Posts related to: Engineering
Sine Language: Circling Pythagoras Through Sound and Color

Sine Language: Circling Pythagoras Through Sound and Color

This semester I am teaching a course on Human Creativity X AI in Education. (More about our first week here.) A key focus of the class is on the idea of transdisciplinary creativity – that of bringing different lenses and senses to the process of learning and...

Hardwired for Connection: Why We Fall for AI Companions (And What To Do About It)

Hardwired for Connection: Why We Fall for AI Companions (And What To Do About It)

There was a recent article in the NYTimes about AI chatbots serving as virtual companion. Titled, She Is in Love With ChatGPT it was a story about a 28-year-old woman who spends hours on end talking to her A.I. boyfriend for advice and consolation. And yes, they do...

Shattered: Myth, Metaphor & Gen AI

Shattered: Myth, Metaphor & Gen AI

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post about Tennyson's "Lady of Shalott" and its resonance with our AI age (The Mirror Cracked: AI, Poetry, and the Illusion of Depth). In that post I explored how our experience of the world is increasingly mediated by technology, AI...

Corporations as Paperclip Maximizers: AI, Data, and the Future of Learning

Corporations as Paperclip Maximizers: AI, Data, and the Future of Learning

Once in a while, you come across a piece of writing that doesn’t just make you think—it makes you rethink. It rearranges the furniture in your head, putting things together in ways you hadn’t considered but now can’t unsee. Charles Stross’s essay, “Dude, You Broke the...

From Self-Driving Cars to Selfish Genes: Trapped in AI’s Metaphors, Literally

From Self-Driving Cars to Selfish Genes: Trapped in AI’s Metaphors, Literally

Tesla recently, unannounced gave me temporary access to its Full Self Driving system, and I decided to give it a whirl. It was somewhat unnerving to sit back and experience the car "do its thing." But over time you get to understand how the car is behaving, where it...

Of Stochastic Parrots and Drunk Interns: My Chat with Win Coalition

Of Stochastic Parrots and Drunk Interns: My Chat with Win Coalition

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...

AI’nt Fair: Why AI May Make Learning Gaps Wider

AI’nt Fair: Why AI May Make Learning Gaps Wider

What is the relationship between AI and human creativity? Will AI supercharge human innovation, amplifying our ability to discover and invent? Or will it replace human ingenuity altogether? Or are we entering a hybrid future where humans and AI combine in unexpected...

To thine own mind be true: Understanding cultural technologies, from cave walls to ChatGPT

To thine own mind be true: Understanding cultural technologies, from cave walls to ChatGPT

For almost 12 years now we have been writing a column series for the journal TechTrends, exploring the intersection of technology, creativity, and learning. Recently, my colleagues and I have been diving deep into generative AI through conversations with scholars like...

“They’re Not Allowed to Use That S**t”: AI’s Rewiring of Human Connection

“They’re Not Allowed to Use That S**t”: AI’s Rewiring of Human Connection

I recently participated in a panel discussion organized by the Center for American Progress. Our conversation focused on the emerging impact of generative AI in classrooms. During the Q&A session, someone posted the following question: I am a designer / engineer...

Building Character: When AI Plays Us

Building Character: When AI Plays Us

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." These words from Martin Luther King Jr. speak to something fundamentally human – the belief that...

My (small) Role in ASU’s AI Evolution: New Report and Ethical Evaluation Framework

My (small) Role in ASU’s AI Evolution: New Report and Ethical Evaluation Framework

Arizona State University continues to push boundaries. I'm excited to share two recent developments that intersect with my collaborative work at ASU over the past few years. These initiatives showcase our institution's commitment to leveraging AI responsibly while...

Turing’s Tricksters: How AI Hijacks Our Social Instincts

Turing’s Tricksters: How AI Hijacks Our Social Instincts

In a recent article in The Atlantic (Shh, ChatGPT. That’s a Secret), Lila Shroff delves into the surprising willingness of people to share intimate details with AI chatbots. To be clear, this did not come as a surprise. Readers of this blog will know this is something...

Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum

Digital Shadows: AI Scripts a Different Curriculum

As we continue to grapple with the hype and transformative potential of generative AI in education, I find myself revisiting a point I've made before: the most significant impacts of this technology may not be within the classroom walls, but in the world that...

Advancing Education in the AI Era: Video Update

Advancing Education in the AI Era: Video Update

I was recently in Washington, DC, for a panel discussion titled "Advancing Education in the AI Era: Promises, Pitfalls, and Policy Strategies" organized by the Center for AI Policy. The panel, moderated by Jason Green-Lowe of the CAIP, also included Michael Brickman,...

Beavers, Brains & Chat Bots: Cognitive Illusions in the Age of AI

Beavers, Brains & Chat Bots: Cognitive Illusions in the Age of AI

Imagine a world where tape recorders fool beavers, triangles tell stories, and AI convinces us it's sentient. Welcome to reality—where our cognitive biases are colliding with technology in ways we're only beginning to understand. In this post, I focus on our tendency...

Education in the AI Era: Responses to a call for help

Education in the AI Era: Responses to a call for help

Recently, I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion on "Advancing Education in the AI Era: Promises, Pitfalls, and Policy Strategies" hosted by the Center for AI Policy in Washington, D.C. The event, held in the hallowed (not a word I use lightly)...

Teachers and genAI: Insights from an OECD Webinar

Teachers and genAI: Insights from an OECD Webinar

I recently had the privilege of participating in a webinar hosted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) on the topic of "How teachers can use AI effectively." The session was described as follows Supporters of AI argue it has the...

On What We Lose: Chai, AI and Nostalgia

On What We Lose: Chai, AI and Nostalgia

Technologies give and they take away. This was poignantly highlighted in a recent article by Lisa Lieberman in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "AI and the Death of Student Writing." The subtitle says it all: "The move away from true hands-on scholarship seems...

Cats on the moon: How OpenAI, Google, Meta,  Microsoft & Apple are Dealing with Hallucinations 

Cats on the moon: How OpenAI, Google, Meta, Microsoft & Apple are Dealing with Hallucinations 

Note: Warr, Oster, and Mishra are at it again with a shared blog post. First (really terrible) draft by Punya, which was cleaned up by ChatGPT and then went through cycles of editing by all of us.  Note: An addendum written after Apple's announcement of its own...

ChatGPT does not have a user manual. Let’s not create one.

ChatGPT does not have a user manual. Let’s not create one.

Note: This is the next post in the shared blogging experiment with Melissa Warr and Nicole Oster. This time we question what and how we should be teaching about generative AI. The core idea and first draft came from Melissa, to which Nicole and I added revisions and...

Working with constraints: Creativity through repurposing

Working with constraints: Creativity through repurposing

Teaching is an inherently creative act, requiring educators to navigate constraints and find innovative ways to engage students. In our recently published chapter, Danah Henriksen, Lauren Woo and I explore the notion of "repurposing" as a vital skill for fostering...

Teacher Knowledge in an Age of Gen AI: SITE 2024 Keynote

Teacher Knowledge in an Age of Gen AI: SITE 2024 Keynote

16 years ago, Matt Koehler and I were invited to present a Keynote at the Society for Information Technology in Teacher Education (SITE) conference. That keynote changed our lives (link to YouTube video). I was invited back again this year for the same. A lot has...

The (Neil) Postman Always Rings Twice: 5 Questions on AI and Education

The (Neil) Postman Always Rings Twice: 5 Questions on AI and Education

Note: This post has also been cross-posted on the Civics of Technology blog. Marie Heath (with whom I recently co-wrote a blog post about GenAI in Teacher Education: A techno-skeptical perspective) and I were invited to write a chapter for an edited volume titled...