Josh Brake

The Cookie Box Principle Generative AI and the temptation to overestimate our willpower

Generative AI offers a set of potential benefits for learning. But like any technology, those benefits are inextricably tied to a set of drawbacks.

What might Frog and Toad’s battle with cookies teach us about engaging generative AI in the classroom?

blog.joshbrake.com/joshbrake/th...

Academia: The Questions Are Big! It's the Curricula That Got Small. Thursday's Child Has Far to Go, But He At Least Read T.J. Kalaitzidis

The latest from @timothyburke.bsky.social is worth a read for all educators thinking critically about genAI and what it means for higher education.

Don't Tinker With AI in the Classroom It's fine to play around by yourself, but if you choose to engage genAI with your students, make sure to think it all the way through

It’s one thing to experiment. It’s quite another to tinker.

We shouldn’t be tinkering with AI in the classroom this fall. Either do the work to articulate the question you’re trying to answer and the specific ways you hope the AI tools will fix it, or don’t use it at all.

Great book!

Interesting. That is a new term to me.

Yes, personalized lesson plans and resources are helpful for enhancing learning. But what’s much more impactful is the personal attention of a teacher. Attention that focuses not just on academic and intellectual development, but on the whole of what it means to be a flourishing human being.

Maybe I’m just salty, but for all the discussion around using AI to create something new, it sure seems like a lot of it is focused on diluting the value and beauty of something that already exists.

This is not the only way! But the fact that this is the path being taken should tell us something.

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to genius.” - Oscar Wilde

Says almost all you need to know about the AI x Studio Ghibli discourse of late. First Johansson, now Ghibli, what next?

Anyone aware of examples of such a model? This feels like something that the folks at @hf.co would be thinking about.

What we need is something like fair trade AI. Models that are built on a dataset that is clearly disclosed so that we can trace the origins. Even then, there are issues around proper citation of sources that will remain, but at least we’ll know the ingredients in the soup.

LLMs by their very structure cut against this grain. By nature, LLMs mix things together into a soup in such a way that it is very hard to untangle the provenance of the inputs. Of course, this is a feature, not a bug. Particularly helpful if you want to obscure the training data.

One of the best features of the Internet is the hyperlink. It makes the act of citing one’s sources seamless and helps point the reader to the origin of one’s thoughts. It is a technology that is aligned with a culture of attribution.

Mens Sine Manus Why AGI can't deliver on its promises

"What does it mean to be human?

Do humans possess intrinsic moral worth irrespective of any economic value?

What does it mean for us to be embodied creatures?

How ought we treat our fellow humans?

What does it mean to flourish?"

- @joshbrake.com

open.substack.com/pub/joshbrak...

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Let’s find ways to focus our energy on the important and valuable activities that support learning.

With that said, I understand (and agree!) with the underlying thesis: there are lots of way that schooling wastes energy. This is parasitic friction which saps us. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Friction is key for traction. Without it, we can’t move anywhere. Think about trying to run on ice. Friction itself is not the enemy.

My biggest hope for AI in education is that it increases friction.

Yes, we need to eliminate parasitic friction but friction is a fundamental component of learning. Our discussion (like so many around AI) is suffering from poorly chosen words.

Trying to nail down an exact definition of AGI is a fools errand. The more important conversation needs to be focused on when, how, and why we decide to seed our agency to these systems.

Technique's Deception Pursue education, not schooling

In much of our conversation around AI's impact on education we're mixing up education and schooling. This week I turn again to Jacques Ellul and ask what his conception of "technique" might offer us as a lens through which to understand AI and its influence on us.

Excerpt from Brake's piece under the section "The False Promise": "The great lie of AI is the false promise of technique—that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps to fix ourselves and our world. That in searching for a more efficient way, we can find technological solutions to human problems. There is no salvation to be found in efficiency."

"There is no salvation to be found in efficiency."

Oh boy, I needed to read this sentence waking up this morning. Stop what you're doing and go read @joshbrake.com:

joshbrake.substack.com/p/techniques...

Thanks for the love, Marcus.

We're Forgetting How To Fly What autopilot systems can teach us about the dangers of relying on AI

Looking at the lessons learned from pilots and autopilots has something to teach us about how we should think about the downstream consequences of AI for us and our students.

brAIn drAIn The enhancement and atrophy of human cognition go hand in hand

Great piece here from @erikhoel.blogsky.venki.dev summarizing the main takeaways from the recent Microsoft paper discussing the impact of generative AI on critical thinking.

Those of us helping young people to find their way toward building expertise should take particular notice.

HMC's Department of Engineering provides Mudders with hands-on experience in engineering analysis, synthesis and practice including applied research as early as students’ first year. Learn more via this short YouTube video. uqr.to/edathmc.

Ursula's list Ursula Franklin is one of my all-time favorite thinkers about both the obvious and obscured parts of our technological world.

h/t to @kissane.bsky.social for a great piece about Ursula the other week too that was part of the inspiration for this piece too. And for @audreywatters.bsky.social putting it on my radar!

Ursula Speaks We ought to listen

Ursula Franklin is not a household name, but I'm on a quest to make her one.

She continually comes to mind as I'm thinking about the questions we should ask about AI and its coming and present impact on us. I'm grateful for her work and her courage to ask unpopular questions.

Efficient learning is analogous to efficient weight training. There are better and worse ways to train, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to lift the heavy things.

I’m all for using AI to help us learn better, but let’s make sure we’re not just shilling the cognitive version of the ab belt.

Beauty for Ashes Why teaching with honesty and vulnerability matters

Empathy is a core aspect of effective teaching. When you experience pain and suffering, it’s an opportunity to bring it with you into the classroom and model honesty and vulnerability with your students. It’s one of the many aspects of the human teacher that AI can never replace.

I finally figured out what those “baby in car” bumper stickers are all about. It’s just a euphemism for “sleep deprived parent at the wheel.”