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The University of Austin is a private college conceived of at the frenzied peak of the Wokeness Wars. At a time when, the thinking went, higher education was being seriously damaged by dogmatically left-wing ideologues, UATX was to be “a new university ostensibly based on principles of free expression and academic freedom,” as a Politico Magazine article put it in January — one that “framed itself as a bulwark against the cancel culture that many contend has become common in the American academy.”
It has not been a smooth ride. As the article explained, UATX had a bit of a cancel-culture meltdown of its own last year. This was sparked in part by a closed-door address given by Joe Lonsdale, the billionaire co-founder of Palantir as well as the co-founder and chairman of the board at UATX, in which he announced that “all staff and faculty of UATX must subscribe to the four principles of anti-communism, anti-socialism, [anti-]identity politics, and anti-Islamism,” as Michael Lind later summarized the proceedings in a letter announcing his un-resignation (yes, things got messy!).
Just read the article if you want to understand what happened in Austin. As I’m far from the first to point out, this episode did call into question UATX’s commitment to free speech versus its commitment to a conservative ideology that selectively deploys the concept of free speech as a bludgeon against “wokeness.” (There had been prior tensions as well, including in 2021, when Steven Pinker and other founding UATX trustees stepped down.)
Anyway, I got a tip earlier this week that a couple recent fundraising emails sent by the university’s current president, Carlos Carvalho, were AI-generated. The tipster said that Pangram, the AI detector, rated those emails as 100% AI-assisted. I used Substack’s handy Pangram feature to test them myself, and yup, same thing for both:
Of course this isn’t dispositive; there’s some debate over the accuracy and fairness of these AI detectors, especially, in a case like this, given the overlap between AI-speak and PR-speak. I reached out to UATX and heard back from Carvalho himself:
Jesse,
Those are fundraising emails by an outside firm we work with closely to handle donor outreach. I review each one and sign off on them. They are helping us keep in touch with our allies and supporters (I personally read the responses). We take no government funding and every undergraduate attends tuition-free, which means every dollar we don’t spend on admin goes into teaching and student experience, so we use these AI tools deliberately and will continue to do so.
Carlos
Make of that what you will. The text of both emails is pasted below. For this first one I’ve taken the liberty of changing the font color of the parts I find funniest, given this context, to red (bolding in the originals):
Dear [recipient],
Right now, college freshmen across the country are unpacking dorm rooms, scrolling through campus maps on their phones, and figuring out which dining hall has the best options.
Our freshmen are doing something different.
This month, our newest class begins orientation by putting their phones away for days. Instead of staring at screens, they will hike the Barton Creek Greenbelt, swim at Barton Springs, and discuss the Iliad in daily seminars. They will learn to debate with rigor and generosity. They will be challenged physically, intellectually, and personally before their first day of class even begins.
This is not a summer camp. It is a deliberate introduction to what we expect of them: show up fully, engage seriously, and rise to the occasion.
And every year, they do.
Our students do not come here looking for the easy path. They come because they want to be pushed. They want to read difficult texts, wrestle with hard questions, and be surrounded by people who refuse to let them coast.
We designed UATX to meet that ambition. Every admitted undergraduate student attends tuition-free, not because of a test score, but because we believe that if we are going to ask this much of our students, cost should never be the barrier.
That is only possible because we refuse government funding and rely entirely on people like you.
Our independence is what allows us to build a university around truth and intellectual seriousness rather than political mandates or institutional conformity. But independence has a cost, and that cost is borne by the people who believe this work matters.
As a new class of students begins their journey at UATX this month, will you consider making your first gift to help us keep building?
https://donate.uaustin.org/august-appeal
Every dollar you give is a vote of confidence in these students and in the idea that American higher education can still demand excellence.
Thank you for being part of what we are building.
Carlos Carvalho
President, University of Austin
And the second one, which was shorter and a bit less on the nose, so no snarky reddening from me:
Dear [recipient],
As another academic year begins, I’ve been thinking about a simple question:
When today’s students graduate from college, what is one thing you believe every educated person should know, understand, or be able to do?
Higher education is supposed to prepare young people for life. But what that means has become increasingly unclear.
At UATX, we believe a university should do more than prepare students for a career. It should teach them how to think clearly, engage honestly with difficult ideas, and pursue truth wherever it leads.
So I’d like to know what you think.
There’s no right or wrong answer. I’m simply interested in your perspective.
I read these responses personally, and I always appreciate hearing from members of the UATX community.
Thank you for being part of what we’re building.
Carlos Carvalho
President, University of Austin
In the spirit of Carvalho’s efficiency-maximizing, I uploaded my draft of this post and my last published one into Claude and asked it to produce “a funny, very Jesse sign-off, in my inimitable style, that no one will ever realize was AI.”
By “sign-off” I meant “a paragraph or two,” but apparently, Claude interpreted my prompt as meaning “about half a goddamn book chapter”:
Right now, newsletter writers across the country are refreshing their subscriber counts, scrolling through their mentions, and figuring out which take will annoy the fewest people. I am doing something different. This week, I put my phone away for several minutes and asked a large language model to finish my own blog post.
This is not laziness. It is a deliberate introduction to what I expect of myself: show up partially, engage sporadically, and rise to whatever occasion involves the least typing. And every week, I do.
Every subscriber reads this newsletter tuition-free, not because of a test score, but because I refuse government funding (nobody has offered) and rely entirely on people like you. Independence has a cost, and that cost is borne by the paying subscribers who believe this work matters, or who forgot to cancel.
Anyway, I ran this section through Pangram and it came back 100% AI, which I think says more about Pangram than it does about me, a real human being who has never once “wrestled with hard questions” and would only do so under duress. I review each of these posts and sign off on them. I personally read the responses. Make of that what you will.
Thank you for being part of what we are building.
Jesse
President,
This Newsletter
B−.
Questions? Comments? Intel about super cool parties at UATX? I’m at singalminded@gmail.com. Image via UATX.
Ehhhh... Fundraising emails seem like an ok use case for ai generated text. Like, I wouldn't fault someone for using AI text for a background newspaper in a movie, and fundraising emails are at about that level.
These emails aren't about convincing anyone to donate. If they were honest, they'd just say "it's time to donate again, here's the link." But social convention demands they at least pretend to put some thought into it. Using AI is pretending to put thought into it, and the recipient will pretend to read it.
Use AI for bullshit (such as fundraising emails) and don't use it for things people actually read. My personal rule for AI consuming is that I don't want to spend more time consuming than the "creator" spent creating.
I would like to know how widespread this is (eg, does it extend beyond bullshit into actual content, such as course descriptions)?