The Lysenko Institute for Natural Stupidity

UMass Boston establishes a new Artificial Intelligence Institute, and guess who's not invited?

Trofim Lysenko

UMass Boston announced the creation of The Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute, conceived and funded by tech entrepreneur and UMass Boston alumnus Paul English, who graduated from the Computer Science (CS) department. The article says (emphasis ours):

The … Institute will catalyze UMass Boston’s efforts to organize significant expertise and activity around AI. It will gather experts from the full spectrum of UMass Boston’s schools and colleges, as well as the Venture Development Center, to lead the university’s ambitious teaching, learning, workforce development, community engagement, and research agenda around AI.

Wait, full spectrum? Apparently not.

One might think such a great initiative would involve the CS department (you know, where the actual AI experts are), or at least the College of Science and Mathematics, but our special reporters asked around and surprisingly (?) no one at the college of Science and Math was involved in the creation of the institute, and what is more interesting, no one had even heard about the institute until the announcement came!

You may think - an AI institute without the involvement of any scientists?! How come? Worry not. In our new AI institute, science or scientists are not needed and are, in fact, a nuisance. Just notice the strategic placement of the word “research” at the end of the above quote for a clue… This is UMass Boston, after all! We no longer care about science. Indeed, the institute has one clear goal:

The new Institute will be the first of its kind and will be embedded in academic study across campus and include a focus on the social, ethical and diversity challenges and opportunities associated with AI.

The article continues:

It will incorporate AI competencies into the curriculum, giving each student the applied AI skills they need to join tomorrow’s workforce.

But wait, you may say, our students already know how to use AI better than us! Do we need a multi-million dollar institute for that? Oh, of course not, you naive fool! That’s just a “massage parlor” front.

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Imagine the infinite possibilities! We already showed that ChatGPT could create a better mission statement than our own flesh and blood colleagues. We also surmised that our very own Provost could be (or maybe he already has been?) replaced by a rather simple AI software and no one would notice.

In other words - artificial intelligence can sometimes be a better substitute for natural stupidity!

Why not expand that notion and, instead of hiring more and more Vice Provosts, create an army of AI DEI officers who will work day and night to task us with more strategic initiatives? MIT, talk to us when you’re ready to do business!

Then, we can take it one step further and get rid of the pesky science faculty by generating AI bot-scientists! Imagine that: no more (de)colonizing efforts, no more open letters that will embarrass our Supreme Leaders, only good little AI scientists who will produce decolonized, Lysenko-like science while the flesh and blood scientists will be sent to gulag. It worked so well in the USSR, why not follow the successful model? Also, the bot-humanity-students have already been deployed before, at Yale. Smashing success!

Our Supreme Leaders can use all the saved money to increase their already whooping high salaries, since they will no longer have to pay exuberant amounts to DEI commissars or faculty.

Finally, to showcase our Provost’s infinite wisdom and world-famous eloquence, Let us finish with a quote from the article:

“The Institute will promote the democratization of artificial intelligence by empowering every UMass Boston student to graduate with fluency—and a competitive edge—in ethically leveraging evolving AI-powered tools to improve processes and outcomes in their chosen professional field,” said UMass Boston Provost Joseph Berger.

ChatGPT, can you please translate it for us? We’re afraid the Provost’s infinitely wise words are beyond our abilities.