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AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably
Brian Porter, Edouard Machery, Nature, 2024/11/20

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This item has caused ripples across educator social media (and increasing angst among English teachers). The story is in the headline (which is what a good headline should do). "People now appear unable to reliably distinguish human-out-of-the-loop AI-generated poetry from human-authored poetry written by well-known poets," write the authors, though of course people who have memorized Shakespeare can presumably tell the difference. "Furthermore, people prefer AI-generated poetry to human-authored poetry, consistently rating AI-generated poems more highly than the poems of well-known poets." In fairness, I'm no fan of the well-known poets; give me some contemporary Dylan or Swift any day.

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A System of Agents brings Service-as-Software to life
Joanne Chen, Jaya Gupta, Foundation Capital, 2024/11/20

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I'm sort of ambivalent about agents, mostly because I think they're really hard to get right. More optimistic people are predicting big things. "Going forward, what makes a System of Agents so effective at automating services is its ability to grasp context, apply reasoning, and generally function as a team of experts, each contributing unique knowledge and abilities. Software is no longer merely assisting humans. It is acting as an autonomous worker." Should such a future come to pass, I can only imagine the pushback as people argue it's dehumanizing to be forced to interact with a software agent. But hey, I just went to the ATM and then later bought concert tickets online. We'll adapt. Anyhow, this article offers a roadmap to future developments in software agents, and it's worth a read. See also: Salesforce's Agentforce.

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Don't call it a Substack
Anil Dash, 2024/11/20

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It seems like half the learning and development community has started email newsletters on Substack, most of them engaged in the corporate sector. Substack filled a need, as the campaign against email spam has made it really difficult to run your own newsletter. It didn't hurt that you could charge people for subscriptions. But as Anil Dash warns, you don't really own your newsletter when you're on Substack. "Every single new feature Substack releases, from their social sharing to their mobile apps, is proprietary and locks you into their network." You'll also have some unsavory neighbours, warns Dash. "Here's how you can export your subscribers." He also points to a list of alternatives, but it's a Wired article behind a paywall. Here's the list: Ghost, Buttondown, Beehiiv.

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Security Verification
Kumar Garg, Renaissance Philanthropy, 2024/11/20

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I'm a little bit cynical about this one, since it leans into using AI for 'the basics' and also heavily into data collection; for example, they write "Eye-tracking, automated speech recognition, and brain-imaging capabilities can hone our measures of reading comprehension and fluency." For teachers, they're looking for systems that "can offer just-in-time suggestions and bite-sized research to help educators improve their teaching." Overall, it's the usual 'ed reform' agenda, only 'powered by AI'. But that said, it's a shopping list of projects that can be proposed and presumably funded, so if you're inclined that way, it's a useful report.

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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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