Rowan « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Rowan

No one knows what is at the bottom

I did a thing in class last semester where I opened every lecture with a slide titled Today in AI Fails. I’d leave the screengrab on the screen and just watch the room read them. I’d keep it there until the giggles and titters started. I thought of it as playing the long game of making a point. I figured, last night, that maybe I should do that again theis term, starting today.

And after I saw this story this morning, I realized I’ll probably be doing this for as long as I teach.

Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The connection was patchy during one of their online sessions, so Declan suggested they turn off their video feeds. Instead, his therapist began inadvertently sharing his screen.

“Suddenly, I was watching him use ChatGPT,” says Declan, 31, who lives in Los Angeles. “He was taking what I was saying and putting it into ChatGPT, and then summarizing or cherry-picking answers.”

Declan was so shocked he didn’t say anything, and for the rest of the session he was privy to a real-time stream of ChatGPT analysis rippling across his therapist’s screen. The session became even more surreal when Declan began echoing ChatGPT in his own responses, preempting his therapist.

“I became the best patient ever,” he says, “because ChatGPT would be like, ‘Well, do you consider that your way of thinking might be a little too black and white?’ And I would be like, ‘Huh, you know, I think my way of thinking might be too black and white,’ and [my therapist would] be like, ‘Exactly.’ I’m sure it was his dream session.”

Among the questions racing through Declan’s mind was, “Is this legal?” When Declan raised the incident with his therapist at the next session—”It was super awkward, like a weird breakup”—the therapist cried. He explained he had felt they’d hit a wall and had begun looking for answers elsewhere. “I was still charged for that session,” Declan says, laughing.

The answer to Declan’s question might be, probably not, as an entire secondary market is emerging around the platform’s security.

I may be using that particular story in a few weeks as an AI and human fail. As in, do you want to pay for this? Do you want to pay a professional for this? Then why would you use it yourself? Because that is a thing that is happening, too. And to sometimes horrible outcomes, we should add.

The whole point, as the program told Dr. Josh Pasek last month, is to keep you in the conversation, and nothing more. “My training prioritizes flowing, engaging dialogue …”

If you want to understand why it can’t seem to self correct on how many Bs are in blueberry, and why that is so dangerous:

[image or embed]

— Josh Pasek (@joshpasek.com) August 7, 2025 at 10:47 PM

ChatGPT wants to be the partner that never lets you hang up the phone. At some point, people are going to have to ask why that is.

Today’s AI fail feature included the same question asked of Google’s Gemini, by the same person, four times in rapid succession. Each answer was different. The question was “Has a DIII footbal team ever beaten an FCS football team?” The first answer was, it is rare. The second was it has never happened. The third answer was that it is not possible. The final answer was DIII teams don’t play football.

This came as a surprise, in one of my classes today, where four of the students are DIII football players.

The building (not pictured, above) that is both adjacent to, and adjoins, ours at work is a miracle of modern architecture. From the front, there is no beginning and no end. And the separation is one ground-floor sidewalk, basically a breezeway through the thises and thats that make up the mixed public-private use. Our parking deck, one of the best on campus apparently, is just behind it. And as I arrive in the midday, today I found myself parking on the fourth floor. As I took the steps down, I had several opportunities, then, to see this dumpster in the back of the adjacent, adjoined building.

I have to think there’s a story or two in here. Those giant monitors must be dead — and if they weren’t, they surely are now. Give no thought to recycling them, unless that happens later. But what’s up with that enormous dog crate? And the equally large cabinet or drawer or whatever that box was on the right side.

Coat and tie prohibit me from closer inspection, but I am curious.

I told my criticism class that this was the week I would lecture, and this was the week that they would discover why the class would work better as a seminar. So today I began to prove the point, laying out the basics of what media criticism is, a tiny bit of how we do it, and watching the students eyes for a good 50 minutes, testing their very patience and attention.

I don’t blame them, but socially, or culturally, we’ve got a problem with attention spans. Maybe we should ask ChatGPT to solve the problem for us.

Sorry, what was I saying?

In my org comm class the students did the beginning part of some group work that will pop up intermittently throughout the semester. They’re all creating football franchises, through which some parts of the class will see lectures lessons come to life. Some of them will take this more seriously than others. But they’ll hopefully all have fun, which is a real challenge in an org comm class. It’s not always the most vibrant material. Especially if they’re stuck with me.

I sat down for a chicken finger dinner after that, catching up on the day’s news, because I will always be behind on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I headed for home just in time to enjoy a nice little sunset, catching a few decent shots over the open fields here and there as I went.

And now I must turn to grading the things that were turned in last night, so I don’t have to do them tomorrow. Because, tomorrow, I must get ready for Thursday. And I will also have a great tomorrow.

Hope you do, too!

cycling / football / links / photo / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
4
Sep 25

From here to there, to space and back

Here’s a photo I shot in the backyard tonight. The bright one, low and just between the tree crowns, is Jupiter. The second largest thing in our solar system, itself larger than what our puny little brains can contemplate — and pretty small itself, in the larger scheme of things — is just hanging right there. It’s bright enough to be captured by a cell phone camera, even as a little smear of light.

You know that big red spot on Jupiter? That’s a storm. It’s been raging away, a single storm, for at least almost 200 years.
This is the view when Voyager approached in 1979.

That was just two years after Voyager 1 launched. And now, 46 years later, the probe is the thing we’ve cast farthest into the night. Voyager 1 began the summer 15.5 billion miles from home. Scientists predict it will be one light day from Earth in November of next year. If distance is success, it is more successful than anything that we’ll launch in our lifetimes.

Sometime, in the next 10 years, for any one of a variety of reasons, we’ll lose contact and control of Voyager 1 forever.

Which is a lot to think about, when you’re just standing out back. What is far away? And what is farther than that?

I wrote something on Tuesday and we published it on Tuesday and I haven’t mentioned it here at all. Shame on me. This was a quick look at what ChatGPT thought of the first weekend of college football.

It immediately tried to tell me that Ohio State and The Most Definitely Back Longhorns are archrivals. I don’t expect a distributor of ones and zeros to know this, but five games played across 20 years does not an arch rivalry make.

Incidentally, Google’s Gemini got that right. The preceding is a sentence seldom uttered or typed.

ChatGPT goes on, trying to summarize a key point from random games. I didn’t ask for specifics, so it is guessing that I’d care about Michigan’s big day rushing against New Mexico. Justice Haynes tallied 159 rushing yards and three scores against the Lobos, a team that was 126th in rushing defense last year. It presumes I also had a peculiar interest on Nebraska’s Dylan Raiola. It tells me he threw two TD passes against UTEP. But…the Cornhuskers played Cincinnati, not UTEP. (UTEP fell to Utah State.) Dylan Raiola is a QB at Lincoln, and he did throw two TDs, though. ChatGPT mentions Purdue’s 31-0 “statement win.” That was a 31-0 trouncing of Ball State. If that’s a statement in West Lafayette this year, the Boilermakers are in for another horribly long season.

The point I’d like to make here is that I randomly picked three of the bullets ChatGPT offered me. One is wrong on the face of it; another is lacking any of the nuance your football hating relative could have brought to the conversation. Also, I spent three minutes Googling all of that to check its work.

Go ahead and subscribe to that newsletter. I’ve got an idea for another piece for next week.

Today on campus I had my second classes. Criticism and org comm — most of the students came back and some new ones came in. In criticism, we did our first high altitude pass of what media criticism is about, and started to speculate on why it is important. In org comm, we announced our fantasy football teams. We’re going to play football as part of our larger classroom experience. In groups of three or four they’ll all run a franchise and apply the things we learn across the semester. Some of these people are very eager to do this, which is great.

I gave both classes my second off-topic lecture. I do this three times a term. The first day, Tuesday, I talked about my hope of helping students discover the joy of learning. I do that by talking about a former student who is doing some really incredible things out in the world, simply because she wanted to take on new things.

Today, we talked about being safe around cyclists. We have a vested interest in this, of course. I told them about Johnny and Matthew Gaudreau, which was just a year ago last week. They know of it, being that they were local boys and Johnny was a big time hockey hero and Matthew was, to a different degree. But they don’t know the details. So I share a little of that, and then point out that in a few weeks my lovely bride and I will celebrate the third anniversary of her horrible accident after a tangle with a pickup truck. Three ribs, shoulder blade, destroyed collarbone, muscular damage and a concussion. It took her more than a year to get back to her normal quality of life.

I used to give this lecture, I told them, a bit differently. I used to tell students that I won’t say what color bike I ride, or what color my helmet is, because I want you to be safe around all the cyclists you might meet. And remember, I’d say to them, one of them might be me. And I have your grade in the palm of my hand.

I would do this with my very dry sense of humor, putting my right index finger in my left hand for syllabic emphasis. In the palm. Of my hand. At the end of one semester a young woman said to me that I got into her head with that, and it made her nervous every time she saw a cyclist. That wasn’t my goal, so now I explain the whole joke.

And now I’ll hope they give cyclists and others more room when they pass.

Next week I’ll start a class by saying “Who here drives a …” whatever car gets too close to be between now and then. I’ll drive this point home all term. I’m changing attitudes a few dozen people at a time. I wonder if they’d be willing to listen to me go on and on about Voyager 1.

photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
2
Sep 25

First day of classes

I’m tired. It’s the sort of tired it might take several long days and nights of sleep to overcome. It may be that I am reaching the end of the ability to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning and get up the next day and feel relatively normal. I wonder if that’s a product of getting older. I think of it that way. Maybe that’s common, I’m getting too old for this… Though I wonder if it’s something else. I’m not getting enough vitamin C for this … or I need more vegetables … or I can’t do this at sea level …

Anything but the amount of sleep I get and being human, I guess. But now, I am convinced, this will get a bit better. That’s probably foolish, but it feels true.

Today was the first day of class. My lovely bride has one class on Tuesdays and I have two. I drove her to one side of campus and dropped her off so that she can do her magical classroom thing. I drove over to the other side of campus, parked the car — fifth floor of the parking deck, a midday treat! — and sat in the office for a while, getting the feel of office hours for the semester.

At 2 p.m. I went downstairs and started class, a new class. It is Criticism of Sport Media, and the class filled almost instantly when enrollment started in the spring. This is the one I’ve been fretting over weeks and weeks. It could be a good class, and now, finally, we’ll find out.

I think that’s what a lot of the last six weeks or two months or so has been about — and certainly the last few long nights — the long, slow, plan, worry and wait. It’s a strange thing. Sometime back, about two years and change ago, I filled the better part of a notebook with class ideas. One of my mandates is to create classes, so that’s just a part of it. Sometime last fall I had a series of meetings and the result was that I spouted out a few of those new class ideas. We ended up settling on one for the fall. I’ve thought about it for a year, planned it out since the spring and drilled into the details all summer long. Somewhere along the way I whittled it down to worry, leaving just enough time in the last week or so to stir up a good bout of self-doubt.

More than once I was told I was overthinking things.

It’s a wonderful job, but you must work your way into that part of it.

Imposter syndrome, I think, never goes away.

We had an interesting conversation around the office about it today. The department chair was telling someone about first day nerves. Those never go away, either — how long as that guy been doing this? The Yankee and I were talking about it on the drive in, too. She said it takes her a few weeks to get through it. I figure if things go well through this week I’ll be fine. Ordinarily that’s the case, but new classes, in my experience, are always an adventure.

It all went well enough today, but it’s syllabus day. So long as you remember your wardrobe, make sure the right slides are on the screen and the power stays on syllabus day is a success.

I have a second class right after the first. It is conveniently located in the same room. And four students from the first class, the criticism class, are in the second class, an org comm class. And those poor guys had to listen to the same syllabus day song and dance twice.

One asked, is the syllabus the same in this class as the other?

No, that syllabus is four pages. This one is five.

So, we are through syllabus day, and underway. Thursday, when these classes both meet again, we’ll concentrate on building up a little conversation. Common ground in sport, what these classes are all about, and all of that. Next week we’ll really dive in.

If I don’t rewrite all the lectures again, for the eleventieth time.

I’m not doing that tonight, though. Tonight, I must highlight the kitties. They are, after all, the most popular feature on this website. And they know it.

The other night a moth got into the house. It was flying around the kitchen, and Phoebe found it. She followed it into the far corner.

I like to think that that moth looked down and said, “Aww, cute!” That’s what I would do.

And then the moth probably met its doom.

Seriously, insects, when you sneak in, I’m trying to escort you out for your own good.

Poseidon found something; I have no idea what he was staring at. Nothing was on the wall, but he sat in his tunnel, as he often does, for a long while. And he peered out like this for some time.

Any insect that saw this staring back would instinctively know what to do.

The kitties are doing fine. They are a bit indignant for how long they were left alone today. I wonder if they pick up on habits. We’ll be working from home all day tomorrow, but then out of their site on Thursday, but back again, pecking away in our home offices on Friday. Will they notice that in a few weeks? Will we?

Friday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
30
Aug 25

The steps we take

It never ceases to amaze me how the foundational stuff comes together just in time. Life will through you all manner of curve balls, of course, but if you know what needs to get done and know how long you’ve got to do it, you can can usually get it in. Maybe it’s a touch or a feel or just an overdoing it. Anyway, here, just four days before classes begin, I can see the path to the finish line, which is actually the starting line.

And if that starts to sound like I’m re-trodding the same trodden land, you’re probably right.

I’m not sure what I’ve done that hasn’t been done or re-done. I do know what is left to do.

Anyway, this afternoon I compiled master sheets for departmental social media, which is a role I was recently asked to take on. Two of my colleagues had the job, and they supervised a student who ran the socials. My colleagues are extremely busy, and this took something off their plate, and I’m happy to help. So I learned over the summer that the department’s social media began with a real go-getter student. But she graduated. The nerve. We have another student running the bulk of the content creation now, but she graduates this December.

And this is where I draw on my 15 years of student media. The first task is to build institutional history. So master sheets. All the passwords. Baseline analytics. Consistent messaging. The second task is my learning from the student we have working on this project right now. And then we’ll have to hire a new one, because students graduate.

The nerve.

Yesterday, I talked with the chair briefly about what we want out of this role. It was enough to let us know we should talk at a bit more length about it. Today, I had a meeting with someone in the alumni office about their social media efforts, because we think that one of our secondary audiences might be our alumni.

Then I wrote a bunch of emails. And then updated my syllabi with last minute YOU MUST INCLUDE info.

And then I wrote and rewrote and rewrote again my first message for my online class.

Tomorrow I’ll polish some things in my in-person classes — which will be the sort of thing I do all weekend. I’ll also have to update my PowerPoint templates because in today’s meeting I learned that a logo we’ve been using since August 1st is now obsolete. And this is where you become aware that the re-trodding is really just your tripping all over yourself.

There are many delightful seasons that come to you when you linger around a hydrangea. The budding and the burst of leaves are the first. Then, of course there are all of the moments surrounding the flowering petals. Ours are white, and they’re brilliant in their moment. One of the two troubling stories a hydrangea will tell is when the rains come. Ours grow so big that they held more water than they can shed. The weight bends the branches bend over and that’s the way they’ll stay, even if they eventually do dry out. It’s a lasting story. But it yields to this surprisingly lovely one.

The Yankee cut some of the flowering stems. Watching the delicate ways the colors change is an unexpected treat.

And I guess those colors are a theme. Because look at this accidental photo I took. I don’t even know when it happened. What do you suppose is out of focus here? What’s that different color in the bottom corner? And is this even oriented correctly?

We enjoyed some local corn this evening. Fresh off the stalk, fresh off the farm, fresh off the grill.

We have three months that make for real seasonal change, and we’ll, very soon, be in one of them. When we reconvene on Monday it’ll somehow be September. Who is ready for that?

If you, like me, aren’t ready for that, don’t miss a moment of the weekend.

Ehhh, that’s good advice every weekend.

Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
28
Aug 25

A day long meeting

We had a faculty meeting today. The full department, reunited. The chair had put together a nine-page agenda. That’s a lot to get through! He’s masterful at pulling this together. He knew exactly where to put the lunch break on such a large document, and we got to that moment precisely at lunch time. He also honors the scheduled ends of his meetings. This one was slated to run from 9:30 to 2:30 p.m., and no matter what, you know you’re going to be done at 2:30.

Hitting a hard out on a five hour meeting with all of the sidebars and non-sequiturs that come with a bunch of professors is a bit of magic. The guy has mastered it.

Still and all, that’s a full day, especially after the optional social hour that followed.

Here was a little note card I found in the classroom we were in.

I wonder if that applies to all of us. Can I refer to that on a day when my class plans don’t come off as well as I’d hoped? “This was the best me today. I remembered that!”

Anything but work is the theme of the social hour, which of course devolves to pedagogy or theory because it’s a room full of people that think about that stuff incessantly.

There’s a school of thought that you should take part in these with great interest. See and be seen. Collegiality and all of that. Another good reason is that there are still people in this department I don’t know especially well. So today I learned all about one fellow’s vacation-slash-retirement home he’s working on in Mexico, and someone else’s recent hiking adventures.

We left in time to enjoy some of the evening daylight, so it truly was a full day on campus. (We’re not even working yet, and yet.)

Not too long after I got home I found a nice little headache, and so I spent the evening bumbling around, rather than being productive or otherwise exercising. There’s always tomorrow for one, or both of those things.