Stephen Downes

OK, this much from Audrey Watters is true: "We cannot outsource thinking and compassion to a hierarchy-generating machine and expect the world to be anything other than automated emptiness and exploitation." But that's a different question from the one asking whether we need human teachers to teach. Now I'm not endorsing the idea "that automation will make learning better, faster, cheaper, more scalable, more 'personalized.'" What I think technology does is to enable students to manage their own learning for themselves, so that they can be thinking and compassionate learners, and not mere automatons following a teacher's instructions. But it's interesting. Watters again: "It (Paul Ford's God Gets Involved) tackles the biiiig question: Can AI replace God?" If you think of God as something 'out there', emanating rules and laws and proclamations, then sure, AI could replace God. But if you think of God as something 'in here', in ourselves, then AI doesn't stand a chance.