Book: thecon.ai // Professor, Linguistics at University of Washington // Doesn't read messages on LinkedIn -- see website for email
Something I didn't get to say yesterday: We heard over and over during the event about "human-centered" approaches to "AI". But if refusal is not on the table (at every level: individual students and teachers right up through UNESCO) then we have in fact centered the technology, not the people.
Book: thecon.ai // Professor, Linguistics at University of Washington // Doesn't read messages on LinkedIn -- see website for email
It has been really interesting to attend UNESCO's Digital Learning Week (though unfortunately I'm not able to stick around). My public lecture from yesterday can be found here: https://lnkd.in/gPT2G9yJ And my contribution to the "think pieces" volume can be found on pages 41-45 here: https://lnkd.in/gpKaD2kZ The title of both was supposed to be "We do not have to accept AI (much less AGI) as inevitable in education" ... but they changed it without informing me in the printed version.
Emily M. Bender Thank you for your contribution at the Opening of the DLW. Despite the hype about AI in Education, I am grateful that you were able to set the frame to make critical conversations possible. I am looking forward to reading your contribution piece after this conference is over and I am hopeful to follow up on this critical discussion! ✨
Nailed it. Thank you for articulating the very simple reality of where the conversation should start from.🎯
Steve Wright
2d
UNESCO's perspective in general seems to be to feed the children into the workforce to serve those that run the economy. From there latest report (un)helpfully titled "What should teachers teach and students learn in a world of powerful AI?" "Defining overall aims and learning goals requires taking a normative stance on the purpose of schools. This often includes important aspects such as preparing individuals for work and citizenship and supporting their autonomy and healthy development. It also raises epistemic questions about what knowledge is worth teaching or, framed in terms of rights, which knowledge students are entitled to learn through schooling." This is the perspective of compulsory education that Agustina Paglayan describes in her book Raised to Obey. It is so pervasive that it is difficult to see how insidious it is. There is no need for the students of compulsory education to learn to think critically? It is the role of UNESCO to decide what children are f@#$ing *entitled* to learn? All of it. They are entitled to learn everything. It should be jarring and ridiculous to hear it as a question. Children will define work and citizenship to fit the world they inherit. Not the other way around..
Jamila Venturini exactly what we discussed that online event and you wrote a blog post afterwards!
Smart Capital.
18hI agree. Always interesting to study your insightful perspectives, Prof. Bender! And, there's a point in time when upgrading our tech is inevitable and maintaining the legacy tech is not sustainable. At the end of the day, the IT department at UW only has so many options to choose from, and it's getting harder to find ones that don't have AI baked in one way or another. In fact, I don't think I'd be able to learn from your perspectives if it were not for the AI models that learned enough about my intellectual interests to rank your posts higher than the hundreds of professors who posted today.