Martha Lincoln

@heavyredaction.bsky.social

4456 Followers 764 Following

Medical anthropologist, Assoc. Prof. at SFSU. EIC at @jvietnamstudies.bsky.social. Studying online health influencers. “In the dark times/Will there also be singing?”—Bertolt Brecht

Innovation or Extraction? AI and the Future of Public Education
Weds 4/8, 5-7:15 PM, LIB 121, San Francisco State

Our event brings together critical perspectives on how artificial intelligence is reshaping schools and universities. Under the guise of enhanced productivity and innovation, the CSU has partnered with several AI companies, including OpenAI, currently working with the Department of War. Our discussion will feature Alex Hanna, co-author of The AI Con, who will engage with the role of AI and its unintended—or intended—consequences, such as the intensification of labor precarity, privatization, the enabling of war and violence, as well as data and ecological extraction in the classroom and beyond.

Speakers: Alex Hanna, Ph.D., Mandana Mohsenzadegan

More information and a link to register: https://scholars.my.salesforce-sites.com/event/home/bayareaopedai

Tech Policy Press 3/18/26: "How Cal State Became Ground Zero for the Fight over AI in Higher Education"

Action Network petition: Cancel ChatGPT Edu. Invest in Humans.

In February 2025, the California State University system announced a $17 million contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu to all faculty, staff, and students on its 22 CSU campuses as part of a larger “AI-Empowered University” initiative. This is the largest contract ever established between a university system and an artificial intelligence company.

Despite the name, ChatGPT Edu is not educational technology. It is a general-purpose chatbot that is not designed, trained, or optimized for education. Beyond its privacy and security features, ChatGPT Edu is identical to the free online version of ChatGPT. ChatGPT Edu does not use reliable peer-reviewed sources to answer students' questions and is indifferent to whether its answers are correct. Experts argue that ChatGPT Edu is harmful to academic working conditions, diminishes the quality of teaching and learning, introduces new forms of discrimination, and is dangerous to students' mental health.

Recent polling shows that CSU students share these concerns, with the majority of students expressing that they are worried about the negative impacts of generative AI on human creativity and the environment.

Duchess, a beautiful black Bouvier, age 10, 95 pounds. A close-up portrait of her beautiful shaggy face. Duchess is a trained service dog and has a sweet temper. She is being fostered in Portola and just needs someone to adopt her! :)

Infographic: Years of disinvestment by the CSU created a crisis for our students.

Across the CSU, there are 1900 students per full-time equivalent counselor.

The CSU serves an incredibly diverse student body composed of many students of color and first-generation college students. In fact, CSU campuses grant more than half of all undergraduate degrees earned by California's Latino, African-American, and Native-American students. It is a bitter irony that the university system which educates the most Black and Brown students greatly underfunds student mental health support.

Screen shot from Inside Higher Ed:
Views
It's Time to Pull the Plug on ChatGPT at Cal State
Recent lawsuits suggest ChatGPT poses an unacceptable risk to our students' mental health
By Martha Lincoln

Chapter 6
From ‘in this together’ to ‘a winter of severe illness and death’: Narrating national pandemic outcomes in the United States, 2020–2023

Abstract
The failures of pandemic response in the United States have been narrated in myriad ways. This chapter critically considers a set of narratives that situate American COVID outcomes in specifically biopolitical terms. At early moments in the public health emergency, political leaders and media framed the nation as a unified ‘body politic’ that would resist infection through its collective resilience. As the emergency progressed, the pandemic was rationalised by other narratives that stressed the problematic biological and behavioural characteristics of ‘vulnerable groups’ and ‘the unvaccinated’. These stories naturalised the pandemic’s outsize and disparate impacts in the United States, making them seem inevitable and unpreventable. (...)

The cover of "Crisis, Inequity, and Legacy: Narrative Analyses of the COVID-19 Pandemic." Edited by Silvia Camporesi, Sanny Mulubale, and Mark D.M. Davis

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We acknowledge the environmental shortcomings of current A.I. infrastructure, including the significant power, water, and heat demands of data centers. We call on the leadership of the technology sector to center environmental sustainability, and prioritize the development of more efficient solutions to mitigate these impacts.

This production was filmed on the treaty lands of the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ, as well as the ancestral homelands of the Quiichi, Tataviam, Serrano, and Chumash peoples. We honor these original stewards and their enduring commitment to ecological and social justice.

We acknowledge the profound and enduring impact of Indian boarding schools on Indigenous communities. These institutions were tools of forced assimilation, generational trauma, and cultural erasure, tearing young people from their families and lifeways. Our film imagines of future where technology, like AI co-pilots, serves as a bridge to empower and educate, honoring Indigenous knowledge while unlocking the potential within each individual.

May we move forward with reference for the past, and strive to create a future where education is a path to justice and healing.

A Cal State presentation for administrators showed some of the companies participating in the university’s A.I. initiative.

Credit—Cal State via public records request

Later in the week, students watched a futuristic video from an A.I. education start-up called Matter and Space. The reel showed Native American young people wearing A.I. glasses and tracking devices that continually monitored their activities and mood.

Then Paul J. LeBlanc, a co-founder of the start-up, told students that A.I. technologies would soon diagnose illnesses faster and more accurately than doctors, displacing human expertise.

Martha Kenney, a professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University, described the A.I. program as a Cal State marketing vehicle helping tech companies promote unproven chatbots as legitimate educational tools.

“It’s not a ‘partnership,’” Professor Kenney said. “If you switch out the product, we would never say, ‘Xerox is collaborating with San Francisco State to offer photocopiers to all the members of its community.’”

Cal State’s growing industry ties offer a glimpse into an extraordinary shift in campus power dynamics unfolding across the United States. Some major universities are inviting tech companies, which typically supply campus computers and email, to take on a much bigger role as education thought partners, A.I. instructors and curriculum providers.

That means dominant tech companies are now helping to steer what an entire generation of students learn about A.I, and how they use it — with little rigorous evidence of educational benefits and mounting concerns that chatbots are spreading misinformation and eroding critical thinking.

Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground

Spurred by titans like Amazon and OpenAI, California State wants to become the nation's "largest A.I.-empowered" university.

Let Them Eat Large Language Models: Artificial Intelligence and Austerity in the Neoliberal University

Martha Kenney and Martha Lincoln

Abstract
This article examines the expansion of generative artificial intelligence (genAI) into higher education. We argue that genAI’s incursion into university systems represents an effort by Silicon Valley to capture lucrative new markets for their products, as well as enhanced credibility by association. Drawing on our experience as faculty in the California State University (CSU) system—the first university system to contract with OpenAI to provide ChatGPT Edu system-wide—we assess the rhetoric that justifies and legitimizes genAI contracts in higher education. We suggest that the uncritical adoption of genAI in higher education poses problems for labor conditions, the integrity of intellectual property, and student learning on campuses, particularly under the conditions of austerity that are commonly found in public universities.

SF Chronicle OPINION: "AI is freeing time for students to focus on what matters — evaluating the information AI generates, interacting with people and machines, and creating new things in the world," writes Henry Lu, a Stanford MBA student.

The California State University
AI Commons
Tools and information for CSU Students, Faculty, Staff, and Alumni

CSU says its "AI-powered university" is good for higher education. But is it?
By Martha Lincoln, Martha Kenney

Sen. Adam Schiff

History is littered with democracies that lost their freedoms without seeming to notice while it was happening.

Let's not become one of them.

Musk’s straight-arm gesture embraced by right wing extremists regardless of what he meant—RNS

Sam Altman: Advancing Al may require
"changes to the social contract."
"The entire structure of society will be up for debate and reconfiguration."

Correction: This essay originally misstated the number of WHO member-states.

Jha says WHO should focus on countries, yet he knows that WHO has already shifted its center of gravity to countries under Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as we have reported publicly and frequently. Increased financing, expertise, and authority sit in our more than 150 country offices.

WHO is what its 194 member states make it, including the U.S. It’s the member states that approve WHO’s strategy, budget, and program of work. Jha fails to acknowledge that all countries, including high-income countries, struggled to save lives during the pandemic, and continue to count on WHO for support with other health challenges within and outside their borders.

Jha writes that WHO should hold its member states accountable in pandemics. Sovereign governments are accountable not to U.N. agencies but to their people. In fact, WHO member states are implementing measures to keep each other accountable, including through the International Health Regulations and a Pandemic Agreement. The agreement is being negotiated by member states, for member states, and will be implemented by member states within their national laws.

I share Ashish Jha’s hope that the U.S. will remain a WHO member state. However, his Jan. 19 First Opinion essay includes numerous inaccuracies, omissions, and misrepresentations.

In his opening, Jha makes a broad assertion that WHO “mismanaged” Covid-19, and the scant evidence he cites vastly oversimplifies complex scientific issues and completely overlooks the comprehensive multiyear response that WHO led. As a scientist, he knows that evidence evolves rapidly, especially in relation to a novel pathogen. Throughout the pandemic, WHO said what we knew and didn’t know at the time, based on the available evidence. Over time we updated our communications and guidance.

WHO is “quick to criticize the U.S.,” he says, providing no examples. We can’t find any, either. By the same token he says “WHO never really criticized China” when in fact we have called on China repeatedly to share information critical to understanding the origins of Covid-19.

The @WHO has published a "response" to my piece saying my criticisms are unwarranted because they have largely fixed the issues I raise

I have so many thoughts on this

But in the interest of transparency -- you should read their response

In the shadow of a pandemic — at a time when its impact is still felt — the U.S. should use its leverage to strengthen the WHO. There are more pandemics and other health crises ahead, and the U.S. and the world need an effective global organization to help guide and inform how we prevent, prepare and respond to them. The WHO depends on U.S. expertise to do just that. Covid taught the world that viruses and diseases respect no borders. Sen. Rubio is right that we need a better WHO. But we can’t address the global challenges we face by leaving the WHO and fighting alone.

Abandoning the organization would create a leadership vacuum that others, especially China, would surely fill — to our detriment and the world’s. Global disease surveillance would be diminished, along with our influence and expertise in global health policy, and our national security. And we would have no voice in helping shape or create a better, more effective WHO, which should be our goal.

Much of the problem stems from its own confusion around its mission. Is it a membership organization with 194 member-states, most of which are low- and middle-income? Or is it the world’s public health agency?

When these two missions conflict, the WHO usually chooses to focus on being a membership organization. And, like most membership organizations, it is loathe to criticize its own members — unless, of course, it is politically expedient to do so. That explains why the WHO never really criticized China for its handling of Covid (but is often quick to criticize the U.S.).

"The likely next secretary of state, Sen. Marco Rubio, once said of the World Health Organization: “The WHO is a corrupt, radical institution that was powerless to stop Covid-19 spreading beyond China.” That was in 2022. In 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, then-President Trump pulled U.S. funding and membership from the WHO, also slinging accusations of pandemic mismanagement. Now, it’s likely he’ll again pull the U.S. from the WHO early in his new administration."

Ashish K. Jha, MD, MPH Jan 20, 2025

Trump WH just announced US withdrawal from @WHO

Worth remembering — withdrawal doesn’t fully take effect for a year

It’s plenty of time for @who to make much needed reforms and may be — just may be - convince US to remain.

My piece in @statnews

Folks working out on a rooftop in NYC amid thick wildfire smoke, June 2023

"Subway Victim's Fiery End Stuns Friends From Her Happy Past

Debbie Kawam, as she was known in high school, was a cheerleader and a sunny presence. As the decades went on, she fell into an abyss."

Anatomy of a paragraph highlighting claim, contextual information, introduction of the evidence, evidence, why the evidence matters, concluding sentence, and transition words

Robert A. Paper
Luigi Mangione's Background Should Make Us All Nervous

Police Say Suspect Most Likely Saw Himself as Hero

Sex, a Hex and a Sick Child Offer Clues About the Mpox Epidemic

Some on Social Media See Suspect in CEO Killing as a Folk Hero—NYT 12/7

Now, however, the country is awash in powerful guns. And some of the new technologies that will be deployed to help preserve order can cut both ways. Thompson’s killer apparently knew exactly where to find his target and at exactly what time. No evidence has emerged that he had access to digital tracking data, but that information is out there on the market. How long before easily built artificial-intelligence-powered drones equipped with facial recognition cameras, rather than hooded men with backpacks, seek targets in cities and towns?

Vinay Prasad RTing a video by Dr. Glaucomflecken ("How to Ace your United HealthCare Interview"): "I see people are retweeting this in the wake of the assassination. That's in poor taste. Glaucomflecken is not actually a student of health policy. He doesn't understand insurance. Denying coverage does not increase their profits. That idea may have gotten someone murdered. Sad"

The New York Times en Español: Brian Thompson assassinated, "The surprising charm of ignorance," Rihanna at a fashion show, story about a fentanyl bust in Mexico

An assortment of highly varied cacti in a greenhouse, as far as the eye can see

STS Hub presents "Algorithms of Suspicion: Political Economy & Politics in Platform Fraud Detection" by Lilly Irani, HSS 361, 3-4 PM, Friday 12/6
Algorithms and AI impact access to work and other essential resources, especially for low-income people. This talk examines the combination of policies, practices, and algorithms of suspicion that control workers' access to wages and work on digital platforms.

Lilly Irani is an Associate Professor of Communication & Science Studies at University of California, San Diego. She also holds an affiliation in Computer Science and Engineering. At UCSD, she serves as the Faculty Director of the UCSD Labor Center. She is author of Chasing Innovation: Making Entrepreneurial Citizens in Modern India (Princeton University Press, 2019), winner of the 2020 International Communication Association Outstanding Book Award and the 2019 Diana Forsythe Prize.

Michael Collins Morton
Most people, including many who claim to take Covid-19 seriously, are loath to admit it, but the truth of our situation is alarmingly clear: the fatal damage resulting from uncontrolled Covid-19 is steadily increasing, propelling us toward an outcome of inevitable doom.