2024 week 41

⚙️ Work

It was kind of “AI Week”. It’s always kind of “AI Week”.

The highlight of the week was being able to recognize 3 team members who reached the 15-year milestone. Pins, photographs, the works. Awesome.

And these weekly things came in super handy in our meeting of the Academic Generative AI Working Group™, where I was able to spin up a shared document and just paste in a bunch of useful links without having to re-find everything. Handy. (shockingly, not everyone uses RSS)

🔗 Links

AI

• Transformer Explainer (via Tom Woodward) An amazing interactive visualization of how transformers work in LLMs. Part of Georgia Tech’s Polo Club of Data Science
• 2 links via Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn:¹
  • Bastani, Hamsa and Bastani, Osbert and Sungu, Alp and Ge, Haosen and Kabakcı, Özge and Mariman, Rei, Generative AI Can Harm Learning (July 15, 2024). The Wharton School Research Paper, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4895486 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4895486
  • Lehmann, M., Cornelius, P. B., & Sting, F. J. (2024). AI Meets the Classroom: When Does ChatGPT Harm Learning? https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.09047

I went to a talk by Greg Kessler, hosted by our Werklund School of Education. Some interesting context for the history of AI, but wandered a bit too far into “AI is going to be directly reading and altering our thoughts by being literally implanted inside our brains” tinfoil hattery. The problem with AI (and all Big Tech™) is rampant libertarian capitalism, not invasive mind-reading singularities. We already have that baked into our phones and social media - without needing wires in our brains. Anyway. It was good to bump into Norm Vaughan, who is now teaching at MRU.

Authenticity and values or something like that

• Nikhil Suresh @ Ludicity: Get Me Out Of Data Hell. Suresh is a data warehouse engineer who has gone viral for speaking out about stupidity in tech leadership. He finally had enough of it, and decided to spin up a consultancy rather than continuing to erode his soul by just keeping his head down and wading through it all.

The future or something

• Catherine Cronin & Laura Czerniewicz @ ALTC Blog: #OER24 The future isn’t what it used to be. A keynote at OER2024. They shared a list of critical tech organizations and initiatives. (via Abbey Elder and Alan Levine)

Edtech & Design

• John Curry: Where have All the Cowboys Gone?.

  Ugh with the “cowboy” metaphor, but yeah. “I see the research of things not theory.” Maybe it always was? Maybe this is just nostalgia - the decade music was when we were young? Everything was better 50 years ago. Maybe Curry isn’t looking in the right places anymore?

• Fitzgerald, M., Colonnese, M., Evans, K. et al. (2024). Considering the Role of Technology and Design in Ensuring Access to High-Quality Learning Experiences. TechTrends 68, 854–856. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-024-01003-7

• Bagdy, L.M., Stefaniak, J.E. (2024). Re-examining Infrastructure: Considerations for How Non-Instructional Interventions Can Support Teaching and Learning Affordances in Online Learning Environments. TechTrends 68, 914–921. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-024-00976-9

🧺 Other

I’ve had a story idea building in my head for a couple of years now, and it’s finally time to do something about it. So far, I’ve re-downloaded Scrivener and pumped out almost 1,800 words of dialog that I didn’t know was there. Who knows how far I’ll go with the story, but thanks to Tyson for the role modelling.

🗓️ Focus for next week

• Thanksgiving, which we’ll be spending in Beautiful Downtown Assiniboia. So, it’ll be a short week. But also a long one.
• I’m going to be missing our team meeting, but know the team will have great discussions in my absence. Because of? Either way. Go, team!