I was fortunate to have the chance to debate with staff from Anthropic in an event at the Tate Gallery.

Under discussion were the ethical and social impacts of Claude and other LLMs, especially in the context of the project at the Tate and Anthropic's push into education. The panel discussion was lively and wide-ranging.

Here are the prompts I prepared for myself beforehand, in case they're useful to anyone who wants to question the inevitability of AI in their university, educational institution or other setting. These questions are a boiled-down summary of extensive research and I have the receipts, as they say.

Questions: How do students feel about using a tool or 'creative collaborator' that:

• has been trained on other people's creative output, without permission?
• depends on exploitative and potentially abusive labour practices?
• is a massively carbon-emitting and environmentally damaging technology?
• is based on a belief in the power of scaling, when this creates so many basic problems?
• is used to put people out of a job or to deskill them, even though it can't actually do the job tasks properly?
• is touted as supporting people at work but is so unreliable it actually creates more work to check it?
• is claimed to improve efficiency but undermines people's skills and capacities?
• that will be pushed into schools and universities while degrading education and learning?
• is really a way to privatise public services like health and education?
• is claimed to be ethical while helping to fill the internet with slop?
• is supposedly on the way to becoming a genius but carries on making really dumb mistakes?
• is ranked as 'intelligent' using measures that are ultimately derived from eugenics?
• is being made 'safe' in ways that actually make it a more powerful tool for potential dictators?
• has as a central goal, according to its founder, American global dominance?
• is increasingly turning towards the military for both funding and purpose?