(Not) Everything Changes
"This changes everything." I find this cliche about technology to be so exhausting, in no small part because I've heard it over and over and over again. Every new product release, a revolution.
After a while, you have to decide whether you're going to be one of the villagers who rolls their eyes at the little boy crying "everything-changes"-wolf and just continues about your daily life; or if you're going to pick up the pitchfork yet again and storm about with some defensive/offensive posturing. There are really just a few who continue to do the latter, I reckon, but they're loud and awfully performative and sometimes they do make you wonder if you're going to be left out if this time – this time -- there really is a wolf.
"AI has changed everything" – I heard this again from a journalist working on a story about ed-tech. I related my usual response: there's a very long history – hell, there's a very long of "AI" in education – and I'm not sure we can really say that any of this has been as utterly transformative, let alone beneficial as the evangelists have hyped and hoped (and repeatedly hyped and hoped, at that). Even the really bad stuff (and my god, there is plenty of that) that chatbots and large language models have done (and threaten to do) to education are intertwined with all sorts of other political, cultural, economic, and technological factors.
This claim about change – sudden, all-consuming – seems to make a lot of people feel unsettled, unmoored even if they can look around and see the continuities that remain. This is, arguably, how the claim is intended to work: if nothing else, it serves to convince a lot of decision-makers to pull out their (schools', districts') pocketbooks, to buy products and gadgets, to sign and re-sign long-term tech contracts... the latter always a good indication that perhaps very little has changed at all.
As I noted in a recent Second Breakfast newsletter, we really do need to think about which stories (about education or otherwise) we're being told, which stories we're repeating, which stories (and subsequently, which products) we're buying. (And/or which ones our bosses are telling and buying.)
I once thought that the follow-up book to Teaching Machines would examine the history of the baby monitor. It’s still a good book project, I reckon. And still an utterly horrific product. Or as The New York Times puts it, “Aw, It’s Baby’s First A.I. Surveillance System.”
There have been lots of student protests globally -- about “AI” specifically and about the other ways in which testing (again, this is inseparable from “AI”) is used to rank, sort, predict, and circumscribe students’ futures. In Mexico (via Ars Technica): “An AI-supervised remote exam went so badly that 58,000 students must retake it.” In Australia. In India (via The Guardian): “‘I will die for this cause’: how India’s cockroach meme became the biggest challenge to Modi’s grip on power.”
“Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t understand how to live,” writes Liz Lopatto in response to the Meta CEO’s awful op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
“Everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about. Your agent will work 24/7 on your behalf to improve your relationships, health, career, finances, home management, hobbies, and more.” I am struck, here, by the inclusion of “relationships” and “hobbies.”
What strengthens a relationship? Almost always, it is personal investment. Perhaps an AI agent might be better at predicting what my father will want for his birthday than I am, but it definitionally cannot give him my time and consideration. Love is not just a feeling; it is a way of paying attention.
Jill Barshay writes about new initiatives that link ed-tech vendors’ contracts to “student outcomes.” This sounds good in theory perhaps -- why should schools pay for stuff that doesn’t work?! -- but measuring “what works” and linking it to a specific product is pretty tricky (if not impossible).
Related: Ben Williamson on the “struggle over ‘evidence governance,’ where multiple different actors are competing to govern the methods, techniques and standards through which ‘policy-relevant’ research about AI in education is generated.”
Local news, national headline: “Reading Scores Drop for N.Y.C. Students Amid Revamp of Literacy Program,” The New York Times reports. Um. Yeah. A theme that runs throughout today’s newsletter: there isn’t a magic bullet in education. There’s just not. There’s not going to be a program, an app, a curriculum, a test, a gadget, a chatbot, an algorithm that is going to “fix” children because children aren’t little machines you can tinker with until you’ve optimized their engines.
Meanwhile, Michael Pershan makes the case that “Emily Hanford's Story Was Basically Wrong.”
One takeaway, if I might: anytime you hear the label “the science of...” -- like, say “the science of reading” (or “computer science” or “political science”) -- you should recognize you’re being marketed a kind of scientism that not only wants to elevate the field or practice to the realm of Real Knowledge but denigrate competing practices as “folk” or “bunk.”
As we see a growing pushback on the ubiquity of “screens” in children’s lives, it’s probably worth thinking about the other factors, well beyond the allure of the gadgetry and the siren’s call of the algorithms, that have pushed childhood towards this particular form:
“Should Letting Children Play Alone Outside Be a Crime?” asks The New York Times.
“How Wildfire Smoke Is Reshaping Childhood” by Mosabber Hossain
“The End of Google Search -- and the Internet -- as We Know It” by Katie Baker in The Ringer.
Good thing no one in education is utterly beholden to this mammoth corporation that has, for a very long time now, been at odds with institutions of knowledge-building and sharing, like libraries, schools, and book publishers.
John Warner on “refusing suspicion” and why he won’t use the “AI”-detection product Pangram.
One of the many benefits of not being on social media is that I needn’t get caught up in the little daily dramas, such as the furor over what some saw as Hank Green’s hypocritical usage of “AI” to make his educational videos. (Indeed, I can ask questions like “who the hell is Hank Green?” without any shame at all.)
I still read (sometimes. maybe.) the longer-form “takes” that other people have, but it’s often days or even weeks later – all a reminder that this high-anxiety about the pace of change is mostly manufactured by the demands of click-bait.
Related: “‘Not healthy’ LLM use is more common than you think,” writes Robert Hart in The Verge.
“The Downside to Robot Solutionism” by Henry Farrell. The upside: Alan Moore references.
“Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids,” write Andy Greenberg, Matt Burgess, and Yulia Almazova in Wired.
What College Didn’t Learn from the MOOC Revolution...
“AI Is a ‘Wicked Problem.’ That’s the University’s Specialty,” Clay Shirky argues.
“These Professors Are Retiring Early,” Adrienne Lu reports in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “AI Was the Last Straw.” So many straws, aren't there...
As many industry observers have noticed, a lot of “AI” funding is circular, creating a “web of financing” that might bring down the whole sector. (Fingers crossed, eh?) And in ed-tech? “Coursera investing $100 million in Andrew Ng's new startup.”
“Teachers need help with AI,” Lee Gaines argues in The Guardian. (Faulty premise right there, IMHO.) “A union is offering training – with $23m in funding from big tech.”
Via The 74: “AI Tutors Are Praising Instead of Teaching. Here’s Why That’s Hurting Students.”
“Major Virtual Tutoring Provider Shuts Down; Experts Cite Lack of Evidence,” Linda Jacobsen reports in The 74. That tutoring provider in question is Varsity Tutors, whose investors include Learn Capital and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, in case anyone wants to keep track of how absolutely shitty ed-tech investors are at funding ideas that do good things.
“Humans understand what AI cannot,” Ben Riley argues.
Not sure how decisions get made in Houston, but here’s the latest in a series of bad “AI” initiatives in the district: “Two Houston ISD elementary campuses will pilot Alpha School’s AI-powered education program this fall,” Houston Public Media reports. Yikes.
“Does Alpha School Work for Regular Kids?” asks Dan Meyer. Betteridge’s Law of Headlines gives away the answer, but you should read Dan regardless. (Especially if you’re a decision-maker in Houston schools, FFS.)
Today’s bird is the king vulture, which lives primarily in tropical lowland forests in Central and South America. Its feathers are mostly white with black tail and flight feathers; but its head and neck are bald and can be a variety of colors – red or orange or blue or purple. The king vulture has a fleshy, orange caruncle on its beak. According to Wikipedia, the lack of feathers on the head is something to do with hygiene – something about the sun sterilizing the skin and killing any bacteria that might get on it from its carrion diet? Sounds awfully MAHA to me...
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