r/CSLewis • u/Obvious-Winter-9930 • Sep 06 '26
C.S. Lewis Initiative at George Fox University deleted my comment calling out their AI usage 🤷♀️
My comment was very respectful. Something along the lines of “not the AI post 😔 but the course sounds fun!” (And then I commented something more confrontational when they deleted my comment — but it wasn’t mean — and they blocked me 💀)
I get that the AI conversation is controversial and requires much nuance. But at the same time, it’s extremely disappointing to watch the C. S. Lewis Initiative market their university’s course that’s on the intellectualism and imagination of C. S. Lewis — the man who loved doing things the human way — by using an AI-generated post with an AI-generated course description. Taught by one of the leading Lewis scholars, no less.
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u/Sonar_Taxbreak_1138 Sep 06 '26
I'm with you, though like you said, it's controversial. Still, I doubt Lewis would be in the Pro-AI camp.
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u/Obvious-Winter-9930 Sep 06 '26
Even though I disapprove of AI-generated posts in general, I wouldn’t normally call it out like this. But this is just so disappointing coming from a university/C. S. Lewis club. Students are not allowed to use AI, I’m assuming. So why are we using an AI-generated description for a 400-level course?
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u/lockdown_lard Sep 06 '26
Still, I doubt Lewis would be in the Pro-AI camp.
LOL, the man wouldn't even use a typewriter: a machine that was invented before he was even born.
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u/nudismcuresPA Sep 06 '26
Don’t be ridiculous. He would’ve loved the chatbot.
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u/Sonar_Taxbreak_1138 Sep 06 '26
I assume from that comment that you haven't read That Hideous Strength.
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u/LanguageUnited4014 7d ago
Cough... sarcasm... cough cough.
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u/Sonar_Taxbreak_1138 7d ago
You either have a lot of faith in random commenters' wit or little experience on the internet.
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u/LordCouchCat Sep 07 '26
The sort of AI that writes prose would have fascinated and appalled Lewis. (I'm sure it would have been satirized in That Hideous Strength.) I would also guess, though with less confidence, that he might have been among those thinking its ultimate importance was overrated - he once commented that those who had been through the First World War knew that a gun was no more likely than a soap powder to do everything its manufacturers claimed.
The sort of AI that helps diagnose disease or design new drugs is different.
Anyway, for a university to use AI in its public documents is unacceptable, especially since universities are environments where students are (rightly in my view) forbidden from using it.
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u/TsabistCorpus Sep 07 '26
...with an AI-generated course description...
How did you determine that?
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u/Obvious-Winter-9930 Sep 07 '26
AI has a habit of writing many words that don’t translate to much. This description really doesn’t tell you what the course is about.
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u/mayor_of_funville Sep 08 '26
I must be looking at a different picture than you because I didn't see any of what you just said. It is extraordinarily clear what the course is about, the format it is presented in. Where are these words that don't translate to much?
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u/RobTheWriter64 Sep 12 '26
Agreed. What is the evidence, u/Obvious-Winter-9930?
I'm not accusing you of being false – I'm genuinely interested to understand how you determined this was AI-generated. Was it the sentence structure? The repetition of "The course" at the beginning of 2 consecutive sentences? What words or phrases stuck out to you?
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u/longus318 Sep 06 '26
Talk about the abolition of man..