All posts tagged: Professors

Where Did All the Computer-Science Professors Go?

Where Did All the Computer-Science Professors Go?

Published by Daniella Wilson

Anthropic has poached such an array of high-profile professors that it has become a punch line in academia. “‘I’m joining Anthropic’ is the new meme right now,” Subbarao Kambhampati, a computer-science professor at Arizona State University (who has not joined Anthropic), told us. This month, the AI company hired the chair of UC Berkeley’s department of electrical engineering and computer science, presumably to help build more capable bots. Perhaps more surprisingly, Anthropic has in recent weeks also picked up a Stanford economist, a theoretical physicist from the University of Maryland, and an analytic philosopher from UT Austin. AI companies are turning into something like mini-universities in their own right. OpenAI employs top mathematicians and physicists—including one who studies black holes, and another who specializes in string theory. At least three computer-science professors joined Meta’s AI lab in late June. DeepMind, like Anthropic, is home to a crew of philosophers. And Anthropic’s recent job postings indicate an interest in hiring legal scholars and political scientists. It’s unclear exactly how many current and former professors are working …

Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors

Grammarly Offering Manuscript Reviews by AI Versions of Recently Deceased Professors

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Grammarly is being accused of “necromancy” after users discovered a feature for reviewing manuscripts with AI versions of real professors — some of whom have already left this mortal coil. The issue was first flagged by Verena Krebs, a medieval historian and Ruhr-University Bochum professor. On Sunday, Krebs shared a screenshot showing the “Expert Review” tool allowing users to pick historian David Abulafia as one of the available “experts” to check their paper. If Abulafia objected to his inclusion here, we’ll probably never know, since he died in January. The news sparked a flurry of fiery responses across academic circles.   “Grammarly is now offering ‘expert review’ of your work by living and dead academics,” Vanessa Heggie, an associate professor in the history of science and medicine at the University of Birmingham, wrote in a LinkedIn post. “Without anyone’s explicit permission it’s creating little LLMs based on their scraped work and using their names and reputation.” “I have seen …

Do Spiders Dream of Arachnology Professors?

Do Spiders Dream of Arachnology Professors?

Published by Jenni Sidey

This edited version of the article below first appeared in New English Review. Have you ever wondered if insomniac spiders, trying to sleep, count imaginary arachnology professors jumping over college classroom desks? Silly questions aside, it’s not something that constantly occupies my mind. Anyhow, the other night as I rested in bed reading a book, I noticed a spider on the ceiling above where I lay. I wondered was it awake or asleep. This sight occurs every seven or eight weeks, and if my ceiling was made out of steel and I had a flame-throwing drone, I’d incinerate the creepy-crawly immediately because they give me the creeps. But instead, I usually get out of bed and, without killing the tiny creature, gently place the head of a sweeping brush under it in order to usher it out safely onto the window ledge. Insects also give me the shivers, even though they’re different to spiders (spiders belong to the class arachnida, insects to the class insecta). And, on a micro level, the thoughts of one scaling down its …