Pedagogy of the Depressed
Benjamin Riley,
Dec 04, 2024
In this article Benjamin Riley summarizes three courses on 'AI for educators': the offerings from OpenAI (in partnership with Common Sense Media), Google, and AI for Education. Now I won't defend these courses; they're all examples of advercation. But the criticisms aren't totally fair, either. For example, Riley criticizes (like many before) the use of anthropomorphic terms like 'learns' and 'experience' and 'makes decisions'. But this criticism makes sense only if we have definitions of these terms clearly at odds with what the AI systems are doing. But we don't. Just some cognitive scientists defending their (rapidly shrinking) turf. And he criticizes the courses for requiring human facilitation, when that true of just about every course that exists. Where the criticism is most fair, though, is when it points to how bad the courses are online learning. They're not interactive, they're completely asynchronous, they're based on superficial mnemonics, and their examples fail. He offers four examples of courses "that are informative and fun" - but I think the same criticisms could be applied (though the 'login required' kept me out of two of them).
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