I came across @maggie 's "Expanding Dark Forest ..." essay, and I'm intrigued by how much her concern for the social web parallels our concern for academia.

https://maggieappleton.com/ai-dark-forest

Indeed, where she expects the rise of future "Reverse Turing Tests" – prove that you are human – that's very much become a part of how we need to think about assessments today.

But there are also interesting differences: for example, academic integrity is a premise for the academy; and my biggest AI worry is not about how students would use it, but about the corrosive effect that lying about their use of AI would have on our ethical baseline: a commitment to truth (cf. https://sentientsyllabus.substack.com/p/generated-misconduct). The social web does not appear overly burdened by such concerns.

Interestingly, thinking about such consequences makes our perspectives converge again. Our "cozy web" is already there: our hallways, studies and our libraries, our spaces for inquiry, the incubators, the fermentation vats. Growing ideas (and minds) indeed requires some protection – for some time, until they can stand on their own. As such, we've always been a "community of like-minded folks", with a "niche interest" – in truth. It's intriguing to imagine how this could scale into the world.

#SentientSyllabus #ChatGPT #HigherEd #AI #Education #University #Academia #AcademicIntegrity