OLDaily

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

Feature Article
Ethics, Analytics and the Duty of Care
Stephen Downes, 2023/10/02

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Excerpts from the preprint of my article Ethics, Analytics and the Duty of Care, which can be found in full here (warning: long and detailed, yet still not as comprehensive as it could be - comments are very welcome). In sum: " ethics are derived from our own lived experiences, and thus reflect the nature of a community as an entire system, rather than one individual making a decision. We need to keep in mind how we're all connected. What's important here is how we learn to be ethical in the first place (as opposed to the specific statement of a set of rules defining what it is to be ethical)."

[Local copy]

The Critical Value of Human-Created Knowledge to the Future of Generative AI
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, 2023/10/02

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The argument - and it's a good one - is that AI models need to be trained using human data. Otherwise, there is a danger of 'model collapse'. "Model collapse is important because generative AI is poised to bring about significant change in digital content. More and more online communications are being partially or completely generated using AI tools. Generally, this phenomenon has the potential to create data pollution on a large scale. Although creating large quantities of text is more efficient than ever, model collapse states that none of this data will be valuable to train the next generation of AI models." Image of model collapse: IEEE Spectrum.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Ending Human-Dependent Peer Review
Haseeb Irfanullah, The Scholarly Kitchen, 2023/10/02

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What do we do when the AI function is demonstrably better than its human counterpart? "Human-dependent peer review is inequitable, suffers from injustice, and is potentially unsustainable." So Haseeb Irfanullah argues "we should replace it (eventually) with AI-based peer review."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

2U/edX Lays Off More Employees as Stock Continues to Decline
Dhawal Shah, The Report by Class Central, 2023/10/02

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I can only offer a wry chuckle. "Last year, 2U laid off a significant number of employees as it shifted to a 'platform strategy' built around edX, which it acquired for $800 million in mid-2021.2U's CEO Chip Paucek contends that this new strategy is proving successful. Last week, he announced that additional layoffs are necessary to realign the company's operations with its new business model." It's a bit like the captain of the Titanic saying "we still have forward momentum."

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

Lessons learned from implementing user-facing analytics / dashboards?
Harry Marshall, Hacker News, 2023/10/02

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It's a Hacker News discussion thread, so it takes some effort (also - pro tip - use ctl/scroll to increase text size and make it readable). But there's solid advice here. For example: "Good decision support is where most of the value is, and it's about building things that draw conclusions, not just throwing the data over the fence with 50 filters and expecting the end consumer to do the actual analysis." There are links to resources, more advice, etc.

Web: [Direct Link] [This Post]

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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