Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) has fundamentally disrupted one of higher education’s most enduring pedagogical tools: the essay. For centuries, the essay has served as both a means of learning and a method of assessment, asking students to demonstrate research skills, critical thinking, argument construction, and disciplinary knowledge through extended written work. The arrival of tools […]
The field of Syriac Digital Humanities continues to advance rapidly, moving from basic text recognition (as discussed in my previous posts on OCR/HTR, particularly our launch of the first public Syriac HTR model on Transkribus: From Vienna to the World…) into the realm of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). Today’s post explores a powerful new possibility: […]
The scientific aim of the Islam West Africa Collection (IWAC) was primarily to compile a corpus of press articles, an under-used type of sources, for two research projects: 1-Youth and Women’s Islamic Activism in Côte d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso; 2- Muslim Minorities in Benin and Togo.This open-access database provides access to press clippings from the […]
My friends are generally optimistic, forward-looking people, but talking about AI makes many of them depressed. Either AI is scarier than other technologies, or public conversation about it has failed them in some way. Or both. I think the problem is not just that people have legitimate concerns. What’s weird and depressing about AI discourse […]
On June 3, 2025, the University of Baltimore hosted its second AI Summit, organized by the university’s Center for Excellence in Learning, Teaching, and Technology (CELTT). The event, as described by the organizers, was “an in-depth exploration of artificial intelligence’s transformative impact across sectors, with a particular focus on workforce development, educational adaptation, and responsible […]
There’s a fascinating piece of research out from Anthropic. Agentic Misalignment: How LLMs could be insider threats. Maybe you’ve seen it doing the rounds this weekend as it landed on Friday I think. There’s a lot of hyperbolic reaction, even for something that merits serious concern. Nevertheless, it seems these things aren’t ready to be […]
