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Welcome to Online Learning Daily, your best source for news and commentary about learning technology, new media, and related topics.

Don't worry about AI breaking out of its box - worry about us breaking in
Ars Contributors, Ars Technica, 2023/02/27

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This article focuses on the dangers of people manipulating an AI system to produce biased or worse results. Compounding this is the possibility that the interference may never be detected. "The worst human impulses will find plenty of uses for generative AI... Some of Bing-or-is-it-Sydney's eeriest responses came after users manipulated the model into territory it had tried to avoid - often by ordering it to pretend that the rules guiding its behavior didn't exist." It also references this article showing how David Rozado "fine-tuned a Davinci large language model from the GPT 3 family of models (and) half-jokingly named the resulting fine-tuned model manifesting right-of-center viewpoints RightWingGPT." My main concern, though, is his assertion that chatGPT is left-leaning. I would suggest that since chatGPT is a more accurate gauge of the mainstream (that is, in fact, exactly how it is designed), what we see is that most of these 'political spectrum' surveys (with leading and often loaded questions) are tilted to the right (with the Nolan survey a notable exception).

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About the Mastodon pilot
Wladimir Mufty, SURF.nl, 2023/02/27

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This describes a pilot project where the partners in Dutch universities and institutions are "jointly exploring Mastodon as an open source platform for education and research in the Netherlands." There's not a lot on the site just yet, but it does outline the project. "The pilot makes the choice easier for interested parties for whom the decentralised concept is new or who find it difficult to judge via which Mastodon server or section criteria they should connect to the Mastodon network."

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The Future of Human Agency
Janna Anderson, Lee Rainie, Pew, Elon University, 2023/02/27

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You'll find my comments along with those of some 500 other people in this Pew Report (173 page PDF). "Experts are split about how much control people will retain over essential decision-making as digital systems and AI spread. They agree that powerful corporate and government authorities will expand the role of AI in people's daily lives in useful ways. But many worry these systems will further diminish individuals' ability to control their choices."

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How colleges are failing our students
Louis Newman, eCampus News, 2023/02/27

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If it were indeed true that students are not learning analytical skills, then this would indeed be a problem. But I would need more evidence than the 2019 study of employer opinions cited by the author. I'd want a more comprehensive account of analytical skills than the list provided here (consider context, consider alternative explanations, weigh evidence, examine implications). And I'd want evidence that explicit instruction is the only way to generate analytical skills: proof, in other words, that "if faculty aren't highlighting these habits of mind, students are unlikely to acquire them independently." Analytical skills are important, but it's not clear to me that the mechanisms of traditional education are the best or only way to teach these. I learned mine practicing as a student journalist and by teaching philosophy. How about you?

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Why Justin Trudeau is Wrong About Bill C-18 and Google's Response to Mandated Payments for Links
Michael Geist, 2023/02/27

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I agree with Michael Geist here. It is not the case that Google is "preventing access" by removing links to Canadian news organizations. "Google does not have the power to prevent anyone from accessing third party websites." Indeed, it makes it clear that search is a service offered by Google to news publishers. I also, like Geist, argue that creating a rule demanding sites pay to be able to link fundamentally breaks the internet. And we both question the selection mechanism determining what counts as 'eligible news businesses'. My site is too small to matter, but if it weren't, I wonder whether it would be thought of as a news provider or a search service.

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We publish six to eight or so short posts every weekday linking to the best, most interesting and most important pieces of content in the field. Read more about what we cover. We also list papers and articles by Stephen Downes and his presentations from around the world.

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