Ben Williamson
Researcher with public evidence across AI business, AI research, Culture, work & education.
- AI signals
- 28 past 30d
- Sources
- 23 distinct domains
- Discussões
- 5 past 30d
- Latest signal
- 1d ago
Articles & links
"Certainly, AI teaching will be cheaper than teaching assistants. But we know that the second it becomes possible for an institution to achieve an end cheaply – even if it’s far worse – there is immense pressure from above to do so." www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...
One good thing to say about this is STS researchers are going to have a blast doing ethnographies of its enactment. "Claude Science brings ... fragmented tools into a single research environment where scientists can conduct all stages of their work." www.anthropic.com/news/cla…
MOOCs may have been so 2012, but the long-game data monetization plan to train AI looks like it was there all along. "Ng says some large companies launch products for the payout of data, not revenue, and then later monetize it through a different product" www.gsb.stanford.edu/…
The recent retraction of a meta-study claiming the learning gains from ChatGPT was a signal of something seriously wrong in AIED research. But the problems are deeper than one paper alone. arstechnica.com/ai/2026/05/i...
- Humanities and Social Sciences Communications retracted the Wang and Fan ChatGPT meta-analysis on April 22, 2026, nearly a year after publication.
- Before retraction, the paper had accumulated roughly 486,000 views, 266 citations, and an Altmetric score of 1,023.
- The retraction notice cites discrepancies in the meta-analysis, including pooling of studies too different in method and sample to combine.
Recent commentary
The anatomy of an AI-supported academic article is becoming more apparent. I desk reviewed ~70 manuscripts this week for our journal. Reckon 20ish had significant AI assistance. On top of hundreds of others recently I'm starting to see patterns. Are other editors are seeing the same or similar? 1/
What's most upsetting me as a journal editor is that many papers we receive where AI use is disclosed for editing and language refinement actually appear to have been ruined rather than improved by AI. We get what seem like promising underpinning studies, but totally obscured by over-complex text.
AI-assisted text is deadly for academic journal editors and reviewers. I'm detecting a lot more of it recently as an editor. It's still there in the "Frankencitations" and those little linguistic "tells" like "AI is not the cause. It's the symptom of an underlying reality." But it's more, too. 1/
The evidence about AI in education remains terrible as a basis for policy or practice. As schools in some places come back from summer next week (oh Scotland it's too early), here's a wee roundup on just how truly woefully AIED research has stood up and why educators shouldn't call on it 1/
Wee bit of advice for anyone writing up research about AI in education. Journals like the one I edit are drowning in it. Reviewers aren't accepting invitations. Most manuscripts offer *nothing* new. Yes it's a big current topic BUT it's not inevitably important as a research subject...
Maybe if they had actually read what my work says about education, data and the edtech industry, instead of relying on some kind of AI summary of it, they would recognize that I - as an academic "who lives in the literature" - am about the last person to want to convert it into autosummary podcasts
Super intriguing that my university's head of tech today asked AI users to use Qwen running on institutional infrastructure instead of commercial LLMs ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini that "incur token based charges" in order to "significantly save money." US big tech LLMs getting too pricy for HE now?
Whatever you think about LLMs in science and research, can we agree it's totally crossing a line to send 14 - *fourteen* - highly AI-produced autopapers *to one journal* in a *single week*! 1/
The imaginary of AI in education is so pervasive you can't even watch the Eurovosion Song Contest without weird references to automated classrooms and tutorbot assistants now
Journal editing is tough these days with all the AI and exploitation of our work by publishers and now big tech too. BUT! Looking back on another academic year at @lmt-journal.bsky.social I'm really chuffed how we've stewarded some really great research on education and tech to publication. 1/
In Ben Williamson's orbit
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