A weekly collection of education-related news from around the web.

Topic: tech/AI: uses and applications

A.I. Updates

    • Gallup
    • 10/08/24
    “White-collar workers are more likely to be using AI. White-collar workers are, by far, the most frequent users of AI in their roles. While 81% of employees in production/frontline industries say they never use AI, only 54% of white-collar workers say they never do and 15% report using AI weekly.”
    • New York Times
    • 09/12/24
    “After three exchanges, which lasted about eight minutes on average, participants rated how strongly they felt about their beliefs again. On average, their ratings dropped by about 20 percent; about a quarter of participants no longer believed the falsehood. The effect also spilled into their attitudes toward other poorly supported theories, making the participants slightly […]
    • 74 Million
    • 08/07/24
    “Snapchat last year said that after just two months of offering its chatbot My AI, about one-fifth of its 750 million users had sent it queries, totaling more than 10 billion messages. The Pew Research Center has noted that 59% of Americans ages 13 to 17 use Snapchat.”
    • Marc Watkins
    • 08/02/24
    “It is increasingly looking like generative AI won’t become intelligent to achieve true AGI, but human beings will still put their trust into these black box systems and may one day be willing to cede autonomy and critical decision-making to an algorithm. To those who scoff at this, and I imagine there are many, know […]
    • Twitter/Allie Miller
    • 07/21/24
    “1) more examples are often better, aim for as many as is reasonable 2) randomly order the examples (don’t end with several negatives) 3) aim for balanced data distribution, preferably similar to in-the-wild distribution 4) ensure examples are labeled correctly 5) choose a common format for all examples 6) pick similar examples to your test […]
    • BBC
    • 07/11/24
    “In 2005, Shane Gero, biology lead for Ceti, founded The Dominica Sperm Whale Project to study the social and vocal behaviour of around 400 sperm whales that live in the Eastern Caribbean. Almost 20 years – and thousands of hours of observation – later, the researchers have discovered intricacies in whale vocalisations never before observed, […]

ADOLESCENCE

    • 74 Million
    • 08/07/24
    “Snapchat last year said that after just two months of offering its chatbot My AI, about one-fifth of its 750 million users had sent it queries, totaling more than 10 billion messages. The Pew Research Center has noted that 59% of Americans ages 13 to 17 use Snapchat.”
    • Marc Watkins
    • 08/02/24
    “It is increasingly looking like generative AI won’t become intelligent to achieve true AGI, but human beings will still put their trust into these black box systems and may one day be willing to cede autonomy and critical decision-making to an algorithm. To those who scoff at this, and I imagine there are many, know […]
    • Medium
    • 06/28/24
    “I’ve created a resource to proactively envision how young people might relate to and utilize chatbots, with different impacts on human connection. The framework below maps four different possible futures, each representing the most common chatbot experience for young people.”

CREATIVITY

HUMANITIES

    • Ars Technica
    • 12/15/23
    “Starhaven recently wrote, “My new morning driving routine involves chatting with ChatGPT through my car speaker/Airplay, as if I were hanging on the phone with my mum.” He talked about working through ideas vocally. “Sometimes you just wanna share your unhinged thoughts with a friend—though, maybe not at 7 in the morning,” he wrote. “So […]

READING/WRITING

STEM

TECH/AI

TECH/AI: EDUCATION

TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK

    • Marc Watkins
    • 11/15/24
    “What we’re seeing in the development space is a sadly typical pattern of reckless deployments that ask users to come up with their own responsible use cases instead of the creators who build and monetize these platforms. The public shouldn’t be the ones left figuring out how best to use this technology safely. What’s worse, […]
    • New York Times
    • 11/04/24
    • Medium
    • 06/28/24
    “I’ve created a resource to proactively envision how young people might relate to and utilize chatbots, with different impacts on human connection. The framework below maps four different possible futures, each representing the most common chatbot experience for young people.”

TECH/AI: GOVERNMENT AND LAW

TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

TECH/AI: USES AND APPLICATIONS

WORKPLACE

Issues

Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.

Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.

Peter Nilsson

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