Ben Williamson

Extralibrary Loan: Making the Civic Infrastructure We Need Amid a war on public knowledge, libraries are pushing outward, enlarging the commons through new configurations of civic and creative life.

"The library is not meant to be a node in the just-in-time-economy that puts a rights-restricted copy of 'Abundance' in our AirPods. It’s meant to be an accessible portal to our government, the place we go to access shared knowledge and to make meaning with others."

— @shannonmattern.bsky.social

Scroll to about 52 mins in for a utopian interpretation of the Gattaca movie.

In case you haven't seen it, the behaviour geneticist professor responsible for the idea of genetically-informed "precision education" from the use of consumer genetic tests is a scientific advisor to Nucleus and lays out the DNA "blueprint" idea with them here
m.youtube.com/watch?v=h1J5...

Genetic embryo optimization startups are certainly talking eugenics language that is wildly worrying in the current context. But this likely isn't Gattaca yet. It's probably just going to raid aspirant parents' bank accounts on the basis of misleading marketing claims. The Dropout 2 coming soon.

A recent mammoth takedown of Nucleus's genetic embryo optimization marketing argued it produced misleading claims, AI-generated testimonials, and was guilty of outright commercial malpractice >> totalhealthoptimization.com/2025/11/21/c...

Genetic IQ tests are bad science and big business A consumer genetics company plans to launch a genetic IQ testing service, raising scientific and ethical concerns. Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash A personal genomics startup company…

"Genetic optimization" of children for educational achievement and socioeconomic success has clearly become a business pitch that startups and VCs love, but it's not scientifically credible, and it's worse than that too >> codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2024/07/01/g...

No, You Can’t Design Your Baby—And Trying Would Be a Terrible Idea A genomics firm saying they can help parents with “genetic optimization” of their embryos is tone-deaf Silicon Valley marketing trampling over legitimate science. Parents should be wary

The designer superbaby idea is based on a really flimsy understanding of how polygenic scores can identify risks of genetic predispositions to illnesses - let alone complex behavioural phenomena like "intelligence" or psychometric constructs like "IQ" www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-...

The ads that sell the sizzle of genetic trait discrimination A startup’s ads for controversial embryo tests hit the New York City subway.

Nucleus Genomics has been getting a lot of press for its "pick your baby" positive eugenics marketing this week, but before panicking about designer superbabies it's good also to remember its scientific claims are really bad albeit venture capital friendly >>
www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/05/1...

Stock price chart showing the 64% decline over the last six months for duolingo

Duolingo announced it was going “AI-first” just over six months ago. Since then its stock is down 64%.

LA Parents say school-issued iPads are causing chaos with their kids A growing contingent of public school parents say school-mandated iPads, particularly in elementary and middle schools, are leading to behavior problems.

NEW on @nbcnews.com: The Los Angeles Unified School District banned smartphones in class last year

But a growing number of parents are irate that some LA schools require kids to spend all day staring at school-issued iPads -- even in gym and band class

www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-ne...

We have a phone ban at my school. Everyone, even the students, talk about how great it is and how they love using their phones less. Except. They just shifted their phone behavior to their laptops.

Let’s say you had the opportunity to assign college students *1* thing (article, video, podcast) to help them understand what edtech is, how it’s funded, who benefits from it, and how it preys on their data. What hits these bases in a comprehensive, up-to-date, and powerful way?

Fit for Purpose? How Today’s Commercial Digital Platforms Subvert Key Goals of Public Education Digital educational platforms have become ubiquitous in American classrooms, with tools like Google Workspace for Education, Kahoot!, Zearn, Khan Academy, and many others now structuring curriculum, i...

If an accessible but properly scholarly, research-based report would suit, I think this recent one on edtech platforms is pretty clear and critical, and written by people who've been studying edtech for years nepc.colorado.edu/publication/...

The ad blitz is a way to end-run such gatekeepers: If a clinic won’t agree to order the test, would-be parents can take their business elsewhere. Another embryo testing company, Orchid, notes that high consumer demand emboldened Uber’s early incursions into regulated taxi markets. “Doctors are essentially being shoved in the direction of using it, not because they want to, but because they will lose patients if they don’t,” Orchid founder Noor Siddiqui said during an online event this past August.

Sadeghi prefers to compare his startup to Airbnb. He hopes it can link customers to clinics, becoming a digital “funnel” offering a “better experience” for everyone. He notes that Nucleus ads don’t mention DNA or any details of how the scoring technique works. That’s not the point. In advertising, you sell the sizzle, not the steak. And in Nucleus’s ad copy, what sizzles is height, smarts, and light-colored eyes.

What if Uber or Airbnb, but a eugenics grift. www.technologyreview.com/2025/12/05/1...

So honored that our article “Speculative Capture: Literacy after Platformization,” co-authored with @philnichols.bsky.social, @quirosjulian.bsky.social, and @ezekieldixonroman.bsky.social received the 2025 Arthur Applebee Award at the Literacy Research Association! Check it out open access!

Better AI in education … is regulation the answer?

🎧🎙️ new podcast episode with legal expert Liane Colonna about the EU 'AI Act' and what it means for AI use in schools & universities.

Is it really possible to prohibit some forms of AI use in education?!

www.buzzsprout.com/1301377/epis...

AI is not destroying education. LinkedIn pundits and influencers claiming AI is transforming education are destroying education.

My employer, Dartmouth College, today boasts it's 1st Ivy "to launch AI at an institutional scale." It is doing this by partnering--"more than a collaboration"--with Anthropic, a company that stole the books of many faculty, me included, which many of us are suing.

Framing GenAI as a battle between teachers and students is a red herring. Students and educators are on the same side. The real opposition are the data extraction firms and brokerages and their allies among the managerial class.

Hour of AI and CS Ed Week lessons and resources from Microsoft | Microsoft Education Blog Join Hour of AI during CS Ed Week 2025. Get lessons and resources from Microsoft to spark curiosity and create AI learning experiences.

From the same people that brought you "Hour of Code", now experience an "Hour of AI" with the exact same accompanying industry discourse of tech jobs and skills www.microsoft.com/en-us/educat...

84% of the UK public are concerned about the government putting technology sector needs ahead of the public when regulating AI. Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8–24 September 2025

🎄All we want for Christmas is for AI regulation to work for people and society.

Our new polling shows the UK public are concerned that tech companies’ needs are being prioritised over their own when it comes to AI regulation.

Read the full findings ⬇️
www.adalovelaceinstitute.org/policy-brief...

Social card - 89% of of the UK public believe Al products and services should not be rolled out until they are proven safe, even if this slows things down Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8-24 September 2025

91% of the public think it is important that Al systems are developed and used in ways that treat people fairly Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 18-24 September 2025

89% of the UK public believe government and regulators should have the authority to halt the use or sale of any Al system found to cause harm Souurce: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8-24 September 2025

84% of the UK public are concerned about the government putting technology sector needs ahead of the public when regulating Al Source: A nationally representative online poll with 1,928 UK adults aged 18+ between 8-24 September 2025

Historian of eugenics here. I don't normally like to retweet bad arguments, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of eugenics, I think it's important to point out. I don't have time to debunk all of the ways this is inaccurate, but I'll highlight a few things and then recommend some books🧵

I Need AI to Write Better Lesson Plans So My Students Stop Using AI to Write Their Papers I care deeply about my students’ learning, but with all the new technologies available to help them cut corners, I worry that they’re not doing the...

“This technology that is ruining education has incredible potential to save education, if only I could figure out how to use it better to improve my students’ education.”

Somehow missed this @mcsweeneys.net gem from September.

ht: @brianrbowen.bsky.social

Oh, look, another AI tutoring company did its own research and concluded that its own product is highly effective!

so it begins

Funders ‘hold all the cards’ to reform publishing, say academics.

Paper urges structural changes to stop “drain” of research resources by for-profit publishers.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-o...

How to Imagine Educational AI: The Filling of a Pail or the Lighting of a Fire? Recent advances in artificial intelligence (e.g., machine learning, generative AI) have led to increased interest in its application in educational settings. AI companies hope to revolutionize teachi...

What do The Matrix and educational AI have in common? Unfortunately way too much, as they promote very narrow ideas of what education should be.

Instead, Alberto Romele and I highlight better sci-fi inspirations in this new paper in Educational Theory:

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A *very* good paper on AI, education and sci-fi here:

"As we demonstrate by analyzing the paradigmatic ideas espoused by Salman Khan, educational AI is designed to optimize the acquisition of knowledge and largely ignores other aspects of teaching and learning, such as care, play, or curiosity."