I recently sat down with Ryan Gray and Robin Bryce of Yavapai College for Win Coalition’s What’s Next Speaker Series. Regular readers of this blog will know exactly what I must have talked about – no surprises here! We dove into AI, education, and where all this is headed.

During our conversation (and yes, I probably got a bit passionate at times), we covered familiar territory – why it’s important to understand AI as a “smart stochastic parrot” rather than some all-knowing oracle, and how educators might actually use this technology thoughtfully rather than just jumping on the latest hype train.

We spent quite a bit of time unpacking my current obsessions: how AI can be a useful thought partner (when we understand what it actually is), why we need to pay more attention to our own cognitive biases, and the broader implications of living in an AI-mediated world. You know, the usual set of ideas I have been exploring on this blog for a while now.

One of the more interesting parts of our chat focused on creative ways to use AI in education – not just for churning out lesson plans or study guides (can we stop this argument for efficiency, please), but for things like creating simulations to help teachers prepare for difficult conversations or understand different student perspectives. We even got into some examples of how AI’s tendency to “make things up” might actually be a feature rather than a bug in certain educational contexts.

You can listen to the full conversation below – that is, if you want to hear me ramble on about these topics in more detail.