What is Project Grain Elevator?

“In most cases, the term ‘grain elevator’ also describes the entire elevator complex, including receiving and testing offices, weighbridges, and storage facilities. It may also mean organizations that operate or control several individual elevators, in different locations.”

— Wikipedia, “Grain Elevator”

Project Grain Elevator is the codename for a sprawling effort to revise my courses, teaching, and online learning content.

Now and then the entire operation here at No Silo Industries needs to be reassessed: spoilage must be sifted out, proceedures reconsidered, contracts renogotiated. Sometimes these revisions are merely the result of boredom with current practices; other times they are the result of a change of mind about pedagogy. On rare occasions, some grand historical event rudely intervenes and makes the standard procedures obsolete or problematic in some way. Project Grain Elevator is of the latter category: this particular revision was inspired by the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs) and easily accessible Generative AI (GAI) tools that appeared in late 2022.