Category: AI

Every day hundreds of posts are written on social media about AI and education. Every day yet more papers are published about AI and education. Webinars, seminars and conferences about AI and education. Yet nearly all of them are about formal education, education in the classroom. But as Stephen Downes says in a commentary on a blog by Alan Levine we need more on how people actually teach and actually learn. “We get a lot in the literature about how it happens in the classroom. But the classroom is a very specialized environment, designed to deal with the need to foster a common set […]

There\s some pretty fearsome discussions going on this week between so called sceptics of Gen AI and supporters (although much of the shouting is over the terms of the debate). Bur it seems pretty incontestable that the big AI technology providers are trying to muscle in on education as a promising market. In a series of posts on LinkedIn, Ben Williamson from Edinburgh University has looked at the different initiatives by the companies who not surprisingly are giving incentives to sign up with their AI variant. Google he said almost literally buying institutions, with prime ministerial endorsement, to advance its […]

Much of the big excitement about Generative AI was driven by the idea that it would boost productivity (and thus profit). Conversely one of the fears was that it would lead to job losses although there was little or no consensus about how severe such job losses might be and indeed some commentators speculated that new jobs created by AI would balance out the losses. Early research and reports into the impact of AI were conflicted, with increasing levels of hype perhaps overwhelming more sober research findings. And even now there is only a limited consensus of the impact of […]

  I’ve been interviewing the AI Pioneers team this week for the project’s annual evaluation and one thing that keeps coming up is the EU AI Act and the dynamics of responsibility. The EU AI Act became law on August 1, 2024. It says companies that make or use AI systems must ensure their employees and anyone else involved in operating those systems have enough knowledge about AI to do their job safely and effectively.   Graham, George and I explored the definition of AI Literacy in our recent preprint AI and Education Agency, Motivation, Literacy and Democracy  The European […]

I’m impressed by the work being carried out by the DAIR Institute. DAIR stands for Distributed AI Research Institute. They say “We are an interdisciplinary and globally distributed AI research institute rooted in the belief that AI is not inevitable, its harms are preventable, and when its production and deployment include diverse perspectives and deliberate processes it can be beneficial. Our research reflects our lived experiences and centers our communities.” They believe locally-developed technology better serves its communities than solutions imposed from afar. In a recent blog, Decentralized, Locally-Tailored Technology, Nyalleng Moorosi looks at the difference between the tools that […]