by Jen, in conversation with Magic Write

After working through this week’s readings I asked Magic Write, the AI inside Canva, to “discuss the hopes and harms of AI.” I’ve been curious about the existence of an AI inside Canva (a popular tool for generating social media content, marketing material, and even educational content); Canva isn’t the first place I’d look for an AI, but here we are. (The free version of Canva currently allows 25 Magic Write prompts; you need to pay to use the AI more.)

Magic Write’s response was:

AI has the potential to bring many benefits to our society, such as increased efficiency, improved accuracy, and the ability to tackle complex problems. AI can also save lives by improving medical diagnoses and drug discovery.

However, there are also concerns about the potential harms of AI, including job displacement, biases in decision-making, and the loss of privacy. AI could also be used for malicious purposes, such as cyber attacks or autonomous weapons.

Therefore, it is important to carefully consider the ethical and societal implications of AI and ensure that it is developed and used responsibly.

In a five-sentence response, I’m moderately impressed by the number of points the AI included. As a baseline, Magic Write is really good at a short answer question. However, it was interesting to me that there was no explicit mention of images created by AI, and so I followed up with, “What are the potential uses and abuses of image creation through AI?”

Magic Write’s response was:

The potential uses of AI-generated images include assisting in the creation of realistic and detailed graphics for various industries such as gaming, film, and advertising. However, the technology also raises concerns about the possibility of creating fake images for malicious purposes such as propaganda, phishing, and deepfakes. It is important to consider the ethical implications and potential misuse of AI-generated images.

One thing that was interesting to me in this week’s readings was a sense that the current wave of AI gives us something new. I don’t entirely disagree, but when Nitasha Tiku laments that “these systems produce images that can cause a range of harms, such as reinforcing racial and gender stereotypes or plagiarizing artists whose work was siphoned without their consent,” I couldn’t help but think about the ways that’s been happening for hundreds of years. AI certainly makes it faster, but anyone who has wanted to perpetuate harm in those ways has been doing it pretty successfully for a long time.

I was interested in thinking more about what, exactly, is new about AI; while reading about surveillance technology in proctoring programs and in grading, I agree that it’s all really sinister, but was curious about my inclination that this is just a new spin on an old trick. I asked Magic Write, “What are the uses of AI in surveillance of students through grading and proctoring?”

The response was:

The use of AI in surveillance of students through grading and proctoring can help to ensure academic integrity by detecting potential cheating and plagiarism. It can also provide a more objective and consistent evaluation of student work. However, it is important to consider privacy concerns and the potential for bias in the AI algorithms.

This resonated with me because of the statement that AI “can help to ensure academic integrity by detecting potential cheating and plagiarism.” That has literally always been the goal of any kind of proctoring and grading; aside from the fact of whether AI does it better than humans (which is probably debatable), I think we need to address the premise of this first: can any kind of grading and proctoring ensure academic integrity, or is academic integrity a biased and flawed notion in itself?

And, moving backwards, does AI increase the possibility of malicious image use, or have visual depictions always held the possibility of being used for malicious purposes? 

Proceeding back to where I started, with the hopes and harms of AI, Magic Write’s response about the hopes of AI name a number of benefits that have value-laden assumptions built into them: efficiency, accuracy. I won’t argue that medical innovation is great, but we’ve always seen bias in the reality of medical innovation…for WHO?

While I’m open to being convinced otherwise, I don’t actually think that AI is creating more harms for us; AI is a mirror of the world we have already created (and fed into it), and I think it is just magnifying existing harms while reflecting them back onto us. Instead of being afraid of this, should we be grateful for the clear evidence of where things have gone wrong, and use this reflection that AI creates as a way to plan out where the work needs to be done?

Brie Scolaro, LMSW

I have been working with Minority Stress Theory (MST) a lot in my work with LGBTQ practice and policy issues. Dr. Illan Meyer, a White man from Columbia University, is typically credited for developing this theory, and is the most widely cited author on this issue. However, last semester I did a deep dive in minority stress theory in my theory class, exploring more the positionality of the theorists themselves, and I actually learned about the work of Dr. Virginia Brooks. Dr. Brooks published her dissertation, “Minority Stress in Lesbian Women” nearly 15 years before Dr. Meyer ever mentioned working on this issue.

Here is a brief blog post about this!

I found one brief article about her online and took it upon myself to get a physical copy of the dissertation from the Hunter library. There is no online copy of this dissertation which I feel has greatly contributed to the near complete erasure of Dr. Virginia Brooks. From individual awareness raising, the first 1-2 research publications have begun to cite her (mostly trans and non binary scholars / focused researches).

Last semester my professors was a leading scholar in the field of stress theory and had never heard of Dr. Brooks. I also brought this up to my GradD mentor, an expert in sex and sexuality, who also never heard of her!

I still have a physical copy next to me that I keep renewing from the library.

I am left with questions and a desire to do something, especially as a queer therapist. MST has paved the way for so much advocacy work, but its more radical, feminist predecessor was left untouched. Even when the preface was written by someone in a position of power who claimed something along the lines of, “Dr. Brooks’s work on minority stress will shortly become a critical textbook at all major universities.” Crickets…

How can I get this thing online?” I tried to buy a copy of this dissertation but it is not possible. The publisher is located in another country and it is not available for purchase anymore.

I wonder if there is any way to get this dissertation online and into the hands of scholars, through working with the library.

I wonder what copyright issues are present, and what forces buried (continue to bury??) this work.

I wonder how I can insert this work into the academic space, and as such, what the consequence is for the field of minority stress research, queer studies, etc etc.
I consulted with Sean this week and we had a fantastic discussion that left me motivated to explore this. From that meeting I am left with an idea to explore the universities she was associated with and see what bread crumbs i can find there.
–
Speaking to Katina, I am compelled to keep a log of my journey – my questions, my challenges, and notes in issues of power, precarity and care that arise.

Proposed Action Plan

1. Speak with classmates with experience in libraries/archives (Jen? Others?)
2. Speak with Roxane Shirazi at the GC library
3. Create log for recording experiences, stakeholder conversations, and notes on power/precarity/care in taking on this work
4. Continue to identify breadcrumbs and see where things go!!!!

For my peers: Do you know anything about this issue that can help me? Does anything else come to mind when you read my post and/or learn about my proposed project? Lmk!!

Students in this class might be interested in attending this upcoming virtual event, hosted by the University of Michigan and the Association for Computers and the Humanities:

We invite you to join us (via Zoom) for a roundtable panel where humanities PhDs, from a diverse range of careers adjacent to or outside the academy, will engage in a conversation about the opportunities and challenges of pursuing careers off of the tenure track.

Building on the work originally published by the American Studies Association’s Digital Humanities Caucus’ Precarious Labor subcommittee, “Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities,” this panel takes a critical perspective to interrogating graduate education and “alt-ac” careers and asks participants to ponder the changing professional landscape of academia. Panelists will reflect on their own graduate experiences, the valuable skills they learned in or outside of those programs, and how they envisioned and fashioned meaningful professional identities off the tenure track.

Please register above. Attendees are encouraged to submit questions to the panel in advance, via the registration link.

Speakers include: 

• Hannah Alpert-Abrams, Program Specialist, National Endowment for the Humanities
• Sara Cohen, Acquisitions Editor, University of Michigan Press
• Patricia Hswe, Program Officer, Mellon Foundation
• S. Pokornowski, Former Senior Trainer, Hollaback!/Senior Analyst, Ithaka S+R
• Stephanie Rosen, Director of Accessibility, University of Michigan Library
• Kurtis Tanaka, Program Manager, Ithaka S+R
• Katina Rogers (moderator), Association for Computers in the Humanities
• Jim McGrath (moderator), Association for Computers in the Humanities

This session is brought to you by the University of Michigan Library, the Association of Computers in the Humanities, the Digital Studies Institute, and the Rackham Graduate School.

This week’s readings centered around the complex dynamic between Digital Humanities scholarship and the institutions in which it is produced. Boyles et al. (2018) describe how the collaborative nature of DH work is often exploitative in terms of how labor is distributed in favor of investing more funding into tangible digital resources (independent from humans). The argument is that the approach to digital humanities scholarship by many institutions within American higher education is ultimately not a sustainable one— which is very accurate. I cannot begin to express how many digital projects I have been involved with in the past five years and how many are currently collecting dust on the internet. I think CUNY tends to have a strong “starter place” mentality when it comes to these projects and initiatives that they get students and adjuncts involved with because the reality is that they’re just exposing people to this type of work with the expectation that they will then independently peddle it forward. Even long-standing DH projects I’ve been part of, such as the CUNY Academic Commons, which serves well over 30,000 members of CUNY, have to constantly argue for and justify their budget/expenses every single year. Additionally, the Commons has the potential to replace CUNY’s LMS entirely in favor of open pedagogies (if we’re willing to forfeit grading as a pedagogical tool), but we will never reach that scale due to the current size of our team and lack of support. At the same time, to speak to Oyo (2019), a large number of faculty members teaching on the Commons and integrating culturally sustaining and open pedagogies are our adjunct faculty. Their commitment to transformation is often taken advantage of and not supported in the same way our doctoral students are— and even our doctoral students are not properly trained to teach.

Tuka Al-Sahlani

My response to Adashima Oyo’s “Innovation and Burnout” article  wass, “ yes”, “yes”, “I hear you”, “yes”, “exactly”. This is my second semester teaching undergraduates in CUNY colleges. I was an Open Knowledge Fellow and went in my first semester of teaching with the aim to have a course site, OERs, upgrading policy, and all the ideals I want in my course. Suffice to say I did none, or I did slivers of some. I quickly realized, although I had the information and tools, I did not have the time to prepare for this better course. So, yes, Oyo, I agree, “ many of these [critical digital pedagogy]  methods require extensive preparation and planning for the adjunct.” These methods are successful  because of the time, labor, connectedness and transparency of these adjuncts in their pedagogy.  ( Shout out to the part-time  faculty–and fellows– at CUNY!) 

As for the Digital Precarity Manifesto.–WOW! I am not sure which quote to specifically reflect on because I might have annotated every other sentence, but there are two things that struck me. One, the historicization of digital precarity or even “the chain” of digital labor that I have not read about nor been introduced to in the general area of digital humanities.  I have always read/ seen digital humanities from the product and not from the production. Two, the breadth of the feminist perspective, but also the “miracle worker”( Boyles, et al.) tone of the feminist perspective. The Digital Precarity Manifesto does not support the “miracle worker” status, but ( and this could be me in awe of the manifesto) it reads like a superhero manifesto. I want to be in that league, but how do we go about eliminating that tone? Or, should I accept that tone as powerful and reframe it?

Another question I had pertained to Boyles et al’s “Precarious Labor and DH”. Summer institutions are something I have looked into precisely as the authors mention to supplement my skills and possibly increase my hireability, but these institutions do offer courses that do read as valuable to scholars in their respective fields. So, how do we provide for continuing learners (because if it is not for a job prospect then these individuals are continuing learners) to attend and benefit from institutions?
Another note on Boyle et al. When I read this quote “few DH projects will ever achieve the level of support or traffic that requires having full-time support staff dedicated to the maintenance of that project” (697) it reminded me of the ITP projects that remain accessible are mostly sponsored such as  Journalism and COVID-19: The Toll of a Pandemic sponsored by PEN America and Teaching Bilinguals (Even if You’re Not One!) that is a part of the CUNY-New York State Initiative for Emergent Bilinguals.

Brie Scolaro, LMSW

1. Precarity and Definition

What is precarity? This is a new word to me, yet a very familiar concept for someone who has long been in social justice. However, words and semantics are important, and to consider the intersecting between precarity and digital humanities, it is important to me to have a clear definition of what this means and where it may come from.

DICTIONARY.COM : Precarity | “A state of existence in which material provision and psychological wellness are adversely affected by a lack of regular or secure income”

Merriam-Webster | Etymology of Precarity | “Probably borrowed from French précarité, from précaire “granted or exercised only with the permission of another, insecure, uncertain” (going back to Middle French, borrowed from Latin precārius “given as a favor, uncertain, PRECARIOUS“) + -ité -ITY“

Precarity Lab’s Digital Precarity Manifesto | Precarity | “Precarity is Life in Chains”

“Precarity is Life in Chains – I feel this needs to occupy another line in this post to give this extra weight, as it has extra sat in my consciousness for reflection. I felt this on a logical but also emotional and spiritual level when reading these examples, but to the extent that a White AFAB US-born individual can empathize.

2. TLDR My Main Take Away(s)

Precarity in digital humanities = the exploitation of historically marginalized communities within the tech value chain (as per the Digital Manifesto).

Tech is made for you to NOT think about it and its value chain. Your website page is expected to instantly load, your stored “cloud” data expected to be instantly available (and actively hosted and protected until.. or if.. you ever choose to access it).

If we pull the curtain back of the tech value chain, we cringe at what is revealed, especially this history of precarity. Can we than hypothesize that this will continue, only to intensify, in the future? As the lines between human and technology continue to blur?

I am particularly moved by Manifesto’s citing of specific examples that serve to highlight how to define precarity of digital workers. I specifically mentioned here the Fairchild Semiconductor Plant run by Indigenous workers in 1965-1975.

The technology created here are the grandparents of the technology used in today’s electronics. Somewhere, a decision was made after a weighing of “pros and cons” in the digital tech value chain. However, White profit is typically the “pro”, the “con” being the continued exploitation of already exploited workers.

I still am trying to reflect on what precarity within digital humanities means if not for the examples presented in the Manifesto, and the full spectrum of what is included by the term “digital workers.”

I just thought of an issue concerning DH and mentoring today while preparing for meeting with a new adjunct who hasn’t used Blackboard before.

My job has several different duties, and DH is only one part of it.

Heck, I was hired in 2004, either before the field really existed or, at least, when it was in its infancy. I was hired for my Instructional Tech skills and my background in language learning.

Even now, very few jobs are explicitly DH. Instead it’s either a part of the job or not mentioned in the job description at all. Honestly, I think that most of us won’t be working a straight up DH job. We’ll be taking the skills that we learn in this program and apply them to our field(s).

This can make mentoring difficult because the people in charge, and therefore, the people likely to mentor us, don’t have a solid grasp on DH as a field or how it can be applied across the Humanities in general.

Even if, say, you were hired in a department that already had a DH specialist, they still might not be able to help you as much as either of you would like.

Take the Humanities Department where I work for instance. We have ten (soon to be eleven) different majors. I am Communication Studies and Linguistics. I don’t know how useful my experience would be to a DH specialist in Philosophy or Art History. We would approach things from very different (and all completely valid) angles, and, therefore, have different expectations of what DH can do.

From an administrative standpoint, I’d be happy to help them, but from a strictly DH standpoint, I am not sure about how much help I’d be.

— Sean

I do not really know what institutional support feels like. Institutional indifference? Absolutely. But support? Not at all. 

Even when I was hired, many of the people in the Communication Studies area didn’t think it was necessary to hire me or that what I did was particularly worthwhile. My direct supervisor supported what I did… or at least, he gave me room to do it. 

Especially since the pandemic, I;ve been left to my own devices, and I like to think I’ve done some interesting and worthwhile work, but my colleagues either don’t understand what I’m doing or still see no value in it. If I’m being honest, it’s probably a combination of the two. 

Seriously, that communication studies faculty just doesn;t see the worth in multimedia projects still astounds me. Of our full-timers, two do media based projects, and of our part-timers, another two (one of whom is me when I teach). That’s it. Everyone else is still stuck on papers and speeches. 

However, the real precarity in my area right now is with our adjuncts. LaGuardia’s student enrollment has crashed, partially due to the pandemic, partially due to the four year schools becoming open admission. At one point, we were down by about one-third from pre-pandemic levels. When the numbers were last publicized – a few weeks ago– we were at about 74% of projected student enrollment, but that projection was lower than projections pre-pandemic. 

Fewer students means fewer sections, so many adjuncts either lost their positions or had the number of classes they taught cut. This term, a few of our long term adjuncts on guaranteed contracts are up for renewal. I don’t know if their contracts are getting renewed. I haven’t heard. 

I used to teach four classes per year. I’m down to one, maximum. I have a full-time job otherwise, so it makes sense to cut my classes: I don’t rely on these classes. They are extra money. Being discarded like this bothers me, but I understand. 

I mean, it’s part of why I’m job-hunting, but I understand the decision.

by Jen

The manifesto from Precarity Lab and the article by Boyles et al provided an interesting contrast in looking at the human precarity of DH. Boyles et al focus on the academy, looking at the challenges faced by DH laborers; in addition to asking for better labor conditions, I felt that they were also asking for recognition of the work itself as labor: “Consider the graduate student encouraged to situate herself within digital humanities by completing digital projects in addition to a dissertation” (emphasis mine, page 694). There is an inference that these challenges arise because this work is new to the university (695). I would counter that this work is not entirely new, but that it is a tactic of the institution to silo this work into spaces where it feels new and disconnected from pre-existing networks and support structures, as a way to justify precarious conditions and under funding. It was interesting to read a piece that was focused specifically on DH within an American Studies context, but I wished for a little more broader recognition of the dynamics of other parts of the institution; I felt to an extent that many of the experiences they discussed were inherited from other parts of the institution, and real solutions could be found through broader solidarity.

I was surprised that Boyle et al’s critique did not name capitalism as the problem, and so was grateful to read the Precarity Lab’s diagnosis of “the precarity of contemporary neoliberal capitalism” at the start of their manifesto. I also appreciated their point that it is unfair to call this labor invisible when it “has always been visible in the same way that the people who do this labor have been: in plain sight but undervalued” (80). I felt that this responded to some of my criticism of Boyles et al seeing their labor as “new;” Precarity Lab recognizes that these types of labor have been invisibilized as a tactic; we’re led to believe it’s new so that we don’t realize it’s always been there, undervalued.

In contrast to Boyles et al.’s discipline-specific focus, Precarity Lab provides a high level view of other “scenes of precarity”: the Fairchild Semiconductor Plant, UberPASSPORT. I found these really interesting but felt that they zoomed too far out; again, they repeat Boyles et al’s step of not examining the academy as a whole. They have left their Humanities Collaboratory at the University of Michigan but, instead of stepping outside to analyze the dynamics of the institution, they’ve looked at the world as a whole.

I want to emphasize that I’m really not opposed to that analysis, but I wanted to read the analysis that lies between these broad and narrow perspectives. Precarity Lab notes that it’s important to situate digital platforms in historic and spatially constructed contexts to interrogate the way they’ve been positioned across time (81); what does it look like to situate these within the institution of academia and recognize how the precarity of DH mirrors the precarity of female computers in early 20th century math labs, or the precarity of visual resource curators in art departments (a weirdly siloed position often dedicated to management of visual art research collections in the latest technological format). I’m interested in an institution-level analysis as a way to articulate how the power structures of our institutes create and perpetuate precarity, and as a starting point for identifying work we can do to undo this.

Adrianna

Many of the things that were said in “Precarious Labor and the Digital Humanities” were new to me, yet they were unsurprising. But the section about summer seminars was simply ridiculous. I couldn’t believe that they had to take out money from their already precarious salary to invest in a seminar that will make them seem more “apt” in the eyes of universities.

All of that aside, there was a line that raised some questions for me. It reads, “Digital laborers face particular challenges in mentorship and advancement in university contexts. Their work, and their positions, is often new to the university, so there is little institutional memory about how best to succeed”(4). I ask myself. could this be a good thing? I know mentorship is key, but maybe not having a mentor could be an opportunity to have more agency over your project? I’m not sure.

Some of the issues that this article brings up, in a way, made me recall the issues with Ethnic Studies that Lorgia Garcia Peña raises in Community as Rebellion: A Syllabus for Surviving Academia as a Woman of Color. I don’t know much about DH and am not sure if it’s even fair to compare the overlooking of Ethnic Studies to the overlooking of DH. But I’d love to hear what other’s have experienced in the realm of DH. Whether lack of mentorship is a pro or a con and if it’s fair to compare DH issues to Ethnic Studies issues? (or not)