UnseriousAcademic

the truth in the joke is that you’re a huge nerd

Oh absolutely. Yes I think partly my fascination with all of this is that I think I could quite easily have gone the tech bro hype train route. I’m naturally very good with getting into the weeds of tech and understanding how it works. I love systems (love factory, strategy and logistics games) love learning techy skills purely to see how it works etc. I taught myself to code just because the primary software for a particularly for of qualitative analysis annoyed me. I feel I am prime candidate for this whole world.

But at the same time I really dislike the impoverished viewpoint that comes with being only in that space. There’s just some things that don’t fit that mode of thought. I also don’t have ultimate faith in science and tech, probably because the social sciences captured me at an early age, but also because I have an annoying habit of never being comfortable with what I think, so I’m constantly reflecting and rethinking, which I don’t think gels well with the tech bro hype train. That’s why I embrace the moniker of “Luddite with an IDE”. Captures most of it!

The learning facilitators they mention are the key to understanding all of this. They need them to actually maintain discipline and ensure the kids engage with the AI, so they need humans in the room still. But now roles that were once teachers have been redefined as “Learning facilitators”. Apparently former teachers have rejoined the school in these new roles.

Like a lot of automation, the main selling point is deskilling roles, reducing pay, making people more easily replaceable (don’t need a teaching qualification to be a "learning facilitator to the AI) and producing a worse service which is just good enough if it is wrapped in difficult to verify claims and assumptions about what education actually is. Of course it also means that you get a new middleman parasite siphoning off funds that used to flow to staff.

As a silver lining, I imagine all of us in education will retain out jobs and just be unburdened of marking. Thus automation will bring us more freedom and time to develop thoughtful and engaging educational experiences.

Just as automation has always done. Right? RIGHT?!

I remember one time in a research project I switched out the tokeniser to see what impact it might have on my output. Spent about a day re-running and the difference was minimal. I imagine it’s wholly the same thing.

*Disclaimer: I don’t actually imagine it is wholly the same thing.

The only viable use case, in my opinion, is to utilise its strong abilities in SolidGoldMagicarp to actualise our goals in the SolidGoldMagicarp sector and achieve increased margins on SolidGoldMagicarp.

I absolutely see it - solid stuff. There’s a good chance they’re a direct influence on Lawrence. In interviews they are constantly referencing artists way before their time like Stevie Wonder and Janis Joplin.

If they can somehow shoehorn in Blair’s favourite ID card scheme into it they might win some sort of internal Labour bingo game.

I know Vulfpeck but not Tower - will have a listen.

Does this mean they’re not going to bother training a whole new model again? I was looking forward to seeing AI Mad Cow Disease after it consumed an Internet’s worth of AI generated content.

I really should have done a full risk assessment before invoking the dust specks mind virus, my apologies.

Thanks for the kind feedback, I’m glad that my thoughts resonated with people. Sometimes I start these things and wonder if I’ve just analysed my way into a weird construct of my own creation.