By Gordon Hull In a couple of previous posts (first, second), I looked at what I called the implicit normativity in Large Language Models (LLMs) and how that interacted with Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF).  Here I want to start to say something more general, and it seems to me like Derrida is a…

By Gordon Hull I first listened to the Pogues late in high school.  I had started moving beyond the music I could hear on the radio – basically top 40 and classic rock – and I discovered the Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy and the Lash at about the same time I discovered Midnight Oil’s Diesel and…

By Gordon Hull Over the course of a few posts (first, second, third), I’ve been exploring the question of what Foucault means when he refers disparagingly to “Chardino-Marxism” in a mid-1960s interview, comparing it unfavorably to what Althusser and his circle are doing.  Although the “Chardino” part refers to Teilhard de Chardin, it’s fairly clear…

Recall that ChatGPT a couple of months ago did a total face plant on the topic of Kierkegaard's knight of faith from the knight of infinite resignation.  Well, with the fullness of time and an upgrade, it's a lot better now: (screen grabs below the fold)

You know how sometimes your students don't do the reading?  And then how, when you give them a writing prompt based on it, they try to guess their way to a good answer from the everyday meaning of the words in the prompt?  And how, sometimes, the outcome is spectacularly, wonderfully wrong? Well, I don't…

The MA Program at UNC Charlotte has a number of funded lines for our two-year MA program in philosophy.  We're an eclectic, practically-oriented department that emphasizes working across disciplines and philosophical traditions.  If that sounds like you, or a student you know – get in touch!  You can email me (ghull@uncc.edu), though for a lot…

I wrote a piece a little more than a year ago about how intellectual property rights are getting in the way of global vaccine equity, condemning a lot of people to die in lower-income countries.  There have been various initiatives to address the situation.  A piece in Nature by Amy Maxmen today highlights somewhat encouraging…

First read this piece by Abeba Birhane, who warns about neocolonial exploitation of people in Africa by AI and big tech. Then read this detailed account of content moderation for Facebook in Kenya and abuse of the workers involved.

This is not what critical race theory says: "Critical race theory, Guelzo says, is a subset of critical theory that began with Immanuel Kant in the 1790s. It was a response to — and rejection of — the principles of the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason on which the American republic was founded. Kant…

Among the indefinitely many evil things the Trump administration has done that will take years and years to fix (and in this case has undoubtedly cost many lives already).  Propublica has the story.