{"id":282766,"date":"2026-02-21T09:18:20","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T14:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingramblog.wordpress.com\/2026\/02\/21\/the-humanities-are-about-to-be-automated\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T09:18:20","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T14:18:20","slug":"the-humanities-are-about-to-be-automated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2026\/02\/21\/the-humanities-are-about-to-be-automated\/","title":{"rendered":"The humanities are about to be automated"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/unnamed-10.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-285478\" style=\"width:900px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Referencing my desire to disprove that AI is \u201cmerely a stochastic parrot,\u201d Claude told me that \u201cpolitical theory may be the one field where \u2018stochastic parrot\u2019 is actually a compliment, since the whole discipline consists of creatively recombining things Tocqueville and Mill already said.\u201d Ouch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Professors at top universities are \u2014 in good part because of what it now takes to get a good job in the field \u2014 more focused on publishing erudite contributions to niche debates in scholarly journals which only a handful of their colleagues will ever read than on teaching and mentoring the ever-dwindling ranks of their students.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yascha Mounk gets an AI to <a href=\"https:\/\/writing.yaschamounk.com\/p\/the-humanities-are-about-to-be-automated\">write an academic paper<\/a> in political theory and says the result is more or less indistinguishable from papers written by experts in the field<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Referencing my desire to disprove that AI is \u201cmerely a stochastic parrot,\u201d Claude told me that \u201cpolitical theory may be the one field where \u2018stochastic parrot\u2019 is actually a compliment, since the whole discipline consists of creatively recombining things Tocqueville and Mill already said.\u201d Ouch. Professors at top universities are \u2014 in good part because &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2026\/02\/21\/the-humanities-are-about-to-be-automated\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The humanities are about to be automated&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-282766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-misc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}