I finished the last chapter of this excellent #cointelligence book by Ethan Mollick. Compared to how frustrated I get when reading AI tech vendor/partner posts on social media, Ethan's writings give me the exact opposite feeling.

Here's the thing: AI on its own today is already fascinating. What has already happened is hard to believe, looking only a couple of years back. There's so much to think about in its future implications on every walk of life.

The hype kills these good things about AI.

I fully agree with Mairéad Pratschke’s analysis here in Generative AI and Education: Digital Pedagogies, Teaching Innovation and Learning Design. From loc 2231:

The innovation we have seen in digital education over the last two decades risks being undermined if we use GAI to revert to outdated models of delivery. GAI, rather than increasing automation in education, should enable more interaction, more active learning, more personalisation. The focus for educators therefore needs to be on the design of active, collaborative and constructivist learning that encourages sense-making and critical engagement rather than the generation of content

But it’s important to contextualise how educators come to define their focus and articulate pedagogical purposes. Unless the funding situation changes in UK HEIs, there will be continued pushes for ‘efficiency’: in which case the capacity for automation will be what is seized upon in order to deliver teaching to larger classes with smaller teams. I increasingly worry the vocabulary of co-intelligence, which I’ve also been prone to using, will contribute to this process. If I was a university manager trying to encourage academics to be open to automation through GAI, I would talk about ‘team teaching with conversational agents’.

We need to be extremely sensitive to the tropes and metaphors circulating around GAI in higher education over the coming years. They will be core elements in how the adoption and imposition of GAI in educational practice will be contested. The language of cultural technology, as well as I think being ontologically more accurate, will be harder to weaponise in order to support automation agendas.

Which means I should probably stop talking about ‘conversational agents’ all the time if I want to be consistent 🤔

https://markcarrigan.net/2024/09/12/how-we-integrate-gai-into-teaching-will-be-as-much-determined-by-political-economy-as-pedagogical-purpose/

#automation #coIntelligence #generativeAI #higherEducation #MairéadPratschke #managerialism #teaching

The February newsletter from the Co-Intelligence Institute is out! Some great links to people working on both protecting and renovating/upgrading/etc. democracy. Includes info about this month's Real World Co-intelligence Call, with Patricia Wilson of the University of Texas. The call is tomorrow - Friday.

Plus, a new CII blog (incl a repost of one of my posts), and a first look at Tom Atlee's forthcoming book on Co-intelligence. https://app.getresponse.com/view.html?x=a62b&m=B0mlpj&mc=Ci&s=BlLDpD5&u=CrXuY&z=EzPVtmy& #democracy #cointelligence #wisedemocracy