Stephen Downes

What's more interesting than the percentages outline throughout this survey (26 page PDF) are the descriptions of what it feels like to people who actually have AI companions. For example, "Once people begin using AI for personal purposes, many develop something that looks and feels like a relationship encompassing trust, emotional connection and a sense of being understood." And "Users feel AI understands them, sometimes better than other people do. They report they feel validated and they say they get good advice from their bot companion in social situations." Now I can easily imagine people responding "no, no, you shouldn't" but I'm on the side of people who need these things and haven't found it through traditional means for one reason or another.

This is an interesting take. Philippa Hardman explains the 'disappearance' of entry-level roles in learning and development as a consequence of the way AI is replacing human work at those lower levels. Nothing new there. But then comes the observation, "L&D work is going from a craft you learned by doing - producing courses, mastering tools, making things - to a discipline you're trusted to exercise: diagnosing problems, specifying solutions, judging quality and measuring impact." I wonder whether this is true - the professions I can think of, such as engineering, medicine and law, all depend a lot on developing through experience the sort of intuition and socialization needed to be 'professional'. Learning, in other words, by doing.

This article draws from a UNESCO report to assert that "in a world where GenAI is becoming part of learning, work, and professional practice, the enduring contribution of colleges and universities is designing learning environments that support the development of those capabilities while creating opportunities for that development to become visible and recognized." Which is fair enough. But the intent is to offer the always reassuring statement that "These questions do not require us to abandon familiar educational practices. In many cases, they simply invite us to build on what already exists." The questions in question invite the learner to reflect on their own learning - to ask, for example, "what evidence or counter-argument changed your thinking?" or "Which suggestion did you reject and why?". And they invite instructors to ask things like "What distinctly human capabilities are important for learners to develop?" None of this embraces the possibility that learners ill need to learn different things than they did before AI, and that as a result what we teach, how we teach, and why we tech may be fundamentally altered.

This article describes work developing biology-based computation, or 'biocomputation'. "Using synthetic biology, it is now possible to modify the specific nature of each of these steps in biological systems (for example, edit the DNA of living cells to sense new inputs) allowing for the programming of information processing devices with living matter."

I don't make any claim to have written literature, but if I think of OLDaily as a single work (and, in many ways, I do) then I have followed most if not all of these opinions. I don't mind writing in long sentences, I focus on telling as much as showing, and digressions are the order of the day. And if I ever come up with what I think is a beautiful sentence, there's no way I'm leaving it out of the final edit.

I'm sure some economists will still argue that free tuition doesn't help people, but according to this article, "the Tennessee Promise program - the first of its kind in the country - successfully boosted college enrollment and attainment, analysis showed." What's more, "one of the study's co-authors said the program pays for itself when factoring in the higher salaries that degree holders earn on average compared to their peers who hold just a high school diploma." Given how important education is supposed to be for the economy and for democracy, etc., etc., it has always been a mystery to me why people argue that the people least capable of paying for it - the students themselves - should foot the bill.