Look, I wasn’t planning on writing today. My head’s still pounding from last night’s exploration of Kentucky’s finest exports, but this story sobered me up faster than my morning coffee-and-bourbon combo.
UCLA, that bastion of higher learning where parents send their kids for the bargain price of their life savings, has decided to let AI teach medieval literature. Not as a supplement, mind you, but as the whole damn show. And the best part? The AI-generated textbook cover looks like what I see when I try reading after a three-day bender.
“Of Nerniacular Latin To An Evoolitun On Nance Langusages.” I swear that’s what it says. I had to check three times to make sure I wasn’t having a stroke. Even my drunk texts to ex-girlfriends at 3 AM make more sense than this linguistic train wreck.
Here’s where it gets better. The professor behind this masterpiece, Zrinka Stahuljak, claims she’s feeding her own course notes into some AI system called Kudu. Convenient that Kudu was created by another UCLA professor. Nothing says “academic integrity” like keeping the grift in the family, right?
Let me pour another drink while I explain why this is monumentally stupid.
First off, Professor Stahuljak says this saves her time because she won’t have to waste precious hours “contextualizing the material.” You know, that useless thing called teaching. Heaven forbid an educator educate. Next thing you know, surgeons will be outsourcing operations to ChatGPT because actually cutting people open is such a time-suck.
The professor claims this will help her “work with students to read primary sources and walk them through critical thinking.” Right. Because nothing teaches critical thinking like having an AI hallucinate its way through Chaucer. That’s like saying watching me try to parallel park after happy hour teaches defensive driving.
And the kicker? This is supposed to prevent students from using ChatGPT to cheat. Because obviously, the best way to stop students from using AI is to… checks notes through whiskey-blurred eyes… make them use AI. That’s like saying the best way to prevent alcoholism is to spike everyone’s morning coffee with bourbon. (Note to self: patent that idea.)
One professor from Tulsa suggested putting Stahuljak in the stocks in the university quad. While I appreciate the medieval theme, I think that’s letting her off easy. Make her read the entire AI-generated textbook out loud at a faculty meeting. That’s real punishment.
You know what gets me? I spent years poring over actual medieval manuscripts while technical writing for various publishers. Real ones, with real monks’ handwriting, real gold leaf, real centuries-old wine stains. There’s something beautifully human about those imperfect pages. They tell stories beyond their text - about the people who made them, who read them, who preserved them.
But now we’re replacing all that with digital nonsense generated by algorithms that can’t even spell “evolution” correctly. It’s like replacing a fine aged whiskey with bathtub moonshine and calling it an upgrade.
The real tragedy here isn’t just that UCLA is charging premium prices for discount education. It’s that they’re robbing students of something fundamental: the messy, complicated, beautiful experience of learning from actual humans. Say what you want about professors - god knows I have - but at least when they’re wrong, they’re wrong in interesting ways. When AI is wrong, it’s just… stupid.
Look, I get it. Technology moves forward. But sometimes moving forward means knowing what to leave alone. Medieval literature isn’t a tech problem waiting to be solved. It’s human knowledge that needs to be passed down by human beings, preferably ones who can spell.
Time to wrap this up. My bottle’s running low, and there’s a medieval-themed bar down the street where the bartender knows more about Beowulf than any AI ever will. At least he can pronounce the words he’s saying, even after his shift ends.
Stay human, you beautiful disasters.
P.S. If any UCLA students are reading this, transfer while you still can. Or at least demand a refund for getting the AI equivalent of a medieval Times New Roman font.
Source: UCLA’s AI-Based Literature Class Ridiculed for Incomprehensible AI-Generated Textbook