Stanford's AI Problem Isn't Just an AI Problem

 

Having made his living as a theatre scholar/teacher/practitioner for a few decades, Curmie is well aware that what appears to be real on stage, isn’t.  That isn’t really a medieval Danish prince up there; it’s an actor pretending to be one.  But there is informed consent all around: the actor voluntarily assumes the role, and the spectator agrees to pretend to believe in the impersonation.  No one in the audience believes that’s actually Hamlet.

Curmie also knows that headshots for actors should show actors in the millisecond in which they look their absolute best.  There’s a caveat, however: they have to look like their subject.  If you’re auditioning for strangers, you can be brilliant, but if the casting director doesn’t recognize you from your headshot, your chances of getting that callback go down.  And if you’re called back because of what your headshot looks like, you’re no longer in the running if you don’t look like that photo.  Inauthenticity is not merely unethical; it’s counter-productive.

Why these introductions?  Well, Stanford University has admitted to using AI to doctor a photograph of students celebrating the Lunar New Year in 2024.  The trio are holding plates of noodles outside an eatery called Star Ginger, apparently a franchisee in one of the campus dining halls.  That’s the image you see on the left in the photo above.  It was used in a marketing campaign almost immediately.  One presumes the university photographer got the appropriate permissions from the pictured students.  So far, so good, right?

Sure.  But it’s a more recent version of that shot, the one on the right, that’s been getting a lot of attention of late.  As you can see, that’s both the same photo and not at all the same photo.  The Hispanic man on the right wearing a GAP sweatshirt has been magically transformed into a black woman in a Stanford shirt.  The face of the Asian woman on our left has been conspicuously narrowed.  They played around with the face of the other man, the one in the middle, too, although not as obviously.  Curmie assumes that whatever that is that blocks the area above the guy’s head and below his chest is a function of the photo’s use on a “welcome” banner sponsored (if that’s the right word) by Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises.

The guy on the right of the original photo, the one who was literally disappeared, is Billy Ramirez.  He was a freshman when that picture was taken; he’s a senior now.  He says he was driving to campus for the fall semester this year when a friend sent him the two images together.  He told The Stanford Review that he was initially “baffled,” and thought it was “hilarious.”  Ultimately, though, he was upset: “I don’t agree with Stanford making those choices about how we were represented. Seeing my identity changed and being left out of the picture made me feel, in a way, silenced and erased from a representation that was supposed to include me.”

That latter reaction may be a bit much, but in general terms it’s understandable.  And it’s easy to see why, after all the local publicity, Ramirez doesn’t want his “legacy at Stanford to be ‘the AI guy.’”  It is certainly more than a little ironic that the change was made for a welcome banner.  The apparent subtext: “Everyone is welcome here at Stanford.  Well, except for people who look like that guy.  At least the other two are OK if we touch them up a little.”

Anyway, the image seems to have been posted on Fizz, a social media platform for Stanford students only, on the 20th of September.  That Review story was published on the 21st.  It was in the New York Times the next day.  One day later, the self-described “Other Two” released a “Letter to the Stanford Community” on Substack.  Finally, on the 24th, the Review ran an article about the university’s admission that yes, that photo had been altered by AI.

Curmie finds it interesting that the statement from Stanford officials seems rather unconcerned with the misrepresentation per se, but they’re pretty steamed up about the use of AI to do it.  They’ve got their skivvies in a twist about a violation of university rules.  They do concede that “Not only the fact that the image was altered, but the ways in which it was altered, reflect a serious error in judgment. We have apologized to the students in the photo whose images were altered or erased…. Quite simply, this was wrong and should never have happened.” 

There are several ways in which the doctored image goes against university policy as defined in a document titled “AI guidelines for marketing and communications.” [].  Curmie quotes a couple sections: “Use AI in ways that are transparent, accurate, and do not mislead.” Obtain written permission before using an individual’s name, image, voice, or likeness (including realistic or recognizable AI-generated depictions or imitations) in published content.” “Do not create or publish AI-generated content that falsely depicts Stanford people, events, research, facilities, or achievements.”  You get the gist, Gentle Reader.

Of course, as that New York Times article points out, universities have been doing making similar misrepresentations for years, using Photoshop or a variation on the theme.  Usually, although not always, it’s to pretend the school has more minority students than it actually does.  That makes it even more ironic that it’s a Hispanic man—a representative of a demographic that is, according to students, under-represented in the Stanford undergrad population—whose image was removed altogether. 

It’s certainly understandable that a university would want to exercise some control over content used in their own forums.  You don’t want someone showing up in a photo wearing a shirt from a competitor, for example.  Thus, when Curmie took students to Ireland, one of his rules was that no clothing could represent an American university other than our own, nor could it overtly advertise a product.  (This latter part might justify changing Ramirez’s GAP sweatshirt to something less commercial, but of course no more than that.)

That said, were Curmie of a cynical disposition (perish the thought!), he might suggest that the university’s emphasis on the AI element might be an intentional distraction from the larger issue of intentional misrepresentation and the motives for the… erm… over-enthusiastic editing.  All the students directly involved—the three people in the original photograph and the editor of the Review—are certain that the impulse to change the image was to present a false image of student diversity.  Curmie suspects the black woman would agree if she… you know… actually existed.

This doesn’t mean the students are correct in their assumptions, but they are at the very least plausible.  And here we see a variation on the Streisand Effect.  Seriously, Stanford: you couldn’t even stage a photo with an actual black female student?  At best, that’s transcendently lazy.  At worst, it calls attention to what many people regard as the situation your clumsy attempt at manipulation sought to cover up.  Even if that wasn’t the intention, it sure looks that way.

Yes, it could be relevant that threats from the Trump administration about anything that might possibly be regarded as a DEI initiative put Stanford in a difficult situation.  But “dishonest,” “sloppy,” and “stupid” are adjectives that no university, let alone one of Stanford’s reputation, ought to want attached to their name, and you can’t blame Trump for the fact that those descriptions sure seem accurate.

More to the point, the most relevant section of those AI guidelines is this: “You must take personal responsibility for any work you produce using AI. This means reviewing outputs for accuracy, ensuring alignment with institutional values, and confirming compliance with these guidelines and university policy. This responsibility cannot be delegated.”

Curmie understands that Stanford promises to prevent anything like this ever happening again.  He believes that they will at least make every effort to do so… or, rather, he will when they announce the names (plural) of the people they fired over this incident.

The Left and Right Both Hate Free Expression--They Just Do It Differently

Curmie, as anyone who has seen a handful of his posts will know, leans left on most issues, but is more civil libertarian than liberal. 

Those on the left think those on the right want to shut down freedom of expression, and vice versa. Trouble is, they’re both accurate assessments of current reality. It was, after all, the right that forbade doctors from giving their best medical advice to women seeking an abortion. Similarly, it was the left that rejoiced when the Twitter and Facebook accounts of a sitting US President were shut down by those social media corporations. But let’s confine ourselves to events of this month. 

Curmie offers two examples (there are undoubtedly more) on each side. I ask you to believe me that I literally just flipped a coin to decide which to talk about first. Liberals first, then. 

Exhibit A, we’ve already discussed: the Hamline University case in which adjunct professor Erika López Prater was dismissed because she showed a couple of images of the prophet Muhammad. The artworks were shown in a course in global art history. They were by Muslim artists, celebrating the prophet. Students in the course were warned in the syllabus and immediately prior to showing the images in class exactly what was going to happen; they were given the opportunity to opt out of the viewing. No one did. 

Ah, but one student claimed to have been grievously wounded by seeing an image she was given every opportunity to avoid, and every administrator you could mention rushed to appease her tender sensibilities. The professor did nothing wrong, but became a pariah anyway, because pretending to believe the victimization claims of anyone who can claim any kind of minority status is easier for those with no ethical compass, no moral courage, and no actual belief in their protestations of academic freedom. 

Ultimately, with virtually the entire academic community piling on, the administration issued an “oops” statement. But it was too little, too late, and López Prater is suing. Curmie hopes she wins big. Also too little, too late, the Hamline faculty is now asking President Fayneese Miller to resign. 

Exhibit B comes not from a “where’s that?” school like Hamline, but from one of the most respected universities in the world, Stanford. Let’s just say Curmie is glad he didn’t end up there after they recruited him for their PhD program forty-something years ago. 

Anyway: the story. It seems that an as yet unnamed (but apparently identified) student was photographed reading a copy of Mein Kampf, and that photo was circulated on Snapshat. 

The book, by the way, has been required reading in at least one Stanford course of late, albeit only a single chapter, and as a linked pdf. The FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) website suggests that the book is available for loan from the university library; Curmie checked, and can see no copies of the book per se except in the original German. Literally scores of analyses, but no copies of the book itself in English. In other words, the student in question apparently purchased the book. The question “So what?” presents itself here. 

Reading a book, any book, is an exercise in freedom of expression. Curmie supposes this idea could be contorted to excuse actual unethical (but still probably legal) conduct, but barring the specific intention of offending onlookers (a variation on incitement), the student in question is guilty of nothing more than accidental rudeness. 

Of course, as might be expected from those who are never happier than when they can claim to be abused, a Protected Identity Harm (PIH) report has been filed with university authorities. The PIH may or may not be well-intentioned—Curmie doubts it, but you know how he is, don’t you, Gentle Reader? The idea is that anyone can nark on their friends conflate the university with the Stasi “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.” 

Here, as at Hamline, the censorious asshats were urged on by university-employed religious leaders, in this case Rabbis Jessica Kirschner and Laurie Hahn Tapper, who couldn’t resist the siren song of victimhood: “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.” FFS, literally no one is suggesting otherwise. What is being not merely suggested but screamed from the metaphorical rooftops is that students who want to know what Hitler actually wrote instead of what someone else said he wrote don’t belong at Stanford. Intellectual curiosity used to be considered a good thing. Not anymore, apparently. 

Of course, FIRE is right in declaring that “the process is the punishment”: “Administrators with disciplinary authority formally notifying students they’ve been accused of ‘harm,’ when they’ve done nothing more than read a book, and asking them to ‘acknowledge’ what they’ve done and ‘change’ their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech.” 

It might be going a bit far to suggest that the author of Mein Kampf would approve of Stanford’s tactics (not their overt political stance, of course), but that suggestion is not far off the mark. 

OK, let’s look at the other side of the ledger: Exhibit C. We all know that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is positioning himself for a presidential run.  Those of us of a particular political disposition might be tempted to suggest that he’s trying to be the sane and not senile version of Donald Trump.  Curmie, to say the least, has never been impressed: he objected to DeSantis’s obviously phony rationale in demanding that everyone—faculty and students alike—at state universities declare their political affiliations. No rational being believed the rhetoric about “competing ideas and perspectives,” especially when there was a not-so-veiled threat of withholding funding if not enough of his acolytes were hired. 

Curmie also wrote:

Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?

As for Gov. DeSantis… he's baaaaaack, and he continues his mendacious ways. We knew that because he’s Ron DeSantis and his lips were moving, but just for verification’s sake, let’s look at his desire to make New College of Florida into a “Hillsdale of the South.” (To be fair, Curmie can’t find anywhere those precise words were uttered by DeSantis himself, only by his minion, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz. Kinda doesn’t matter, though.) 

The point is that DeSantis hasn’t the slightest interest in making New College into a Hillsdale. How can Curmie be so sure? Two reasons: 1). Curmie has a dear friend of long standing who teaches at Hillsdale, and we’ve had more than one discussion about life at our respective institutions, and 2). Hillsdale is a private college whose defining characteristic isn’t its conservatism, but rather its libertarianism and self-styled independence from government interference. The government says “your students can’t get Pell Grants unless you do this,” and Hillsdale replies, “Okay, no Pell Grants.” The college is breaking no rules by their refusal, it’s just that the government is flustered by their inability to impose demands. 

New College is a state institution, and DeSantis wants to be able to appoint its board members; if it were a private college, he wouldn’t be able to get his grubby mitts anywhere near its day-to-day operations. He’s a megalomaniacal narcissist, not the slightest bit interested in diversity of perspectives; he wants his own views presented to the exclusion of others, and he wants the state to pay for it. 

Curmie has made the point repeatedly that for the last generation or more, boards of state colleges and universities are appointed for their adherence to the political philosophy of the governor. The state university from which Curmie recently retired had dozens of Regents over the last two decades; nary a one, to the best of Curmie’s knowledge, was a Democrat. Indeed, being active in Republican politics far outstripped any particular skillset or interest in education in the selection process. So whereas DeSantis is less than ethical, he at least has, or, rather, had, the lame but commonplace excuse that everybody does it. 

This is different, though. As Peter Greene writes at Curmudgucation, “Taking the liberal and successful New College and targeting it to become the ‘Hillsdale of the South’ is not about creating more choices, and nobody is even pretending that it is. It’s about silencing one set of voices and amplifying another set.” 

Greene continues by arguing that “School choice advocates who hold Florida and DeSantis up as examples of forward-thinking awesome school choice advances are being disingenuous—Florida is on a road to impose a more ideologically focused authoritarian model of education in which only ideas approved by the governor may be included in schooling.” 

Curmie agrees, and notes also that DeSantis wants to overthrow the tenure system, audit money spent on DEI programs (this could actually be legit, but it’s Ron DeSantis, so we’d be wise to expect the worst, especially in terms of an attempt to suppress Critical Race Theory), block AP courses on African American Studies (newsflash, Ron, it’s not your call)… well, you get the idea. This is the “free speech” guy conservatives salivate over? Seriously? 

And so we move on to Exhibit D. Now we’re in the great (or perhaps not so great) state of North Dakota. Needless to say, Curmie is not an expert on things in the Peace Garden State (yes, Curmie had to look that up). There are actually two stories here, but Curmie is going to lump them together because of their chronological propinquity. The first to catch Curmie’s attention wasn’t in the form of a news story per se, but in a post by the above-mentioned Peter Greene. His post is titled “ND: Actual Anti-Furry Legislation. Really,” which sort of borders on clickbait because the essay is really about some pretty creepy manifestations of transphobia. 

You should check out Greene’s post in its entirety, Gentle Reader, but there are two specific points that need to be emphasized. First, North Dakota (like Missouri, apparently) clearly has no real problems to solve or no sane person would be wasting time on stuff like this. Second, like Texas’s abortion bill of a couple years back, there’s money to be had for narking on your neighbors. At least the left only encourages this kind of crap; they don’t provide monetary incentives. 

The other North Dakota story concerns proposed legislation being pushed by the House majority leader to give university presidents the right to fire tenured faculty pretty much at will. A decision to do so could not be appealed by the faculty member, and “the president and any administrators designated to assist the president shall fulfill these duties without fear of reprisal or retaliation. No complaint, lawsuit or other allegation is allowed against a president or other administrator for actions taken pursuant to these provisions.” 

This idiocy makes tenure meaningless, of course, and completely ignores both the advantages of a robust tenure system and the obligations owed to faculty who took a position or didn’t leave because they believed the state and the university would behave ethically. 

More to the point: the governor appoints the board, the board appoints (and fires or rewards) the president, and the president is to be granted absolute, unrestricted (by internal appeal or lawsuit) authority to fire even tenured faculty. (Curmie notes that Kansas tried this crap a couple of years ago, disingenuously invoking financial exigencies caused by COVID. Guess what party controls Kansas’s government.) What could possibly go wrong? 

Neither the left nor the right, then, really give a damn about free expression. Curmie won’t bother to link all the examples he’s written about over the years, but there have been a lot of them, from both sides, and scores of others he didn’t get to. As Hall of Fame baseball manager Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up. Both sides want to control what happens in the classroom; Curmie was about to say the left is more interested in what happens outside the classroom, the right in controlling the curriculum and the faculty… but that really isn’t true, at least universally. 

The one difference is the strategy. Most of the repression from the left comes from the campus per se, generally from idiot administrators at both the university and secondary school levels. The right prefers to legislate from outside the institution itself, citing often imaginary problems that need to be solved. 

Neither side seems willing to allow faculty to teach and students to learn. ‘Twas not ever thus, and the future of education and indeed of the nation depends on returning to free expression in and out of the classroom, to the quest for truth rather than the dubious claim to have found it, and to finding an appropriate balance between encouraging disparate perspectives and believing (or pretending to believe) that they’re all equally valid.