Control and Thinking

“When you control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his actions.” – The Mis-Education of the Negro, Carter G. Woodson via Elisabeth Glassco

Value in the Friction AND #AI Skills #EduSky

This quote from Nathaniel Myers: “I want them to undergo the writing process for themselves in ways that aren’t immediately turning to a tool that’s helping them write, because there’s value in the friction that’s a part of that work and learning that happens in writing without those tools,” Myers …

MyNotes: What is Stoicism? #Stoicism

An impulse purchase, I picked up a copy of Tanner Campbell’s and Kai Whiting’s book, What is Stoicism? A brief and accessible overview. I’ve read some of Ryan Holiday’s stuff, as well as various translations of Epictetus' work (not Discourses, though). Tanner was kind enough …

#AI: Expertise Paradox #Edusky

Associate Professor Jonathan Boymal highlights a new study. Here is one excerpt that jumps out me: The Expertise Paradox: “The paradox of expertise is that while generative Al assists in executing tasks requiring lower-level thinking skills, this advantage paradoxically hinders a learner’s …

If Adam Picked the Apple Poem

I shared this poem with my daughter. I got a laugh and a moment of reflection… Text in Image Here’s the text from the image: Title: “IF ADAM PICKED THE APPLE” Author: DANIELLE COFFYN (from North Meridian Review) There would be a parade, a celebration, a holiday to commemorate the …

The Games People Play

What Is the First Thing Remarkably Successful People Do? Figure Out Which Game They’re Actually Playing Then you can determine how to win the game you not only want to play, but need to play. …

A Principled Stand Against #AI #EduSky

As a whole, this piece (Refusing GenAI in Writing Studies) was unconvincing. I found it stuffy, ivory towerish, and yet…the longer I reflect on it, the more little pieces of it grow on me. Critical Thinking One example includes this quote from Vee, as cited: “Large language models such as ChatGPT …

A Mesh of Possibility

Where we were apart, we are now together, a dense mesh of possibility. -Stephen Downes Love this quote! For me, it highlights the importance of reconciliation.

Dawn of AI Era Report

Our new report, “The Dawn of the AI Era: Teens, Parents, and the Adoption of Generative AI at Home and School” – out today – shows that teens are quickly adopting generative AI, similar to how they embraced social media. But many parents are behind on how often their kids …

Handwriting and the Brain

“The most surprising thing was that the whole brain was active when they were writing by hand, [while] much smaller areas were active when they were typewriting,” van der Meer says. “This suggests that when you are writing by hand you are using most of your brain to get the job done.” Moreover, …

AI Summarizer: Roundup on GenAI

An AI summary of Paris Marx' article, ** Roundup: Will generative AI have many long-term benefits?** 5 key points • ChatGPT may harm students' math learning by acting as a crutch rather than improving skills. • AI assistants in medical imaging can significantly reduce radiologists' accuracy when …

AI Summarizer: 3 AI Trends That Will Impact Your Job In 2024

The following is summarized by AI from Rachel Wells' article, ** 3 AI Trends That Will Impact Your Job In 2024** Five Key Points • AI is expected to automate routine tasks, allowing workers to focus on more complex and creative aspects of their jobs. • Personalized AI assistants will become more …

Proton Docs: A New Word Processor

A longtime user of Proton’s version of secure, encrypted Mail, Proton Drive storage, as well as the original Google Docs (even before Google acquired it), I was pleased to see this announcement: What? Proton now adds word processor to their stable of products? Great! I can’t tell you how …

Passive Oppression

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being …

Student Use of AI

…when students rely on a generative A.I. tool like ChatGPT to outsource brainstorming and writing, they may be losing the ability to think critically and to overcome frustration with tasks that don’t come easily to them. …what troubles Martin more than some students’ shrewd academic …

Free AI Survey course Available

Announced a few days ago… A free survey course on LLMs, taught by practitioners…[on] Mastering LLMs, a set of workshops and talks from practitioners on topics like evals, retrieval-augmented-generation (RAG), fine-tuning and more. Learn more

Not that anyone cares except myself and a few friends, but I added to, and updated, my list of Windows programs, iOS smartphone apps, and browser extensions. Find it online.

MU geoscience camp uplifts girls in STEM

Middle school girls from the Columbia area attended Geoscience Summer Camp for Girls on July 10-11. The camp focused on natural disasters and how geoscientists are able to provide data and aid during these events. The camp is the brainchild of Aída Guhlincozzi, who started it during her grad school …

Deciding to Learn in spite of #AI #education

“…the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting” (Plutarch). Assessment in the face of AI continues to be such a huge concern. This article suggests assessment has been flawed from the beginning and relying on the most convenient approach. That …

Time Saved, An AI Illusion

Will AI really save time overall or just push us to complete tasks more quickly so we can do more tasks without saving time? If you have eight hours, you finish 20 tasks instead of the usual ten, but you still work your full eight hours or more. No time is saved unless you hold to the same total …

Assessment in the Age of AI

This piece in Forbes by Dan Fitzpatrick makes some interesting points about assessment, quoting several educators. I admit that I have not given assessment as much thought as I should when considering AI. A simplistic perspective is that we write to learn and think through ideas. If you take a …

Yikes, AI is Coming for Your Data

We may use the information we collect and publicly available information to help train our machine learning or artificial intelligence models for the purposes outlined in this policy. Via When the Terms of Service Change to Make Way for A.I. Training - The New York Times

Claude.ai Lets You Organize Chats into Projects

Woohoo, as you can see above, Claude now lets you organize your chat support documents, or whatever you want to call them, into “Projects.” Here’s an explainer video from Claude.ai on the subject. An explanation from Claude: Projects help organize your work and leverage knowledge …

Quote: Books

For 99 percent of the tenure of humans on earth, nobody could read or write. The great invention had not yet been made. Except for firsthand experience, almost everything we knew was passed on by word of mouth. As in the children’s game “Telephone,” over tens and hundreds of …

3-2-1: The Unknown Toll of AI

This morning, while reading this response on Threads on my new, consolidated account, I found myself wondering, “How many resources does Perplexity, or Claude or ChatGPT, consume when I ask a simple question, like, ‘What’s the scientific consensus on XYZ?” And, should I even …