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I read this as part of a reading group on campus - the group included faculty and staff interested in how to approach teaching and learning in the wake of LLMs. The book is essentially just a manual of how to teach, in general. The idea is that good teaching is the best way to combat "cheating." A return to things like writing in class, paper-based assignments, oral exams, etc. are some of what's offered.

But the book also uses GPT at points, I guess as a way to incorporate the tool into the authors' process and to perform a way of adopting the tech in some way.

The book also makes a strange argument that it is up to instructors to protect "assessment integrity" and thus the value of degrees and institutions. This is not how I think about the problem at all, but maybe I'm crazy? I'm invested in providing interesting learning opportunities to students, but I don't see myself as being responsible for protecting the institution. And if students aren't into the opportunities I'm providing, that's mostly something I have to accept. They are spending time and money on an education - if they just want the credential, I think that's a huge bummer. But I see that as a social failure and not something I am responsible for trying to fix in the classroom.

I remain skeptical that these tools can do much of anything that is good, and I am 100% convinced they are damaging to those who are learning new skills.

Another book chosen by a student in my class for their extra credit assignment. Somehow, I've never read this.

I think fiction like this will probably become more important in the coming years, but I also think we have no idea what stories we should be telling about AI. These days, I'm much more interested in what artists and writers have to say about AI than what engineers have to say about it. This book eventually arrives at a discussion that feels like a debate between religion and secularism: a robot that insists that it contains multitudes in conversation with a human who insists that they are in search of their one "purpose." The human character feels, at times, flatter and more cliche than the robot, but I wonder if my reading of these characters is too shaped by my own resistance to the idea that one needs a single purpose in life.

Here's another one I'm reading as part of the student extra credit assignment I offered. I haven't read a Stephen King book in a very long time. Here we go.