John Warner

Very good development that this thinking is breaking through to the mainstream, as illustrated by @danagoldstein.bsky.social's article in today's Times. Many of us writing teachers have been issuing these warnings for years and now we're having a better conversation. www.nytim…

nytimes.com

Two encouraging data points on the road to broad recognition that it's important to get students writing, rather than doing automation-assisted document production. 1st from @drrebeccawinthrop.bsky.social on a large study that showed using AI decreases original ideas. www.nyti…

Opinion | What 370,000 College Essays Tell Us About A.I.’s Effects on Creativity nytimes.com

Several times after I've given a talk or workshop about how I think we need to reorient instruction/assessment to deal with the presence of AI I've had senior faculty thank me and say I confirmed their instinct that it's time to move on. I think that's okay. www.chronicle.com/…

chronicle.com

I'm a strong believer in including experiences that require students to grapple with ethics/morals of a discipline as part of a course. I've done it in every course I've ever taught, but the idea that improved moral formation will prevent "cheating" is simply wrong. www.nytime…

nytimes.com

Good pushback from Harvard faculty against the dean who doesn't understand learning. www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Harvard Humanities Faculty Push Back on Deming’s Call for AI Use in Writing Courses | The Harvard Crimson thecrimson.com

Sincere question: Why are journal editors obligated to give a full review to obvious AI slop or quasi-slop under the theory that there could be some nugget of worthwhile insight under the crap? Couldn't they just punt anything that's obviously not human-derived? www.chronicle.…

chronicle.com

I suppose this is my manifesto on the subject that writing is writing and AI-assisted or automated document production is something else. Harvard appears to believe that AI automation is an inevitable future. www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

Writing Classes Are About Writing, Not AI-Aided Production insidehighered.com

Professionals have "practices." AI automation that seems to be an aid in terms of efficiency may instead disrupt a meaningful part of the practice. This is happening with AI scribes in medicine. Where is it happening in your practice? www.insidehighered.com/opinion/colu...

AI Scribes in Medicine Are Short-Circuiting Thinking insidehighered.com

I've not digested Pope Leo's encyclical on technology and AI, but it strikes me that in terms of saying something clear in its message, it helps to start from a place of values. Not coincidentally, this is the same advice I give to higher ed institutions. www.insidehighered.co…

We Don’t Need to Retreat From the Challenge of AI in Schools insidehighered.com

Those who can incorporate LLMs into their writing without de-skilling, disempowerment and dependence are 1. Rare. 2. Extremely proficient as writers. 3. Very knowledgeable about AI affordances. 4. Extremely vigilant. This is not most students. biblioracle.substack.com/p/the-wo…

The Worst Use Case for Generative AI is Writing biblioracle.substack.com

Not sure what this says about me, but the more I explore the capacities of generative AI the less it interests me. I'm not denying its potential power, just that how it does what it does is not nearly as interesting as the thoughts and expressions of some other, any other, human being.

Thinking about what I see as a contradiction lately. I think it's pretty clear that AI has advanced quite a lot in terms of its capabilities and reliability since the arrival of Chat GPT, and yet, despite this, I, personally, still have very little use for it. If Google search hadn't shit the bed...

I'm not a generative AI has no use guy at all, but some of the people who have read (or read an AI summary of) my book (More Than Words) and want to convince me that I'm wrong about something other need to lay off the Claude. Their brains are cooked. Two people this month told me they're "cyborgs."

My book (More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI) is obviously targeted towards education leaders/teachers/faculty, but a handful of students have found their way to it and universally tell me that they had never been introduced to writing as an expressive act in school.

I'm seeing a trend toward saying that students should only use AI to replace skills they've already "mastered," but I don't know about this. 1. At least with writing, there's no terminal proficiency and our proficiency, once achieved is not permanently fixed. I recently went through a couple weeks..

I feel about AI solving math proofs the same way I feel about AI playing chess or robot sprinters doing 100m faster than Usain Bolt, near total disinterest. I'm fundamentally more interested in what happens when humans intersect with these boundaries, rather than the clearing of the boundary itself.

Query: Why is @hopkinspress.bsky.social claiming 100% of the Anthropic settlement for the book I did with them whereas my commercial publishers are doing the expected 50/50 split. Anyone else run into this with them or other nonprofit publishers?

Can anyone name a single COLLEGE that is treating AI as an “enemy?”

New wrinkle on the author scam in my inbox where the first outreach says how frustrating it is to contact writers and get AI replies, so they want to first make sure that I'm a human.