Book: thecon.ai // Professor, Linguistics at University of Washington // Doesn't read messages on LinkedIn -- see website for email
I recently read a talk announcement about "AI" and K-12 education that looked like it maybe, maybe embedded a critical perspective but was still dressed up in the language of AI hype, presupposing both job market & education "reshaped by AI". The abstract seemed like a job talk (though not announced as such), so assuming the presenter is a junior scholar, I'm not going to put them on blast. Instead, I wanted to put out some broader questions for reflection: If you have been framing your work as involving/in relation to "AI", what do you mean by "AI"? How would you describe your work without using that phrase? That is, incidentally, the same question I propose here: https://lnkd.in/gevZHS3y When you are using the "AI" framing, does the way you talk about "AI" carry water for the Sam Altmans of the world? That is, are you helping to paint a picture of their tech as inevitable, all powerful, and/or anything other than commercial products? If so, why? Are you under pressure to do so? Where does that pressure come from? What would happen if you resist? Or is it simply a question of following the fashion for how these things are talked about? In that case, how does that sit with your own values? We are certainly facing a lot of systemic problems which should not be individualized, but at the same time, I believe that academics hold a certain amount of power, and it is worth being thoughtful about how we use that power, including the framing of our work.
