First news letter!
Welcome!
Thank you for signing up for my newsletter! Every week (or thereabouts) I'll share book progress, AI-related news, and a few personal projects I'm working on to spice things up a bit.
📰 AI in the news
Can AI be used in the arts, and to do the work of voice actors? Hank Azaria, of Simpsons fame, argues no. (And I agree!)
🖊 On my writing desk
A good book starts with good research, so this month my focus is on organizing my scattered notes.
📖 AI scholarship
Microsoft released a new study that suggests that AI might be making worse at critical thinking—but does it? I dig into the study and offer my thoughts.
🎨 On my paint desk
I paint miniatures as a hobby! I've been working on a model called "Red" for a while now. This week I discuss my progress, and how I'm using the project to learn more about painting skin.
🎥 YouTube
My channel (GLINTS) is geared toward graduate students. This week I discuss how students should approach their first year PhD studies.
Until next week!
Stephen J. Aguilar
📰 AI IN THE NEWS
A core issue I have with many of the arguments AI-zealots use, is the notion that AI will led to increased efficiency, writ large. They see "inefficiency" everywhere, and fail to realize that the human experience is a part of the inefficiencies they seem to want to eliminate. We are not 1's and 0's. We see this most clearly when AI is used in the arts.
There was an absolutely wonderful opinion piece in the New York Times this week: Can Characters Come Alive Without People? by Hank Azaria (Simpsons voice actor). It's essentially a meditation of what AI will mean for voice actors, since it's possible to mimic almost any voice using AI with high fidelity. Yet, is voice acting just mimicry? I won't spoil Hank's argument for you—give it a read, and listen!
🖊 ON MY WRITING DESK
Authenticating Intelligence is my most ambitious project to date, and aims to synthesize relevant work in education, technology, artificial intelligence, psychology, education policy, ethics, philosophy, and design. This month my focus is on organizing my scattered notes—a good book starts with good research, after all!
On my to-do list is returning to Martin Heideggar, whose philosophy has shaped the way I think about (educational) technology. I should also be able to knock out my acknowledgements section. It's always easy to think back to people who have made a difference in my professional journey. I look forward to thanking them, in writing.
📖 AI SCHOLARSHIP
AI and (Un)Critical Thinking?
This week a new study from Microsoft was published. Some have used this as evidence that "AI makes us worst critical thinkers." But there is reason to be cautious here.
First, let's look at their research questions:
"[We are interested in] when and how knowledge workers perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI (RQ1), and when and why do knowledge workers perceive increased/decreased effort for critical thinking due to GenAI (RQ2)" (emphasis mine).
Basically, when do folks think they're being critical thinkers when using AI, and when do they perceive themselves to be working more/less hard. The problem here? As a rule, people are pretty terrible at those sort of self-evaluations. Effort is something that's particularly subjective! We misremember effort all the time, and measuring our own critical thinking is ripe for bias and/or innacuracies.
The second problem? The researchers used Bloom's Taxonomy to measure "critical thinking." Strictly speaking, Blooms is best used to describe how complex tasks are, e.g., remembering things (non-complex task) vs. synthesizing facts to create something new (complex). It's a proxy for complexity (and not the best one at that), so it's not really a good stand in for "critical thinking."
The study itself is interesting once you dig into it, but we should be careful to not make mountains out of molehills. Much more work needs to happen before we can understand the true impact of AI on critical thinking. Such work should use more objective measures and not rely on self-reported data.
🎨 ON MY PAINT DESK
I've been painting Red from Mindwork Studio for a while now. He's essentially serving as a study in skin and eventually non-metallic metal (NMM). So far I'm happy with the direction he's going in, but I have some work to do. Pictured first is a reference image I took of the bust, where cast shadows serve to highlight the muscle volumes I need to pick out better with paint. Second is the same figure, but in direct light. Notice how the muscle volumes mostly disappear? That's because I need to "paint the light," i.e., paint the shadow tones to give the muscle volumes more shape. I need to exagerate them. I hope to be mostly done with the skin by the end of February.
🎥 YOUTUBE
This week I discuss best practices for first year PhD students.
