标签：education

Universities that prohibit students from using AI to write papers should be dissolved immediately

AI & Scholarship2026.05.27
Universities that prohibit students from using AI to write papers should be dissolved immediately
It’s graduation season again, and recently many universities in China have acquired a new task: checking AI-generation rates. Rules like “if AI-generated content (AIGC rate) exceeds 40%, you cannot graduate” are simply hilarious; they show how helpless some universities are in the age of AI. I believe that any university that stipulates that using AI means you cannot graduate can be dissolved on the spot; that is the best thing it can do for this era. Stop misleading the young. Checking the AIGC rate is a joke Checking the AIGC rate is in the same vein as the earlier thesis plagiarism check. I criticized the absurdity of plagiarism checks in…
China scholarship freedom education
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2026年5月27日
Let Beibei Become Someone Different from Yang Weiwei

AI & Scholarship2025.11.01
Let Beibei Become Someone Different from Yang Weiwei
The report I gave on October 25 at the National Academy of Art, “Human Childhood: The Forum for the Eighth International Cross-Media Arts Festival and the Fifth Sensibility Forum.” This year’s festival took the 1988 film Electric Boy as its starting point. I specially watched Electric Boy and prepared a talk that was as on-topic as possible. Here is the draft: Electric Boy tells the story of a child with extraordinary powers—a child who carries electricity—from being out of place to finally becoming integrated into society. In my personal view, this is a tragedy, because in the plot Beibei is gradually recognized by others only by doing good deeds and…
technology China culture freedom
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2025年11月1日
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New

Culture & Public Commentary2025.09.12
How Science Museums in China Can Innovate by Bringing Forth the New
Published in Science Times (2025-08-28, p. 3, general), with the title changed to “The first users of science museums should not be teenagers, but scholars” In this summer vacation, which is about to end, science museums have joined the ranks of the many must-check-in tourist destinations. For parents, if they want their children to take part in some edutainment-oriented activities, science museums are obviously one of the best choices. In recent years, our country has continuously increased investment in science museum construction. According to Xinhua News Agency, the number of science museums open free of charge in China increased from 92 in 2015 to 409 in 2024, with an average…
China history of science scholarship science
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2025年9月12日
In the Digital Age, How Do We Win the “Battle to Defend Childhood”

AI & Scholarship2025.06.01
In the Digital Age, How Do We Win the “Battle to Defend Childhood”
Published in China Science Daily (2025-05-30, p. 4, Culture). The original draft title was “How to Protect Childhood in the Digital Age”; this is a reprint of the published version. International Children’s Day on June 1 is approaching. The holiday was initiated by the Soviet Union, originally to commemorate the children persecuted in the Lidice massacre of June 1942; later it became “International Day for the Protection of Children,” aimed at protecting children’s rights to survival, health care, and education, and at opposing the hiring of child labor. As for the right to survival and the right to health care, adults ought to have those too. What is truly special…
culture book reading media education
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2025年6月1日
In the Age of AI, What Is Philosophy For?

AI & Scholarship2025.02.21
In the Age of AI, What Is Philosophy For?
Published in Science Daily of China (2025-02-21, p. 4, Culture). This should be the longest article I have ever published in a newspaper; they gave me a full page. My original text was basically not changed much, except that the section headings were altered a bit and the prose was lightly polished. What I am posting here is my original draft; anyone who wants to reprint it can go find the version posted by Science Net. Welcoming the AI Era In the courses on history of science and philosophy of technology that I had been teaching at Tsinghua, I had already run into the shock of AI. Back then I…
philosophy technology freedom Aristotle
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2025年2月21日
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT

AI & Scholarship2023.03.19
Can General Education Outmaneuver the Majors? — A Loose Talk from Course Assessment Methods to ChatGPT
Note: I originally just wanted to vent a bit about the feelings stirred up by a wave of severely plagiarized assignments, but as it turned out the discussion naturally drifted into AI, and things got a bit loose. Let’s leave it at that for now. The two courses I taught last semester—A General History of Technology and Introduction to Philosophy of Technology—have only just now finally been brought to a close. Normally, my courses use in-class exams during the last week of the term, but because of the outbreak of the pandemic at the end of last semester, the university suggested changing the final-exam process and arranging two exam sessions,…
technology scholarship freedom Introduction to Philosophy of Technology
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2023年3月19日
The Science Museum in the Metaverse: Looking Ahead to the Future of Digital Collectibles

Web3 & Cypherpunks2022.03.31
The Science Museum in the Metaverse: Looking Ahead to the Future of Digital Collectibles
Recently I’ve had a few conversations about the possibility of combining NFTs with science museums, including people in blockchain circles and in the VR industry. I’m recording my thoughts here: The digitization of museums is nothing new; it’s been underway for many years, especially in many overseas museums, which long ago digitized most of their collections and made them public on the internet. Of course, digital exhibition halls and the like have also already been built in great numbers. Our own Tsinghua Science Museum is not behind the times either: every exhibition is turned into a “3D Digital Exhibition Hall”. But the current kind of digitization is basically still rather…
history of science Web3 education blockchain
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2022年3月31日
Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem

AI & the Future of Technology2021.11.04
Biography of Things (Continued) — Educational Significance, Secondary-School Science and Technology Innovation, and the Bottleneck Problem
Yesterday’s comments still weren’t finished. What I wrote yesterday was that research in the history of scientific instruments can be positioned as “artifact biographies,” in which meaning is formed around the artifact itself. But that does not mean that, beyond this intrinsic meaning, research in the history of instruments has no other benefits. We can also make an analogy with biographical research. Unlike general academic research, biographical works as the outcome of research on individuals often lie somewhere between scholarship and popularization. Apart from non-academic biographical literature, research-based biographies also tend to have a popularizing dimension, making them easier for general readers to read. Between intervening in academic issues and…
technology history of science history education
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2021年11月4日
The “Atmosphere” of Online Teaching, or a New Paradigm

Culture & Public Commentary2020.04.18
The “Atmosphere” of Online Teaching, or a New Paradigm
Stage-by-Stage Reflections on Online Teaching The most unusual semester in years has already passed its halfway point in the blink of an eye. I have finished eight lectures of my course on the history of technology, and of course it has always been online. The reading group I host has naturally also shifted to an online mode; during winter break we had already launched a “cloud reading group,” meeting once before the semester began and then resuming once a week after classes started. The reading group is held through Zoom cloud video conferencing, while Tsinghua’s large lecture course (history of technology) is livestreamed simultaneously via Rain Classroom and Zoom cloud…
technology culture scholarship media
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2020年4月18日
Visiting for an Exchange at Jiangsu Province Qinghe Middle School (What Kind of “General Technology” Do Middle School Students Need?)

AI & the Future of Technology2019.08.23
Visiting for an Exchange at Jiangsu Province Qinghe Middle School (What Kind of “General Technology” Do Middle School Students Need?)
Giving a Lecture to Middle School Teachers and Students On August 17 and 18, I was invited to Jiangsu Province Qinghe High School to take part in an exchange. They had an experimental project in educational reform, aiming to add elements of the history of technology to the teaching of the high school course “General Technology.” Jiangsu Province Qinghe High School is in Huai’an; it is not some famous school, but I was still very interested in this topic. Of course, it was also quite rare for the teachers there to think of inviting me, so I was more than happy to go. At the time, the incoming freshmen were…
technology history of science history of technology education
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2019年8月23日