ACLU Report – Digital Dystopia. The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling [63 pages]: “Over the last two decades, a segment of the educational technology (EdTech) sector that markets student surveillance products to schools — the EdTech Surveillance industry — has grown into a $3.1 billion a year economic juggernaut with… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Education
The Dangers Of Searching For Medical Information Online
MakeUseOf: “Looking for medical information online is a gamble at best. You key in a symptom, a disease, a medical term or two, and you’re quickly presented with a bunch of matching results at random. You take one look at them, add two and two, and come up with five. Searching for and relying on… Continue Reading
The Online Maze of Job Applications
CareerFair-Shikhar Sachdev: “Applying to jobs online is like navigating a maze. Amidst the special torture that is resume parsing software, the inability to reuse information across different application tracking systems (ATS), and the existence of a certain company that rhymes with every day of the week, it can get pretty frustrating. I wanted to explore… Continue Reading
Scholastic’s “bigot button”
Popular Information: “Scholastic, the popular publisher of children’s books, is a big business. It is a publicly-traded company with a market capitalization of $1.15 billion. Its CEO, Peter Warwick, collected a total compensation of $3,300,361 in 2023, and at least four other executives were paid over $1.3 million. Since 1981, Scholastic has hosted book fairs… Continue Reading
AI Skeptic – Why Generative AI is Currently Doomed
@The_AI_Skeptic – Long Post: Why Generative AI is Currently Doomed We’re so used to technology getting better. Every year there’s a new iPhone with a faster processor. It’s the way of the world… or so it seems. Sometimes, bigger doesn’t mean better. Take, for example, LLMs like ChatGPT. If you keep scaling them up, they… Continue Reading
Can linguists distinguish between ChatGPT/AI and human writing?
Can linguists distinguish between ChatGPT/AI and human writing?: A study of research ethics and academic publishing Methods in Applied Linguistics, ISSN: 2772-7661, Vol: 2, Issue: 3, Page: 100068 Received 3 June 2023, Revised 18 July 2023, Accepted 18 July 2023, Available online 7 August 2023, Version of Record 7 August 2023. There has been considerable intrigue… Continue Reading
Antisemitism and Its Impacts
Use this Explainer and Tropes Chart to help students understand what antisemitism is, how it shows up in contemporary settings, why it persists, and how it impacts individuals and communities….”What Forms Does Antisemitism Take and Where Does It Show Up? Because humans often divide our societies into “in” groups and “out” groups, and because we… Continue Reading
What people ask me most. Also, some answers.
One Useful Thing – Ethan Mollik – A FAQ of Sorts – “I have been talking to a lot of people about Generative AI, from teachers to business executives to artists to people actually building LLMs. In these conversations, a few key questions and themes keep coming up over and over again. Many of those questions… Continue Reading
IRS says Microsoft owes an additional $29 billion in back taxes
CNBC: “Microsoft received Notices of Proposed Adjustment from the Internal Revenue Service for an additional tax payment of $28.9 billion, the company said in an 8-K filing Wednesday. Microsoft said the dispute concerns the company’s allocated profits between countries and jurisdictions between 2004 and 2013. It said up to $10 billion in taxes that the… Continue Reading
Heather Ford: Is the Web Eating Itself? LLMs versus verifiability
Ethan Zuckerman: “One of my favorite things in academia is that you can go a decade without seeing a friend and remain at least somewhat in touch with what they’re doing and thinking by reading their work. Dr. Heather Ford, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Technology Sydney, where she leads the cluster… Continue Reading
Language Models, Plagiarism, and Legal Writing
Smith, Michael L., Language Models, Plagiarism, and Legal Writing (August 16, 2023). University of New Hampshire Law Review, Vol. 22, (Forthcoming), Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4542723 “Language models like ChatGPT are the talk of the town in legal circles. Despite some high-profile stories of fake ChatGPT-generated citations, many practitioners argue that language models are the way… Continue Reading
New Accidental Government Information Librarian webinar
The next Help! I’m an Accidental Government Information Librarian webinar is scheduled for October 18 from 3:00-4:00pm (Eastern). Session topic: Reporting on the World of Government Information – a panel presentation from the editors of “Government Information Landscape and Libraries”. Hosted by Jim Church (UC-Berkeley), Kay Cassel (Rutgers University) and Kate Tallman (University of Colorado… Continue Reading
