A renewed focus on Edtech and Ai
I will now be focussing on security, privacy and data protection issues around Edtech exclusively. This will also cover public digital rights education, and commentary on government comms around that.
Every two weeks, I will round up the most important writing and news concerning edtech, AI and the Wild West that it all is. One day, I hope that I will be able to bring good tidings of product safety. This week is sadly, not that week.
We will only look at 3 or four articles or podcasts as people are busy. This is your on lunch break with five mins update.
We begin with an article about the universities partnering with LLM companies to offer free accounts to all on campus. I find this very troubling and also sad. Surely University is by thinkers, for thinkers. Not for outsourcing reflection and innovation to a plagiarism machine that spits out errors and tells people to end their lives. My concern is also for the intellectual property of students and lecturers. You will never convince me that Turnitin is not covert IP theft. This is just the same but on a larger scale.
Alfie Kohn has written a fantastic blog on AI in education and the risks.I think it will help anyone who is struggling to form arguments against the AI hype mongers.
When we are pushed to adopt AI in education to prepare students for the working world, we should consider the harms from AI in the workplace. This Futurism article has some easy to understand explanations of the harms of AI and tech generally at work.Very easy to see how this is already used in education.
This week’s podcast is From Mystery AI hype theatre and is about the risk of therapy chatbots. Which is relevant when so many AI edu platforms offer chatbots for children.I would recommend listening to Emily Bender and Alex Hanna before you listen to any ai education influencers.
Have a great week, may few emails find you.