Disclaimer: For all intents and purposes, especially for the purposes of a legal matter, all of the following is a joke. Again, any references to any hypothetical theft, piracy, or crimes (punishable by law within the fifty states of the United States of America) are purely hypothetical scenarios made in jest in order to entertain an audience. The persons and events in this blog are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons or events is unintentional. Please don’t sue or arrest me. I’m broke and too pretty for jail.
Anywhoseits, on a completely unrelated note, I refuse to pay the NYT, or any other major news corporation for that matter, any amount of money in order to read a document. (And before you say anything, the writers have already been paid! Any money I hypothetically did not spend on the subscription would have gone to the the shareholders and upper management.) It’s also just so much fun. If you wonder where I get this sentiment from, please watch the video below.
In order to circumvent this, I may have, possibly, allegedly, hypothetically, stolen a bunch of articles for my thesis. I currently, may, have about 45 articles hidden in a google drive folder. I definitely didn’t do this by clicking on the article then hitting command+A before the paywall arose. And I would never open up a blank google doc and paste everything into that. And I most certainly didn’t go through each article to get rid of the ads and find more victims articles. I definitely wouldn’t recommend anyone do the same.
“Freedom is so much the essence of man that even its opponents implement it while combating its reality; they want to appropriate for, themselves as a most precious ornament what they have rejected as an ornament of human nature.” -Karl Marx
How’d that get there?
Now that I have finished my, entirely hypothetical, warning of what not to do when finding sources, let me get to what I have actually done.
So, for those who don’t know, my plan is to write a speculative horror fiction anthology focusing on the impact LLMs are having within writing centric spaces. I am drawing inspiration from works like Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, and The News (Dun Dun duhhhh). By “The News” I mean that I only want to use events that have already happened or have a foundation in things already happening, similar to the approach Atwood took to Handmaid’s Tale.
““Somebody asked me on Twitter recently, ‘How do you come up with this shit?’ My answer was, ‘It’s not me who has come up with it, it’s the human race over the past 4,000 years.’” – Margaret Atwood
The section I am working on right now hits particularly close to home. The chapter follows a teacher who, over the course of a year, is replaced by the very AI she trained. There are a few precedents I am drawing on as inspiration for this story.
- There is a large push in the education field to integrate AI into both our professional practices and the classroom. We are being told to use programs like Chat and Magic school to create resources, lesson plans, and activities for our classroom. At the same time, they are telling us to have students use AI chat rooms for activities and project creation.
- Earlier this year, Melania Trump praised AI in the field of education and suggested that it could/should replace teachers in the classroom. (Which is ironic, coming from one of two first ladies who hasn’t completed a degree since 1897.)
- While Linda McMahon disagrees that teachers should be replaced, she does cosign that it should be integrated into the curriculum and classroom environment. (Also ironic, considering the fact that she has never actually taught a class.)
My general virtial for the government aside, the move towards AI being a staple in the classroom is terrifying.
So the plan is to draw on that sense of dread that I experience that keeps me up every night, staring into the dark abyss, contemplating my existence. Write what you know and what not.
I want to give a special shout out to Dr. Sisler! Dr. Sisler has helped me a lot with establishing a basis for the research. She was nice enough to send me some links to articles (for legal purposes, these links are completely unrelated to any links mentioned in the prior, completely made up, story.) that really helped when it came down to a starting point for the research.
I’m having fun writing it, so far, and I’m excited for what the other stories have in store.
Until next time, Dear Reader.
