Episode 17: Back to School with AI Hype in Education (feat. Haley Lepp), September 22 2023

Emily and Alex are joined by Stanford PhD student Haley Lepp to examine the increasing hype around LLMs in education spaces - whether they're pitched as ways to reduce teacher workloads, increase accessibility, or simply "democratize learning and knowing" in the Global South. Plus a double dose of devaluating educator expertise and fatalism about the 'inevitability' of LLMs in the classroom.
Haley Lepp is a Ph.D. student in the Stanford University Graduate School of Education. She draws on critical data studies, computational social science, and qualitative methods to understand the rise of language technologies and their use for educational purposes. Haley has worked in many roles in the education technology sector, including curriculum design and NLP engineering. She holds an M.S. in Computational Linguistics from the University of Washington and B.S. in Science, Technology, and International Affairs from Georgetown University.

References:

University of Michigan debuts 'customized AI services' (record.umich.edu/articles/its-debuts-customize…)
Al Jazeera: An AI classroom revolution is coming (aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/5/24/ai-wont-repla…)
California Teachers Association: The Future of Education? (cta.org/educator/posts/the-future-of-education)
Politico: AI is not just for cheating (politico.com/newsletters/california-playbook-p…)
Extra credit: "Teaching Machines: The History of Personalized Learning" by Audrey Watters (mitpress.mit.edu/9780262546065/teaching-machines)
Fresh AI Hell:
AI generated travel article for Ottawa (cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/artificial-intellige…) -- visit the food bank!
Microsoft Copilot is “usefully wrong” (blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducin…)
* Response from Jeff Doctor (twitter.com/jeffadoctor/status/169262259339471…)
“Ethical” production of “AI girlfriends” (linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:71019…)
Withdrawn AI-written preprint on millipedes resurfaces, causing alarm among myriapodological community (retractionwatch.com/2023/09/01/withdrawn-ai-wr…)
New York Times: How to Tell if Your A.I. Is Conscious (nytimes.com/2023/09/18/science/ai-computers-co…)
* Response from VentureBeat: Today's AI is alchemy. (venturebeat.com/business/todays-ai-is-not-scie…)
EU on the doomerism train, warns about "mitigating the risk of extinction from AI." (x.com/EU_Commission/status/1702295053668946148…)
More AI in the legal system: 'jolly useful' ChatGPT gives judge legal summary (theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/15/court-o…)
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Music by Toby Menon.
Artwork by Naomi Pleasure-Park (naomipleasurepark.com).
Production by Ozzy Llinas Goodman.