This essay has now been published in Critical AI at this link. [https://doi.org/10.1215/2834703X-11205217]; the abstract is pasted in below. If your institution lacks access to Critical AI please encourage them to subscribe. If you are an independent scholar please write to criticalai@sas.rutgers.edu.
ABSTRACT:
The authors suggest that national investment in the educational utility of automated software comes at an enormous cost, a price paid by the very students that technology aims to convert to history as a lively and accessible field. This “high-tech mimicry” pretends to incarnate the past but instead silences the inflections of time, gender, region, race, or other vocalic variables. Further, the perception that technology is objective or unbiased conceals the vulnerabilities of language models. The authors argue that the illusions of authenticity these bots produce does not bode well for teaching African American history.