Tag: artificial intelligence
Stevenson’s army, May 4
– Tom Nichols analyzes the alternative explanations for the drones over the Kremlin.
– Politico notes the disparate approaches in Congress to AI.
– WaPo shows how few days are left when key debt players are in town.
-WaPo says business and nonpartisan groups aren’t weighing in on debt ceiling.
-There’s more than we thought to US-Philippine agreement
– And look how new British election laws requiring a voter ID are helping the Tories. Neither US nor UK has a national ID card for cultural reasons. [Ours is that the NRA is a chief opponent]
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, April 6
–Conflicts in Poland over Ukraine policies.
– Poland ready to give more MiGs.
– Putin blames Ukraine war on US.
– NYT has detailed graphics on Russian offensive.
– FP details Chinese spying.
– Vox has history of US industrial policy
– Reuters says China to inspect ships in Taiwan strait.
-Israeli concerns over Milley Iran comment.
– Semafor has report on Coast Guard’s global role.
– Freedom caucus & Progressives have some common goals.
Charlie added a Thursday bonus:
– WH has released a 12 page review of the Afghanistan withdrawal. AP summarizes.-
-FP says we need an economic war council for dealing with China.
-Lawfare praises State rules for military AI.
– FT says US opposes roadmap for Ukraine in NATO.
-Economist has fascinating story about improvements in camouflage.
– I’ve come across several Georgetown youtubes on the all-volunteer force at 50.
-Poli sci prof confirms decline in committee legislating
– Another reports benefits in grandstanding.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Quandaries of the modern professor
Two challenges strike me this week:
- What to do about student use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to prepare written product.
- What to do about the risk that a student may be a spy for a foreign government.
These are real-life quandaries.
AI tools in the classroom
ChatGPT and other AI tools that prepare written product in response to user inquiries are the immediate problem. They go a step beyond what we are all used to. We all use search engines to look for relevant bibliography. We also read Wikipedia to get oriented to a new subject or check facts. I am fortunately not teaching classes with assigned written products these days, but I am supervising graduate students preparing theses. What do I think about use of generative tools to produce written material? Do I feel the same about their use as an exploratory tool and as a final product?
It seems to me the answer to that second question has to be no. Final product has to come from the student her/himself, with citations to sources. But I can’t really object to AI use as an exploratory tool. We all need to start someplace. My own habit is to start as much as possible with primary source materials, but I am an historian. I don’t really see why a political scientist or an economist shouldn’t ask generative AI to summarize the latest data on election results or business cycles. That is a small step past using a search engine on those terms. Even if current AI technology doesn’t deliver much, no doubt future generative tools will.
Learning is key
The real issue then is how you determine what the student has learned, beyond the products of the AI tools s/he may have used. It seems to me that isn’t so hard. Exams (without computers) can serve that purpose. So too can oral presentations or informal chats with the professor.
When I was a graduate student preceptor (teaching assistant) at Princeton, I received a paper from a student who hadn’t performed well in class. He referred in the first paragraph to the “pre-lapsarian Adam.” When I asked him what that meant, he was unable to respond. Plagiarism is not new. I didn’t need “Turnitin,” a software that can now check for it.
Spies in the classroom
No one who teaches international affairs anywhere on earth can be sure he/she hasn’t had a spy–past, present or future–in the classroom. Certainly a goodly number of students at SAIS, both Americans and non-Americans–later pursue careers in their home country intelligence agencies. We also get students who pursue degrees while they are still working for government agencies, or after they have completed careers in them, with intelligence responsibilities. Teaching them analytical methods and policy frameworks is a good idea, not a bad one.
The problem is current spies who hide their true identities. That is what the Washington Post says SAIS’s Russian student pretending to be a Brazilian did. The Post focuses on what he himself might have been doing. The example they give is reporting last year on US attitudes towards a Russian invasion of Ukraine. That Moscow could have gotten reading the daily press. The Post also focuses on what he might have done in the future. Penetrating the International Criminal Court’s computer systems is the case in point, as he had an internship lined up there before being arrested. That seems to me more serious.
Another issue
But I would point to another issue: recruitment. International affairs schools are brimming with students who will go on to bigger and better things, in government and in the private sector. A covert agent might have a field day lining up people living on student stipends and finding it difficult to pay tuition or otherwise make ends meet. Once recruited, such an individual becomes subject to lifetime blackmail.
The consequences could be long term and catastrophic.
The tougher problem
Spies in the classroom seems to me a much tougher problem than AI in the classroom. A professor can be expected to know when students are learning. But professors don’t command the tools required to ferret out covert operatives. That is an intelligence and law enforcement responsibility, not an academic one. Covert spies in the classroom could compromise classmates (or professors) and create problems for decades in the future.
There are more than 750,000 foreign students in the US. Do we really think the CIA and FBI are capable of keeping an eye on even a small fraction of them? And would we want the limitations that would necessarily come if they tried to do so?
No easy answers
Nor would I want the university administration to take on that responsibility. The most we can expect from it is to make reasonable efforts to ensure students are not using false identities. Beyond that, I suppose we’ll need to keep a watch out for suspicious behavior. But I confess as a Foreign Service officer I met several Americans who spied for foreign governments: Walter Kendall Myers (Cuba), Aldrich Ames (Soviet Union and Russia), and Felix Bloch (Soviet Union). I suspected none of them.
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Stevenson’s army, January 4
– NYT says Ukraine is shooting down Russian drones with missiles that cost far more than their targets.
– WSJ says defense industry consolidation impedes increased production.
– Soldier cellphones make them targets.
– Franklin Foer says maybe we need the old folks in Congress.
– Military Times is happy with the number of veterans in the new Congress.
– WaPo column says cheating with AI-written essays can be curbed by requiring hand-written submissions. It also explains why handwritten notes make you smarter than typing them.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, December 8
– House votes today on NDAA under suspension of the rules –requires 2/3. Senate votes next week.
– Blinken discusses limits on Ukraine weapons.
– NYT explains ChatGPT, while Atlantic says such AI means the end of written essay tests. [OK, let’s do orals.]
-WOTR assesses new digital battlefield.
– Hill lists top lobbyists.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I republish here, with occasional videos of my choice. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, May 11
– Fred Kaplan explains the pipeine context.
– NYT reports on DarkSide.
– WSJ notes that TSA [!] not CISA is responsible for pipeline cybersecurity.
–Shots fired at Iranian boats.
– Open Secrets has new foreign lobbying data. Look at China’s.
– Politico says WH now requires approval of quotes in background briefings.
– Provocative article: WOTR writer says DOD is doing AI all wrong, shouldn’t be top-down.
– Former CIA official says IC shouldn’t do propaganda.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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