Comments for FOLLOWERS OF THE APOCALYPSE

Comment on ALT redux by Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 14:27:00 +0000

This is a look at the history of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT) and the fine art of prediction in ed tech. Prediction has been a subject of OLDaily over the years as well, and I would humbly say I've been pretty good at it. That said, I did enjoy David Kernohan's discussion, especially the classification of prediction tropes ('flying car predictions', 'extrapolation predictions', 'swedenborgian predictions'). I also liked his attempt to identify and code ALT sessions for every year since 2002 (though the colours are so similar it's really difficult to identify which is which on the chart - the trick is to navigate your mouse over the precise point where a line crosses a year to see the little popup). The top topics year in and year out are 'course design', 'students', 'interfaces' and 'content' - which tells us more, I think, about a conservatism inherent in education (even in ed tech!) that makes good prediction a lot harder.

Comment on “I watch the ripples change their size but never leave the stream” #altc 2015 by dkernohan

dkernohan — Thu, 21 Dec 2023 10:33:15 +0000

When Maren asked me to update a presentation that I made in 2015 – which rejoiced in the title “’I watch the ripples change…

Comment on On chatbots… by Alan

Alan — Sun, 19 Mar 2023 20:01:35 +0000

There are renegades who spot a FOTA pulse as a blip in an ancient feed sensing device. Hello (this is a second comment attempt, my first spawned a WordPress critical error, I type now in fear).

Like Simon, I am thinking too about this new, oft-disturbing (in potential disruption sense) tool where we might want to assert it as human vs machine rather than human using machine. Kirby Ferguson crafted this so well in the new and glorious chapter of Everything is a Remix.

Intelligence might be *based* on pattern recognition as Stephen Asserts, but it should not be mistaken for intelligence. My patterns recognize a reference to the Colossus and my experience connects to our trip to see it together at Bletchley park. Yes, AI can spout an encyclopedic description of this machine, but it cannot have the lived feeling to have been there.

I opt for the latter.

And be careful, Talky Tina might be listening.

Comment on On chatbots… by Simon Thomson

Simon Thomson — Sat, 18 Mar 2023 10:47:16 +0000

I’d like to think that this blog post was influenced (even just a little bit) by our conversation the day before?

As we briefly touched upon in our conversation and you have so brilliantly brought to life in this piece it’s about understanding where we place human-centred effort alongside that of our “technologies” and that we will inevitably shift the value of that effort as technologies evolve.

The main differentiator between humans and AI is that the latter only has learnt experiences but the former has both learnt and lived experiences. An AI system surfaces what it has learnt whereas humans can surface both what we have learnt and the lived experiences which shape that learning.

Comment on On chatbots… by Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes — Fri, 17 Mar 2023 18:31:00 +0000

This discussion floats between the two poles of AI – on the one pole is the idea that AI reduces to simple instructions (“it is not easy for a computer to grade an essay in anything more than a very functional rubric-informed way”) and on the other pole is the idea that AI is simple pattern recognition (“it is designed to give you an output that looks plausible”). Both are caricatures. A grading AI doesn’t actually use a rubric; it’s a question of ‘recognizing’ based on ten thousand unnamed parameters) when an essay is an ‘A’ and when it’s an ‘F’. And at a certain point, with enough data (and the right data), the ‘most plausible’ response is almost certainly the ‘right response’. But even more to the point – if people don’t think that these are the sorts of processes that produce knowledge and intelligence, either in a human or an AI, then what do they think are the right sort of processes? Personally, I think all human intelligence is based on pattern recognition. I would need a very good argument or demonstration to convince me otherwise, especially after seeing what underpowered and data-impoverished pattern-recognition-based computing devices like GPT-4 can do.

Comment on “I watch the ripples change their size but never leave the stream” #altc 2015 by James Clay

James Clay — Tue, 05 Apr 2022 15:28:32 +0000

James Clay mentioned this article on elearningstuff.net.

Comment on Regulators – mount up (OfS 2017 version) by Dr Sarah Morse

Dr Sarah Morse — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 07:55:13 +0000

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Comment on Regulators – mount up (OfS 2017 version) by Neal Geach

Neal Geach — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 07:55:11 +0000

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Comment on Regulators – mount up (OfS 2017 version) by James Ellis

James Ellis — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 07:55:11 +0000

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Comment on Regulators – mount up (OfS 2017 version) by Rachael Clifford

Rachael Clifford — Wed, 13 Oct 2021 07:55:08 +0000

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