Totally agree. I have no idea what was behind the OSU decision. If it was admin led or forced, not good at all. But if it was faculty led, faculty driven asks based on intellectual interest or real or perceived demand from students, then it could in fact be a really interesting initiative.

Oh I very much support people being critical of this, and to outright oppose it. I'm aware I'm an outlier here. This initiative sends a strong signal of what OSU values, and many will disagree. It's a debate we very much should be having

From the linked post, the person you describe is only one of many types of experts they're looking for. A few positions for AI+humanities (I think you're right about those numbers!), a chunk from AI+other disciplines, and then a chunk of the NeurIPS type. To me, that's a neat collection of faculty!

The 20,000 people who attend NeurIPS have a very different expertise than me :) It's a broad but deep field, and it's absolutely massive. I'm not trying to be annoying. I think we need to critique initiatives like this, but not on the grounds that "there are no experts in the field".

😬

There were 22,000 valid papers submitted to NeurlPS last year. 22,000, and almost all with multiple authors. And that's just one conference in the AI field.

One more bit of context: There were nearly 22,000 valid papers submitted to NeurlPS this year. 22,000. Virtually all with multiple authors. And that's just one conference in the field. A university can absolutely find 100 experts in the blink of an eye.

Yes, absolutely yes they could! But In any case I think these are being spread out across departments. I'm not saying this is the right investment. But saying these are academic fields that mostly don't exist is just flat out wrong.

These fields are all established, long standing fields that have existed for decades. None of these are new fields. None. Foundational AI goes back to the 1950s. Applied AI just as far back. Cybersecurity was established in the 1960s.

It's not worth debating on here for sure. But this belief extends offline, and makes IRL discussions around AI in higher education almost impossible to tolerate

(Sorry for yelling. We can and should debate where resources in higher ed are best allocated. But AI is an actual well established, long standing field, spanning history, STS, philosophy, CS, cognitive science, etc etc, and the discourse in this comment thread drives me bonkers)

Another gem from the OP: digging in on refusing AI or embracing edtech contracts and creating more black boxes are both (probably) negative and (definitely) reactive responses to the situation. *These are not the only two options.* There are many more proactive actions higher ed can consider.

Yes that's the one!

I think it's probably Roger and Me? And if so, was that clip early or later in the film?