Clarissa's Blog

AI has improved dramatically. I can ask it, for example, “where did Pierre Bourdieu talk about the embodied state of cultural capital?” and it immediately reminds me of the source. And then pulls up a link to the .pdf. I’d find it myself but it would take longer. I haven’t worked with Bourdieu since my Master’s thesis, so of course my memory is tenuous. Now I’m rediscovering him, and it’s a great joy.

Going back to my point, I’m not hiring any student researchers any more because AI does it faster and with zero drama. Of course, if I came across a student who’d be genuinely interested in the research and would want to have conversations about it, I’d hire in a flash. But that is almost never a thing.

I hired student researchers for almost two decades and it was never worth the trouble, the handholding, and the drama. These were all male students, by the way. Zero female students ever applied.

So I’m now one of the evil employers who uses AI to get rid of human labor.