The Week in Review: AI Critiques & Criticisms Abound

Another week further into the Age of AI, as Bill Gates has referred to it. He provides a high-level comparison to other paradigm shifts he’s witnessed (and influenced) which is a useful frame for how edtech’s intersection with AI compares to other fields. And educators are becoming more curious about such an impact. Earlier today, Beth Havinga and Nneka McGee offered their insight as part of a panel for Fairfax County Public Schools, outside of Washington, D.C. The large district has sought guidance from Advanced Learning Partnerships and formed a study group to investigate and report to the board their findings for impacting local policy.

We are seeing more and more educators who are already playing with AI components to solve problems in their schools. Likewise, we hope to see district leaders working collaboratively to boost their own AI literacy and lean upon such organizations for input in order to best navigate all the changes that are happening so quickly. It’s also encouraging to see researchers already publishing papers about emerging concerns and issues with this latest class of LLMs and other AI. Be sure to read Jeremy Roschelle’s latest post about governance for AI relative to the promise education continues to hold for the sake of democracy.

Perhaps school and district tech directors can benefit from emerging tools that are faster to recognize quality tech than our current such as PitchBook’s application of AI to predict which VC-funded startups may be sold before they sign their next contract—or what if you finally had a reliable digital sounding board for making more rational decisions for your product, policy, or school district? Hopefully, developers will notice that the field is paying attention and will involve educators in their product roadmaps.

We end this week with another report on the developments. Convergence, extensibility through ChatGPT Plugins, and the call for transparency is what the experts are chiefly concerned about in the headlines. Speaking of those plugins. People are making some very interesting tools and sharing their lists.

Who knows what next week will bring. Enjoy and please reach out if you have resources to share or would like more information.

SAFETY

• The Social Dilemma’ Contributors Warn NBC News’ Lester Holt There Is No ‘Pulling the Plug’ on AI

• The AI arms race is on. But we should slow down AI progress instead. - Vox

• Why LLaMa Is A Big Deal | Hackaday

• K-12 Cybersecurity in 2023: Ransomware, AI, and Increased Threats

ACCOUNTABILITY

• Why hasn’t Apple entered the generative AI arms race?

• The People Building AI Don’t Know What It Will Do Next - The Atlantic

• GPT-4 is here. But most faculty lack AI policies.

• With GPT-4, OpenAI opts for secrecy versus disclosure | ZDNET

FAIRNESS

• Inside the Quest to Detect (and Tame) ChatGPT | EdSurge News

• AI in the Public Interest: Education and Democracy | blog@CACM | Communications of the ACM

• Ethics and digitization in education: this overview will help you on your way

EFFICACY

• Artificial muses: Generative Artificial Intelligence Chatbots Have Risen to Human-Level Creativity

• ChatGPT Gets Its “Wolfram Superpowers”!—Stephen Wolfram Writings

• You can now try Microsoft Loop, a Notion competitor with futuristic Office documents - The Verge