Maha Bali, PhD

To be honest, I only made it through about a paragraph or so of Paul LeBlanc before I skipped ahead to @mahabali.bsky.social‘s insightful critique. We are supposed to see the launch of their LE-1 this month, so I guess we will see what they are overhyping right now…

2/2 it's also like... analogous to training the AI in your voice and video and worrying about what it might do with it and distort it into something else given all it's been trained on before? I have some thought experiments on this!

Yes... and also, there is a risk people on the margins have of whether training larger models on their data risks them losing rhetorical and data sovereignty (particularly important for Indigenous groups, but also, e.g., for me, sacred holy texts?). 1/2

I HATE when people compare AI to the printing press, it's so disingenuous. The printing press was opposed by the elites because it put power in the hands of everyday people, and popularized a vernacular. AI does the opposite, by allowing elites to bypass artists and laborers.

Not to constantly refer to one of my own translations, but Saitō's use of André Gorz's distinction between open and locking technologies is very pertinent here -- generative AI is locking tech masquerading as open tech

Brood Parasites Humans have always invested great meaning in birds. No surprise, what with the feathers, the flight. Each week, when I look at all the stories that've been told about education and technology and try ...

Brood parasitism is not a perfect metaphor, by any means, for AI, for the offloading of ed-tech development onto teachers and students, for the vampiric practices of VCs ... but it's the bird I went with to head this week's news round-up...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/brood-parasi...

A Letter to Letters — Grow Beyond Grades In this letter, Subhiksha Sreeram breaks up with grades, recalling how letters once ruled her worth and turned learning into a numbers game. She shares how chasing A’s left her anxious, perfectionisti...

“Why focus on how to improve when the verdict has already been delivered?” 📫

High school senior, Subhiksha Sreeram, describes the way grades cut off real learning. Her essay A Letter to Letters is the first of three winners in our Growth, Not Grades contest.

growbeyondgrades.org/blog/a-lette...

What If College Teaching Was Redesigned With AI In Mind? | Learning Curve A former university president is trying to reimagine college teaching with AI in mind, and this year he released an unusual video that provides a kind of artist’s sketch of what that could look like. ...

Ep 2 of Learning Curve just dropped! This one looks at a new model for teaching with AI proposed by Paul LeBlanc, former president of SNHU, plus some reaction from longtime teaching expert Maha Bali. Can AI bots be part of teaching w/o cutting off human connection?

learningcurve.fm/episodes/wha...

#ICYMI, last week we spoke with @mahabali.bsky.social on #digitalliteracy and #AI in the classroom. Tune in at: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...

What If College Teaching Was Redesigned With AI In Mind? | Learning Curve A former university president is trying to reimagine college teaching with AI in mind, and this year he released an unusual video that provides a kind of artist’s sketch of what that could look like. ...

In this podcast episode, I respond to Matter & Space and critique their claims to transform edu with AI
learningcurve.fm/episodes/wha...
Would love to hear what you think

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: SLU Education Conference Day 1 Keynote: Dr. Maha Bali. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email about joining the webinar. Keynote talk will start at 13:15 and will be streamed from Loftets hörsal i Ultuna.

I'm giving a keynote today on Cultivating socially just care in academia today via SLU, starting 1.15pm Sweden time, 11.15 GMT, 2.15pm Cairo, and way early ET 7.15am

Register here if interested:
slu-se.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

AI in the Classroom: Power, Bias and Opportunity with Maha Bali Podcast Episode · Educating to Be Human Podcast · 08/19/2025 · 45m

🎧 New Episode: AI in the Classroom w/ @mahabali.bsky.social
exploring how #AI shapes power, equity & relationships in education - and why questioning tech is crucial in today’s world. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a...
#AIinEducation #DigitalLiteracy #CriticalPedagogy #FutureOfLearning #EdTech

Oh I don't know what story I shared inspired this? Or I forgot? Tell me haha

Unexpected Reflections from the ABBA Museum Experience I love ABBA. My parents and uncle turned me into music of their generation when I was young, and I was hooked on them, the Beatles, Boney M, Beegees. My husband is similar, so our teen is also into…

Unexpected Reflections from the ABBA Museum Experience.
blog.mahabali.me/pedagogy/cri...

Can a Flight Cancelation Be a Gift? I start this blogpost the morning after arriving here in Sweden where I’m expected to give a workshop and a keynote soon. The question “how is this a gift to me?” came from the person who inv…

Can a flight cancelation be a gift?
(This is me theorizing approaches to uncertainty and its intersection with privilege based on a recent experience)

blog.mahabali.me/parenting/ca...

Disability Dongle: Another Thinking Tool for the Technoskeptical Toolbox — Civics of Technology The authors of this week’s blog intersect technoskepticism with disability studies to offer a series of questions that help in evaluating assistive tech.

Such a useful and important article when assessing tech for accessibility

Disability Dongle: Another Thinking Tool for the Technoskeptical Toolbox.

Via @civicsoftech.bsky.social www.civicsoftechnology.org/blog/disabil...

Can't wait to chat with @hypervisible.bsky.social - join us! #MYFest25 - details below

Nooooooooo 🙈🙈🙈

Sponsored by the AI Pedagogy Project at Harvard's metaLAB and the Data Nutrition Project, this event is free, open to all, and designed to make AI approachable and relevant for you.

Honored to be giving a keynote with @mahabali.bsky.social alongside @randomwalker.bsky.social, @eryk.bsky.social +

Public AI Summit A dynamic, two-day virtual AI Summit for the general public to hear from leading experts about the latest AI developments, gain a clearer understanding of what these changes mean, and learn how we can...

Register for a dynamic, free two-day virtual AI Summit August 13-14 for the general public to hear from leading experts about the latest AI developments, gain a clearer understanding of what these changes mean, and learn how we can leverage these tools in our everyday lives.
publicaisummit.org

I think you were reading the museum stuff more closely than I was. I never liked physics in school or uni (had to take 5 courses! Got A's, understood nothing!) but still enjoyed CERN very much and more so because you were there!!!

Thanks to my visit to CERN in Geneva last week several of these terms magically make sense to me! 🙌🏾 Shout out to @mahabali.bsky.social who organized our excursion!

Public AI Summit A dynamic, two-day virtual AI Summit for the general public to hear from leading experts about the latest AI developments, gain a clearer understanding of what these changes mean, and learn how we can...

Excited to co-organize the #PublicAISummit (Aug 13–14) with the Data Nutrition Project + metaLAB (at) Harvard's AI Pedagogy Project!
🎙️ Keynotes by Kathy Pham, @randomwalker.bsky.social, @annamillsoer.bsky.social, @mahabali.bsky.social
💻 Free + virtual
🌍 For the public
🔗 Register: publicaisummit.org

Prompt libraries for higher ed!
Lessons from @mikecaulfield.bsky.social's megaprompt!
Lessons from deep collaboration on the @pairrfeedback.bsky.social prompt!

Slides for Let’s Prompt Together: Educators Sharing and Refining AI Prompts, a MyFest presentation
link.annarmills.com/letsprompt

Join us for Vanessa Andreotti & her daughter Giovanna's session on Hospicing and Outgroeing Modernity.

Register for MYFest25 - more details below:

Typical: white man at an AI conference trying to convince the small group of women and people of color that AI bias isn't that big of a deal, coz all isms are overrated anyway.

The AI Cultural Hallucination Bias Tell me if I’m phrasing this correctly. I think one of the reasons I have conversations with people about AI and we view it very differently is either: There is an AI cultural bias in the hal…

the fab @mahabali.bsky.social has written about this as well. blog.mahabali.me/educational-... The AI Cultural Hallucination Bias – Reflecting Allowed

New aspirational learning outcome for my course: Balance your wellbeing by becoming self-aware of how you can navigate a world that is not that empathetic or equitable, and learn how to build on things like community of peers and other approaches to wellness[already do this-ish, but being explicit]

anyone else notice how ridiculous Google's AI summaries often are? Total BS!!!!

✨ You can nominate someone else — or yourself.
From impactful projects to everyday heroes of open education, now’s the time to celebrate them.

🗓️ Deadline: July 21
#OpenEducation #EverythingStartsWithASeed #OEAwards25
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