This reminds me of the "Dead Internet Theory" that is slowly becoming reality. If academia also becomes rampant with AI generated content and student submissions are also AI generated then who is the institution meant for? Would it reveal the underlying notions that universities carry with them, like the degree simply being a mask for privilege, their role in maintaining power structures, and reinforcing colonial ways of knowing?

The fact that these LLMs rely largely on Reddit to retrieve information about human experiences with products and are optimized to appease the user so they may continue to use the AI model over retrieving factual data from the internet goes to show that these tools were never meant to aid its users to seek knowledge. In an ideal future such advanced technology would have been used to break barriers between people, make connections in ways that would advance collective human knowledge, or at the very least create thoughtful content. But every effort is being made to find a way to monetize usage, influence spending habits, and fill online spaces with meaningless slop.

Almost everything related to AI seems to be a struggle for power, an effort to perpetuate and grow the power imbalances that are already present within our societies. The goal being; to remove the power that the production of knowledge leaves scholars with, the power that comes from seeking knowledge instead of having answers being handed to you eliciting no further questioning, the control over knowledge distribution and who deserves access to it.

I find it so strange to have written an article about how the use of AI strips power away from those who have genuine knowledge about the topic (scholars) only to then use AI to illustrate the points within the article. You can see here how much work the prompt does in comparison to the output. Do these descriptions compensate for the subtle messaging that comes from human artists. To me it feels like the output is a direct reflection of the words in the prompt, no deeper meaning embedded, no deeper thought beyond what was provided in writing. By using AI art in this article the writer perpetuates the continued disempowerment of human artists and human knowledge in fields beyond higher education.

I like this analogy of looking at how the current ruling entities governments or otherwise are operating in an attitude of what we have now is all that maters. When forests are stripped for their lumber and the eco diversity trampled, and companies hire planters that plant the same type of tree to cover the claim they are repopulating the forests but it would take decades for the biodiversity to return to what it was. Its also so applicable to education, healthcare, public services as a whole if the recent cuts are considered.

This line is particular highlights how much of a "kangaroo court" style government that we all exist under. How is there so many issues that go about uncontested? Aren't governmental parties suppose to represent the concerns that people have, if one doesn't shouldn't the other? The fact that the drop in support exists for all governments reveals that the publics access to higher education is a threat to the funders who hold the real control within governments. Canada isn't a two party system but this idea has been engraved within out psyche through years of dichotomous thinking.

I find it so striking that Ontario has the largest population in Canada, yet their investment into higher education is so low in comparison to its neighboring provinces. Why is this the case? Do these investments represent the attitudes held by the public or members of the governing bodies?

Why is it that even within marginalized groups hierarchies are unavoidable? Why does the experience of a co-struggle not close the gaps of race or class? I suppose the answer may again lie in the fact that humans are desperately trying to assign and organize quick categories and labels to the world around them. When faced with identities that don't conform to any singular group or generalized label the cognitive dissonance might cause frustration. I think the writers allude to this further down the text when they say that this suggests existence of an acceptable image of queerness.

This is reminiscent of how students with special needs were treated early on during their fight for education. Students with special needs were often relegated to separate schools or classes. This approach may have been beneficial for a few students but the homogenization of the whole group resulted in them all receiving the same treatment. Similarly the same approach is being applied here where it is better to contain, and isolate as a way to appease advocates rather than considering a systemic change which would require greater effort.

I find this discomfort to be so curious. What is it about someone expressing their own gender or sexuality that makes heteronormative individuals feel threatened? Is it simply that someone who doesn't conform to a specific way of being challenges the superficial foundation upon which people build their identities? Should universities not challenge the norms of society?

What caused this drastic change in attitudes? Searching on this I found that it was a combination of student activism, academic research that disproved prejudice, and legal pressure. I believe this can provide insight into the collaboration required to bring about drastic change in institutions. the pressure universities are facing with the drop in enrollments can be leveraged to the benefit for advocating for marginalized groups.

This is such a critical consideration. It is often those people who can afford the privilege to protest that must raise concerns or in this case apply for leadership roles. Because those who are being oppressed systemically would also lack the support systems required to organize against the organization oppressing them. This harkens to the crustal role allies adopt when advocating for queer and other marginalized groups. Having someone in a position of power who can advocate for queer needs also aids in establishing much needed trust between queer communities and institutions.

The queer community was forced to cause a commotion for their raised issues to be given any modicum of attention. Yet the reaction from the greater public to them identifying systemic problems is to dismiss their issues as exaggerated. What's worse is how the internet and social media are weaponized to continue to shame queer communities, target representatives, and mock their cause. Just recall the amount of memes that were popular during the first Trump election that framed specific individuals at protest as irrational liberals. The weaponization of humor through memes is also an underexplored topic, where we see how meme culture as a whole frames queer individuals as targets for ridicule and mockery.

I wonder if Mahelona explained the damage to the environment that is also caused by these learning models. I feel mentioning the repercussions on the planet would have made convincing the elders a little more difficult. Its a wonderful thing that the Maori language will survive this culling of minority human languages but something about the whole ordeal feels unfair. Like the Maori community is forced to participate in this multi-facetted situation (technological advancement, degradation of environment, commodification of human knowledge wherein the profits are given to those who didn't produce it) or become forgotten/irrelevant in the world being created by a careless few.

I find this fragility to be true for many of the social constructs we live with in society today. Whether it be gender norms, capitalism, or nationalism all are concepts that are held in place through institutional and social pressures. I often think about this when I have to make students stand for the national anthem each morning, why must I also participate in the enforcement of nationalism in my students, creating invisible boarders between "us" and "them"? But I also see resistance against other constructs like the "give-and-take" philosophy of capitalism, when students inherently come to their peer's aid or give away their snacks without expecting anything in return to ensure their friend doesn't go hungry for the day.

I find this perspective of viewing the output of LLMs as a form of predictable mathematical steps refreshing because it demystifies the notion that these LLMs show any sign of consciousness. Viewed from this perspective LLMs are simply advanced search engines that respond with an answer the user wants to hear less than the truth the user is actually seeking. However, the notion that the responses these LLMs produce can fools many into perceiving intelligence says so much about that wealth of knowledge that exists within the relationship between words but also how desperately our minds seek patterns and work to anthropomorphize non-living entities simply because they can imitate our speech. Is an LLM that produces full form sentences thoughtlessly more intelligent than a crow that mimics human words for treats? I suppose in a way both entities have managed to interact with the human species to their benefit whether that be gaining information to sell to advertisers or a snack.

I find this classification interesting especially when later on it is identified how LLMs have been trained greatly on online content generated by WEIRD individuals. It is especially jarring to find out that advertisers know that a large portion of data being scraped to provide LLM users with reliable answers are websites like Reddit. Advertisers are now actively seeding these websites with promotional content to result in AI promoting their product to user query.

This quote strikes me because of how historically culture has been organically generated by groups or communities that collectively keep it alive through active participation. However, now that technological advances have made the sharing of ideas instantaneous the internet as a whole now has developed a culture (memes, newsfeeds, social media, etc.). Since the users themselves have no ownership or control over these methods of communication, it gives their owners and investors (elites) the ability to dictate what ideas are allowed to be shared and governing the ideas around which culture can be congregate. This may leave the reader with a defeatist attitude, that we are incapable of escaping this control, but Gramshi argues the opposite, culture is non-existent without its participants and the more citizens that are aware of this form of control, the less control it has. One is less likely to believe a liar after they have been exposed for lying.

The information derived from the relationship between words carry with them the stereotypes, biases, and the contemporary worldviews of the users who's data is being scraped (WEIRD individuals) creating spaces made by and for those already privileged people. Additionally, since words are ever evolving and change depending on the contexts within which they are used, means that the LLMs will never truly understand the information it is taking in or generating well enough to generate novel ideas that critique the popular ideas of today.