Sam Illingworth, PhD

Full Professor of Creative Pedagogies

Founder of Slow AI

'When to use AI, and when to leave it the hell alone.'

Sam Illingworth

As featured in

BBC Nature Scientific American The Conversation Times Higher Education

I am a Full Professor of Creative Pedagogies at Edinburgh Napier University, a poet, and the founder of Slow AI. My work sits at the intersection of AI, education, and critical thinking.

I help people develop the judgement to know when AI is useful and when it is not. Through research, writing, and teaching, I build the critical faculties that no AI tool can provide.

Can you tell human writing from AI?

Bot or Not is a Turing test for the age of generative AI. Try it.

Why Slow AI

AI is surrounded by hyperbole from all sides. Utopians who think it will save the world. Doomers who think it will end it. Oligarchs trying to control it. Snake oil salespeople profiting from the confusion.

None of them are right.

AI will make positive differences if we keep it out of the wrong hands. Slow AI exists to help people cut through the noise, develop critical thinking skills, and apply them to AI in their own context. I believe in friction, in slowness, in human judgement. The work is not to keep up. The work is to know when to stop.

What people say

'You're one of the few creators on here that actually makes me think. Not skim. Not nod along. Think.'

Nick Quick, Slow AI subscriber

'He bridges worlds that don't always talk to each other. His background in critical AI literacy, AI ethics, and education means he can connect what is happening with AI to the bigger questions about how people understand these systems.'

Karen Spinner, Writer & Content Strategist

'A true renaissance person and a compassionate folkbildare (people's educator): someone helping a broad public access and cherish complex subjects so they can form their own insights.'

Olle Bergman, Science Communication Consultant