Author: Graham Attwell

An article in the Financial Times by Carnegie Mellon University Professors Laurence Ales and Christophe Combemale says Generative AI is different from past automation and requires a shift from what AI can do to what it should do. They put forward four pivotal questions for organisations when contemplating automation with Generative AI. First, how complex is the task? Second, how frequent is the task? Third, how interconnected are the tasks? Fourth, when executing a task, what is the cost of failure? These questions, they say, should guide companies considering automation and help explain why GenAI affects certain occupations more than […]

One fear from researcher in educational technology and AI is lock in. It happened before. Companies compete in giving a good deal for applications and services but lack of interoperability leaves educational organisation stuck if they want to get out or change providers. It was big news at one time with Learning Management Systems (LMS) but slowly the movement towards standards largely overcame that issue. But with the big tech AI companies still searching for convincing real world use cases and turning their eyes on education it seems it may be happening again. OpenAI have said it will roll out […]

I picked up this from a blog by Doug Belshaw. It is from a report by Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude.ai. Doug points out that that its not been published in an academic journal and therefore not peer-reviewed, but, he says, they’ve open-sourced the dataset used for the analysis. And it certainly is interesting. Source: The Anthropic Economic Index About the image This artwork captures humanity’s collective endeavour in building artificial intelligence, drawing inspiration from Persian Negargari (miniature painting). It emphasises that AI is not the result of sudden breakthroughs but centuries of collaboration among minds, cultures, and technologies. […]

This week has seen extensive press coverage of the AI summit held in Paris with attendees from 60 countries. Despite the noise, not much seems to have happened. The summit revealed disagreements over regulation, particularly between the USA where the tech companies are lobbying to have none or the minimum regulation and Europe which is continuing to develop a regulatory framework. The issue of regulation is important for AI in Education and the Council of Europe has published a roadmap for for Responsible AI in Education. ✅ 2025: European Year of Education for Digital Citizenship – Raising awareness & strengthening […]

As I have noted before LinkedIn has emerged as the clearing house for exchanging research and commentary of AI in education. And in this forum, the AI skeptics seem to be winning. Of course the doubts have always been there: hallucinations, bias. lack of agency, impact on creativity and so on. There are also increasing concerns over the environmental impact of Large Language Models. But the big one is the emerging research into the effectiveness of Generative AI for learning. This week a new study from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University found that increased reliance on GenAI in the workplace […]

When we talk about education and training we tend to focus on teachers and trainers in vocational schools. But there is a whole other sector known as L&D – Learning and Development. According to the Association for Talent Development, the term learning and development, encompasses any professional development a business provides to its employees. It is considered to be a core area of human resources management, and may sometimes be referred to as training and development, learning and performance, or talent development (TD). Phil Hardman is a researcher and L&D professional. Her weekly newsletter is in interesting because of her […]

In the latest edition of Dr Phil’s newsletter, entitled ‘The Impact of Gen AI on Human Learning: a research summary’ Phil Hardman undertakes a literature review of the most recent and important peer-reviewed studies. And in contrast to some of the studies currently coming out, which tend to claim either amazing success or doom laden failure for the use of AI for learning, she adopts an analytical and nuanced viewpoint, examining the evidence and providing a list of key takeaways from each report, leading to implications for educators and developers. Here are the Key takeaways from each of the five […]

Last Friday, 24 January, marked the UNESCO International Day of Education. And as part of that, the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning hosted a webinar on ‘Lifelong learning in the age of AI’ aiming “to bring together policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to revisit the idea of lifelong learning in the age of emerging technologies, with a thematic focus on lifelong learning as a concept, workplace learning, digital competencies of adult educators, and bridging the grey digital divide.” Current policies on AI and lifelong learning, they said, often adopt an instrumental and technologically deterministic approach, prioritising efficiency over human development and […]

As I write this post, the newspaper headlines are focused on the record decline in value of tech shares, especially chip manufacturer Nvidia, following the release of the Open Source DeepSeek Large Language Model and platform. Most of the extensive news coverage has focused on the tech business and the likelihood that it represents a bubble, especially for the Generative AI companies, OpenAi, Anthrpopic Google and the like. The other ,main focus has been geopolitical, with China having caught up with the USA in AI development. For education, DeepSeek can be seen as good news. The domination of Generative AI […]

Its probably fair to say that the hype around Generative AI far outstrips the reality. Perhaps that is because in the slow process of discovering actual jobs which AI can do, copy editing and advertising is one of those at the forefront.And goven that the AI companies are very keen on hyping their products, there is an endless stream of artciples saying how wonderful AI is for almost every occupation. These articles almost always talk about how much time AI saves and how this increases productivity. Here’s an example from a company called Screenloop: “AI is not simply a tool—it’s […]