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Essay
Content type: Essay
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Supernormal Stimuli: From Birds to Bots
Picture this: a small bird desperately trying to balance atop an egg so enormous it keeps sliding off, while its…
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The Tale of Two Tech Teams: How Small Interactions Expose Our Values
A while back, I wrote about an email that made my heart stop—an auto-generated message declaring that an employee had…
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Dewey or Don’t We Care? Addressing the Novice’s Dilemma in Learning with GenAI
In my previous blog post on the Microsoft Research study about GenAI and expertise I ended with a troubling realization…
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From Yawn to Yeah!: How I Got an AI to Stop Being So Darn Serious
As part of my class on Human Creativity x AI in Education, students were randomly assigned to Teams A through…
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GenAI Reasoning Models: Very smart & confident (but still drunk)
A year or so ago, I came up with this metaphor that working with a chatbot is like having “a…
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Value Laden: Are LLMs Developing Their Own Moral Code?
Tesla recently quietly granted me temporary access to their Full Self Driving system (something I had written about in another…
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The GenAI and Expertise Paradox: Why It Makes Expert Work More Important But Harder
I’ve had many conversations recently with colleagues about what happens when we integrate GenAI into our daily work. What effects…
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The Attribution Problem: Why we can’t stop seeing ourselves in AI
Note: For over 20 years I have been taking photographs of everyday objects that appear to have faces, a phenomenon…
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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…
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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…
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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.…
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What Arizona’s New AI School Gets Wrong (Hint: Everything)
Two pieces of news caught my attention this week. The first was the passing of Lee Shulman, a giant in…
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Lee Shulman (1938 – 2024)
The news of Lee Shulman’s passing has led me to reflect on the profound impact he has had on my…
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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…
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The ELIZA Effect-ion
NOTE: This is a cross post with the Civics of Technology blog. I first read about the “ELIZA Effect” as…
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When Truth Doesn’t Matter: AI Falls for Illusory Optical Illusions
I’ve been exploring ChatGPT’s ability to analyze images, and the results have been impressive. From interpreting complex refugee statistics to…
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When Tools Become Culture
In my doctoral seminar last Monday, I started class as I always do – with a “This Day in History”…
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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…
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Hype, Luck, and Numbers: More Gratuitous Self-Promotion
[Because apparently one self-congratulatory post this year wasn’t enough] A few months ago, I wrote about some academic recognition that…
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On rejection: A mini-rant about current academic scholarship
It started with a rejection. That’s nothing new – we academics collect rejections like kids collect Pokemon cards (or whatever…
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The Mirror Cracked: AI, Poetry, and the Illusion of Depth
In a recent episode of Silver Lining for Learning on Hybrid Intelligence, I was going on about how AI systems…
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AI’s Honey Trap: Why AI Tells Us What We Want to Hear
Leon Furze’s blog post about AI sycophancy popped into my feed yesterday and got me thinking. In his post (worth…
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Mind Games: When AI Learns to Read Us
I had recently written about NotebookLM’s podcast feature [“NotebookLM’s Viral Secret“] and how eerily human it sounds. My friend Sean…
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“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…
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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…
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Beyond Quick Fixes: What Teacher Prep Really Needs
The Center for Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has a new report out, titled “AI is Evolving, but Teacher Prep is…
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Chatting Alone: AI and the (Potential) Decline of Open Digital Spaces
Note: The image above is inspired by the cover of Time Magazine’s 1983 Person of the Year issue – at…
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Kern You Believe It? A Typographical Tango with AI
As someone who enjoys playing with images, words, and typography, I’m always seeking new ways to generate ideas. I recently…
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From Clairvoyant Fish to Static Earths: Scientific Dialogues with GenAI
In my previous post (From Shortcuts to Simulations: Two Contrasting Uses of AI in Higher Education), I shared how my…
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The Conscious Suspension of Belief: Getting Smart about Human-AI Interaction
A classic tale of early cinema recounts the 1896 Paris screening of the Lumière brothers’ “L’arrivée d’un train en gare…