On AI at the APA

Over at the blog of the American Philosophical Association, I rant a bit about how using chatbots shirks the work of philosophical writing and reading. You can read it over there (by clicking the link) or here (below the fold).

It’s part of the APA’s AI and Teaching series. Thanks to Will Fraker, who edits the series, for some helpful pushback on bits here and there.

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Citing “Injustice”

My paper with Emmie Malone, Popular Music and Art-interpretive Injustice, has appeared in a recent issue of Inquiry. Here’s a sentence from the conclusion, which can serve as a pull quote:

We hope the examples we have given make an initial case for adding to the already crowded field of philosophical terms that take the form ‘some adjective injustice.’

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I said a thing

At Scientific American, Meghan Bartels reflects on Wikipedia at age 25. The story includes some discussion of my research as well as a quote from me.

I took media training a while ago, but this is really the first time I’ve ever been interviewed by someone in the press about my work. It’s a bit ironic, since the work on Wikipedia really didn’t count toward my tenure. It was just this extra thing I did, over and above the research that made the case for my promotion.

Five degrees of separation

In a footnote to the previous post, I suggested that a recent collaboration would lower my Erdős Number to 5.

On the basis of having checked a long time ago, I knew that my Erdős Number was at most 6 on account of having coauthored with Craig Callender.

Since then, however, Craig has also collaborated with more people. So his Erdős Number went down to 4 years ago, meaning that mine was already 5 or less. The new paper just means that there are multiple paths by which I’m entitled to an Erdős Number of 5.1

Updated drafts with ten different coauthors

Updated drafts posted in the last few weeks:

* Who’s sorry now: User preferences among Rote, Empathic, and Explanatory apologies from LLM chatbots, with Zahra Ashktorab, Alessandra Buccella, Jason D’Cruz, Zoë Fowler, Andrew Gill, Kei Leung, John Richards, and Kush R. Varshney2

* Chatbot apologies: Beyond bullshit, with Alessandra Buccella and Jason D’Cruz

* Music genres as historical individuals, with Emmie Malone and Brandon Polite

And 1000 screaming Argonauts

My exchange with Brandon Polite, from last summer’s author meets critic session, has now been publised in Contemporary Aesthetics.

I’ve posted a draft of a paper about They Might Be Giants (in particular) and art interpretation (in general). Is context infinite, like the Longines Symphonette? If you happen to take a look, feedback is welcome.