Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'ai' Technologies in Academia
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A research paper argues against the uncritical adoption of 'AI' technologies in academia, sparking discussion on the responsible use of AI in research and its potential consequences.
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- 01Story posted
Oct 3, 2025 at 6:29 PM EDT
about 2 months ago
Step 01 - 02First comment
Oct 3, 2025 at 9:27 PM EDT
3h after posting
Step 02 - 03Peak activity
21 comments in Day 1
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Step 03 - 04Latest activity
Oct 5, 2025 at 8:35 AM EDT
about 2 months ago
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What an utterly bullsh*t way to say I don't know anything about history nor how world works.
Here's the full context:
1 Overview
The culture of AI is imperialist and seeks to expand the kingdom of the machine. The AI community is well organized and well funded, and its culture fits its dreams: it has high priests, its greedy businessmen, its canny politicians. The U.S. Department of Defense is behind it all the way. And like the communists of old, AI scientists believe in their revolution; the old myths of tragic hubris don’t trouble them at all.
Tony Solomonides and Les Levidow (1985, pp. 13–14)
This paper sets out our expert position on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies permeating the higher education sector, demonstrating how this directly erodes our ability to function (see also our Open Letter, Guest, van Rooij, et al. 2025).
(the rest elided)
Other's also voiced their concerns at the time:
Sherry Turkle https://monoskop.org/images/5/55/Turkle_Sherry_The_Second_Se...
Tom Athanasiou ghostwrote Hubert Dreyfus's book 'Mind over Machine' (1986) https://www.ecoequity.org/about/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus%27s_views_on_ar...
Athanasiou, Tom (1985). “Artificial intelligence: cleverly disguised politics”. In: Compulsive technology: computers as culture. Ed. by Tony Solomonides and Les Levidow. Free Association Books, pp. 13–35
Carl Mitcham https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222771271_Computers...
Other articles citing these early critics:
Special Issue Artificial intelligence through the lenses of Marxism and critical thinking https://periodicos.ufs.br/eptic/article/download/21789/16168...
Artificial intelligence and the ideology of capitalist reconstruction https://ouci.dntb.gov.ua/en/works/lRaVX6M4/
If I wanted to be cheeky, that's your privilege showing :) There are likely some people in your proximity (if you are American, then mostly Cubans and some Russians) who have lost some family member to actual Communism.
AI can probably produce better propaganda than mediocre party hacks.
b. "felt the stick", what an euphemism for large-scale human rights violations, and not limited to "landlords".
Friends, from a survivor (a favorite word of the American left, ain't it?): actual Communist rule is very bad, most nations abandoned it in the very moment that it was possible to do so, and in the places where it can't be done, people at least try to flee.
That is why you have so many Cubans and Venezuelans in that horrible capitalist America, but not one American risks his/her life trying to swim or sail into those working class paradises.
Even in Europe the old Iron Curtain worked in one way only, to prevent people from escaping their working class paradises, although in the GDR it was called "anti-fascist protective wall".
If we had been capable of less uncritical adoption - including taking stronger measures to limit CO2 output - we would be in a better position today. So that was a blunder by society as a whole, with scientists playing an important role in that.
The first paper describing anthropogenic CO2-driven global warming was published in 1896. But as a whole, most scientists completely ignored that for nearly a century - plenty of time to have taken corrective action of all kinds. That was a blunder.
> “No one has a crystal ball. […] it wasn't clear in 1896 or even 1996.”
It was clear long before 1996. I personally was aware of it as being essentially settled science by 1992, but I was far from on the leading edge of that, and my knowledge came from mainstream media. But the problem was that there was huge and even funded resistance to accepting it.
Just for example, Time Magazine published articles about anthropogenic global warming as early as 1939, the year after Guy Callendar published a paper titled “The artificial production of carbon dioxide and its influence on temperature.”
Time covered the subject several times after that, in the 1950s, 1970s, and 1980s, eventually publishing an issue entitled “Planet of the Year: Endangered Earth” in 1989. Here’s a quote from that issue (https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,956...):
> “According to computer projections, the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere could drive up the planet's average temperature 3 degrees F to 9 degrees F by the middle of the next century. That could cause the oceans to rise by several feet, flooding coastal areas and ruining huge tracts of farmland through salinization. Changing weather patterns could make huge areas infertile or uninhabitable, touching off refugee movements unprecedented in history.”
The fact that we continued to essentially ignore the issue for decades after that was a blunder. It has nothing to do with “not knowing enough about complex dynamic environments.” Anyone who genuinely believes that has most likely been strongly influenced by the oil industry propaganda on the subject.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BLZ3pmQTZA
"Citizens will be on their best behavior." (almost exact quote)
"We will use these wonderful technologies to gather and connect data about everyone." (paraphrased)
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