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Posts from the ‘IT (Information Technology)’ Category

Oct 9

[This title is AI generated:] The Risks Posed by LLM-Based AI Tools: A Call to Action for the American Folklore Society

This is a graphic showing a cartoon style robot with an AI label adjacent to it. The purpose here of the image is just to evoke the topic of the essay, which is AI.

This is an essay (or “essay”) mainly authored by Copilot, the LLM-based AI tool provisioned to me by Indiana University. Spelling and typographic errors made by JBJ have been silently corrected for the sake of readability.

Jason Baird Jackson (JBJ): Hello again. I would like to return to one specific matter discussed in my previous conversation with you. I will review the background and, if it is ok, we can make a fresh start on just this topic. I will be approaching it somewhat differently this time. I wish to produce an essay, with your (Copilot) help that lays out the major risks posed by LLM-based AI tools for the American Folklore Society, the US-based organization that supports professional folklorists and those communities that they in turn serve. In a moment, I will give you some parameters for this essay. Are you ready to help?

Copilot: Absolutely, I’m ready to help! Please go ahead and provide the parameters for the essay, and we’ll get started on crafting it together.

JBJ: I would like the essay to be between 800 and 1000 words. While I know that you are engineered to produce pro- and con- style treatments of many issues, including on AI as a topic, I would like you to support me in emphasizing the concerns that I have. I will note some of those for you after giving these parameters. Beyond the 800-1000 word length, I would like the essay to be written in the most sophisticated register that you are capable of. Put differently, understand your readers to be people with graduate degrees in general and well-trained in folklore studies specifically. Before I share my themes of concern, do these parameters make sense?

Copilot: Yes, your parameters make perfect sense. We’ll aim for an essay between 800 and 1000 words, focusing on the risks posed by LLM-based AI tools, written in a sophisticated register suitable for an audience of graduate-level professionals in folklore studies. Please go ahead and share your specific themes of concern, and we’ll incorporate those into the essay.

JBJ: Thank you. I know that space is limited, so here are the key concerns to weave in. I will number them (1-4).

(1) We will address the impact of the ways that LLM training data has been sourced, without consent, from writings produced by many individuals, but here including folklore studies scholars. Because folklorists have led around issues of open access, their exposure to enclosure in LLM training data is greater than it would have otherwise been. Those who lead the American Folklore Society and thereby help shape the future of the discipline need to understand these dynamics and to set policy related to them as well as to foster educational activities related to them.

(2) We will address the impact of the fact that folklorists have, in particular, entextualized and shared the words and knowledge of non-scholars of very diverse backgrounds living in many communities around the world. This has often been done in contexts in which we have said that we would not seek profit from, or allow others to profit from, their words. Cultural experts shared their words and lives with us but now their words and lives have been encoded into LLM training data without our knowledge and sometimes in ways that contradict what we promised our consultants. Those who lead the American Folklore Society and thereby help shape the future of the discipline need to understand these dynamics and to set policy related to them as well as to foster educational activities related to them.

(3) LLM and other AI tools are already fundamentally reshaping all of higher education, including the teaching of folklore studies (also known as folkloristics) by folklore scholars based in universities and colleges around the world. Those who lead the American Folklore Society and thereby help shape the future of the discipline need to understand these dynamics and to set policy related to them as well as to foster educational activities related to them.

(4) LLM and other AI tools are being adopted and put to use widely at present. This uptake is already transforming social life and having significant environmental and economic effects. Because folklorists are social scientists and humanists who study and intervene in the social world, it is crucial that they understand these environmental and economic effects and share their own work in relation to them. Those who lead the American Folklore Society and thereby help shape the future of the discipline need to understand these dynamics and to set policy related to them as well as to foster educational activities related to them.

With these four themes described, you can compute a response using your own LLM models.

Copilot: Great, thank you for outlining these key concerns. Let’s begin crafting the essay. Here’s a draft that incorporates your themes:

The Risks Posed by LLM-Based AI Tools: A Call to Action for the American Folklore Society

The advent of large language model (LLM) based AI tools has ushered in a new era of technological advancement, promising unprecedented capabilities in data processing and information dissemination. However, these tools also pose significant risks, particularly to disciplines such as folklore studies. As members of the American Folklore Society (AFS), it is imperative that we critically examine these risks and develop strategies to mitigate them. This essay outlines four major concerns that demand our immediate attention and action.

1. Unconsented Use of Scholarly Work

One of the most pressing issues is the manner in which LLM training data has been sourced. Many LLMs have been trained on vast datasets that include writings produced by individuals without their consent. This includes the work of folklore studies scholars, whose contributions to open access initiatives have inadvertently increased their exposure to such data enclosure. The ethos of open access, championed by many folklorists, has been exploited, leading to the unauthorized use of their intellectual property. The AFS must recognize these dynamics and advocate for policies that protect the rights of scholars, ensuring that their work is not co-opted without permission.

2. Exploitation of Cultural Knowledge

Folklorists have long been dedicated to documenting and sharing the knowledge of diverse communities around the world. This often involves entextualizing the words and experiences of non-scholars, with a commitment to ethical practices that respect the source communities. However, the integration of this cultural knowledge into LLM training data, often without the knowledge or consent of the communities involved, represents a profound breach of trust. Many folklorists have assured their consultants that their contributions would not be used for profit, yet these assurances are undermined by the current practices of AI developers. The AFS must address this issue by setting stringent policies and fostering educational initiatives that emphasize the ethical implications of AI use in folklore studies.

3. Transformation of Higher Education

The impact of LLM and other AI tools on higher education is already being felt, with significant implications for the teaching of folklore studies. These technologies are reshaping pedagogical approaches, research methodologies, and the overall academic landscape. Folklore scholars must navigate this rapidly changing environment, balancing the potential benefits of AI tools with the need to maintain the integrity of their discipline. The AFS has a crucial role to play in guiding this transition, developing policies that support the responsible integration of AI in academia, and providing resources to help educators adapt to these new challenges.

4. Broader Societal Impacts

Beyond the confines of academia, the widespread adoption of LLM and other AI tools is transforming social life, with significant environmental and economic effects. As social scientists and humanists, folklorists are uniquely positioned to study and intervene in these transformations. The environmental costs of AI, including the substantial energy consumption required for training and operating LLMs, are a growing concern. Additionally, the economic implications, such as job displacement and the creation of new forms of labor, must be critically examined. The AFS should lead efforts to understand these impacts, encouraging research that explores the intersection of AI, society, and the environment, and advocating for policies that promote sustainable and equitable technological development.

Conclusion

The risks posed by LLM-based AI tools are multifaceted and complex, demanding a proactive and informed response from the American Folklore Society. By addressing the unconsented use of scholarly work, the exploitation of cultural knowledge, the transformation of higher education, and the broader societal impacts, the AFS can help shape a future where AI technologies are used ethically and responsibly. It is incumbent upon us, as stewards of cultural heritage and advocates for ethical scholarship, to lead this charge and ensure that the values of our discipline are upheld in the face of technological change.

Please review this draft and let me know if there are any adjustments or additional points you’d like to include.

JBJ: I have only one request. In section “4. Broader Societal Impacts” you evoke, as expected, “substantial energy consumption”. Could you add language related to the environmental issue of water consumption in AI computing? It is acceptable for this addition to make the essay slightly longer.

Copilot: Certainly! Here is the revised section with the addition regarding water consumption:

4. Broader Societal Impacts

Beyond the confines of academia, the widespread adoption of LLM and other AI tools is transforming social life, with significant environmental and economic effects. As social scientists and humanists, folklorists are uniquely positioned to study and intervene in these transformations. The environmental costs of AI are substantial, including the significant energy consumption required for training and operating LLMs. Additionally, the water consumption associated with cooling data centers is a critical issue, as it places further strain on already limited water resources. These environmental impacts necessitate a thorough examination and responsible management. Furthermore, the economic implications, such as job displacement and the creation of new forms of labor, must be critically examined. The AFS should lead efforts to understand these impacts, encouraging research that explores the intersection of AI, society, and the environment, and advocating for policies that promote sustainable and equitable technological development.

Please review this updated draft and let me know if there are any further adjustments or additional points you’d like to include.

JBJ: Thank you. May I have your permission to share this with text readers, citing you (Copilot) as the co-author?

Copilot: I’m glad you found the essay helpful! You are welcome to share the essay with your readers. While I don’t require formal citation, you can certainly mention that you used Microsoft Copilot to assist in crafting the essay. If you need any further assistance or revisions, feel free to ask!

JBJ: Thank you!

Copilot: You’re very welcome! If you need any more assistance in the future, feel free to reach out. Good luck with your essay!

A Note to Human Readers

Thank you for your patience with me (JBJ) in this, my most recent experiment with LLM-based AI. You should know that I engage in such experiments sparingly because on the one hand, I really do not wish to be doing this and, on the other hand, I really feel the need to understand these tools, which have already dramatically changed my job and the lives of all of those around me and in my own egocentric and sociocentric networks.

Hopefully readers will realize that what I would say unassisted by co-pilot would be different. Co-pilot is not human and therefore co-pilot does not actually believe anything, but reading the text that Co-pilot strung together one work prediction at a time might suggest that co-pilot has opinions. If Co-pilot had the opinions expressed/suggested, then Co-pilot and I would agree on some points and disagree on others. Where we agree, it is because the system is drawing upon my prompts and trying to give me what I am asking for. Where we disagree it is because the system is drawing upon its own predictive algorithms and training data to produce what it thinks is the statistically most likely statements. An example early in Co-pilot’s text is “promising.” I certainly would not, on my own, say promising. But take note: the training data and algorithms “know” us and such systems are getting more sophisticated in reflecting what we know all the time. That is part of the point here. If you need an example of this, search for the phrase “source community” in section 2. This is not everyday English. This is a term of art specific to museum anthropology and museum-focused folklore studies. It has only been in active disciplinary use since the publication in 2003 of Laura Peers and Alison Brown’s edited book Museums and Source Communities.

Before publishing this AI-dependent post, I donated to the Native American Rights Fund, which supports federally recognized Native American nations in the US in defending water and water rights. I invite you to learn more about NARF and its water work here: https://narf.org/cases/tribal-water-institute

Image sourced from https://icon-icons.com/icon/artificial-intelligence-robot/101984 via a search for CC licensed content.

Feb 19

Tomorrow! Workshop on Social Media and Academic Freedom

Social media panel discussion flyer

Oct 12

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On the Digital Practices in History and Ethnography Interest Group: An Invitation

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

New members are invited to join the Digital Practices in History and Ethnography Interest Group (DPHE-IG) in the Research Data Alliance (RDA), an international initiative to facilitate the development of effective data practices, standards, and infrastructure in particular research areas, and across research areas–aiming to enhance capacity to archive, preserve, analyze, and share data, and for collaboration both within and across research communities.

RDA’s DPHE-IG works to advance data standards, practices and infrastructure for historical and ethnographic research, contributing to broader efforts in the digital humanities and social sciences.  Bi-weekly calls move the work of the group forward.  Many meetings are “project shares” during which someone leading a digital project describes their efforts and challenges. Some calls are with other RDA groups (such as the Provenance Interest Group), aiming to draw their expertise into our work in history and ethnography.

Our call-in meetings are on Tuesdays, 1:00 p.m. EST; see our schedule through May 2015, and let us know if you would like to share a project. Also see our annual report of activities, including a list of project shares thus far.

RDA holds two plenary meetings each year at which interests group can meet, and interact with other interest groups.  The next plenary is in San Diego, California and will be held on March 9-11, 2015.

Please join the group (just below the calendar here) [its free] and pass on this information to others who may be interested.  We would especially appreciate help reaching people outside Europe and North America.

Jason Baird Jackson (Indiana University), Mike Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), Kim Fortun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), co-chairs

(Contact me if I can answer any questions that you might have about DPHE–Jason)

May 23

Reflections and Reports on Open Access Published in the New Issue of Cultural Anthropology (@culanth)

The new, May 2014 issue of Cultural Anthropology is out now. It is the second issue of the journal to be made freely available online, which means anyone with internet access can read it. (Hurray.) In support of the journal’s commitment to understanding and pursuing open access approaches to scholarly communication, the new issue has a dedicated section of peer-reviewed contributions focused on open access in the journal publishing realm.

I am happy be one of the contributors to this section. Ryan Anderson and I revised and updated an earlier interview on open access that we did together. We calibrated the new version to contemporary circumstances, included specific discussions of the Cultural Anthropology case, and sketched a critical anthropology of contemporary scholarly communications practices. It was exciting not only to revise the interview but to improve it on the basis of appreciated peer-review. We think of the piece as an experiment in genre too, as the interview was a textual co-construction in which we revised and altered each others’ words with the goal of creating the most useful resource that we could. It began as a true interview, but did not end there. (In this, its inspiration was an earlier Cultural Anthropology piece on open access “Cultural Anthropology of/in Circulation.”) The interview’s primary function among the other pieces is as an introduction to open access practices. We hope that it is useful in this role. We appreciate everyone who has already expressed kind appreciation for the piece.

There are many great pieces in the open access section (see list below). I am only now reading the other articles in the issue. Charles’ Briggs’s “Dear Dr. Freud” is compelling.

A key thing about the way that the Society for Cultural Anthropology is doing its journal and website is that the site is a rich hub for content both in support of the journal and extending well beyond it. Articles are often richly supplemented with interviews, images, and media and there are also opinion pieces, shorter works, photo galleries and much additional content. While Chris Kelty is present in the open access section of the journal, I want to call attention to his even newer opinion piece, which was published today. In it, he makes a strong case for the adoption of Creative Commons licenses for Cultural Anthropology going forward. I share his views.

There is lots to read in the new issue. Here are the open access pieces.

I really like the Glossary. It allowed me to get a definition of FUD into the pages of Cultural Anthropology! (Learning the term was the only good thing about the PRISM fiasco, an episode that seems so long ago now.)

The issue is receiving a good bit of discussion on Twitter but, as so often happens, there will probably be only a tiny amount of commenting on the journal site–even though there is great infrastructure in place to allow for it. I invite everyone to prove me wrong. Be brave and leave a comment on any of the papers.

Thank you to @culanth editors Anne Allison and Charles Piot for their hard work and for including the piece that Ryan and I did. Thanks as well to @culanth Managing Editor Tim Elfenbein for his hard work on the issue.

Feb 20

Check Out the New Anthropod Podcast on Open Access

I really enjoyed listening to the new Anthropod podcast on open access in anthropology. Focusing on the move of Cultural Anthropology to an open access model, hosts Bascom Guffin and Jonah S Rubin have done a great job with the podcast. I urge everyone to check out their well produced conversations with Sean Dowdy (of Hau), Alex Golub (of Savage Minds and many OA discussions), Brad Weiss (past SCA President), and Timothy Elfenbein (Cultural Anthropology Managing Editor).

Find it in context here: http://www.culanth.org/fieldsights/492-8-can-scholarship-be-free-to-read-cultural-anthropology-goes-open-access

Aug 10

An Inaugural Voyage for the IQ-Wall at MMWC with @lichtensmbw and the Freshmen of COLL-S 104

Detailed accounts of the MMWC’s partnership with University Information Technology Services and its Advanced Visualization Lab will come in time, but I cannot resist quickly sharing here this tweet from @MathersMuseum from earlier in the day.

The course kicking off the IQ-Wall era at MMWC is COLL-S 104, The Struggle for Civil Rights: Reacting to the Past, an Intensive Freshman Seminar taught by MMWC guest curator Alex Lichtenstein.

Unless you are social media adverse, you really should be following MMWC on Facebook and Twitter so that you can keep up with all that is happening at the museum. Thanks to everyone who is supporting the museum’s continued growth and development.

Jul 31

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The MMWC Newsletter and Other Infrastructure: Building our Bazaar

mmwc1_Page_1

The Mathers Museum of World Cultures (MMWC) has a new newsletter. The cover for MMWC #1 is shown above. Clicking on it should take you to the whole issue as it appears on the online publishing platform Issuu. To add the newsletter to your hoard of PDFs, you can download it from the MMWC website download it here. For the long haul, we will soon add the newsletter to the museum’s “community” in the IUScholarWorks Repository.

Before talking about the newsletter as infrastructure, I want to thank MMWC Assistant Director Judy Kirk for her great work getting it edited and launched. This is a small summer issue that recaps some recent MMWC developments. A forward-looking fall issue will follow it very soon. While thanking Judy, I want to also thank the whole MMWC community–staff, volunteers, students, researchers, advisory board members, donors–for the work that we begin reporting in this first issue of the newsletter.

One of the museum’s accomplishments of the first half of 2013 was the establishment of an ambitious strategic plan. One thread running through that plan is work aimed at putting into place a range of kinds of museum “infrastructure.” Some of this will be very visible to the museum’s friends and supporters, other kinds of infrastructure will help the museum do its behind-the-scenes work more effectively. As I can, I will try to tell the story of our infrastructure work here. I have found the public reporting of my colleagues and of peer-institutions extremely helpful and my aim here is to reciprocate in appreciation for what I have learned from them. (For a recent example, consider this great account of the building of a teaching lab at the Penn Museum.) Read more

Dec 5

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Two Reasons to Love the University of Nebraska Press @UnivNebPress

Visitors to this site will know that I am involved in a range of projects relating to reform in the scholarly communication system. University presses are a key part of that system. They bring to the current moment a lot of durable skills, values, and useful practices and they have the potential to play a key role in innovating the future.

In this note, I want to put on my author hat and celebrate two modest practices–one a tradition and the other an innovation–in the work of the University of Nebraska Press, the press that I have historically worked most closely with.

Part One: Some Things Never Go Out of Style

As an editor of a small scholarly journal with a reviews program, I spend a lot of time with what used to be called (and sometimes still are called) tear sheets. The term’s origins are in commercial advertising, but it extends logically to journal-based publishing of things like book reviews. When a publisher sends a new book to a journal in the hopes that it will be reviewed, it asks (among other things) that a journal that actually does publish a review send a copy of the final published review to the press’ attention. In the older days (and, in some cases, still today) the obligation was to send two (sometimes more) paper copies of the review to the press’ attention. These days, this task is most often accomplished electronically by sending a PDF of the published review to the attention of the relevant press’ marketing staff. The old name tear sheet refers to actual sheets of paper (with advertisements to send to buyers or reviews to send to publishers) torn from the relevant print edition so that they could then be mailed. (BTW: Shame on those journals who do not live up to their end of this bargain.)

When the reviews get to the press, there are a number of things that can be done with them. It is common for them to be harvested for favorable quotes that get added to a book’s page on the press’ website. In more elaborate operations, such quotes get pushed out to sites like Amazon. A acquisitions editor can use the incoming reviews to guide the development of their “list.” In aggregate, reviews tell editors what kinds of works (and which authors) are being well received. Such intellectual indicators complement quantitative measures as sales numbers.

At the University of Nebraska Press a tradition that many other presses have abandoned is also maintained. It is one that promotes tremendous goodwill with authors and, by extension, furthers the press’ reputation among potential authors. Judging by my experience (I have never discussed the practice with UNP staff.), the UNP marketing staff forwards incoming reviews to authors for their interest and use. Even in an era of such things as Google Alerts, this is a tremendous help to authors. In the wake of the publication of Yuchi Ceremonial Life, copies of these reviews–neatly annotated by press staff with date and place of publication–were mailed to me as they came in. Today, via email, I got from the press a PDF copy of the Chronicle of Higher Education book note appearing in the wake of Yuchi Indian Histories Before the Removal Era. This is such a wonderful courtesy. If the new (edited) book is reviewed, I will really appreciate learning of this from the press. Even today, not all journals are richly woven into the digital infrastructure and thus the press will sometimes know of a review before I will. When I mention that UNP does this for authors, all my colleagues are jealous, as few of them have experienced such attention from the presses with which they work. This service is especially valuable to pre-tenure scholars for whom reviews are a crucial resource in route to their tenure cases.

In a time in which academic author have new choices, old courtesies like this can go a long way in maintaining strong relationships with authors.

Part Two: New Things Done the Right Way

Increasingly, university presses aim to promote awareness of their titles by making sample chapters available for free via their websites. This is an inevitable outgrowth of broader practices, such as the views inside books available on sites like Amazon. Typically university presses simply (and it is not exactly simple, of course) make this material available as a PDF download from inside the press’ website on the book’s page. This is a logical thing to do, but it is also a very temporary thing to do, as press websites (like most websites) are very unstable and ephemeral things. They are breeding grounds for link rot and they just do not measure up as preservation environments.

If a press is going to let a sample chapter loose into the digital world, it should do this in a way that advances all of the goals of scholarly communication. This means that if content is going to be freely available, it should be made freely available according to professional best practices. This means curated carefully in a digital environment with attention directed to preservation, metadata, stable URLs, etc.

Kudos and thanks, in this context, to the University of Nebraska Press for working with DigitalCommons @ University of Nebraska-Lincoln (the university’s institutional repository) to make such samples permanently and properly available (with a great cover sheet and good metadata) for the long haul.. I was happy to learn about this effort when I found the introduction to Yuchi Indian History Before the Removal Era deposited there. As such samples clearly generate sales, these practices are self-interested as well as in the interest of the public good.

In a word, thanks to everyone at the University of Nebraska Press for your work to preserve what is good about university presses while we discover new paths forward.

Feb 13

Something I Would Really Like You to Read: Codacorolla on Public Libraries Today

I believe that William Gibson is usually correct when he says that “the future is already here, it is just not very evenly distributed yet.” In the spirit of that sentiment, there is something seemingly ephemeral that I would really like you to read. You (whomever you are) are really busy and cannot be constantly badgered to go off on literary wild goose chases, so I promise not to make such special pleas all the time.

The consistently smart and helpful Miriam Posner pointed me (and her other twitter followers) to a comment made recently on a MetaFilter post dealing with:

California rejects top rate tax increase, removes all state funding for CA libraries. Funding cut for “literacy programs, InterLibrary Loans, and miscellaneous expenses such as librarian training programs and books.

You do not need to read the whose ensemble of posts and comments to get to the piece that I would like you to read. The comment, which very vividly evokes the state of public libraries and public librarians, is by librarian and MLS graduate student “codacorolla” and it can be found here:

http://www.metafilter.com/112698/California-Dreamin#4183210

I hope that someone reading this post chooses to read this comment and to factor the bigger situation that it evokes into their commitments as a citizen.

Jan 17

Joining the SOPA Blackout

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA H.R. 3261), the Protect IP Act (PIPA S. 968) and the Research Works Act (H.R. 3699) are terrible proposed laws that, if enacted, will greatly harm the public interest. If I can make things work, Shreds and Patches will be offline tomorrow (1/18) as part of the wider SOPA Blackout. Get online and learn more about these proposals and their likely impacts. Here is a video to get started with.

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