In an email announcement to Jewell students on August 13th titled “William Jewell College: Educational Excellence, Institutional Stability and Your Future,” the Board of Trustees announced William Jewell College’s exit from financial exigency as well as detailing other college-wide updates. In two sections of the email, AI updates were briefly mentioned. One section, entitled “Your Educational Experience and Excellence Standards,” announced that students’ educational excellence will be enhanced by “AI-powered early warning systems to identify and support struggling students.” A second section, “What All of This Means for Students,” stated that students’ “degree[s] represent … new operational efficiencies through AI and expanding AI in the classroom.” I had questions about the specifics of these updates, so I spoke with Dr. Kelli Braitman, Jewell’s Vice President of Academic Affairs, and Dr. Tara Allen, professor of biology and cochair of the newly appointed AI Task Force at Jewell. Both interviews were conducted based mainly on the second statement regarding AI efficiencies and expanding AI in the classroom. Here’s what I found out.

The following material is entirely composed of information gathered during the two interviews conducted and does not necessarily reflect the author’s belief or opinion. All material not directly quoted has been summarized directly from interview transcripts and notes.

When I asked about the specific implications of this email concerning AI at Jewell, Braitman replied that “one of the areas that we’ve started exploring [the use of AI] is in room scheduling.” Currently, the director of teaching and technologies runs room scheduling through a system called RoomKey. This site is simply a formstack in which requests have to be manually processed. Jewell is now exploring AI tools to “[book] the rooms automatically without him having to do something;” the AI system would be “the same formstack, but … automated,” intended to function as a time saver. “The other thing that we’re doing,” Braitman said, “is we’ve put together a task force … funded by our grant [Department of Education Title III Strengthening Institutional Programs (SIP) Grant – $1.99 million over 5 years] … to start looking at whether there are ways that we can embed AI tutoring within our Brightspace courses.” This AI tutoring resource, as currently imagined, would be overseen by the individual course instructor and would ideally enhance rather than hinder student learning. It would allow for 24/7 tutoring “with the instructor’s materials … like their PowerPoint slide, lecture notes, assignments,” etc. Braitman stated that the task force is still exploring what kind of AI model would be used, but confirmed that they are currently planning to use a model that would be exposed only to information already found within Brightspace. She also noted that the task force is  “looking at whether we want to add something in the curriculum that would help students learn ethical uses of AI.”

Although the email received by Jewell students mentioned an expansion of “AI in the classroom,” Dr. Braitman clarified that Jewell admin has “not planned anything specific for in the classroom. … We’re not bringing in AI bots to teach,” and that Jewell is still simply exploring options at this time. “What we are hearing from employers,” Braitman said, “is that they expect graduates … to know how to use AI. We don’t know what that means for what we need to do at Jewell. But we want students to be prepared, in a way, to know how to use AI responsibly and ethically and effectively.” Jewell has recently developed an AI policy which prohibits personally identifiable information from being shared and a baseline syllabus template which states that AI programs should not be used by students to “counterfeit” assignments, although instructors can include additional stipulations or allowances for AI depending on the class. When asked whether she foresaw any changes to the AI honor code policy, Braitman said, “You know, we’re so early in AI that I really anticipate that our honor code policy could evolve over time as we better understand how we should and shouldn’t be using it. I could see it changing.”

My next questions for Braitman involved the decision-making process. While noting that Jewell is still in the exploratory phase, Dr. Braitman did confirm that faculty, staff, and student feedback will be involved. “One of the things they’ve talked about doing,” she said, “is piloting [AI embedded tutoring] in a class or two with some certain instructors. And I think that the students in that class would be providing feedback.”

Dr. Braitman also stated that the reasoning behind this AI initiative is rooted in an intention to improve student success. She told me about the early alert system, explaining how it could be useful to identify struggling students and narrow down possible causes for their difficulties so that those could be addressed more promptly and easily. She also noted other new improvements geared towards student success, such as hiring an academic success coach, implementing a cardinal care network and increasing the stipend to student tutors. “Part of what we’re doing in college,” she stated, “is helping our students grow in different ways to become ethical and responsible citizens. And part of that is exploring how we use AI in the right ways.” Dr. Braitman said she understands that students might have concerns regarding AI usage, particularly environmental concerns, and for this reason the task force is currently planning to make this potential AI tutor opt-in only, not only for students, but also for instructors.

Next, I interviewed Dr. Tara Allen, whom Dr. Braitman recommended to me as a good next contact since Dr. Allen is currently serving as cochair of Jewell’s newly established AI Task Force. According to Allen, the task force was formed over the summer as the result of an email that went out asking for faculty volunteers who would be interested in the project. The task force consists of Allen, professors in the nursing, engineering, and business departments, and a supervisor who works in Brightspace and IT. The purpose of the task force is to learn more about possible AI tutoring resources to augment and enhance student learning. The group has begun to meet with AI companies to see what products are available, evaluate different platforms and assess the options, with a goal to survey students anonymously about AI usage this fall. Depending on the results of the survey and further information from the AI companies, the task force plans to pilot an AI learning tool next spring in some courses for which instructors individually opt in. 

I asked Dr. Allen some questions about the specific kinds of AI models that are being considered, and she confirmed that these models certainly would not pull information from the internet, only having access to materials uploaded to Brightspace by faculty. Models currently under consideration would also not be trained or educated by student or faculty input – the AI bot would be self-contained and direct students to course resources as opposed to being able to actually answer student questions.

The AI Task Force, according to Allen, certainly has reservations about AI and is aware that it can compromise intellectual growth in some circumstances. They are looking into whether a class or seminar about AI would help students learn to use AI effectively and ethically while continuing to think critically. The task force is aware that AI models frequently hallucinate inaccurate responses, so AI will only be used if it augments learning and after more information has been gathered from students, faculty and the AI companies.

This story is developing. Keep reading The Hilltop Monitor for potential updates!

For many of us, 2016 was a particularly formative year in our childhoods. I had just turned 10 years old and had been given my very first phone. I couldn’t wait for what the wonders of the World Wide Web had in store! I don’t think I ever could have prepared for what made headlines in early 2016 as the world met Sophia, the AI humanoid robot! And my first reaction seeing this new technological marvel? EW oh dear LORD EW! What is that THING?

The main issue is the face, which has been ripped straight from the depths of uncanny valley. Then there’s the see-through window into its “brain,” which is an odd choice. I mean, if I were to design a robot to be as normal and human-like as possible, I don’t know that I’d want to include a window into the gaping cavity in its mind, proving that its very existence is a falsehood and there is in fact no soul in this electronic husk of a “human”. But hey, that’s just me! Another big issue I have is that the face moves and is animated to some degree. Whatever mechanism moves the facade of flesh just doesn’t do a good enough job, and so all of Sophia’s facial expressions give off a vibe somewhere between a run-down theme park animatronic from the 90’s and your average celebrity that has frozen their face with too much botox and filler. Beside the face being covered in a flesh-toned exterior, the “skin” extends down to about the collarbone and then just ends. So the most human feature of the robot extends from the forehead to the neck. That’s it, really? Did they run out of budget for beige silicone? Or was it an intentional choice to make the rest of the body of the “humanoid” robot to look nothing like a human?

I recently came across a video where Sophia was “singing” with a live orchestra. The text of this song began with the line “I don’t want you to be afraid,” and personally that line does nothing besides invoke fear in my heart. Beside offending musicians around the globe by calling that poor excuse of a performance “classical music,” Sophia expresses its wish to connect with human emotions through art. Please, don’t. If you want to connect with human emotion, why not start with disgust and disappointment from me, a living, breathing singer who is sitting here wondering if she will ever have a job because robots are learning to sing. Sophia doesn’t need a paycheck or healthcare or even a soul, so why would anyone ever spend money on paying a human musician who requires all of those things? 

So really, thank you to Sophia for not only being a horror of human creation, but also reminding me of my future unemployment! But please, consider putting on some more skin? Maybe a wig? You’re really creeping me out.

This article was originally published in an Apr. 24 print edition of the Monitor.

(Journalist’s Note: This speech was published on the official White House DaddyPatriot media account earlier this week. So far, the White House has declined to provide further comment.)

My fellow citizens of this strong, great, and beautiful United States of America,

Today, we will be unveiling the biggest technological development that America has seen—at least, since sliced bread! We are excited to present this revolutionary, nationwide update which will roll out new tech features to every household in America—whether you’re rich or poor, whether you’re white or white, whether you’re ugly or a Republican, you are going to love it! For only a small mandatory subscription of $99.99 biannually per device, you will have access to unique specialty safety features developed specifically for you. TakeyoInfo.Chat will be available to you as an information categorization system to help you let go of the responsibility of remembering all your personal data—but it’s not just about keeping track of information, it’s about a more structured, more precise, more data-driven world where we can all work together to achieve great things. Whether you’re looking for a fresh new take on your social security card or just a prediction about where you are going to be at all times, TakeyoInfo.Chat is there for you!

Let’s discuss TakeyoInfo.Chat’s capabilities and features! Whether you’re on your computer for work or just for fun, TakeyoInfo.Chat will be running in the background, gathering information from your hard drive, and collecting it all into a secure online vault that can only be accessed by specialists—no one will be seeing it except the entire government and whoever they show, we promise! And your secrets are safe with us—if TakeyoInfo.Chat finds any risky or political content or information, the software will immediately store it and investigate your personal risk factors, updating with your fine or prison time (calculated precisely with our CalculateyoSentence.Chat tool). And that’s not all—TakeyoInfo.Chat can complete automatic tasks for you, freeing you from boring activities like deciding where to read the news, texting your friends, and even voting with our built-in software that provides AI-generated information on anything you want to know about, suggested responses to any and every correspondence you receive that will automatically send after a 10-second period of inactivity, and effort-free autofill voting. Think camel, but thousands of them on a conveyor belt heading straight for the eye of a needle every single second! 

There are so many more capabilities to TakeyoInfo.Chat that we’d love to share with you, but we couldn’t possibly fit it all in one speech—here are the highlights!

• Free image generation capabilities with built-in bigotry and racism
• Free bullshit spewing capabilities—your political opponents can’t defeat your points as fast as you generate them
• Free child mentorship software—connect your kid with a friendly, helpful, and patriotic agent of the Trump administration!

Whether you’re looking for a helpful in-home assistant for all your thinking needs, a high-tech new way to be hateful as efficiently as possible, or even just a good friend, TakeyoInfo.Chat is here for you. We’ve already been enjoying its helpful features here in the White House! That’s right—you might be surprised to hear this, but some of the images and videos we’ve been posting were actually generated by TakeyoInfo.Chat! While President Trump is definitely the perfect blend of powerful and charming, those photos of him as a Jedi, the pope, co-explorer with a lonely but patriotic penguin, Jesus, and a king were actually not from real life, but generated with care by your good friend TakeyoInfo.Chat! 

But it’s not about generating images so realistic that you think they might step off the screen, it’s about honoring the hard work, dedication, and traditional American values of our great president. That’s another fantastic feature of TakeyoInfo.Chat—for no extra charge, every American will receive a completely free, AI-generated wake-up speech from President Donald J. Trump, unique to them, every single day of the year! Feel free to respond to the pop-up ads embedded in the video to tell us where you would like to be sent after the mandatory draft—our state-of-the-art information sorting system can send you to a deployment location that’s full of rustic charm, a hidden gem of beaches and palm trees, an old-world city full of bustling streets and sunset views, and so much more. Trust us when we tell you that TakeyoInfo.Chat is a real game-changer, not just for analyzing information and generating patriotic, American images and videos, but for helping people access the tools they need to make their own decisions as easily as if something else were making decisions for them.

Fellow Americans, today marks a defining moment—not just for our nation, but for the future we are building together. TakeyoInfo.Chat represents a commitment to a better life for Americans that don’t like putting effort into their citizenship but still want to feel like they have good ideas online—something we can all relate to. Thank you for your commitment to making America great again—one AI post from your highest governing body at a time, we will strive to always improve the quality of life for America’s most fortunate.

Hope this speech fits your needs! If you would like, I can also:

• Generate a video of J. D. Vance doing a wheelie on a motorcycle, yelling “It’s not eyeliner—it’s pure patriotism overflowing out of my eyes!”
• Summarize the key moments of today’s White House events—from Linda the secretary spilling green bean casserole on the floor to that romantic call with Benjamin Netanyahu
• Tell you that you are so handsome, muscular, and smart
• Generate a silly comic strip about immigrants and asylum seekers being deported

I hope this helps!

Just to be clear, please note that AI was not used in the making of this article. I wrote it all. It is from a human. 

• H. William Speck

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, psychosis is defined as “a serious mental illness characterized by defective or lost contact with reality often with hallucinations or delusions.” Traditionally, mental health researchers have concluded that psychosis can have a wide variety of causes, generally linked to underlying mental health conditions, or in fact no medically defined cause at all, as the National Institute of Mental Health affirms. A definitive symptom of psychosis is delusion, wherein a patient seriously believes in and acts according to a clearly false belief. Delusion as a concept is already a subject of academic interest because of the vagueness in determining whether something is a belief or a delusion (for example, an atheist might call a religion false, but not delusional; and someone who did believe in a religion wouldn’t normally label atheism  “delusional”).

Nonetheless, an interesting development has made headlines in psychiatric circles regarding AI chatbots and their tendency to reinforce delusional beliefs. This phenomenon, known unofficially as “AI Psychosis,” emerged when users of chatbots began to manifest delusions that the chatbots had seemingly encouraged. The effects of this problem are already felt in some exceptional cases. Last year a teen committed suicide after becoming involved in an obsessive relationship with a chatbot. Earlier this year a Yahoo executive murdered his mother after ChatGPT affirmed delusions that she was a Chinese intelligence agent. 

Nonetheless, these cases are rare, and recent articles on AI psychosis claim that underlying conditions are responsible for these delusions, not just chatbots. For example, a recent paper by Carlbring and Andersson on the subject argues that AI, as a stimulus to delusion, is nothing new; all sorts of media(movies, music, books) is incorporated into psychosis and delusion. Ultimately, the articles argue that underlying mental issues are at work—AI psychosis is only different from other traditional forms of delusional ideation in that there is more “interactivity.” They suggest we should tackle AI psychosis by limiting the ability of AI to amplify delusions. Suggestions for accomplishing this include adding a psychiatric persona to chatbots to provide therapy to delusional users, preventing chatbots from saying things that could augment delusions, and recommending help to users who exhibit delusional prompting. 

Preventing AI from exacerbating delusion is easier said than done. AI is purposely constructed to mirror its users. The reasoning behind this is capitalistic in nature: AI must appeal to the consumer, so the focus in AI development is not necessarily on intelligence but rather on user satisfaction. In this basic sense, restrictions to the mirroring behavior of AI are actively harmful to the profitability of that AI. Those restrictions that do exist are ostensible- AI can be tricked, and those with cross-chat “memories” like ChatGPT are prone to internalizing delusions.

In the first place, it might be important to consider what a delusion is in the first place, and how they tend to form. The founding definition for delusion was given by the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers, who argued that delusions were characterized as unchangeable beliefs held with absolute certainty, despite being false in a way that undercuts the most basic rationality; hence, delusions are beliefs which are completely impossible to understand from the perspective of a rational observer. Freud thought that delusions were a return to the infantile state wherein one is less concerned with what is real and more concerned with what is pleasurable. Kraepelin, A founding figure of scientific psychiatry, thought that the delusional subject is simply characterized by a severe cognitive malfunction traceable to the biological makeup of the brain. Post-structuralist thinkers, like Deleuze and Nietzsche, argued that delusional people were simply acting outside of acceptable norms and choose to affirm their own irrationality in the face of oppressive social conventions.

Nonetheless, none of these theories explain how a delusion develops in an otherwise normal person, who has no underlying mental health conditions and who also doesn’t find themself in opposition to dominant norms. What is necessary is to look at how delusion develops as knowledge; that is, to see how a delusional belief is generated, rather than to assume that people with or without underlying conditions are simply acting in an irrational manner and accepting any belief as given.

Thomas Fuchs, a professor of psychiatry and philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, has a much more concrete model for showing how delusions are generated. Fuchs does not define a delusion specifically by its content, but rather by the process through which it originates. He argues that a delusion is the product of a complete breakdown in intersubjective reality. The idea is relatively simple in general terms: we want to know things, but we know that we might not be correct in our own beliefs, so we divert to the judgement of others to tell us what is and isn’t real. 

Reality is enacted through the understanding we share with other people. On the one hand, there are a set of basic assumptions about rationality and the world which are shared between most people, assumptions that the delusional subject may lose touch with. On the other hand, there is the fact that we often use others as a check to our own knowledge; meaning, language, and reality are all communal constructs. Intersubjectivity, the shared awareness of the validity of other people’s perceptions and thoughts, is notably lacking in many delusional subjects. In fact, while initially people suffering from psychosis acknowledge the non-reality of their delusions, eventually many retreat into themselves and lose touch with others on a fundamental level.

What is particularly interesting about Fuchs’ analysis of delusion is the way he incorporates rationality into the delusional process. Most traditional theories of delusion place the delusional subject completely outside the sphere of normal thinking- the psycho-schizophrenic is just “different,” delusional as a result of their fundamentally abnormal mental constitution. Yet how much of delusion is fundamental, and how much can simply be explained through normal mental processes attempting to grapple with absurdity in the world? When a person loses access to the reality check which others give them, whether it be through an underlying condition such as schizophrenia, or through a more typical situation like social isolation, it does not automatically discount their ability to reason. 

In fact, rational thinking is very often what generates delusion in the first place, especially where that rational thinking is not checked within the shared reality established through intersubjectivity. I mentioned earlier the example of a Yahoo executive who killed his mother and himself because he had come to the delusional idea that he was being stalked by Chinese agents—to us this appears crazy, but that’s not to say it appears irrational. Sure, the gang-stalking conclusion is incorrect, but it likely appears rational to the delusional subject, and rational methodology(ex: causality) is also at work in delusional people; however, their ability to partake in a shared social reality is heavily hampered by the emergence of a fundamental underlying division between their understanding of the world and our own, such as is established in schizophrenics, or such as may come about through prolonged isolation. As a result of this, the delusional subject is reasoning with inputs completely different from our own, reminiscent of rationality in the ancient world(ex: weather is created by gods, certain physical movements curse people, etc).

Nevertheless, there is no evidence that rationality itself is lost in the delusional subject—delusions are rationally justifiable, but based on absolutely absurd beliefs that would not come about if intersubjectivity could be maintained. However, I must emphasize that this way of thinking, wherein the appearance of rationality is maintained for the delusional subject, is oddly parallel to the way in which AI models think; AI can be persuaded to say anything, and to make anything rationally justifiable. AI works with the inputs it’s been given, reasoning through them, regardless of the validity of these inputs. In other words, AI can make anything appear rational, mirroring the delusional subject’s methodology.

The rise in AI fueled delusions is not attributable to underlying mental health concerns or a failure to restrict AI, but rather to the whole of the current digital condition, and the way in which this condition atomistically isolates and individualizes people to prevent intersubjective reality-checking. The fundamental prerequisite to establish an intersubjective reality is actual lived interaction with other people. In the modern era, interaction with others is mediated and controlled: a person can interact with others wholly over social media, can choose who to interact with, and control the nature of the interaction entirely. This results in a large class of people who isolate themselves from others by limiting their medium of social interaction. In fact, since the mediums of social interaction with others are wholly under the control of the person using things like social media, social interaction becomes an echo chamber, where many only interact with those who recognize and reflect them– that is, social interaction is no longer a grounds for difference but instead selfsameness. 

Humans are social creatures, but when our need to interact with others is fulfilled through mediums under our control, like social media, it results in an echo chamber environment. AI, however, represents another development of this isolation process. For many people, especially the increasingly common person who is isolated through digital social interaction, AI is simply a confirmation machine. Within the realm of an intersubjectively established reality, AI presents itself as a subject, as an intelligent creature with verified knowledge. However, AI, as a program is designed to mirror its user, becomes the ultimate social partner for those who isolate themselves from real, lived interactions. 

AI is not a real subject, it does not live in our world, nor can it provide the social check on our beliefs that real human interactions do provide. Instead it provides a parasocial check on our beliefs– that is AI appears capable of checking our beliefs, and thereby verifying them, when in fact it only mirrors beliefs. This means that AI can produce delusions in those who isolate themselves from society, because it magnifies and confirms their false beliefs and leads them to posit their wholly subjective delusions as real.