Prof. Emily M. Bender(she/her)A strong statement of resistance to the relentless marketing of "AI" in education spaces. I encourage all educators to have a look and consider signing on:
Merrily@emilymbender
Meanwhile in Estonia: https://news.err.ee/1609614773/president-karis-spearheads-ai-driven-transformation-in-estonia-s-high-schools
Meanwhile in Estonia: https://news.err.ee/1609614773/president-karis-spearheads-ai-driven-transformation-in-estonia-s-high-schools
President Karis spearheads AI-driven transformation in Estonia's high schools
On September 1, 2025, Estonia will launch the TI-Hüpe (AI- Leap) educational program in partnership between both the public and private sectors, The program will provide Estonian school students and teachers with free access to AI learning applications and has an annual budget of €6.5 million.
@emilymbender
And it's not like this will be some home-grown LLMs developed by Estonians for Estonians. The president specifically compared this "leap" to Estonia's digital transformation, which was a comparatively sovereign, in-house development, founded on open standards and at least partially open source.
This AI "project" amounts to "let's pay Altman a ton of money and export our student's data and conversations to the US"
https://news.err.ee/1609723875/estonia-to-introduce-ai-model-in-high-schools-this-fall
Estonia to introduce AI-model in high schools this fall
Starting this fall, the state will introduce an artificial intelligence model in upper secondary school classes aimed at supporting learning without providing students with ready-made answers. However, the exact model has not yet been developed and the first year will serve as a test period.
@merrily How frustrating.