It's going to 'lead' us where we choose to follow. If we accept or even facilitate the increasing role of tech companies in making important decisions about student education in the classroom, we'll eventually lose the ability to make that choice for ourselves. - ThreadSky

edtechification.bsky.social • 9 days ago

It's going to 'lead' us where we choose to follow. If we accept or even facilitate the increasing role of tech companies in making important decisions about student education in the classroom, we'll eventually lose the ability to make that choice for ourselves.

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dawblack.bsky.social•9 days ago

So it is companies you are concerned about and not AI itself?

edtechification.bsky.social•9 days ago

I'm not concerned about any particular technologies as such. I'm concerned about 'AI' as a marketing tool that explicitly tries to blur the line between human intelligence and technological tools, because (1) it makes it harder for people to critically analyze specific technologies and their 1/2

edtechification.bsky.social•9 days ago

impacts (2) it encourages people to engage in magical thinking around tech and analyze it based on future promises rather than current reality (3) it encourages offloading of human agency and (4) it promotes situations in which human values are compromised to fit technological constraints. 2/2

dawblack.bsky.social•9 days ago

4. Examples would be helpful for me to understand the point you are making.

edtechification.bsky.social•9 days ago

He's an example from this week's news. Other examples include writing webpages to be worse for people but better for SEO, everything at the AZ 'AI' charter school, redefining' personalization' to mean reducing students to data sets and having them stare at screens rather than interact with humans.

dawblack.bsky.social•9 days ago

3) Yes and no. It does encourage offloading of some things, but it also can free us for new things. I am sure some people complained when store-bought clothes became a thing, thinking we were giving up human creative agency. But that also freed us.

edtechification.bsky.social•9 days ago

(3) That's not a 'yes and no'. That's a 'yes, but'. The problem is we are offloading our agency in terms of critical thought, communications, etc., to what? Save time? This is in addition to the huge social problems industrialization in textiles caused. (You don't have to guess. It's documented.)

dawblack.bsky.social•9 days ago

It looks like there are some things we agree upon, a lot that we don't, but I appreciate reading your perspective and that it was shared in such a respectful manner. In the end, we both want what is best for students and learning.

dawblack.bsky.social•9 days ago

1) AI IS more challenging with discernment with its natural language responses. No argument there. That is one of the challenges I have in the classroom. 2) That has been an issue with every technology. There are some differences, however, about how pervasive this will be in society.

edtechification.bsky.social•9 days ago

(2) This has not been an issue with every technology (e.g. dishwashers, calculators, spreadsheets). 'AI' is specifically marketed using magical thinking around 'learning' like a human, and it's been promising 'human-level' intelligence in the next decade for over 50 years. And people gobble it up.

edtechification.bsky.social•9 days ago

(1) You're demonstrating my point. You are conflating 'AI' with natural language processing, which makes it harder to talk concretely about the different types of technologies currently being marketed as 'AI'. If we want to talk about large language models, then we should be saying that.

dawblack.bsky.social•9 days ago

AI is the umbrella term and there are various models under that. Your feeling is that this needs more transparency? If so, to what end? What would be the practical difference?

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