 27
@samuel @danstowell totally fine if you dislike the language to therefore not sign. I do not like calling it generative AI myself because it is a technical term used to refer to what is actually chatbots, an app, regardless of the stats. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_model) My problem is not with any specific statistics, but these products, as we clearly say.
Generative model - Wikipedia

Show threadDan StowellJul 3
@olivia @samuel Thanks for providing food for thought. I wrote on my blog, a response to this letter: https://mcld.co.uk/blog/2025/ban-ai-in-the-classroom-my-comment.html #LLMs #education #highereducation
Ban AI in the classroom? My comment :: mcld.co.uk blog

Show threadOlivia Guest · Ολίβια ΓκεστJul 7
@danstowell More soon from us, we're writing a position piece. Keep your eyes peeled (or I can send it). ☺️
Show threadVelteropⓐⓊ🪂🇪🇺🇳🇱🇬🇧🇩🇪Jun 27
@olivia Quite. Shouldn't uncritically adopting 'any' unproven technology be anathema to academia?
Show threadMike Taylor 🦕Jul 8
@villavelius @olivia QUITE.
Show threadGjalt-Jorn PetersJun 28

@olivia It told me yesterday, and tells me now, that the server is temporarily unavailable, when I try to sign. Does that ring any bells?

I'll keep trying now and then off course 🙂

In any case, excellent initiative, thank you all! 🙏

Show threadOlivia Guest · Ολίβια ΓκεστJun 28
@matherion sorry to hear — free to DM me your details and I can try for you if I am allowed.
Show threadGjalt-Jorn PetersJun 30
@olivia Finally had time to also try it on my PC. I get the same error on FireFox on Android as on LibreWolf on Windows (screenshot included). I'll DM my details in a 'copy-pasteable' version! Thank you for the manual intervention! 🙂
Show threadMartin Vermeer FCDJun 28
@olivia The petition is almost worth signing for its use of the Oxford comma alone...
Show threadOlivia Guest · Ολίβια ΓκεστJun 28
@martinvermeer writing is my passion