Content-type: text/html Downes.ca ~ Stephen's Web ~ The Five Pathologies of EdTech Discourse About Generative AI

Stephen Downes

Knowledge, Learning, Community

Related, I think, to my other post today about TruthGPT Coin is this post outlining 'five pathologies' of discourse about AI in our field. There's no doubt these are trends; I've seen them in the literature (both formal and informal) myself. Here they are, for the record:

  • A preoccupation with trendiness
  • Exaggerated results
  • Technology solutionism
  • Learning as the only approach to change
  • Moral panics

Just as I observe in my other post, these are not properties of the technology, they are properties of the community. Or to be more subtle, Phil Hill argues, "it's less that responses to AI are indicative of the current state of HE and more that the responses typify the common pathologies of EdTech discourse." It is a fine distinction, and we can draw it, but I would be hard pressed to say that these pathologies exist only in the discourse. Higher education itself has a lot to answer fo.

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Stephen Downes Stephen Downes, Casselman, Canada
stephen@downes.ca

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Last Updated: Apr 29, 2024 5:43 p.m.

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