President Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement once billed itself as a response to a radical censorship leftwing agenda, one that the MAGA movement itself is now perpetuating in a deep red state, according to a new report.
Adam Serwer of The Atlantic reported on how Texas Tech University is implementing artificial intelligence to help the university root out suspected “woke” texts from its curriculum, a move that has caused roughly a quarter of the university’s staff to look for work elsewhere. The chatbot was developed in response to a state law that requires academia to represent that there are only two genders, male and female.
At times, the university’s AI chatbot has completely mischaracterized perspectives about certain works and has hallucinated some reasons for excluding material, Serwer noted.
“The difference between ‘advocating’ and ‘teaching’ is not clearly defined, but the way the censorship policy is being implemented makes the situation pretty clear: If you’re using material that state lawmakers agree with, that’s teaching; if you’re talking about something they object to, that’s advocacy, and you have to stop,” Serwer noted.
The university’s use of AI to enforce state law has rankled many of the university’s tenured staff. For instance, Alan Berenberg, who specializes in Soviet Union history, told Serwer that the university’s AI concocted a “completely inaccurate” reason to exclude readings from Princeton historian Joan Scott and the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
“The fact that the system AI doesn’t work, that it makes inaccurate pronouncements—that’s a feature, not a bug. They don’t care if it’s accurate or not. They just want to be able to say, Look, we’re making sure that your children are not being exposed to these horrible ideas from these radical professors,” Barenberg said. “A key part of how authoritarian systems often work is that, through the vagueness and sending up signals and vibes, they’re essentially saying, You know what not to do, but being deliberately vague about it.”
William Wenthe, a poetry professor, told Serwer that the university is demeaning its students by using AI for this purpose.
“They’re old enough to vote. They’re all old enough to fight and die for this country. And you’re treating them like babies,” he said.
Lisa Limeri, a biology professor who recently received tenure, was more curt. “We are not allowed to teach them scientifically, accurately,” she said.
“America has risen to global prominence in science and scientific research because of the strength of our system,” Limeri said. “If these kinds of censorship policies were implemented everywhere, we would have a generation of students who are not learning to think critically, are not learning to think for themselves, and are not learning full and accurate scientific information.”
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