A question stumping experts around the globe has finally been solved: why does Carnegie Mellon have an English department? For decades people have wondered who would possibly attend CMU just to get a degree in Creative Writing when everyone knows literary analysis is for losers. README has recently conducted a groundbreaking investigation into why anyone would possibly spend tens of thousands of dollars every year to learn how to read, a skill most people learn by first grade.
In reality, the humanities department of Carnegie Mellon is an extensive testing ground for research on sentient AI. By placing AI in a four-year program designed to simulate achieving an English degree, researchers hope to better teach artificial intelligence to pretend to be smart. A professor who requested to remain anonymous described what the transition to robotics was like:
“At first I was totally against it. I mean, all AI can do is predict the next word in a sentence. How will teaching it Shakespeare do anything other than make it sound kind of like Shakespeare? But then I saw the bonus they were offering and, I mean, you know, I’m an English professor without tenure. No way I would pass up free money. And hey, the writing may be total dogshit, but at least I can watch a bunch of robots spit complete nonsense at each other during discussions.”
Though many professors feel the university would be better served teaching real live humans how to analyze media and history critically, CMU is pushing ahead. Harry Q. Bovik, senior computer scientist at CMU, remarked “why would I think about what I’m reading when AI can do that for me?”. When pressed on an AI providing inaccurate information when asked about the details of a topic, the professor responded “details schmetails, who cares what some nerds who read books for fun think?”†. This sentiment was common throughout CMU’s computer science department. Gone are the days of stupid things like “reading books”, “watching movies”, or “knowing about history”. Instead, CMU is paving the way for the day our new robotic overlords are able to spoon-feed information into our mouths with nary a drop of energy expended on humanity’s part. Having already replaced its staff with variants of ChatGPT, README strongly supports these important endeavors.
† Editor’s note: the insult of “nerds who read books for fun” does not apply to the readers of README, all of whom are extremely smart, funny, and cool
