Stephen Downes

It's another list of principles to toss into the ever-growing list of AI policy statements. This one resembles most of the others, particularly with a very standard list of principles (illustrated). One interesting newish thing: "Ensure there is no copyright infringement when prompting AI." The principle here is that you should use copyright material as content for a prompt. That's an interesting requirement, and one I'll have to think about.

"The contrasts are stark," writes Julian Stodd. "On the day that Donald Clark has shared research showing solid research on the benefits of Generative AI in terms of knowledge gained and retention, my sons school has told me that he is essentially sat in class doing not much as the books are three weeks late being delivered." I don't do ontology (in the philosophical sense) but it really does seem that people are having trouble grasping ontology in a relativistic world, something I may write a bit about to address.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day. Arrr, Mateys. "Talk Like a Pirate Day is an annual opportunity to pepper your speech with swashbuckling phrases like 'ahoy matey' and 'shiver me timbers.' But where does 'pirate speak' come from, and is this how historical pirates really talked?" You'll have to listen to this video to find out. :)

I can't really imagine educators spending a lot of time with this book (488 page PDF) but it would be interesting to see what the old-school learning theory researchers make of this new-school learning theory. Me, I've never thought of learning theory as anything other than this (or something like this) (which is why all the 'connectivism is not a learning theory' discussion mystified me). Anyhow, I have not read the full book (it's on my list for when I have a free week). But you might want to.

Too early to report on it (there's a rate limit of 50 queries per week, which makes any real interactive work difficult) but it feels like it's worth mentioning. Still: "We trained these models to spend more time thinking through problems before they respond, much like a person would. Through training, they learn to refine their thinking process, try different strategies, and recognize their mistakes... (this is) a significant advancement and represents a new level of AI capability. Given this, we are resetting the counter back to 1 and naming this series OpenAI o1."

According to this article, " Pearson has introduced several new AI-powered tools to help provide students personalized help from within their e-textbooks or study platforms. The tools are available through Pearson+ Channels, the video tutorial library part of the company's e-textbook subscription service." The article appears to be a lightly rewritten version of this August 28 press release.