Stephen Downes

So now we know what Doug Holton did with his summer. This is the AI in Education Knowledge Base, a sweeping project that challenges the imagination. Core navigation is based on concepts that radiate out from a core AI in Education concept. Each concept is a markdown article on GitHub which I think is authored by an AI that interacts with the knowledge base. Concept articles are based on academic articles; these are summarized and stored on GitHub (again, I think, by AI). An important part of the structure, and probably also how AI works with the content, is the set of connections between concepts and articles, which creates a knowledge graph, using wiki notation. A set of skills informs the AI how to work with custom Astro wiki software. Readers interact with it through AI-based inquiries or via a set of generated FAQs. I really like the thinking behind this, but how useful is it in practice? The concepts and summaries aren't especially readable; they're clear enough, but there's a lot of padding and fluff. But you use your own AI to interact with it; the concepts and summaries are context, not content. More concerning is the claim to be a knowledge base. The articles are generally read uncritically, with everything in them presented as fact (or, at least, factoid). Via Alan Levine.