Now we just have to get all large language model content to be declared “pornographic” in Utah
A long piece from Helen Beetham on Generative AI and higher education. There's a lot to unpack here but this part in particular struck me as important for academic librarians to grapple with:
Guidance from UNESCO, the UK Government, every university, and even OpenAI itself, is for students to ‘check with other sources of information’ before relying on synthetic text. But as synthetic text become the interface of choice for search, and as the results of search become more and more likely to be synthetic, it becomes difficult to see how this is going to work. Or at least, how students are supposed to operationalise this advice using their own tools and resources. What I think students may be hearing, from all the contradictory advice they are getting, is ‘keep trying until you get something that sounds right’.
It's all there in the headline. The Fascist States of America continue to unravel.
Australian Universities Accord Final Report
It remains to be seen whether all or any of the recommendations here will be implemented. But if they are, the Universities Accord has the potential to fix a large number of structural problems in the Australian university system.
There's nothing here about the rampant casualisation and wage-theft that characterises higher education labour relations, nor anything to fix the absurdities of scholarly publishing, but it's a good start.
Libraries and Learning Links of the Week is published every week by Hugh Rundle.
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