FAQ on LLMs

Is generative AI acceptable in higher education? How can/should it be resisted?

• https://alinautrata.substack.com/p/the-anti-dystopians-guide-to-genai (archive) - The Anti-Dystopian's Guide to GenAI for students & educators - What is GenAI, Why is it Bad, and How Can Higher Education Resist It?
• amplifying popularity effects among scientists: https://www.jeffpooley.com/2025/11/the-matthew-effect-in-ai-summary (archive) - The Matthew Effect in AI Summary by Jeff Pooley
• pollution of supposedly peer-reviewed literature - https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.09.09.25335401v1.full - Dramatic increases in redundant publications in the Generative AI era by Danny Maupin, Tulsi Suchak, Adrian Barnett, Matt Spick
• student cheating on essays:
  • https://gizmodo.com/ai-cheating-is-so-out-of-hand-in-americas-schools-that-the-blue-books-are-coming-back-2000607771
  • https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html
• humanities: I'm a Professor. A.I. Has Changed My Classroom, but Not for the Worse., by Carlo Rotella, NYT, 25 Nov 2025

Resistance

• https://atecopol.hypotheses.org/13082 Face à l'IA générative, l'objection de conscience (Conscientious objection to generative artificial intelligence) (archive) by Atecopol = Atelier d’Ecologie Politique de Toulouse - "scientifiques réfléchissant en interdisciplinarité aux enjeux socio-écologiques et au rôle de l'ESR dans ce contexte" (interdisciplinary reflection by scientists about socio-ecological issues and the role of the higher education and research community in that context)
• https://zenodo.org/records/17065099 Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia, by Olivia Guest+ Sep 2025, "... In this position piece, we expound on why universities must take their role seriously to a) counter the technology industry's marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. ..."
• https://openletter.earth/an-open-letter-from-educators-who-refuse-the-call-to-adopt-genai-in-education-cb4aee75 July 2025 An open letter from educators who refuse the call to adopt GenAI in education "... We are a global community of education professionals who refuse the call for generative AI (GenAI) adoption in schools and colleges, and reject the narrative of its inevitability. ... Current GenAI technologies represent unacceptable legal, ethical and environmental harms, including exploitative labour, piracy of countless creators' and artists' work, harmful biases, mass production of misinformation, and reversal of the global emissions reduction trajectory. GenAI is a threat to student learning and wellbeing. ..."

UMK

• 16 Jan 2024 UMK guidelines for AI in teaching (archive)

Are LLM data centres accelerating the climate emergency?

• https://greenscreen.network/en/blog/within-bounds-limiting-ai-environmental-impact Within Bounds: Limiting AI's environmental impact by Green Screen Coalition, Green Web Foundation, Beyond Fossil Fuels, Aspiration, critical infrastructure lab and signed by 130+ organisations
• Yes. By 2028, "AI alone could consume as much electricity annually as 22% of all US households" - "between 165 and 326 terawatt-hours per year" https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech (archive) - We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here's the story you haven’t heard. by James O'Donnell, Casey Crownhart, May 2025

Truth

Which is more accurate: LLM hallucinations vs bullshit vs not making assertions?

• WikipediaEn:Hallucination_%28artificial_intelligence%29 versus WikipediaEn:On_Bullshit versus not making assertions
• arguments for bullshit
  • Bergstrom and Ogbunu https://undark.org/2023/04/06/chatgpt-isnt-hallucinating-its-bullshitting
  • Hicks et al. (2024) ChatGPT as soft bullshit https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5
• arguments for not making assertions
  • https://fediscience.org/@UlrikeHahn/114932221763940313 (archive) + https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/pfjzu

Are LLMs guaranteed to generate false statements?

• https://www.computerworld.com/article/4059383/openai-admits-ai-hallucinations-are-mathematically-inevitable-not-just-engineering-flaws.html

Factual accuracy versus political persuasion

• ArXiv:2507.13919 - The Levers of Political Persuasion with Conversational AI by Kobi Hackenburg, Ben M. Tappin, Luke Hewitt, Ed Saunders, Sid Black, Hause Lin, Catherine Fist, Helen Margetts, David G. Rand, Christopher Summerfield

Are LLMs forcing human language evolution?

• Yes: ArXiv:2409.01754 - Empirical evidence of Large Language Model's influence on human spoken communication by Hiromu Yakura, Ezequiel Lopez-Lopez, Levin Brinkmann, Ignacio Serna, Prateek Gupta, Ivan Soraperra, Iyad Rahwan

Are the humans who train LLMs traumatised?

• The Emotional Labor Behind AI Intimacy: https://data-workers.org/michael (archive) "My name is Michael Geoffrey Asia, and I wrote this testimony to tell the story of workers like me who found ourselves trapped in the hidden corners of the AI industry, where human emotion becomes data."
  • full report pdf (archive)
  • Fediverse thread - @milamiceli@dair-community.social

AI bubble

• AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage, WikipediaEn:Cory_Doctorow, 18 Jan 2026, subtitle: AI is asbestos in the walls of our tech society, stuffed there by monopolists run amok. A serious fight against it must strike at its roots (archive)

Multi-question

• https://www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue-with-an-ai-booster
• https://blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-done-thinking-about-genai-for-now.html _I Think I'm Done Thinking About genAI For Now - The conversation isn't over, but I don't think I have much to add to it', 4 June 2025, by WikipediaEn:Glyph_Lefkowitz, developer of WikipediaEn:Twisted_%28software%29

Overall ethics

Doctorow/Tante debate

• Cory Doctorow vs Tante

Practical steps

MS/GH

• If you still use Microsoft/Github (as of 2026-02, still difficult to avoid), then you can add the user "Claude" to https://github.com/settings/blocked_users see the thread; this should warn you when you are looking at code that has WikipediaEn:AI_slop from Claude; the same warning for Copilot does not seem to be available as of 2026-02-18.