Why Open Source Matters for AI
2026/08/14
I agree with the argument made in favour of open source AI offered here by Tim O'Reilly. "I believe that the big labs are making the same strategic mistake that Netscape and Microsoft made in the mid 90s. Yes, make the models more reliable for ordinary users. But don't shut down the options for developers who don't work for you to push the state of the art forward. As Bill Joy put it decades ago, 'No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.' No one should have a monopoly on innovation, and no one should be building a moat to hold it back."
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How to Educate the Poor: Global Programs, Resources & Ways to Help
2026/08/14
What I like about this article is that it makes it clear that there is no single way to support what they call education for the poor. As the diagram says, "no single layer solves it alone". And it offers an effective counter to single-minded programs (such as the religious and charter schools recommended in Deseret News, via the always negative Joanne Jacobs). My view: There's a lot of data showing a correlation between socio-economic status and learning outcomes, which is why support programs, including dental and health care, sit alongside good pedagogy and access to resources as essential elements in educational equity. As I said in the very first few issues of OLDaily some 25 years ago, if you want children to do better at school, feed them. (The downside of this article: it's from a very sketchy source, Unlock Knowledge and Talent Upliftment (UKTU), "an independent human-vetter informational framework". I probably should never have linked to it, but now I'm here, I may as well pass it along as a cautionary note).
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Empty shelves or lost keys? Recall is the bottleneck for parametric factuality
2026/08/14
It's important, I think, to understand that this article is focused specifically on recall of facts, and not cognition generally (though there are people out there who will no doubt conflate the two). It's interesting because of the way it describes five sources of failure of factual recall based on "one of five knowledge profiles: (1) encoding failure, (2) recall failure, (3) direct recall, (4) recall with thinking, and (5) inference without encoding." The authors "suggest that recall is tightly coupled to the conditions under which a fact was learned. When the query diverges from the training-time context, phrasing, or ordering in which the fact was encountered, recall becomes harder."
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AI, technofascism, and the unmaking of higher education. An interview with Stefan Popenici
2026/08/14
This interview (25 page PDF) is accurately described by the abstract, which frankly I would not recommend reading beyond (why link it here? for the record). "Tracing GenAI's origins from an Epstein-funded symposium and the Pentagon's chequebook to the eugenic roots of Silicon Valley's culture, Popenici contends that AI is the political project of 'technofascist' billionaires rather than a neutral educational tool." The article is historically dubious, narrowly focused, and conspiracy theory clickbait.
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Making 768 servers look like 1
2026/08/14
This article describes the practice of sharding databases in order to serve more requests across larger data sources than a single database could handle. In sharding, each of several (or several hundred) databases contains a certain segment of the data. This division of data is defined by a simple function (for example, each database might handle only certain record numbers - the first handles records 1-10, the second handles records 11-20, and so on). A router then sends the request to the right database depending on the request. Multiple identical routers may exist, and traffic to them is distributed through a load balancer. It's a good article, and only touches the basics of sharding (there's no discussion of how search is managed, for example), but well worth reading for a detailed outline.
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A Home for Personal Context
2026/08/13
This article starts from the perspective of a personal AI that learns about its user over time. We'll call that the 'personal context' for lack of a better term, along with the author, Duncan Davidson. How do we create and manage a personal context? Davidson lists some things that matter: provenance, for example, to distinguish between what the user wrote and what they read. Scopes are important, as they distinguish between work, home and family. Identities and types matter, to allow for a consistent ontology across sessions. Time matters: my views may change over time, and what I said recently on a topic should take precedence (all else being equal). The system should be available across devices and across locales, and interoperability should not require uniformity: "Different people and companies should be able to build different context systems for different ecosystems and trust boundaries. What they need is agreement on identity, permissions, provenance, and exchange, not one universal application."
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The author describes Nine Timeless Human Dignity Needs as reason, security, human rights, accountability, transparency, justice, opportunity, innovation, and inclusiveness, and opposes them 'human nature', as characterized by emotionality, amorality, and egoism, "traits that, if left unchecked, can undermine trust, cooperation, and institutional legitimacy." As he explains in this paper (14 page PDF), " the findings indicating that we do not have an innate morality, and the compelling case for our actions being ultimately motivated by our own perceived self-interest." I'm generally sceptical of arguments based on accounts of human nature because it begs the question, what is 'natural' for a human? If we fear a tiger, is this 'natural' or 'learned'? Is there a principled distinction to be drawn between 'emotion' and a 'moral sense'? Neuroscience doesn't answer these questions, because the distinction itself is blurred and confused.
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This Essay is 10% AI Generated
2026/08/13
I like this discussion, and it raises a central point about meaning, text and authorship. Alex Danco contrasts two authors, Roland Barthes, who in The death of the author argued "that we should no longer assign a text's meaning as coming from the author. Text's meaning comes from text, and its relation to other text," and Michel Foucault, who argued in What is an author? that "there is nonetheless an emergent quality called 'authorship', which we create and employ socially as a way to categorize the text, assign meta-significance to it, or even to regulate it or police it." So, writes Danco, "LLMs, therefore, should be a total and complete triumph for Barthes," but that feels wrong, as we still need to "classify, compress, and critique the text; whether a person wrote it or not." In my view, the text plays a small role in meaning; far more important is how the reader comprehends the text (so, yes, the same text can have different meanings for different readers). The role of authorship, in my view, intersects with how the reader comprehends the text. Knowing the author allows the reader to recognize familiar ideas and concepts from characteristic turns of phrase. AI writing doesn't offer the same affordance, and so feels hollow and less meaningful to the reader.
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EdTech Isn't One Industry. It's Nine.
2026/08/13
"The economic models and market narratives EdTech has relied on for 30 years have collapsed," writes Ian McCullough. "By sharpening definitions and drawing clearer boundaries, we can focus our resource investments and set the stage for new entrepreneurial activity." The result is a framework that divides the industry into nine segments, defined by sector (consumer, business, government/schools) across one dimension, and by service (instruction, infrastructure, managed services) across another. The divisions make sense if you're concerned about things like the speed of decision-making or the threat of new competition. But the real segmentation is defined by, first, who pays, and second, why. In my opinion, at least.
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Using AI-based Learning Assistants in Higher Education: A Large-Scale Descriptive Analysis
2026/08/13
This paper (17 page PDF) is a large survey of AI users in distance education. 44,035 out of the 76,485 students enrolled in distance education courses at IU International University of Applied Sciences (IU) used Syntea, an AI supported chatbot. Beyond the size, though, the study is disappointing, breaking down the sample by easy demographics (age, gender, subject, degree, mode) rather than, say, looking at what they were doing. Does it really matter than more women than men, or more young people than old, used AI? No it does not. If you're going to publish a study, do something useful, more than just reading the logs. Via Checkpoint.
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Universities Experiment with Hidden Grades
2026/08/12
As reported here, "The University of Michigan's College of Literature, Science and the Arts is trying out something new this coming term: a dual grading system in which professors give students ordinary letter grades based on the quality of their work, but what shows up on the student's transcript is either a 'pass' or 'no credit'." The argument is that this will reduce stress for first-year students, but "according to The Hill, the university will maintain final grades internally for athletic eligibility, compliance reporting, and students' eligibility for financial aid, among other purposes, (so) there is a question of just how liberated from grading some students will feel."
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Client ChallengeReluctant billionaire: The elusive Craigslist founder is ready to talk
2026/08/12
I enjoyed this interview with Craig Newmark, the man who developed Craigslist, effectively replacing the newspaper classified advertising market. The headline says he is a billionaire, though he responds "I am not, and never have been, a billionaire." But it's close, and he may end up giving more than a billion to various charities (including, most notably, journalism education). While interesting, his self-limiting talk can be frustrating, as he frequently says things like "I will then focus my limited attention on areas where I can do something about." I mean, it's better than billionaires pretending to be experts in everything, but understating what he can do serves no one well.
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3 Ways To a Picture-Perfect Process AND Product with the Studio Habits of Mind
2026/08/12
Just for the record, the Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM), an eight-habit framework from Harvard Project Zero: - Develop Craft: Students refine skills and techniques
- Engage & Persist: Students stay focused and work through challenges
- Envision: Students imagine possibilities and plan next steps
- Express: Students convey ideas and meaning
- Observe: Students notice details and see in new ways
- Reflect: Students evaluate their work and revise
- Stretch & Explore: Students experiment, take risks, and embrace mistakes
- Understand Art Worlds: Students connect to and understand art in the world around them 
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Humans understand what AI cannot
2026/08/12
I wrote about understanding a few weeks ago to address arguments such as the one here. It should be clear that a hand-wave like "understanding as 'remembering in disguise'" is far from an adequate summation. I liked the use of the Helen Keller story to try to get at what we mean when by understanding, but clearly it's a special case, and does not show that 'understanding' equates to 'knowing the meaning of words'. And none of this goes to show that "understanding entails a certain level of abstraction, what cognitive scientists call schema." And all this is even further from showing that 'humans understand what AI cannot' - indeed, if understanding does reduce to meanings of words, then all an AI needs to 'understand' is a second, non-textual sensory modality. A sense of touch, say, in addition to a set of words.
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Evidence experimentation in AI evaluation in education
2026/08/12
In this post Ben Williamson argues that the introduction of AI in schools is being accompanied with a redefinition of what counts as evidence of impact. "Specific kinds of design experiments such as AI prototype tests, implementation R&D, and evaluation measurements conducted by technology vendors themselves have been centred as authoritative evidence practices, challenging or replacing independent evaluation methodologies based on wider and multi-dimensional measures of educational impact." The sort of evidence he feels is being challenged or replaced is found in this paper (14 page PDF), published only last January, called the the Multiple EdTech Impact Index (MEII), which "includes fifteen indicators of impact... across five domains: efficacy, effectiveness, ethics, equity, and environment." I can understand the concern about what counts as evidence, but I wouldn't consider either set of indicators to be "authoritative", despite the positioning of one as such in this article.
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The Future is for Everyone
2026/08/11
This is a remarkable letter, not the least because it comes from Mark Zuckerberg. The premise is that we should put AI into people's hands and have people make their own decisions about how to use it. The most important point is that "everyone will have an exceptionally capable personal agent that understands you, your goals, and everything you care about... the key to a positive future for everyone is achieving a balance of power that favors individuals. The solution is to ensure that superintelligence is broadly distributed to empower people." I am in agreement with this basic proposition, however, I don't trust the author to implement it. The history of Meta has always been consolidation and control, not free and open commerce and communication. I don't see that changing any time soon. See also: Carlo Iacono, The Future Is for Everyone Who Wins the Auction.
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The only reason you’ll ever need not to write with AI
2026/08/11
It takes a while for Colin Carlson to get to the 'only reason' but it's this: "Using generative AI inherently exposes you to the risk of career-ending accusations of plagiarism." It's worth noting that Carlson views the accusation as career-ending, "especially if those accusations become public, where they can be debated ad infinitum. And anything you've written, at any point, can be relitigated a half-century later." Perhaps. Or perhaps the rise of AI will push back against the imagined purity that is academic writing. After all, nothing - nothing - is completely original. Take the current post - the one that states "here's the basic point I haven't seen anyone make." Now ask yourself why it isn't a copy of the idea expressed in Plagiarism of ideas in the age of generative artificial intelligence, by David Resnik & Mohammad Hosseini, published back in May. Or Plagiarism, Copyright, and AI, written by
Mark A. Lemley and Lisa Larrimore Ouellette back in 2025. Let's stop pretending we're more original than we actually are.
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Social Media Have Only Partially Democratized Climate Communication
2026/08/11
I would imagine that what this paper found about climate change communication on social media platforms applies generally to discussions in general. "Early studies initially suggested that social media gave more members of civil society and environmental and grassroots movements as well as citizens in general a chance to be heard. Over time, however, it became evident that established actors – like political actors, government bodies and news organizations – continue to shape and often dominate the discussion and dissemination of climate-related content." The result has been social media echo chambers, with differences appearing between platforms, not within them. Speaking of undemocratic, the actual research is paywalled.
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Tooting from the Blog
2026/08/11
If you have a blog with an RSS feed (and who doesn't, right?) then this post will show you how to send your new blog posts to Mastodon (and, potentially, Bluesky) using GitHub actions. "This would also run fine as a plain cron job on any server with Node installed, GitHub Actions isn't a requirement, just a convenient place to run it for free without maintaining a server yourself." Neat. Or as Claude would say: Clean.
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Your ‘App’ Could Have Been a Webpage (so I fixed it for you…)
2026/08/10
I've engaged with various projects over the years that focus on building apps, not websites. I've never understood this focus; it seems to me to be wrongheaded. As Dan Q writes, "Software companies are happy to make their lives harder (and more expensive: deploying to the big app stores isn't free!), in order to deliver HTML content to fewer people and with fewer features than if they just published directly to the Web in the first place!" Anyhow, the bulk of this article describes how the author converts a tour company app back into a website - some good insights here.
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The Alpha School Panacea: Is AI-School a Learning Revolution or the latest Educational Mirage?
2026/08/10
I agree with this post in one paragraph and disagree just a few paragraphs later. The paragraph I agree with is this: " Schools are communities of learning, not simply delivery systems for academic content. Students learn through dialogue, debate, collaboration, disagreement, and shared intellectual experiences." Quite so. That's why a focus on instruction and a standardized body of content misconstrues learning. And that's why I disagree with this: "Students cannot think critically about subjects they know little about. Nor can they become informed citizens without a shared foundation of historical, scientific, literary, and cultural knowledge." Not so. Indeed, for society to function at all these days we need to learn how to navigate a world with multiple foundations.
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Exclusive: Spotify’s new ‘skip’ button could end the podcast business as we know it
2026/08/10
It's precisely this sort of thing that keeps me far far away from platforms such as Spotify. Many podcasts run advertisements read by the host or integrated as part of the podcast. Spotify's new button will allow listeners to skip those. Fine, you say? I would be in favour, but as the story notes, what the button won't allow you to skip are ads inserted by Spotify. So basically the company is eliminating the competition and trying to monopolize revenue generation for itself. And that is what makes the plan so pernicious. The long term plan, of course, is to eliminate free podcasts altogether, moving all control from the podcaster to the platform. Just like cable TV.
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The Real Solution to the EdTech Backlash is Digital Leadership
2026/08/10
I don't really agree with the argument in this post. The proposal is that better leadership will counter the tech backlash in schools, where this amounts to: first, better pedagogy focused on high-level cognitive work; second, transparent multi-channel communications with parents and students; and third, high-touch leadership "to stay present in classrooms, mentor teachers, and support students." While I understand that 'leadership' is no longer viewed as 'telling people what to do', this approach feels pushy to me. It treats people as though they don't really understand technology and that the leader's touch will solve this problem. And that's where I don't agree. If I were a teacher I wouldn't want the principal pushing pedagogy on me, short-cutting interactions with parents, and hovering in the classroom. I'd want to room and the space to explore technology on my own terms, with my colleagues, and making my own decisions. Students, too, would probably prefer this approach.
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Scanning for robots, summer 2026
2026/08/09
This is a fun scan looking at the emerging world of robots (with half an eye to their impact on education). As Bryan Alexander notes, robots haven't evoked the hatred that AI has, "possibly because the domains where robots succeed (manufacturing, security, companionship) are not as media-friendly as the threat AI poses to white collar jobs." Give it time, though, I think. "Some readers might recall the dark vision of the Slaughterbots video from 2017," notes Alexander. Anyhow, giving AI robot bodies and senses represents the next great influx of AI training data. "Google Deepmind announced an upgrade to its Gemini Robotics software system, designed to run 'truly adaptable robots.' This includes a 'vision-language-action model (VLA) that converts vision and language input into motor control, enabling a robot to take action.'"
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