SAIL: AI Futures, Metaversity, AI Infrastructure, Social Credit
Good morning!
A common theme of this newsletter is to track and identify the topics and discussions that relate to AI and AI's potential in supporting human knowledge work (learning, sensemaking, decision making). The AI focus, however, is not the entire point. The point is to get to the trend of significance - i.e. the thing that AI will impact most. In education and learning settings, it will change how we relate to information and to one another. That will require a systems change. Teaching in digital settings where we have a "God's eye view" of a student based on her data across multiple platforms, and the ability to compare her performance with students who share her attributes or similar profile, is a different process and requires different support structures, from traditional classroom teachers. This is especially pronounced when we have technologies that can be active partners in the human cognitive system.
A few articles of note this week:
State of AI from a Futures Lens (.pdf 2022). I'm finding futures thinking to be more and more relevant in tracking what's happening and how we should be positioning ourselves (as individuals and organizations) in response to macro/micro trends. In an era of information abundance, the critical challenge is finding the "things that matter" in the overwhelming flow. The section on "techniques to watch" (p 14-17) is a nice intro. Similarly, the section on creative fields (p.30-->) offers some promising examples of AI impacting human cognitive processes.
Metaversities: This feels like Second Life 2.0. We built many campuses in that environment. What's different now? Big tech are the only organizations with large enough data sets to make large scale AI in learning work reasonably flawlessly (i.e. things like learner profiles). Microsoft had it's moment with Covid and Teams. Suddenly they had detailed moment to moment data on learners interactions with one another and with content. Google has had our interests for a long time. And Meta, while it started in higher education and many organizations use groups (or at least used to) for teaching and learning, it needs a data pipeline into micro-level interactions with people while learning. The metaverse provides that in full colour multi-modality.
Infrastructure for AI in Learning: free, upcoming webinar hosted by GRAILE. Register now.
AI & Dubbing: A common question is around "what does AI actually do in education?". A good idea is to look at other fields that are already experiencing the benefits of AI. This article captures a concept that will grow in importance in education/AI, especially around content. The challenge is to "scale the human-in-the-loop aspect of the process and create efficiencies to further reduce the turnaround time of dubbing [or education]."
Why social credit systems are scary A slightly odd link, from a secure email provider, but I like the emphasis on the web as a surveillance machine and that the (only?) difference between China's social credit system and the system in USA/EU/western countries is the lack of inter-connectedness between various system.
Elon Musk has fallen from grace in many sectors that used to idolize him. Gary Marks calls him out on his prediction that artificial general intelligence will be a thing within seven years. This statement is important: "humanity as a whole, still don’t really have an adequate methodology for building complex cognitive systems. Complex cognitive systems have too many moving parts, which often means that people building things like driverless cars wind up playing a giant game of whack-a-mole, often solving one problem and creating another."