Conn McQuinn

Every person who works in educational technology should read this at least twice a year.

I agree with you. It was a close election, and she was running against headwinds (especially inflation frustration and the Gaza tragedy) that had nothing to do with her race and gender. Of course racism and misogyny in the end made the difference, but each election is different.

As someone involved in educational technology for 40+ years, I strongly endorse this. Students absolutely should not be using generative AI, in school or at home. #edtech

A piece of property he flipped to a Russian oligarch just a few years later for more than double what he paid for it.

The Levers of Political Persuasion with Conversational AI There are widespread fears that conversational AI could soon exert unprecedented influence over human beliefs. Here, in three large-scale experiments (N=76,977), we deployed 19 LLMs-including some pos...

Lots to unpack in this study, but to me the critical issue is in the last line of the abstract:

"...strikingly, where they increased AI persuasiveness they also systematically decreased factual accuracy."

arxiv.org/abs/2507.13919

I worked with many schools and districts in my career, and the most consistent pattern I saw was this: Whatever you want students to experience in their classrooms is what your teachers need to experience in their work. An old Latin phrase translates “You can’t provide what you don’t have.”

I know these are trying times and venting can be helpful, but can we give these over-used comments a rest?

“We’re cooked (or f***ed or doomed).”
“Make it make sense.”
“Got it.”
“We live in the stupidest timeline” or “I hate this timeline.”

Just genuinely curious - how do schools in states/districts that have regulations requiring board approval of curriculum deal with using generative AI, which is creating curriculum materials on the fly? #edtech

Don't get me wrong - I think it's far more likely that those were indeed his personal picture, particularly since he hasn't offered up any good alternate explanation. Hacking is plausible, but that's not the same as probable.

In less than five minutes, before we had even finished configuring things, someone outside our office connected and started to Airplay porn. We quickly booted them and turned on password protection.

It’s entirely plausible that Walters could be that incompetent with his security settings. 2/2

I am absolutely NOT defending Ryan Walters, who I believe is a disgrace, but -

Some years ago we installed our first wall-mounted TV and AppleTV setup in my boss’s office. We left password protection off because we were on the third floor of an isolated building, so we figured it was safe. 1/

I finally unfollowed Axios because they were regularly posting stories clearly intended to inflame the progressive/liberal divide, always with unnamed sources, and never confirmed by any other outlets or journalists. This is just one of many such stories.

The LLMentalist Effect: how chat-based Large Language Models rep… The new era of tech seems to be built on superstitious behaviour

Excellent article about how LLMs perform their feats of "magic" by exploiting the same psychological hacks that psychics do when performing cold readings.

::Chefs kiss::

softwarecrisis.dev/letters/llme...

That would be rational, but the problem is that virtually all the tech companies have convinced themselves that AI will be the true Sorcerer's Stone, and that the first company to create Artificial General Intelligence will rule the world. That requires going full tilt with data centers.

He's staying low to let the spotlight shine on his boss. I agree he would be a poor candidate in an open election, but if DJT passes during the term JD will pull out all the stops to lionize DJT: Huge, garish funeral, statues, face on currency, etc. to show his obeisance to the cult leader.

Remember that DJT was able to capture his base in part because the pre-existing network of evangelical/Christian Nationalist leaders actively promoted him to their flocks. They will do the same for Vance. If they can convince the faithful that DJT is godly, they can convince them JD has charisma.

Image of July 21 Seattle Times, page A12. The top two headlines read “ChatGPT learns to shop, make PowerPoints” and “Meta built a data center nearby, then their water taps went dry.” The second article is illustrated with an aerial photo of a farm set in acres of grass and forest, with a new, huge data center complex looming nearby.

A tale in two headlines. The second headline is just one of the reasons I am not the least bit interested in the first one.

The press (and voters) will give him a honeymoon, and he has little of the scandalous baggage DJT. He won't be a chaos agent like DJT, and his administration will seem calmer and more reasonable by comparison. He'll keep most of the cult, and could easily pick up a sizable chunk of the middle. 2/2

In the long term, yes. But in the short term, if DJT expires while in office, Vance will provide the cult with an extended period of mourning and lavish state funeral that lionizes their hero. He will probably move quickly to add his face to Mt. Rushmore, onto currency, and build a statue in DC. 1/2

Yes, but. He's the groomed Manchurian candidate of Thiel and the fascist authoritarian movement. He'll never have the cultish devotion of DJT, but if DJT leaves/expires during his current term, JD will take over with the kind of tight focus on cementing authoritarianism that DJT is incapable of.

I am cancelling my Paramount+ membership, and will be sending the money instead to support public broadcasting. If one out of eight Paramount+ subscribers were to do the same thing, it would make up for the federal budget cuts - not to mention make an important political message.

Not in our state. Voters passed a constitutional amendment to establish the non-partisan process in the 1980s. In order to change it, you would need a 2/3 majority vote in both houses of the legislature followed by a statewide vote. We’re blue, but nowhere near 2/3 in either the house or senate.

The challenge is that in many blue states (such as mine) we have passed laws to prevent gerrymandering, setting up independent commissions to draw up the maps. Hopefully some of the blue states have more easily adapted processes.

We already have a lot of anecdotal evidence of chatbots contributing to serious delusions among some adults. It's absolutely insane to turn kids loose with such a powerful technology without first understanding its impact, especially during the critical period of adolescent neurodevelopment.

After every election, regardless of outcomes, pundits of every stripe write articles about "What the voters told us." It's almost never based on any data, just the pet issues each particular pundit is already focused on, or the groupthink they fall into as a herd. It's all self-hypnotized blather.

I'm confused about the idea that "identity politics" is unique to the left. *All* politics is "identity politics." Everything 47 and his ilk talks about is which identities are worthy of rights, and which identities aren't. Ignoring marginalized people is just identity politics with an eraser.

I’m not trying to be argumentative, but it’s my belief that we are at the peak of a hype cycle, not revolutionary change. We have always been terrible at predicting the adoption or impact of new technologies. Always. The more certain someone is about the future of AI, the more likely they are wrong.

These are the same people and companies who told us the Metaverse would take over our lives, and who encouraged businesses and organizations to squander tens of billions of dollars preparing for it. The best outcomes in that situation were for those who stayed away from the conversation entirely.

All of these are being built and launched before conducting even the most basic level of research on their effectiveness. I have seen countless examples of technology-based instruction products over the years, and 99% of them launch with great promises and then eventually disappear without a trace.

I began my career in ed tech in 1979. I have seen these same claims over and over and over again. They always fade away under rigorous independent scrutiny. I grant little credibility to the data the sponsoring company provides; show me truly independent research that properly measures results.