Blog Series: Intelligent Artifice

Active Learning in the Age of AI

Photo Credit: Snapshot by HASTAC staff and courtesy of HASTAC. Annual Conference, Arizona State University. Pictured, HASTAC Graduate Center Team: Kalle Westerling, Cathy Davidson, Lauren Melendez, Danica Savonick

It’s Not Just For the Birds What are those chirpy zebra finches saying to one another? Now we know. Thanks to the diligent and creative research by Dr. Julie Elie, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies interspecies communication, we humans can understand what other zebra finches have always known: that those Active Learning in the Age of AI

Democracy in 3-D Glasses

Selfie: Cat in 3-D Glasses, in front of Goshka Macuga mural at the Prada Foundation, Milan, Italy, June 10, 2026

In the stunning mural by Polish multidisciplinary artist Goshka Macuga, “Make Tofu Not War” (2018), exhibited currently at the Prada Foundation in Milan, one sees one set of images if one looks with the naked eye and something else if one looks with 3-D glasses. I took this selfie in 3-D glasses. Wearing these ironic Democracy in 3-D Glasses

AI Is Not Neutral

Pictured, Stanford Computer Scientist Yejin Choi who advocates “Small Language Models.”

AI Ate My Homework: Big and Small Solutions for Educators Now

I began my teaching career in what was the worst academic job market until the present moment. I was unemployed for three years, fired (technically, I wasn’t renewed) from my first job for hosting a women’s day that administrators felt crossed a political line. I subsequently worked various part-time jobs (including at Fermi National Accelerator AI Ate My Homework: Big and Small Solutions for Educators Now

Auditing AI: A Great Book That Holds AI Accountable—And Shows How We Can Too

Cover of "Auditing AI"

The Marquand House Collective, Auditing AI. MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series, 2026. Auditing AI is the book I’ve been searching for–and I believe it will be useful for any and every reader who wants to move past hype and hysteria to really understand what tools we need to hold various AI systems accountable for what AI Auditing AI: A Great Book That Holds AI Accountable—And Shows How We Can Too

“Artificial Ignorance” and Data Sycophancy

Bookshelf of Recent Books on AI

Artificial Ignorance A recent exhaustive study of AI use by computer programmers conducted by Judy Hanwen Shen and Alex Tamkin (“How AI Impacts Skill Formation”) shows that using AI may speed some aspects of your programming but, it, at the same time, “impairs conceptual understanding, code reading, and debugging abilities, without delivering significant efficiency gains “Artificial Ignorance” and Data Sycophancy