Stephen Downes

If a human (ahem) can write a (sometimes opinionated) summary of an article they read online, then why can't an AI do it? I'm not sure, but that's the basis for this lawsuit between Brave (the web browser) which produces the summaries and News Corp (the evil media conglomerate run by Rupert Murdoch) which produces the stories. "Decades of legal precedent and practice confirm that it is not copyright infringement to index website content to maintain a search engine," Brave argues in its complaint to the federal district court. "Instead, it is fair use."

I haven't seen a scathing takedown article like this for a while, and it's all the more so because the author, John Gruber, has to my mind long been an Apple proponent, not to mention one of the more respected voices in the field of design and technology. But he's right when he says Apple is lost on AI, and he's right when he says it points to deeper problems in the company. "What Apple showed regarding the upcoming 'personalized Siri' at WWDC was not a demo. It was a concept video. Concept videos are bullshit, and a sign of a company in disarray, if not crisis." Image: Apple Leaps in to AI, 2024, the Press Democrat.

Although this article places D-Wave in Palo Alto, California, the company originated as an offshoot of work done at the Univesrity of British Columbia with Canadian government funding. "The company says it has solved the first problem of scientific relevance with a quantum processor faster than would be done using classical computers." This is not the only quantum technology work being done in Canada; there are people right in the building where I work involved in the field (every once in a while there are open lectures, not stuff I can understand in any detail, but enough for me to know this is a real thing). Related: The first operating system for quantum networks has been built in Europe.

A 'learning map' is a "model of multiple ways that diverse learners can acquire knowledge, skills, and understandings (KSU) in a particular domain." It presents the domain as a set of inter-related KSUs instead of as a linear or hierarchical construction of them. Interestingly, "Learning maps contain two fundamental elements: nodes and connections... Nodes depict the KSUs within a domain and vary in complexity or grain size... Unidirectional connections indicate the order of KSU acquisition, with less complex nodes preceding more complex nodes." This paper (25 page PDF) describes learning maps and outlines how they are applied.

This article introduces a special issue of Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation on "recent debates around tech workers in the global economy, with a focus on their subjectivities and labour conflicts." Diamond open access (that is, there are no access fees, and no publication fees). "High expectations and aspirations have turned into what some commentators have described as a 'techlash', provoking political mobilisation, unionisation and regulatory demands from actors across the political spectrum... Economic turbulence, political struggles and industrial disputes have transformed the once-hailed profession into a more contested field of employment." Timely, relevant.

I don't have the space to give this post the attention it deserves, but I'll highlight a couple of points: first, the need to invest in people first, technology second; and second, the question of ethics with respect to an educational instituition's operational side (ie., the but that runs the buildings, in frastructure and technology). "Shifting 'institutional cultures towards greater ambition, experimentation and the sharing of/ learning from that experimentation' will not happen by buying everyone a license for . That's the worst kind of esssentialist and instrumentalist thinking. Organisational culture work is people centered work and requires us to grapple with complexity and human messiness."