This was finally the week when I broke into AI writer-bots in class. As part of the discussion, some of my students joined me for a webinar that a colleague was hosting for library professionals and information professionals. It was brief, but gave them a chance to see how people in a profession share thoughts on emerging trends or issues in the field. Also, this was a chance to hear about AI writer-bots for uses other than plagiarism (the main fear that usually comes up).
If there's one thing that I have noticed with each of these big shifts in the way tech affects how we "do education," it's that it throws the entire purpose of education, learning, school, etc. into stark relief, leading us to question fundamentally why we do it at all. What is school even for? Training? (We can just adopt AI tutors for that.) Daycare? (Teacher-as-babysitter is a whole other conversation.) Getting better jobs? (People in certain skilled trades make a lot more than I do, as do others with other forms of income). Omphaloskepsis? (That is a fancy term for "contemplating one's navel," with all the same connotations.)
Of course, tech being tech, it wasn't working very well when I did a quick demo, and I had expected that might happen. But we've gotten the conversation started, and students had some great insights...and questions...and concerns.
"How might higher education respond to AI?" Bryan Alexander and Ruben Puentedura on the Future Trends Forum, originally recorded March 16, 2023
From this, I glossed a few good points about education beyond regurgitation, including a proposal that a writer-bot as a "partner in construction," with synthesis as the end goal for students. Also, how can we use CGPT to get students to have better insight into their own thoughts/thinking patterns?
"GPT-4 Is a Giant Black Box and Its Training Data Remains a Mystery," Kyle Barr for Gizmodo, March 16, 2023
This remains a huge concern for me. Obviously in the most general sense, the dataset for many of these AIs is our own words, thoughts, and creations spun in a digital blender. But when we don't know the particulars, it's as sinister as a black mirror.
"States Should Update Digital Literacy Programs to Include AI Literacy," Gillian Diebold for the Center for Data Innovation, March 9, 2023
Obviously I will favor almost anything with the word "literacy" in it. When people know how to read something, it opens up all kinds of horizons and allows them to forge new connections. If someone wants to do the work of laying out benchmarks and proposing a scope and sequence, that means it's catching on. While school is for far more than mere career prep, AI is worth exploring for both that and for philosophical reasons.
"Tech guru Jaron Lanier: ‘The danger isn’t that AI destroys us. It’s that it drives us insane,’"Simon Hattenstone for the Guardian, March 23, 2023
I've had students read one of Lanier's essays in my classes, and it's fun and subversive and surprising. It may have been a little far out for some students, but we had fruitful parallel discussions about their frustrations growing up in the age of social media. Lanier's "dismal optimist" focuses on both creativity and our need to make choices.
"AI finds the first stars were not alone," Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe for Science Daily, March 23, 2023
OK, this one's not really in the chatbot theme. But I love the title-- it's poetic-- and the subject is fascinating. It shows we still have so much to do, learn, and dream about.
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