Some News Items and Recent Videos

• Article: Ronald Purser, "AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself" Current Affairs (December 2025)

• Video: "It's All Marketing," Dr. Timnit Gebru on the Smoke and Mirrors of AI Hype, with Brenda Darden Wilkerson, (AnitaB.org)

• Video: Karen Hao, for More Perfect Union, "We Investigated Al Psychosis. What We Found Will Shock You" (Oct. 2025)

• Video: Audrey Watters, “I’m sorry. There’s been a misunderstanding.” AMICAL (2025)

  • Watters is the author of Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning (MIT Press, 2023)

• Newsletter: Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant's newsletter

• Roundtable: "Where Does AI Live? Datacenters & Community Impacts," UCR IE Labor & Community Ctr (Dec. 2025)

• Interview: Cory Doctorow: How the internet went to sh*t | Part One of the Prospect Podcast interview (Dec. 2025)

• Interview: Cory Doctorow: How AI is ensh*ttifying the web | Part Two of the Prospect Podcast interview (Dec. 2025)

Some Introductory Videos

• 2023: What is AI? Part 1, with Meredith Whittaker | AI Now Salons

• 2023: What is AI? Part 2, with Lucy Suchman | AI Now Salons

• 2025: Dismantling the Empire of AI, Karen Hao (on Brian Merchant's "Blood in the Machine" page)

• 2025: Are AI Companies Cooking the Books? w/ Sarah Myers West ("The Maybe")

• 2025: Resisting GenAI and Big Tech in Higher Education (Loyola Marymount webinar)

• 2024: Dr. Shaolei Ren (UC Riverside) "AI consumes a lot of water — but why?"

• Find many more recordings here from the AI Now Institute

Some Relevant Books

• Becker, Adam. More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. Basic/Hachette, 2025.

• Bender, Emily M, and Alex Hanna. The AI Con : How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. Harper Collins, 2025.

• Davies, Surekha. Humans: A Monstrous History. UC Press, 2025.

• Doctorow, Cory. Enshittification : Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do about It. Verso, 2025.

• Hao, Karen. Empire of AI : Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI. Penguin, 2025.

• Merchant, Brian. Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. Hachette, 2023.

• Suchman, Lucy. Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions. Cambridge, 2012.

• Watters, Audrey, Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning, MIT, 2021.

Some Web Resources

• AI Now Institute

• Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR)

• 2025 Report: "Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions," American Association of University Professors (AAUP) ad hoc committee on Artificial Intelligence and Academic Professions

• Strange and Wondrous: Notes from a Science Historian, Dr. Surekha Davies newsletter

• Modern Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines (Course, Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West)

• Cartography of Generative AI, by Estampa

• Blood in the Machine, Brian Merchant's newsletter

• European Students' Union Statement on Artificial Intelligence

Some Relevant Popular and Scholarly Articles

• Barajas, Julia. "Inside Cal State's big $17 million bet on ChatGPT for all" LAist (August 19, 2025).

• Nataliya Kosmyna, et al. "Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt When Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task." arXiv preprint arXiv:2506.08872 (2025). PDF link here.

• "Frederikzon, Johan. "Rethinking Error: 'Hallucinations' and Epistemological Indifference" (Critical AI, Duke University Press, 2025)

• "The Impact of the Use of AI on People with Disabilities" (2025), Presidential Task Force on Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies, Co-Chairs: Lorraine McGowen, Edward So, Jerome Walker

• Purser, Ronald. "AI is Destroying the University and Learning Itself" Current Affairs (December 2025).

• Wieczorek, M. "Why AI Will Not Democratize Education: A Critical Pragmatist Perspective." Philosophy & Technology 38, 53 (2025).

Some Relevant Teaching Resources

• Rutgers English Department Statement on AI

• Rutgers DESIGN JUSTICE LABS, Critical AI Literacies: A Guide for Students

• Rutgers, Teaching Critical AI Literacy

• San Francisco State Department of Public Health AI Policy

• Example of Syllabus Language on AI Use (Britt Paris, Rutgers)

• Rutgers AAUP-AFT "AI Impacts Statement"

• Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, and Generative AI: Guidelines for Post-Secondary Writing Teachers, Special Committee on Generative AI in College Composition and Writing Studies, Conference on College Composition & Communication