Stephen Downes

Eamon Costello writes, "The USA is AI's primary regulator and ideological driver. Its dominant cultural values will be increasingly embedded in it." I'm not sure that this is true, but let's assume it is. But Costello's observation that the existing "dominant cultural values" are so toxic and should never be allowed to infuse AI strikes me as a very good argument for not continuing to educate people the way we have in the past. Look how that turned out! I mean, how did so many people acquire the values and views that they did? This is not just a U.S. problem, either; we can look to many other societies where the national cultural values have gone wildly astray through no fault of AI (or even of educational technology in general). Where learning and development are concerned, I am personally far more concerned about advertising and mass media than I am about AI.