OLWeekly

Ethics and Regulation of Human Brain Organoid Research: Recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group
Shu Ishida, et al., Asian Bioethics Review, 2026/05/01

I'm not sure where this will fit into the definition of learning technology exactly, but there has to be some overlap, and it's better to be thinking of these issues before the fact rather than while we're in the middle of it. "Human brain organoids (HBOs) are three-dimensional structures derived from human stem cells that model aspects of brain development." They're not conscious, sentient, or capable of experience the way we define it, but the ethical issues are still numerous, from grounds of privacy (regarding stem cell donors, for example), commercialization, and application (such as transplanting of human brain cells into animals). This paper is a good overview of the ethical issues that may arise, with due regard for public misperception, cultural variation, and future developments. Image: PubMedCentral.

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All we’re doing is reading today
Emily Zerrenner, ACRLog, 2026/05/01

This effort goes about the way you would expect it to: "(the) entire class plan was to bring down carts of books related to the class topic, have the students pick something they were interested in, and then read for about an hour." So they read, they fidgeted, and in the end, everyone marvelled at how great an hour of reading was. And sure, I get it. But what struck me is that when I was in school I used to get into trouble for reading in the classroom. The books were apparently a distraction from the much more important (and oh so boring) stuff happening at the front of the room. For the rest of my life, I've always had something to read with me (more usually digital these days) under the desk. It has always been one of the differences between me and the people who just did what they were told.

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AI, tractors, and the productivity paradox
Sachin, Technically, 2026/05/01

Good article that makes the following case: "If AI is so impactful, why isn't it showing up in the productivity stats? The Solow paradox answer is that firms haven't reorganized yet. The computer took nearly a decade to show up in productivity numbers because the organizational work - flattening hierarchies, redrawing workflows, retraining workers, rebuilding integration machinery around the new technology - took nearly a decade to do." I would argue that this is also why we are not seeing 'learning gains' (whatever those are) as a result of AI intervention. The necessary reorganization and rethinking of methods and pedagogy hasn't happened yet.

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Beyond free courses and resources: 4 takeaways about the future (or the present) of open education
Jackie Bucio, Medium, Creative Commons: We Like to Share, 2026/05/01

This post is a mixture of reflections from an ICDE conference last November, but the main message centers around an alternative vision for AI in education: "This vision moves beyond simply deploying AI, to focusing on its ethical and innovative application in the very design of two-way-learning experiences." I agree, and like the author, it is my experience with MOOCs that makes this clear. "Learners are not passive recipients of technology but active agents who bend platforms to their will... These 'hacks' expose a critical gap between how educational technology is designed and how it is actually used. They indicate that effective learner-centric design requires observing and empowering user behavior, not just building more (AI) features just because we can."

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Why Can’t OER Be All in One Place?
Medium, Creative Commons: We Like to Share, 2026/05/01

The answer to the question post in the title is pretty self-evident: funding, and quality issues. It takes a lot of money to host a single centralized data repository, and it's something that needs constant vetting and curation for inaccurate content, out-of-date content, and these days, AI slop. Efforts well known from the past - MERLOT and OER Commons - have faltered and now struggle with obsolescence. "Therefore," writes James Thibeault,  smaller repositories, or decentralized models, that focus on certain specialties are not only more attainable, but they can also host far better OER to the public."

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Open Data Structures
Pat Morin, 2026/05/01

Maybe you don't need the information in this book. But if you do any serious work in development and programming, including analytics and graphs, then the contents should be second nature to you, and if they're not, you need this book. "Open Data Structures covers the implementation and analysis of data structures for sequences (lists), queues, priority queues, unordered dictionaries, ordered dictionaries, and graphs." What I like is that it references "data structures in this book (that) are all fast, practical, and have provably good running times. All data structures are rigorously analyzed and implemented in Java and C++." This makes it a good reliable source not only for humans but also for generative LLMs used to encode these data structures.

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There Will Be a Scientific Theory of Deep Learning
Jamie Simon, et al., arXiv.org, 2026/05/01

I will be the first to admit that it would take me weeks - maybe more - to comprehend this paper (41 page PDF) in detail, but it surely seems like an important statement, and I wonder whether it could be applied to learning in general. 'Deep learning' is the term used to describe multi-layered neural networks, and these form the basis (at a much smaller scale) for things like large language models and (arguably) human neural networks. The authors argue that "there will be a scientific theory of deep learning; that we can see pieces of this theory starting to emerge; and that this theory will take the form of a mechanics of the learning process." They suggest, "The measurability of deep learning makes observation and empiricism a particularly fruitful approach, since experimentation can be iterated on quickly, while revealing mathematically simple relations and structure in trained models." This is based on the manipulation of what they call "numerical knobs", termed "hyperparameters," which include "optimization hyperparameters such as the learning rate, batch size, momentum, and initialization variance, as well as architecture hyperparameters such as width, and depth." This opens the possibility of universality in representations: "It has been shown that networks trained to solve different tasks learn similar representations across training datasets." A combination of top-down hypotheses and empirical observation may well yield the theory of deep learning the authors are looking for.

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Comparing Decentralized Identifiers (DID) Methods
Lymah, DEV Community, 2026/05/01

This is something I'm referring to as I develop distributed identity for CList. "In Web5, a user's Decentralized Identifier(DID) links their identity to their data via Decentralized Web Nodes (DWNs). This removes users off from centralized data storage, granting them full control over their data. DIDs are unique identifiers that users can create and control without relying on third parties. DIDs use cryptoanalysis techniques to demonstrate ownership." What's important is that "Different DID methods implement unique mechanisms for creating, updating, and resolving DIDs." There are trade-offs among the mechanisms. I'm starting with DID:web but building a migration path to DID:dht if the CList ecosystem ever matures.

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Karpathy Found the Pattern. Educators Have Been Teaching It for Years. | Ian O'Byrne
Ian O'Byrne, 2026/04/30

I like the work Ian O'Byrne have been doing recently designing (and redesigning) his own personal learning system. He has the first three of the four stage "aggregate remix repurpose feed-forward" model I've described in the past (he calls it "consume curate create"). It's a common enough pattern, certainly nothing I invented, and he references Andrej Karpathy's of an LLM wiki in the same context. I plan to do something similar with the 30,000 or so links I have amassed over the years. But I'm cautious about any integration of AI. As O'Byrne says, "I care a lot about keeping my voice." In most things, I say the thing AI can't say, because I see the world differently from the majority. 

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More scoops, less aggregation and analysis: How Casey Newton is revamping his newsletter to compete with AI
Laura Hazard Owen, Nieman Lab, 2026/04/30

I am also grappling with this new reality. "Original reporting, news analysis, and a roundup of links. Those have been the three pillars of journalist Casey Newton's technology newsletter, Platformer, since it launched in 2017. But, Newton wrote Monday, two of them - link roundups and news analysis - may no longer work so well for his audience in a time of AI automation." With a fundraising campaign stalled at 15% of what I calculate I need to continue running this newsletter, I am learning to reconcile myself with the idea that people don't need it any more, and that it's time to - like Newton - rethink what I'm doing in the online space. But on the other hand, I don't want to lose out on the value producing the newsletter brings to me. 

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Measuring What We Value, or Valuing What We Measure? Interrogating Educational Measurement Practices in the Global South
NORRAG, 2026/04/30

There's a discussion taking place on Learning Engineering revisiting a topic that comes up here from time to time: Anne Fensie writes, "we were only able to find an embarrassing small number of studies (159 from an initial pool of about 12,000 records) that actually reported on learning activities and objectively measured learning, with either quantitative or qualitative measures." My first question, of course, is "what are you even measuring?" and then "does anybody actually care about this particular measure?" In this article from NORRAG the authors "global education measurement systems as politically shaped frameworks that prioritize standardized, often Western and increasingly AI-driven metrics, narrowing what counts as learning and obscuring relational, contextual, and transformative dimensions. It calls for reimagining measurement as a community-led, context-sensitive practice."

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Deescalating the AI Learning Debate
Nick Potkalitsky, Educating AI, 2026/04/30

I like the way this discussion is framed and it is one of few real efforts to grasp the many different views people have on what we mean by 'learning' (let alone 'education', which is another matter entirely). Nick Potkalitsky sets up a series of 'if-statements', 'if learning is this..', 'if learning is that...', etc. My only criticism of this approach is maybe that he stops too soon - we could continue with new perspectives on learning for some time. Still - the point is made. He then points to three researchers - Philippa Hardman, Terry Underwood, and Leon Furze - working on different aspects of learning (Potkalitsky calls these 'stages' or 'levels', developing a "a complex, multi-phased and multi-dimensional learning process." That might be a little too inclusive for my tastes - not every account of 'learning' references something real of correct. Still, any attempt to comprehend the complexity is welcome.

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Why are the Artemis II photos on Flickr?
Anil Dash, 2026/04/30

I've been aching for a reason to post an Artemis photo here in this newsletter and Anil Dash gives me that excuse as he explains - at length - why NASA photos have ended up on Flickr. Long story short - after being acquired by SmugMug they created the Flickr Foundation to preserve public photos for the next 100 years. I use Flickr a lot - I have (at the moment) 45067 photos from around the world, free and open for any non-commercial use. At some point I'll just commit them to the public domain, with the hope that at least a few of them endure through time, a record of these crazy days.

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Young People’s Ability to Assess Reliability of Information is Decreasing
Elisa Nadire Caeli, Dataetisk Tænkehandletank, 2026/04/30

Governments and to some extent schools have resisted teaching critical thinking and media literacy for many years. There are actually campaigns against teaching them in some places. But now we face a dilemma: with the increasing proliferation of AI-generated content filling search engines (the way fake vendors fill Amazon search results)  critical thinking and media literacy are becoming essential skills. It's not clear how a population without these skills will cope. "In Denmark, there is a strongly defined subject area – technology comprehension - which, in its current form, among other things, aims to strengthen students' ability to understand, create, and act meaningfully in a society where digital technologies and digital artifacts are increasingly serving as catalysts for change." We need this everywhere.

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POSIWID
Gordon Brander, Squishy, 2026/04/30

The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does (POSIWID). Or as Stafford Beer says, "This is a basic dictum. It stands for a bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances." There has been a lot of talk about systems here in recent days, but to my mind, the greates weakness of such talk is teleological. We talk about systems as designed (which they often are) with a purpose that expresses the intent of the designer. And sure, humans design systems. But nature doesn't. Gordon Brander writes, "It seems that these purposes have arisen from within the system, rather than being imposed from without. They are statistical attractors that dependently arise from the structure of feedback networks in the ecosystem. Biologists call this kind of emergent-from-within goal-seeking teleonomy, to distinguish it from imposed-from-without Aristotelian teleology."

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Memory Game Is
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2026/04/30

There's a thing called the physical symbol system hypothesis  (PSSH) which asserts that our mental contents (such as memories) are encoded and stored verbatim, and that the act of remembering is essentially a playback of this recording. It's a popular folk theory, but as everyone here (Alan Levine, Audrey Watters, Andrew Hickey) agrees, that's not how memory works. We don't 'store' memories, but it's not magic either: experiences cause a wave of neural activations, which in turn alter the strengths of connections between them. Remembering (something distinct) is the having of an experience based (more or less) exclusively on neural activations based on those connection weights; it's not (as everyone here attests) a playback, not a 'story' (that's the PSSH kicking in again), but but a reconstruction or recreation. You can't just say "the brain is not a computer" - that's meaningless in this context - but by the same token, the brain does not in any meaningful way resemble the device in ypur desktop or in your phone.

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Teaching to the test
Randy LaBonte, CANeLearn - The Canadian eLearning Network, 2026/04/29

"This post analyzes the disconnect between modern educational goals and outdated assessment methods." The argument is that "The ultimate goal of education must pivot. In the age of AI, producing efficient test-takers who can replicate information is a redundant exercise. We must move toward assessing what only humans can do: exercise ethical reasoning, apply creativity to novel problems, and adapt within collaborative frameworks." Obviously assessment should change, as argued here, but I'm not sure the right direction is to focus on things "only humans can do" (especially when that list is questionable in itself). 

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Retraction Note: The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis
Nature, 2026/04/29

Ben Riley reports "that meta-analysis that was published in Nature last year that purported to show a large positive effect of ChatGPT on student learning... has been retracted." The editors "decided to retract this paper owing to concerns regarding discrepancies in the meta-analysis. These issues ultimately undermine the confidence the Editor can place in the validity of the analysis and resulting conclusions. The authors have not responded to correspondence regarding this retraction." I didn't cover it here but it has been cited by others elsewhere.

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ASU Atomic Rips a Page from the WebinarTV Playbook
Alan Levine, CogDogBlog, 2026/04/29

I've been talking about the use of AI to create (disposable) open education resources for more than a decade now so it's not really a surprise to me to see an institution deploy tech like ASU Atomic to create "AI-generated modules based on lectures taken from ASU faculty by cutting long videos down to very short clips then generating text and sections based on those clips." It's also not surprising to see critics like those in the (spamwalled) 404 Media article complain about "academically weak and even inaccurate content." Whatever you think about these, with Alan Levine "you have to start thinking, or wondering, about the things we consider as 'content', fixed assets - books, courses, OERs, blog posts, they are all maybe going by the wayside, or they are just the raw material, for these new kind of entities." See also: Ben Williamson.

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Open Research Europe
European Commission, 2026/04/29

This is interesting. "Open Research Europe is an open access publishing venue for European Commission-funded researchers across all disciplines, with no author fees.Accelerate the impact of your research with rapid publication, open peer review, and indexing in databases such as Scopus and PubMed." There are 1330 articles in it as of this writing. One wonders why a project like this couldn't be extended beyond those eligible to become a much more general open publishing service for (funded?) research in general.

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Responsible Generative Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Pedagogy Systems: A Conceptual Framework for the Global South
Majibur Rahman Siddique, et al., 2026/04/29

This paper (26 page PDF) examines "the growth and intellectual structure of scholarly literature on responsible generative AI (GAI) in pedagogy" and develops a Technology Accemptance Model (TAM) "context-sensitive conceptual framework for its adoption in the Global South." Overall we see "a strong concentration on artificial intelligence, generative AI, medical education, and language teaching, with ethics, governance, and sustainability remaining underdeveloped but emerging themes."

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The Illusion of Protection: Why Canada’s Growing Push to Ban Social Media for Kids Won’t Work
Michael Geist, 2026/04/28

Michael Geist outlines the objections to proposed plans to restrict access to social media (and in some cases, AI chatbots) for kids. The ban, he says, lets social media off the hook. "Algorithmic manipulation, addictive engagement design, inadequate content moderation, inconsistent policy enforcement, insufficient transparency, and privacy risks affect users of every age." Also, evidence from Australia suggests the ban does not work. The ban creates its own hams, such as when "mandated, mandatory ID submission is required for all users." And ultimately, "kids have constitutional rights too." Image: my cat. Just because.

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The Reinvention of Workday: From System of Record to Platform of Agents
Josh Bersin, 2026/04/28

Workday, enterprise applications for finance and HR and known as the most hated software on earth, is (remarkably) "moving from a system of record to a system of agents." I have no doubt other enterprise software providers are watching closely. Josh Bersin explains it well. "Workday, as a trusted system of record, provides the company rules, policies, security model, and compliance that enables agents to run at scale. These 'rails' exist in Workday today and recreating them outside of Workday is expensive, slow, and risky." Agents, if you will, run on the rails, based on five operating principles (paraphrased): AI complements deterministic rules, approval chains, and data models; these rails are the core of enterprise AI; agent management tools are a core part of the infrastructure; Sana is the new default front door for Workday; and the model aligns to outcomes, not seats. Bersin also comments, "the Sana dynamic learning platform is far more profound than most companies realize. AI-native learning is not training alone: it's global employee enablement, powering enormous improvements in productivity and employee reskilling. I don't think Workday fully sees this opportunity yet, but Sana customers do." There's a lot to like about this new direction, just in terms of enterprise software design, though of course I am always wary of the enterprise overwhelming the individual. See also a16z on this story.

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MyTerms and SEDI's Duty of Loyalty
Phil Windley, Phil Windley's Technometria, 2026/04/28

This is a short article that connects a number of important concepts: MyTerms, the new IEEE 7012 standard, that "gives individuals a protocol for proposing terms to websites as first parties"; and State-Endorsed Digital Identity (SEDI) provides that non-optional base layer, enabling portable proof, accountable delegation, and interoperable trust infrastructure to function at societal scale. "MyTerms," writes Phil Windley, "could become the concrete mechanism through which SEDI's duty of loyalty requirement, essentially fiduciary obligations to identity holders, are expressed and enforced."

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I Taught Philosophy for 20 Years. Here’s What I Learned.
David Website, 2026/04/28

The most important lesson in philosophy I ever taught was not taught in the classroom. I was driving toward the college in Grouard, Alberta, where I gave a mostly Indigenous student cohort a course in critical thinking. I was running late, but it was morning in northern Alberta, and the sun caught the mist over the river just right, and I stopped to take out my camera and enjoy the view. There I was, knee-deep in brush and weeds, as the school bus came. I arrived in class, late and dirty, and a voice came from the back: "gotta stop to smell the roses, right?" The whole class changed in that moment; they could see me in a new light. No, it was not the pedantic question of "whether students can ponder questions without rushing to resolve them. Whether they can tolerate not knowing, and still keep at it. Whether they notice how their own assumptions shape what they take to be obvious: and are up for that shifting." For me, it's whether people can live while living, whether they can experience what they are experiencing, whether the expectations of everyone else - including philosophy professors - can be set to the side for a time while you watch the ducks on a lonely northern river in the morning mist. Image: the photo I took that day.

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A systems Weltanschauung of open, distance, and digital education (ODDE)
Olaf Zawacki-Richter, Journal of Open, Distance, and Digital Education, 2026/04/28

This paper (21 page PDF) attempts an analysis and new theoretical structure of open, distance, and digital education (ODDE) framed within a type of systems theory, drawing especially from sociologist Niklas Luhmann. "Communication, evolution, and differentiation - these components serve as the basis for introducing Luhmann's systems theory here, which will then be applied to ODDE." The paper follows in a grand tradition; "This interpretation complements earlier systems-oriented models in distance education (e.g., Rumble, 1979; Moore & Kearsley, 1996), which conceptualize ODDE as a set of interrelated functional components, by reinterpreting these components as communicatively constituted subsystems." If the problems of the world (and hence ODDE) are in the systems, then we need to get the systems analysis right.

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forrestchang/andrej-karpathy-skills
GitHub, 2026/04/28

I don't use this exact CLAUDE.ms file telling the AI how I want it to approach programming tasks, but my own version is very similar. "A single CLAUDE.md file to improve Claude Code behavior, derived from Andrej Karpathy's observations on LLM coding pitfalls." The key instruction: "Don't assume. Don't hide confusion. Surface tradeoffs." Now that I think about it, it's probably pretty good advice for life in general. Here's a version you can paste into your project.

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The Long Push To Blame Systemic Problems On Individuals
Nick Chater, George Loewenstein, Science Friday, 2026/04/28

The idea that "many of society's, and the world's, problems stem from individual failings" is called in this book excerpt "the i-frame (individual frame)." It is contrasted with the view that "the idea that social problems arise because there is something wrong with the system of complex and interlocking rules that govern our lives," known as "the s-frame (system frame)." The thesis, with which I am in general agreement, is that "a mountain of evidence shows that the impact of i-frame interventions - the nudges we have been told are so beneficial - has been disappointing, often showing small or even null results." We are being lulled - or even deliberately misled - into believing that we are the problem. But we're not. "Change the game, not the players." Via Alfie Kohn.

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Decoding Khan Academy's Mission: World-Class Education for Anyone, Anywhere – Sudhir's Personal Website
Sudhir Gupta, 2026/04/27

I'm going to take Sudhir Gupta's criticisms of Khan Academy as granted, because I think the points are valid. The method - which assumes reliable internet connectivity and sustained, individual device access, and digital literacy - runs the risk of subsidizing the rich rather than helping the poor. As Gupta says, "showcasing Navodaya schools as 'India impact' feels misleading... They represent the exception - the already-well-resourced institutions." Fair enough. But the proposed solution - 'Teacher Mode' - requires even more investment, specifically, human teachers. Going back to the technologies that were too expensive in the past won't address this even more pressing problem in the future. Mass media - books, radio, television - get us part of the way. Mass personal media will be needed to get us the rest of the way. But how to do that, while avoiding the worst excesses of 'personalized learning' and social media - that is the question.

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Social Media Learning Under Constraint: A Conceptual Framework for Higher Education
Olajide Jolugbo, Agnes Reeves-Taylor, The Journal of Social Media for Learning, 2026/04/27

This is quite a nice paper (15 page PDF) that looks at the role of social media in learning. It is typically found to be limited by institutional constraints, as higher education institutions prefer their own platforms and methodologies. But "such assumptions limit conceptual understanding of how learning is organised and sustained in contexts where institutional provision is fragmented and digital infrastructure is unreliable," like, say, Liberia. Here, we see social media play a very different role. "Social media platforms function as de facto learning infrastructure (and) are frequently appropriated to support academic coordination, explanation, and peer learning in higher education contexts." The Constraint-Responsive Social Media Learning Framework (CR-SMLF) outlined in the paper describes this.

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Developing higher education to support modernization in China
Huai Jinpeng, World Education Blog, 2026/04/27

In this statement from the Chinese Minister of Education, three priorities are outlined: "promoting a shift in higher education toward greater emphasis on competency development and value guidance," which is a response to AI; "promoting a greater emphasis on cross-sector integration in higher education," and third, "promoting a greater emphasis on openness and cooperation in higher education." On the third, the statement adds, "Divergences and even conflicts in thinking and cultural values persist among different civilizations and nations. In an interconnected human community, the principles of openness and cooperation, understanding and trust, and innovation and creation among universities are values to uphold and directions to follow."

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Washington Post letter on degree hacking / online degree speed
George Veletsianos, 2026/04/27

I read the Washington Post article, which you can find via an archive, and then waited for the inevitable response. It came this morning. The gist of the Post article is that students are using 'loopholes' to power their way through degree programs in just a few weeks instead of the months or years it normally takes. Here's what George Veletsianos writes. "These learners aren't gaming a loophole. They're demonstrating self-direction, time management and strategic planning... They are demonstrating it on the assessments their own institutions designed to measure it." And I think this is a good point. Some people might argue, "well you need the extra time to acquire the skills and competencies that just aren't measured on the test." But what skills? What competencies? If you need them, and you can't test for them, what distinguishes them from magic?

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You Can Just Say How To Do Things: A Radical Approach to Expert Prompting
Mike Caulfield, The End(s) of Argument, 2026/04/27

I would like to think that, as Mike Caulfield says, "the magic tricks phase of prompting is over," but as long as there's a LinkedIn, there are going to be 'magic tricks' articles. But what Caulfield is saying here is that we don't need that any more (if we ever did). "Your value add is, for the most part, figuring out how to do things, and figuring out how to explain them in a way that someone other than you can do them... Your special power is in better understanding the things you already know. Focus on how to do the thing." Yes. That's how I'm using Claude to write software, and how I actually write these posts by hand. There's no trick. (That's also how I feel theories in education generally- in this article that role is filled by all the cute acronyms). (p.s. Cast Away is one of my favourite movies ever and it's just this analysis that makes it so clear why it is.)

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Collaborative sticky-note boards
D'Arcy Norman, Jellyboard, 2026/04/27

This is just a sandbox, so it might not last the week. Who knows? But it's just another example of the blossoming of code happening at the moment. This particular application, Jellyboard, is a post-it not board on an infinite canvas that lets you group and link notes. That's it. Super simple. Really effective. Here's one created by Matthias Melcher on the virtues of two-pane layouts. Update: it now lives at https://jellyboard.ca/

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Do Students Rely on AI? Analysis of Student-ChatGPT Conversations from a Field Study
Jiayu Zheng, et al., AIES 2025, 2026/04/27

"Humans' reliance on AI systems is a multifaceted phenomenon influenced by a complex interplay of system-related, user-related, and task-related factors," and educators love a taxonomy, and that's what this paper (12 page PDF), true to form, produces: a taxonomy "to capture students' reliance patterns, distinguishing AI competence, relevance, adoption, and students' final answer correctness." This is the result of a study in the early days of AI with students not yet familiar with it. Reliance on AI is related to familiarity with it, according to the paper, With discussion in the wind about banning not only social media but also AI chatbots from youth access, it raises the question of how youth learn to navigate them well. More from the eighth AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society.

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Fairness in Federated Learning: Fairness for Whom? | Proceedings of
Afaf Taik, Khaoula Chehbouni, Golnoosh Farnadi, AIES 2025, 2026/04/27

There's a lot of goodness in this one paper (14 page PDF). For one thing, it discusses 'federated learning' (FL), which is "a decentralized machine learning (ML) paradigm in which a global model is trained collaboratively across multiple participants (e.g., smartphones, hospitals, or institu-tions), without exchanging raw data." So much to think about here. But the result of this study is a set of great insights into the concept, or should I say concepts, of fairness. There are many different types of fairness, they vary across contexts, and they aren't interchangeable. See the diagram for more detail. The result is a harm-based model which takes into account the various forms of fairness implicated in FL environments which "highlights a disconnect between how fairness is defined in research and how harms manifest in practice." More from the eighth AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society.

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Grievance Farming Comes for Teaching Centers
Marc Watkins, Rhetorica, 2026/04/27

This is a good overview of the recent discussion of teaching and /learning centres, beginning with Paul Schofield's recent criticism of them, and following up with a summary of some more notable responses. Marc Watkins characterizes the original article in the Chronicle of Higher Education as 'grievance farming', a trend in social media and online journalism that has become more prevalent in recent years as a means of attracting attention. Of course, it's worth noting that the Chronicle has been doing this for years; usually it just goes unnoticed behind the paywall. Overall, the Watkins article is a good overview and should put this incident to bed. 

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A New Type of Neuroplasticity Rewires the Brain After a Single Experience
Yasemin Saplakoglu, Quanta Magazine, 2026/04/24

Interesting article about behavioral time scale synaptic plasticity (BTSP), which is contrasted with typical Hebbian neural plasticity (which can be summarizes as: 'what fires together wires together') in that it characterizes a type of learning that can happen suddenly, rather than gradually over time. How? That's more of a complex question. "The biggest difference between the dendrites' activity and Hebbian plasticity: time... (their activity potentials) persist for tens to hundreds of milliseconds (sometimes approaching one second), and through BTSP they can strengthen synapses active six to eight seconds before." Before people get too excited at the possibility of one-shot learning: "it has been observed in limited circumstances (and) only in the hippocampus."

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An attack on teaching and learning centers
Bryan Alexander, Bryan Alexander, 2026/04/24

Bryan Alexander offers a reasonable and even nuanced description and response to that Chronicle of Higher Education article recommending that campus teaching and learning centers be closed and their staff fired (yeah, it was that extreme). The Chronicle article is behind a paywall, so Alexander's summary is useful (and, as I read the full article on archive.ph I can attest that the summary is accurate). While I consider the article to be a classic instance of the Chronicle's blinkered and cranky coverage of, well, everything, Alexander finds that the post resonates with (some) actual professors. "They saw centers as tools of oppressive administrations, integrated attacks on the abilities, nature, and identities of professors."

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