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Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Feature Article
Questions and Answers on AI Regulation
Stephen Downes, Half an Hour, 2023/06/05

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Suchith Anand poses some interesting questions on the OPENED SIG mailing list, and though I am not the British government agency to which the questions are addressed, I have thoughts...

[Link] [Local copy]

Generative AI and the future of HR
Bryan Hancock, Bill Schaninger, Lareina Yee, McKinsey & Company, 2023/06/05

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When I read something like this I realize how much some writers want AI to be doing exactly the same thing for exactly the same people as people do today: " But what if I, as the employee, can query, 'who are five success models with my strengths and weaknesses, and what have they gone on to do? How can I visualize my career development? How can I continue to work on it?'" If I had an AI that powerful at hand, that's not even remotely the sort of question I'm asking it.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow
Erin Kissane, 2023/06/05

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Some really good thinking here: "in my work life, I'm trying to sharpen my sense of how and why the patterns we build on the internet shape the behaviors we enact inside them. But I keep getting sidetracked into the opposite formulation - how repeated behavior shapes our spaces, how rituals turn to hauntings, how buried things keep erupting into the present." I love especially the story about the fan.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Tutorbot-Spock: An Education Tutoring Chatbot based on Learning Science Principles powered by Large Language Models
Shashank Sonkar, Lucy Liu, Debshila Basu Mallick, Richard G. Baraniuk, GitHub, 2023/06/05

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Subtitled: "CLASS Meet SPOCK: An Education Tutoring Chatbot based on Learning Science Principles." As the paper (21 page PDF) reports, "To train the chatbot, we create a synthetic dataset of mock conversations between a student and a tutor based on learning science principles like scaffolding. We employed a specialized prompt to generate these mock conversations using OpenAI's GPT-4 APIs." Interesting experiment? Absolutely. Should it be used at this stage of development? Don't be foolish.

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Today's Technology Do-Gooders: FlySense Vaping and Bullying Sensor from Soter Technologies
Alex Passett, IoT Evolution, 2023/06/05

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We can see both sides of this, right? "FlySense 286 sensors detect the chemical signature of vaping pen emissions, enabling automated alerts for appropriate personnel. The sensors also monitor ambient noise levels without the invasion of student or faculty privacy, and they send alerts when noise patterns change in ways indicative of conflict or outright bullying." A lot of people will raise privacy issues, but as one who suffered at the hands of bullies, I would ask, should they have the right to bully in private? (Ralph James taught me how to box, which saved me, and I'll be forever grateful, but I'd rather just have done without the beatings.)

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Moderation Strike: Stack Overflow, Inc. cannot consistently ignore, mistreat, and malign its volunteers
Meta Stack Exchange, 2023/06/05

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As of today, "a large number of moderators, curators, contributors, and users from around Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange network are initiating a general moderation strike." The move is in response partially to the way management at the company treats these volunteer contributors as a commodity, and not the core of the service they offer, and partially in response to the the way management effectively allowed AI-generated responses to be submitted to the service. I use Stack Overflow a lot and would hate to see the service turned into some sort of commercial garbage (I could use Cory Doctorow's phrase, but I won't). The story also teaches us some important lessons about community, which Laura Hilliger draws out for us.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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