OLDaily

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

Will large language models kill Medium’s business model?
Ben Dickson, Tech Talks, 2024/04/11

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I have to say that I'm not really feeling threatened by AI-authored content. But as Ben Dickson reports, Medium - which charges subscription fees for 'Membership' content - is struggling. Though its writers are prohibited from uploading AI-generated content, they have no real incentive not to, and Medium has no real way to detect it. According to Dickson, "business models that will work in the age of AI-generated content are those that directly connect content creators to consumers." Maybe. But we will have to get past the idea that they are 'content creators' and think of them as something else. For while we may 'create' content, that's hardly the half of it.

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AI Policy Observatory
OECD, 2024/04/11

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This is OECD's 'live' live repository of AI strategies & policies from more than 70 countries, territories and the EU. I didn't find the interface very appealing but you can download all the policies as a .csv document. I wanted to link to the source article from IBM where I found this (it came in an email newsletter) but it seems to have disappeared, though there's a copy here. What was really weird was that as I tried to find the original by searching for extracts (this is my go-to method for finding sources) I found them scattered through other IBM documents, suggesting that this article was formed by combining these other articles by some means.

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Global Digital Education Council Established
Kate Lucariello, Campus Technology, 2024/04/11

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Campus Technology reports on the founding of the Digital Education Council (DEC) "to address ed tech issues worldwide, including the impact of AI on education and work" by SuperCharger Ventures and a dozen or so business and management schools. DEC came out in March with one of the more puzzling manifestos I've seen, and there are a few more vague articles on the website (here's news: university leaders are concerned about negative impacts from AI). No RSS, naturally, but there's plenty of Google and Facebook tracking on the website.

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Has online learning all but destroyed the university experience?
Neil Mosley, Neil Mosley Consulting, 2024/04/11

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This is a good article and I appreciate Neil Mosley's desire to engage with the argument in the article 'Online learning has all but destroyed the university experience' (from the Telegraph, and paywalled). The key point appears near its end: "more online learning in on-campus courses may lead to, or risk, students becoming isolated in their accommodation, thus preventing interaction and socialisation with peers and educators." Mosley walks a reasonable path in response, but then there's a turn two thirds of the way through, where he asks, "Is online learning doing enough to support healthy study habits?" We could answer the question either way, but the question isn't relevant. That's not the sort of "interaction and socialisation" that proponents of a traditional university education at the Telegraph are looking for.

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Enterprises Must Now Rework Their Knowledge into AI-Ready Forms: Vector Databases and LLMs
Dion Hinchcliffe, On Digital Strategy, 2024/04/11

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This is an important (if self-serving) article that looks at how the development of foundation models in artificial intelligence will (once again) change the way we look at data. It's the latest transformation in a series that began with documents, then relational databases, graphs, vector databases, and now, foundation models. Now it's true that "the latest advancements in knowledge representation really do usher in a steep increase in technical sophistication and complexity." But the greatest skill will be demonstrated by those not lost in the complexity but those able to make these concepts accessible - at least at some level - to the people who need to work with the data. As for me - well, the learning never stops. This article doesn't make things easier, but it lays out the territory. If you're with me, have a go at it, follow the links, but be OK with not understanding it all (he's not trying to make it easy).

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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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