Executive Orders & AI
I'm currently attending AERA, my field's flagship conference. Many of you signed up for this newsletter after I pestered you to during my talk—welcome! I was only at AERA for a day, and that day has passed, so I hope to see many of you in the future.
📰 AI IN THE NEWS
I discuss a new executive order about education that isn't 100% terrible! Short on details, and focused on AI. Fingers crossed?
🖊 ON MY WRITING DESK
After a day and a half of reflection post conference, I'm returning to my introduction to understand how to best frame "innovation" with regard to AI in the classroom.
📖 AI SCHOLARSHIP
I explore a recent paper by a colleague focused on helping teachers create personalized and motivationally appropriate math lessons for elementary school students.
🎨 ON MY PAINT DESK
What is "lighting from hell" and why did I try to paint an Orc warrior using that lighting scheme?
🎥 YOUTUBE
At least some of you are at a conference, so I added a video with my thoughts regarding now to best maximize your experience!
Until next week!
Stephen J. Aguilar
Trump and AI
A new executive order was released a couple of days ago and aims to encourage the growth of AI in education. I won't bother to go through all of it, since it's pretty short and doesn't include many details. All in all I'm pretty lukewarm on the order. Which is saying a lot, given that recent executive orders have been outright assaults on higher education. What did stand out, however, were the following bullet points:
I am often suspicious of public-private partnerships. Too many times the "partnership" is simply using tax dollars to fund private profit generation, instead of actually encouraging collaborative work. Such partnerships become problematic when the private/corporate actor focuses too much on capturing market share and maximizing profits. I'm not wholly against either of those goals, but they can get in the way of doing good when they supersede the public good. I'll be keeping an eye out to see which partnerships are announced first.
*cough* it'll be OpenAI + others *cough*
I am also heartened to see that more NSF research might be devoted to studying AI in education. However, given recent events I am generally suspicious of what kind of research will be funded. I imagine a push towards "color-blind" and/or "hey look at all the cool things AI can do," will be the focus of new funding. How useful that'll be remains to be seen.
🖊 ON MY WRITING DESK
Back to my Introduction
Conversations during AERA have been super generative. I left the conference wondering about the nature of innovation. What is it, exactly? Who benefits from it? Does it always have to be "paradigm shifting," as has been commonly argued with respect to AI? My primary goal in writing Authenticating Intelligence is to explore the nature of "AI-powered" technological innovation as applied to education.
Folks who know me well know that I consider myself to be a "productive antagonist" in the space. I ask annoying questions that can often burst bubbles. I don't aim to be a buzz kill, but the UChicago-trained analytic philosopher in me is always on the lookout for valid warrants for any and all claims that are made by others. (I can't help it.)
That is why I am neither an AI zealot nor a an AI hater. Instead, I suspect that we will acclimate to AI, much like we've acclimated to every other technology—digital or otherwise. While I am confident about this point, that doesn't mean that the post-AI "acclimated world" won't be different in may ways. We have been shaped by constant access to each other and the information we produce though smart phones, for example, even though they are pretty mundane devices these days.
So the burning question is: what will be considered true innovation that shapes what and how we learn? I don't think it'll be chatbots, but I could be wrong.
📖 AI SCHOLARSHIP
I was fortunate enough to present at a symposium focused on recent developments in AI and motivation. One of the papers was presented by a colleague, Dr. Teomara (Teya) Rutherford.
The study focused teacher's using ChatGPT to personalize math lessons so that they would be more motivationally supportive of elementary school students. It was a true collaboration between researchers and teachers—something I think the field needs to do more of if it is to remain relevant and impactful.
Teya's study was great, and is an example of the sort of innovation that will (hopefully) become more common as AI becomes integrated in educational settings. Teacher's learned that generative AI could help them personalize lessons, and had the support of an expert to ensure that the way they personalized was backed up by sound motivational science. Teacher's reflections included:
It looks pretty good. Some things I would have thought of, others maybe, ‘oh that's a good idea.
I think we'll see more of this when teachers use generative AI in their classrooms; small efficiency and ideation gains that will move the needle in positive directions for their students.
🎨 ON MY PAINT DESK
"Lighting from Hell"
One of the hardest things to get right when painting a mini is dramatic lighting. Which is a shame, because I tend to gravitate towards dramatic lighting in my painting. Below, for example, is an Orc warrior I panted up during a workshop. The story I told myself is that the Orc warrior was looking down on a fiery scene in the dead of night—what we would call "lighting from hell" since the light source is emanating from below.
The first image (left) is what I was trying to emulate. I literally hung the mini upside-down and lit him from below with a lamp to see where the light vs. shadows would go. I then tried to create a black and white value sketch of that lighting, but as you can see I didn't quite get it right (middle image). My highlights needed to be brighter, and my shadows needed to be darker. Still, I pushed forward and added some color (right image). The final effect is almost what I was going for, but not quite. I am pretty happy with how I sketched his metal armor, though.
Like all workshop projects I'll leave him in his final unfinished state, since I like to have artifacts of where my painting skill was during a discrete moment in time.
🎥 YOUTUBE
Conference away!
It seemed like a good idea to send folks this throwback of some of my conference tips. The best conference is the one that happens in between sessions!
