Collin Bjork
@collinbjork.bsky.social
Rhetoric, communication, podcasting, writing, teaching. From Texas to Aotearoa New Zealand.
Pinned
Collin Bjork
@collinbjork.bsky.social
· Aug 20
Extractive Artificial Intelligence and Its Challenge to Technical Communication - Collin Bjork, 2025
Mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) is an extractive industry that exploits both humans and nonhumans. The extractive underpinning of mainstream AI systems ...
journals.sagepub.com
Are you teaching TechComm this semester and wanting to discuss AI? Consider using my short accessible piece about “Extractive AI” that recently came out in JBTC: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Collin Bjork
The second CCCC Reading Circle on Land, Labor, Water & Writing: The Costs of Generative AI in the Writing Classroom is on Wed, Dec 10 @ 4–5 PM ET.
Looking forward to discussing @dustinedwards.bsky.social's Enduring Digital Damage w/@hannahhopkins.bsky.social & @donniejsackey.bsky.social!
Looking forward to discussing @dustinedwards.bsky.social's Enduring Digital Damage w/@hannahhopkins.bsky.social & @donniejsackey.bsky.social!
November 4, 2025 at 3:45 PM
The second CCCC Reading Circle on Land, Labor, Water & Writing: The Costs of Generative AI in the Writing Classroom is on Wed, Dec 10 @ 4–5 PM ET.
Looking forward to discussing @dustinedwards.bsky.social's Enduring Digital Damage w/@hannahhopkins.bsky.social & @donniejsackey.bsky.social!
Looking forward to discussing @dustinedwards.bsky.social's Enduring Digital Damage w/@hannahhopkins.bsky.social & @donniejsackey.bsky.social!
Reposted by Collin Bjork
"The more people loudly challenge and refuse the extraction and violence of AI Empire, the safer it becomes for others to do so. We can do this work together."
November 12, 2025 at 5:52 PM
"The more people loudly challenge and refuse the extraction and violence of AI Empire, the safer it becomes for others to do so. We can do this work together."
Reposted by Collin Bjork
Please join the Coalition at 1 PM (EST) on November 17th for “Generative AI as Feminist Methodology,” a Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda webinar.
Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
November 12, 2025 at 7:03 PM
Please join the Coalition at 1 PM (EST) on November 17th for “Generative AI as Feminist Methodology,” a Cheryl Glenn Advancing the Agenda webinar.
Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Register here: us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
Reposted by Collin Bjork
This is a fantastic, super accessible piece. Not only does it diagnose the extractive nature of most AI systems, but it also offers other (less extractive) visions for AI.
If you’re looking for a critical perspective on AI that’s accessible to students in a course on media, tech comm, or rhetoric and writing studies, consider this: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... Extractive Artificial Intelligence and Its Challenge to Technical Communication - Collin Bjork, 2025
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
October 12, 2025 at 9:19 PM
This is a fantastic, super accessible piece. Not only does it diagnose the extractive nature of most AI systems, but it also offers other (less extractive) visions for AI.
Reposted by Collin Bjork
Just heard word that my book, ENDURING DIGITAL DAMAGE, is shipping on Oct 15 if ordered from the UAP website. You can preorder it now and the discount code “DAMAGE” will take 30 percent off the total price.
www.uapress.ua.edu/978081736219...
www.uapress.ua.edu/978081736219...
Enduring Digital Damage
Networks the intricate relationship between rapidly advancing digital technologies and environmental degradation and reveals the costs of our globally connec...
www.uapress.ua.edu
October 3, 2025 at 3:45 PM
Just heard word that my book, ENDURING DIGITAL DAMAGE, is shipping on Oct 15 if ordered from the UAP website. You can preorder it now and the discount code “DAMAGE” will take 30 percent off the total price.
www.uapress.ua.edu/978081736219...
www.uapress.ua.edu/978081736219...
Reposted by Collin Bjork
I wrote this blog about how feeling like a killjoy whenever I talk about GenAI.
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...
On Being a GenAI Killjoy
Maggie Fernandes, University of Arkansas Photo by Maksim Romashkin on Pexels.com At a recent teaching talk about GenAI refusal, an audience member asked Megan, Jen, and me this question: how d…
refusinggenai.wordpress.com
October 9, 2025 at 4:55 PM
I wrote this blog about how feeling like a killjoy whenever I talk about GenAI.
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...
refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/o...
Reposted by Collin Bjork
25 Podcasts Announced as Eligible for Golden Globes https://podnews.net/press-release/golden-globes-eligible-podcasts-26
25 Podcasts Announced as Eligible for Golden Globes
The awards will be presented on January 11, 2026
podnews.net
October 3, 2025 at 5:38 AM
25 Podcasts Announced as Eligible for Golden Globes https://podnews.net/press-release/golden-globes-eligible-podcasts-26
Are you teaching TechComm this semester and wanting to discuss AI? Consider using my short accessible piece about “Extractive AI” that recently came out in JBTC: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Extractive Artificial Intelligence and Its Challenge to Technical Communication - Collin Bjork, 2025
Mainstream artificial intelligence (AI) is an extractive industry that exploits both humans and nonhumans. The extractive underpinning of mainstream AI systems ...
journals.sagepub.com
August 20, 2025 at 9:29 PM
Are you teaching TechComm this semester and wanting to discuss AI? Consider using my short accessible piece about “Extractive AI” that recently came out in JBTC: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....
Reposted by Collin Bjork
TOP AI IN EDUCATION FAILS ... so far:
April 15, 2025 at 8:34 PM
TOP AI IN EDUCATION FAILS ... so far:
If you’re looking for a critical perspective on AI that’s accessible to students in a course on media, tech comm, or rhetoric and writing studies, consider this: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... Extractive Artificial Intelligence and Its Challenge to Technical Communication - Collin Bjork, 2025
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
August 7, 2025 at 6:29 PM
If you’re looking for a critical perspective on AI that’s accessible to students in a course on media, tech comm, or rhetoric and writing studies, consider this: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.... Extractive Artificial Intelligence and Its Challenge to Technical Communication - Collin Bjork, 2025
Uncivil is a FANTASTIC podcast! I teach it to my uni students in New Zealand. And I teach your Transom stuff on voice and vocal delivery. Congrats!
Man! What an honor to be listed as one of Time Magazine's top 100 podcasts of all time! hope Uncivil's popularity demonstrates that people can appreciate history even when it challenges myths & tells hard truths. Maybe even especially when it does that.
time.com/colle.../100...
time.com/colle.../100...
time.com
July 29, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Uncivil is a FANTASTIC podcast! I teach it to my uni students in New Zealand. And I teach your Transom stuff on voice and vocal delivery. Congrats!
Reposted by Collin Bjork
This is very bad. Although entirely predictable. Once more the humanities are being cut back to prop up STEM and, increasingly, AI investment (including at the expense of bench science). In the past, cuts to humanities were promoted on two separate logic streams that do not hold true: /1
Dean at U of Chicago: “She also expressed concerns that the administration might be asking the Arts & Humanities Division to cut back to compensate for other divisions’ financial challenges, asking whether ‘our entire unit [is] being used to float other units facing cuts.”
UChicago Arts & Humanities Division to Restructure Amid “Historic Funding Pressures”
“The status quo is not an option,” Deborah Nelson, dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities, wrote to division faculty on June 18.
chicagomaroon.com
July 24, 2025 at 10:37 PM
This is very bad. Although entirely predictable. Once more the humanities are being cut back to prop up STEM and, increasingly, AI investment (including at the expense of bench science). In the past, cuts to humanities were promoted on two separate logic streams that do not hold true: /1
Reposted by Collin Bjork
Canvas just became one of the most powerful surveillance, IP theft, & data monetization tools in the world.
OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts.
But they can’t make us use their trashware.
Boycott. Luddify. Open source.
Don’t let them have your work or your students.
OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts.
But they can’t make us use their trashware.
Boycott. Luddify. Open source.
Don’t let them have your work or your students.
July 24, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Canvas just became one of the most powerful surveillance, IP theft, & data monetization tools in the world.
OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts.
But they can’t make us use their trashware.
Boycott. Luddify. Open source.
Don’t let them have your work or your students.
OpenAI bought a user-base locked in to long-term contracts.
But they can’t make us use their trashware.
Boycott. Luddify. Open source.
Don’t let them have your work or your students.
Reposted by Collin Bjork
In addition to owning Canvas, KKR also owns Simon & Schuster (one of the Big 5 publishers), OverDrive (which owns Libby and has a monopoly on e-lending at public libraries as they get rid of physical books), bankrupted Toys 'R' Us, and bought nursing homes that then became sites of abuse and neglect
Friendly reminder that Instructure, parent company of Canvas, is owned by KKR, a private equity firm that purchased it for $4.8 billion last November.
“…faculty members will be able to click an icon that connects them with various AI features…, like a grading tool, a discussion-post summarizer… Canvas’s parent company, Instructure, is also in partnership w/ OpenAI… so instructors can use generative-AI technology as part of their assignments.”
July 24, 2025 at 2:20 AM
In addition to owning Canvas, KKR also owns Simon & Schuster (one of the Big 5 publishers), OverDrive (which owns Libby and has a monopoly on e-lending at public libraries as they get rid of physical books), bankrupted Toys 'R' Us, and bought nursing homes that then became sites of abuse and neglect
Silicon Valley AI and Academic Publishing are both extractive industries. Not surprising, but still infuriating.
Any academics keeping track of how your papers are being used by publishers to create value as data for AI companies, here's the latest financial report from T&F on its further "Data Licensing Agreements" for access to its "content archive" www.informa.com/globalassets...
July 23, 2025 at 8:43 PM
Silicon Valley AI and Academic Publishing are both extractive industries. Not surprising, but still infuriating.
Good ppl, doing important work. Apply today!
Want to work with the SMC? We don’t expect perfection in our candidates – if you think you may have what it takes, but don’t meet every point referenced below, please still get in touch!
More info and apply here: www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/06/26/w...
More info and apply here: www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz/2025/06/26/w...
Work with us! Kaimanaaki Pāpāho | Media Advisor – Science Media Centre
The Science Media Centre is looking for a media advisor to join our dedicated team working to improve the reach, relevance and accuracy of news media reporting on science and related topics in…
www.sciencemediacentre.co.nz
July 9, 2025 at 9:43 AM
Good ppl, doing important work. Apply today!
This is good reporting bc it’s often hard to get the specific numbers. But I’ve written about this before: Turnitin is a predatory EdTech tool that uses mora panics to siphon public edu funding into private coffers at the expense of student IP and educators. calmatters.org/education/hi...
California colleges spend millions on AI detectors. Is the faulty tech worth it?
Turnitin’s AI detectors are flawed and the company demands forever access to student papers.
calmatters.org
June 29, 2025 at 6:23 AM
This is good reporting bc it’s often hard to get the specific numbers. But I’ve written about this before: Turnitin is a predatory EdTech tool that uses mora panics to siphon public edu funding into private coffers at the expense of student IP and educators. calmatters.org/education/hi...
Reposted by Collin Bjork
“To call AI a con isn’t to say that the technology is not remarkable, that it has no use, or that it will not transform the world (perhaps for the better) in the right hands. It is to say that AI is not what its developers are selling it as: a new class of thinking—and, soon, feeling—machines.“
What Happens When People Don’t Understand How AI Works
Despite what tech CEOs might say, large language models are not smart in any recognizably human sense of the word.
www.theatlantic.com
June 7, 2025 at 1:58 AM
“To call AI a con isn’t to say that the technology is not remarkable, that it has no use, or that it will not transform the world (perhaps for the better) in the right hands. It is to say that AI is not what its developers are selling it as: a new class of thinking—and, soon, feeling—machines.“
Reposted by Collin Bjork
We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.
www.technologyreview.com
May 26, 2025 at 3:25 PM
We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1...
Reposted by Collin Bjork
"I had no idea science could be so bad."
Epic trawl through the state of the AI in education scientific literature "claiming to measure the impact of AI on learning outcomes" and finding it's mostly very bad, overblown, or even based on scientific malpractice
ht @benjaminjriley.bsky.social
wesstrabelsi.substack.com/p/the-good-t...
ht @benjaminjriley.bsky.social
wesstrabelsi.substack.com/p/the-good-t...
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Science of AI in Education
What would you learn if you scoured the peer reviewed studies out there on AI in education? I did, and I wasn't ready for it.
wesstrabelsi.substack.com
May 21, 2025 at 6:48 PM
"I had no idea science could be so bad."
Reposted by Collin Bjork
New blog post: Recognizing AI Hype Masquerading as Research (a reworking of my previous LinkedIn post) refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/r...
Recognizing AI Hype Masquerading as Research
Jennifer Sano-Franchini, West Virginia University I recently posted to LinkedIn a critique of some AI hype masquerading as research, and I thought to do a blog post on this topic, in case it’s help…
refusinggenai.wordpress.com
May 21, 2025 at 3:53 PM
New blog post: Recognizing AI Hype Masquerading as Research (a reworking of my previous LinkedIn post) refusinggenai.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/r...
Reposted by Collin Bjork
#TheAmbies are proud to honor @james.crid.land with the International Impact Award!
From launching the first UK radio podcast to shaping the future through Podnews and Podcasting 2.0, he has made a lasting mark on the global audio community.
👏 Congrats, James!
@podnews.net
From launching the first UK radio podcast to shaping the future through Podnews and Podcasting 2.0, he has made a lasting mark on the global audio community.
👏 Congrats, James!
@podnews.net
May 19, 2025 at 4:00 PM
#TheAmbies are proud to honor @james.crid.land with the International Impact Award!
From launching the first UK radio podcast to shaping the future through Podnews and Podcasting 2.0, he has made a lasting mark on the global audio community.
👏 Congrats, James!
@podnews.net
From launching the first UK radio podcast to shaping the future through Podnews and Podcasting 2.0, he has made a lasting mark on the global audio community.
👏 Congrats, James!
@podnews.net
Reposted by Collin Bjork
Read the article open access: openpraxis.org/articles/10....
Award announcement: facebook.com/share/p/18hN...
Judges praised it as “innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship advancing the field” with a critical literacy toolkit for AI discourse.
Award announcement: facebook.com/share/p/18hN...
Judges praised it as “innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship advancing the field” with a critical literacy toolkit for AI discourse.
Assistant, Parrot, or Colonizing Loudspeaker? ChatGPT Metaphors for Developing Critical AI Literacies | Open Praxis
openpraxis.org
May 19, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Read the article open access: openpraxis.org/articles/10....
Award announcement: facebook.com/share/p/18hN...
Judges praised it as “innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship advancing the field” with a critical literacy toolkit for AI discourse.
Award announcement: facebook.com/share/p/18hN...
Judges praised it as “innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship advancing the field” with a critical literacy toolkit for AI discourse.
Reposted by Collin Bjork
How much air pollution are people in Memphis inhaling so Elon Musk can make an algorithm that’s better at spouting racist conspiracy theories?
Oh my god
May 15, 2025 at 2:53 AM
How much air pollution are people in Memphis inhaling so Elon Musk can make an algorithm that’s better at spouting racist conspiracy theories?