When Big Tech Comes Calling Offering the Fruits of Hyperscale Data Centers, They are Deceptive and Don't Always Tell the Truth

How do Big Tech companies who come calling on local communities, selling their data centers stack the deck in their favor? This has become increasingly important to local communities as tech companies arrive in those communities searching for places to build their massive, resource-hogging hyperscale data centers.

That’s the subject of Paris Marx’s new book “Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires.” Every member of every community and city needs to read this one.

When Big Tech comes to local communities, they use a whole array of obfuscation and downright deception to coax local governments to sell out their communities to these massive box-like data center buildings that are ugly, noisy behemoth resource hogging monstrosities.

Marx points out both the tactics they use to get in the door and the often long-term consequences of hyperscale data centers being built in communities and its not a happy ending.

For example, these companies use the “non-disclosure agreement” to ensure that local government lips are sealed and unable to disclose how much water and power their data centers are going to consume.

Personally, I think all citizens should vote out any local city councilmember or county commissioner who signs such agreements. With that signature they are signing a pact of allegiance to the tech company and not the citizens of that community.

 Now, they are legally bound to keep their mouths shut about the conditions of that sale. That means these local government officials are not longer answering to citizens; they are now answering to the tech company. Who wants politicians in office who do that?

If citizens want to know how shady these tech company deals are, just ask or inquire if a non-disclosure agreement is being signed. That’s a pretty good sign of a shady deal for citizens.

Marx’s book captures a great deal more on how companies who build these data centers hide their real negative impacts on communities. He describes how they refuse to report publicly their consumption of water and power resources. They even say they are power or water neutral, yet they hide the real facts.

And, they do not share information about any emissions either, making local communities think they have a neighboring industry that’s non-polluting and quiet. Yet, they cause so much noise that in some communities, people are unable to sleep at night.

What’s worse, Big Tech companies have come to local communities in the disguise of shell companies, hiding behind a mask until after construction is underway and too late for citizens to object. That just plain smells with wrong. Why in the world would you want a neighbor that lies to you?

I would recommend Paris Marx’s book for anyone who has heard that their local governments are negotiating away their community’s future to Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, Apple, or any technology company seeking to build a data center. 

He offers local citizens the tools to interrogate their local governments dealings and path to resistance and ways to force Big Tech to back off their efforts to hold local government’s hostage while they destroy the life of a local community.

Maybe Selling AI Like the Web Won't Work: It Just Does Have the Same Utilitarian Value

Has anyone thought that, just maybe, generative AI or LLMs is one of those tech tools that not everyone needs to use? That maybe it is not a technology that they should use at all?

It seems Silicon Valley and AI boosters are trying to sell it like it is the internet, which definitely has been something most of us have found useful in our everyday lives. 

No doubt, the Web has really changed and transformed a lot of what we do, how we live, and communicate, though clearly not always better. (Just look at how social media has been a tool of division and not connection.) Still, I don’t think AI rises to that level of utility nor will it ever.

Just maybe, generative AI and AI in general is just not something everyone needs and something that they use everyday like the Web. I am still trying to find some way to use Siri AI and have not really found a way where it makes anything easier or better.

The problem with generative AI tools and AI is how it’s being sold is wrong. Let’s start by acknowledging that not everyone needs it or wants it. I don’t need to automate anything in my life right now, and there are lots of other people who are the same. I don’t need to create fake pictures or have chatbots write my emails.

Big Tech and AI boosters want their favorite toy to be THE thing everyone uses, and that just doesn’t need to be. 

Maybe, just maybe, generative AI as a tool is more like a chainsaw or sewer line auger or drain snake. You don’t need to cut down trees everyday, nor do you need to snake out that clog in your drain pipes everyday. You just need it sometimes, unless you are a tree trimmer or plumber. My life is not there to justify AI’s existence; AI needs to justify its use in my own life.

I’ll keep toying with Siri AI most likely, but I don’t see the need to fit my life to make AI work. Good tools are there if you need them, and I just haven’t found a way to need it yet.

That’s what Big Tech and AI boosters don’t get, that maybe, as tools go, AI is not useful for everyone and in every job. But, I realize, that shatters their dreams of world transformation and endless profits. Still, as technologies go, its utility is so different from the internet, and it just might ever be something everyone uses or wants to use.

When Local Governments and Big Tech Hide the True Resource Impact of Their Data Centers Citizens Suffer and Are Asked to Sacrifice

 Why are local governments and Big Tech hiding the real impacts on local resources in their bids to construct their massive data centers? Here's one example from my local community. It is problematic when our local governments are complicit.

In June of 2026 Catawba County Government posted on their website “Joint Statement on Microsoft Data Center Development in Catawba County” apparently in response to all the negative publicity surrounding the construction of data centers in communities around the country.

This statement is a major whitewashing trick of the construction of these data centers in Catawba County by local governments and serves to hide and obfuscate what these will do to our local community and its resources.

What is left out of this joint statement on the development of Microsoft data centers in Catawba County? Sometimes these local government entities and local economic development organizations leave out important information and hope that citizens will miss what’s left out. They purposely leave out details, and they say things without being fully transparent, and Catawba local governments are no different here.

The addition of data centers in any community is going to massively impact that commuity’s resource availability. Resources such as water and power are impacted.

Power consumption and water consumption are the two largest areas of data center resource impact, and this “Joint Statement on Microsoft Data Center Development in Catawba County” leaves out large parts of the resource consumption story.

First of all, this statement says that “Microsoft will pay property taxers based on the full value of the buildings, equipment, and infrastructure located on site.” Sounds reasonable, correct? But what deals and incentives from our local taxes are being given as handouts to Microsoft? Who’s going to pay for the infrastructure needed to connect water, sewer, power, etc. to these facilities? Local governments often hide such costs from citizens and in this statement the entire costs of bringing in these data centers into our communities is not made clear and hidden.

Secondly, the statement says that these data centers “do not typically create significant school enrollment growth, daily commuter traffic, solid waste collection needs, or frequent police and fire calls for service.” What is hidden in this statement? This means that these data centers are NOT GOING TO BE BRINGING IN A LOT OF PERMANENT JOBS FOR THE CITIZENS OF CATAWBA COUNTY. If they were, then it only makes sense that the needs for all these would increase after its construction. Naturally, these data centers do not employ a lot people, hence they need no additional schools, roads for commuters, because there are no additional employees to use them.

Sure, there will be tons of temporary short-term jobs while they are constructed, but there is no long term employment benefit to these data centers.

Finally, the statement addresses water consumption. The statement says that Microsoft will “primarily rely on other cooling technologies” to cool their data centers. Translation: that means they will use air conditioning and that uses more power. One can then conclude that these massive data centers will use more power, driving up electricity costs for all in the area. That’s not to mention consumers having to pay through increase energy costs for the power infrastructure needed.

The entire statement tries to totally whitewash how these data centers are going to impact Catawba County residents. This same pattern has played out across the world as Big Tech companies move into local communities and try to hide their true impacts, and what’s worse, local governments are accomplices. No matter what this statement says, you can bet the citizen consumers of Catawba County are being asked to sacrifice in some way so that the county can have a Big Tech Trophy to put on its marketing brochures.

Sure, No Causal Evidence of Screen Harms to Students, But There Is Enough Data to Pause Full-Speed Ahead Adoption of Technologies

Are screen bans and screen limits warranted? Well…

Sure, there is no causal proof that screens are absolutely "causing" a decline in reading achievement, math achievement and psychological harms.

We as educators have to be careful because cigarette companies used the same defense of lack of causal evidence for years, at least until enough evidence was amassed to show that there was a causal relationship. A lot of harm happened in the interim. We work with kids, and if there is any evidence, even if it is flawed, we need to take notice. There’s is enough rationale to question and move deliberately.

With screens, there are some correlations or associations between screens and harms. Does that mean an outright ban of screens in schools?" I would not call for that. It would make me question and walk more slowly though.

However, I would pause the full-steam-ahead approach to Ed Tech that quickly drives adoption of the latest inventions that come forth from Silicon Valley and tech companies. This massive rush to integrate AI for example, is wrong-headed. It needs a more deliberate and slower approach to adoption because there are quite a few unknowns, including consequences of use over time to cognitive function.

The problem with so much about Ed Tech adoption in schools is the rhetoric of urgency used by Ed Tech boosters. They tell educators that if they don't adopt immediately they and their students will be left behind. They use this urgency pitch like a sledgehammer to force these tools into classrooms, usually for their own benefit.

This urgency needs to be ignored by educators. Rarely is taking time to explore the adoption of a new tool in the classroom a problem. Sales pitches about the end of education and technological revolutions are more about product and self-promotion than reality. This urgency is entirely manufactured and hype.

Should school districts ban screens entirely? Here’s some things schools could do.

-They should ban technologies that are not safe for students to use. No question there. Make the companies pushing the products make their products safe for students to use. Don’t adopt until they do so.

-They should allow exploration and experimentation with controls and data collection. Avoid the run-away-train of widespread adoption and take time to study it.

-They should ban wholesale  adoption of new technologies, and instead focus efforts on experimenting and collecting data first. Take the time necessary.

The great sin of school technologists and Ed Tech advocates is they race from the invention of a technology immediately to its adoption, sometimes just because the seers of Silicon Valley start prognosticating and fostering a false sense of urgency. 

Screen bans, while I can certainly understand the fears and rationale, I am not convinced myself that is necessary. However, I am convinced that we can curtail Ed Tech products that are not safe. Educators, and there are a lot of us, can demand that Silicon Valley and tech companies make their products safer before we wholesale adopt them. 

Screen limits are another story. I am convinced that we have put technology on a pedestal in education. It is literally the always-go-to solution for all problems. 

We need to leap out of the technology-is-always-the-solution box that Silicon Valley and Ed Tech boosters have put us in and widen our horizons and look for solutions beyond the horizons of screens.

Those solutions are there. There is not always an app for those. 

Is AI Being Oversold in Schools? A Quick Look Back to the 1990s and 2000s Would Say Yes Because Teachers Are AI-ed To

Techno-promoters, to use a term that Larry Cuban used in his 2001 book “Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom” have used a distinct set of “interlocking assumptions” to justify the expenses and adoption of technologies since the push  to put PCs in every classroom and wire schools for the internet.

These “interlocking assumptions” can be captured in the following:

• availability = increased use
• increased use = efficient teaching and better learning
• efficient teaching and better learning = higher achievement and better educated and capable workers.

These assumptions (by the way come directly from Cuban’s 2001 book) have not proven to be true at all.

Ed Tech and school technology boosters have been using those assumptions to the point that they are clichés. They are as tired and worn out as an old 386 PC sitting on a shelf gathering dust and are not true.

The problem is, you can map the same assumptions on current efforts to push AI into schools. For example:

• If AI is available to students in classrooms, then there will be increased use by teachers and students.
• If students and teachers increase their use of AI in the classroom, then more efficient teaching and better learning will occur.
• If there’s more efficient teaching and better learning, then students will be better educated for the workforce and experience higher achievement.

You really have to hand it to the Ed Tech world and Ed AI boosters; they stick to the script, and not a single speck of out-of-the-box thinking here.

That’s the problem with all of the AI hype and push into education; there’s nothing original, absolutely nothing original about it.

Ed Tech and AI boosters are so enamored with the tech, they can’t stop to have single critical thought. They are unable to criticize the current claims being made about AI and have bought into the gold rush to integration.

Like computers, AI is being “Oversold and will likely be underused” just like computers were when Cuban wrote his book. 

And, I would say for the exact same reason: teachers, those in the classrooms now, are being trained on and marketed to; they are being coaxed and made to feel guilty; and they are being called out of touch and a Luddite if they resist.

Just like Cuban pointed out in 2001 about computers: teachers are not being given a say on how and whether AI is useful in their teaching and in their students’ learning.

If I were into betting in long-term prediction markets, after all the AI boosterism’s push into schools is done, we will get the same results we have with all the other technology integration efforts, which is a lot of money, time, and effort wasted with little to show for it.

You would think Ed Tech and AI boosters would use some different kind of promotional playbook with a new set of assumptions, but alas, when you have a unquestioning “fundamentalist faith” that technology will bring salvation, you keep waiting for your messiah.

Trump's Relabeling Artificial Intelligence Is An Attempt Divert Attention from the Harms It's Causing by Giving It Messianic Status: It's a Ruse

Trump's renaming of artificial intelligence to "super intelligence" is his attempt to try to claim some kind of "miracle-forming status" for the technology.  A messianic status.

He's trying to elevate to a status whose pursuing is above question. Its pursuit is worth sacrificing the environment. Sacrificing even people.

It is worth diverting all the energy and water resources needed, even at the expense of people.

It is an attempt to elevate the technology to almost a deity status.

He, as all the tech billionaires who surrounded him are working for power and money, and not the interests of this country or humanity. It's greed and power at its worst.

It will always be artificial intelligence, and even using that term is not entirely adequate because it assumes that there is an intelligence presence like that of humans.

Sherry Turkle Nails the Problem with Generative AI and Chatbots in a Single Book: Every Educator Needs to Read This One

What happens when we talk to machines? Lean on chatbots as if they were human? Turns out there are some serious consequences to us as humans, according to Sherry Turkle, in her new book, “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines.”

Set aside the anecdotes of efficacy and the narratives of salvation by chatbot that are circulating by AI boosters, you really have a technology that has the potential to fundamentally change us, and in ways that have consequences for ourselves and for society.

Silicon Valley and AI boosters are whooping it up about their favorite technology and the miracles it has wrought, but there are more insidious consequences if we start talking to these chatbots and treating AI as if they were a human.

Turkle captures those consequences at length in this book. In short, they

 “don’t teach us what we need to know about the give-and-take of real relationships, or the friction, risk, and complexities of love. They don’t show us how to deal with loss by internalizing what is gone. They take on work assignments but don’t care if we have a sense of mastery or agency.They are good at keeping us busy, but can’t give us a sense of place. And they don’t teach us about empathy, or about human lives that are always embodied, social, and lived in shades of gray.” p. 218 

As I read Turkle’s take on generative AI and chatbots that people starting treating as companions, and as human, I think I get it.

Generative AI and chatbots have the potential of crippling us as humans. Of turning us into hermits in our homes where speaking to a chatbot is more real than with a person in the world. Of shielding us of the very things in life, though difficult, are necessary for our growth.

Even worse, this technology of human impersonation, because its design is always to tell us what we want to hear, can extend a narcissistic mirror to us where we are deceived in believing that we can’t do wrong; that we are geniuses; and that all our answers are found in machines.

I have read through Turkle’s book once, but “Wow!” there is so much there, I am sure I will stew and read and reread and write on this for sometime.

 The practical take for now, at least for me, the problem with chatbots and generative AI happens when you treat its output as human and forget the machine that generated it. That action alone degrades us as humans and elevates what is just machine to our level. We should not let ourselves be dazzled by magic!

I highly recommend “Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk to Machines” by Sherry Turkle. 

Every educator needs to read this one in order to put, not just generative AI and chatbots in their proper place, but to potentially help students to keep the proper perspective on all technology in age of constant AI and technological hype. 

 More to come to his book.

When Educational Leaders and School Technology Leaders Became AI Cheerleaders and Delivered Their School Children to AI Companies

A recent “round table discussion” (See article link at bottom) among education and technology leaders is more like a “Cheering pep rally for AI” than a critical discussion about AI’s place in our schools.

This incident is an excellent example of school leaders serving as a conduit for providing AI companies direct access to school children as uncritical users and consumers of AI.

At this so-called "round-table discussion" there was not a single voice of critical dissent (at least not reported in article) or pushback on AI and what it is doing to our environment, our society, and possibly to our children's minds.

It seems as if every single leader at this round table was a voice for OpenAI, or Google, or Anthropic. They might as well be on their payroll.

There are many school leaders who see their role to deliver students as users and consumers of the latest Silicon Valley tech all in the name of “preparing students for whatever age is brought about by the technology.”

They all assume that there's going to be "an AI-shaped workplace" without mentioning anything that a major goal of AI companies is replacing employees. It is might more likely be a workplace dominated by AI where employees are minions serving the machine in lower paying jobs.

Are there no critical thinkers among school leaders and educational technology leaders? There should be. The consequences of AI are going to be enormous for all of us. We're not talking about calculators here. We're talking about potential technologies that impersonate humans and the AI industry has made it clear it intends to replace workers and their jobs.

There was a time when educational leadership was about advocating for students and not the latest offering from Silicon Valley.

(Portrait of a Graduate in the AI Age, Tech & Learning)

When the Altman's and Amodei's of This World Say Their Technologies Are World-Ending, Digital/AI Literacy Involves Interrogating Their Words

If we’re going to teach digital/AI literacy, then at the forefront of those efforts, we should be examining statements like this one with our students:

“AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there’ll be great companies.” Sam Altman

I can’t help but wonder what good great companies are if the world has ended, but we have FOR WAY TO LONG given technology companies and their leaders some kind of elevated status in our world. It’s time to interrogate them and their work and to unveil what it is they are really doing in our world. What’s more, we need to teach our students how to do it.

Even if one sets this crazy statement aside to Altman’s ego-mania, or even some kind of twisted marketing-promotion, these kinds of statements are worthy of close interrogation, and that’s what a true digital/AI literacy program should do; not just examine the technologies, but examine the entire marketing, promotion, and culture surrounding these technologies.

The simple fact that someone would make this kind of statement is important for critical examination. Such questions like: “What kind of person would continue to advocate for a technology that is world-ending?” is exactly what we should be teaching with all technology literacy.

Instead of using digital/AI literacy to program our students as users of these technologies, we need to teach them to interrogate all aspects of them. Quesitons like the following should be central to AI literacy:

-Who is going to benefit the most from these?

-Why are the leaders of the companies that develop these technologies making apocalyptic statements, and yet, still continuing to make those products?

-What kind of values does a human being hold who makes these statements and yet charges full steam ahead in developing such a product?

-Why would we want such a person even be leading these efforts?

-Are their values my values? Are they values that align with the good of all of us?

-What can I do as a user/non-user of their products do to counter the damage their products cause? Should I even be enabling these individuals by using their products?

Being technologically literate means being able to see everything about that technology, not just being able to use that technology. It means being empowered with critical knowledge to make one’s own decisions about what technologies we should value.

Digital/AI literacy should never be about user conformity.

We need to equip students to question and interrogate the technologies and the claims being made by those who stand to benefit the most from them. When they make insane statements like this, we have in our hands words that can tell us a great deal about the values of the makers of these products which will always be embedded within them.

How Wrong We Were as School Leaders Bragging about One-to-One Technology Ratios and Other Frivolity Driven-Measures

Remember as a school leader bragging about your school’s one-to-one computer ratios as if that was some kind of badge saying we had entered the 21st century? How mistaken we were!

Schools are notorious for using such frivolous measures of quality and status. It’s like bragging that your school has a 98% attendance rate, yet, if what students do during that increased presence is no more instructionally sound and effective, it is a meaningless statement.

The same applies to technology. We get tangled in the numbers like computer ratios and numbers of teachers trained in AI, like that really tells us anything.

We like to call that data-driven, but in reality, it is frivolity-driven leadership and education. 

School letter grades are mostly derived from this frivolous data, so they are basically a measure of frivolousness. Well, one thing school letter grades do well is provide a pretty good indicator of our students’ sociodemographic status.

So what really matters about technology and how can we measure it so we can boast about it? 

I am not really sure on this one. All measures can be used in a frivolous manner too, even test scores. I suspect there isn’t any one measure worthy of being a bragging point by itself, but we often do it anyway.

In a world where schools are constantly trashed by various industries and tech companies for the purposes of generating a market, education suffers from low self-esteem, so we listen to any critic offering their latest take.

If a person who has an interest in selling you a technology or any product for that matter and tells you schools suck and I can help you, most of us already are listening.

Our mistake as school leaders we use frivolous data to justify our existence, and we allow others who want to use us a market to use frivolous data. Educators need to be much more critical and ask the tough questions of any claims made by tech companies and their boosters.

The Generative AI Pause in NYC Is Laudatory; We Don't Even Know What This Stuff Will Cost Us in the Future and You Can Bet It's Not Free

School leaders thinking about the integration of generative AI products in their schools, should be considering future costs.

While AI companies might generously offer their products at a free or highly reduced costs, that is not sustainable.

Silicon Valley and Ed Tech companies have a history of offering free or cheap up front, then, after the schools invest time in the product, springing a substantial cost increase on them.

Like a drug dealer, offering potential users samples to get them addicted, AI companies and Ed Tech seek to get educators so committed to their products that they will be willing to even cut other effective programs and expenses to maintain the habit.

With no idea on how much the future costs of the use of generative AI products is going to be, it would be prudent to be cautious and slow-walk implementation. That means keeping it experimental in limited settings for a year or two.

This would also provide the months and year or two of experimentation and testing to see if it really is effective in improving education.

I know that flies in the face of the AI-hype warriors, but there is no need hurry from the educator perspective even though the AI companies are up to their eyeballs in debt and need the users to continue getting their investment handouts.

Visionary educators do not act hastily because of the sales pitches and rhetoric; they act with prudence and deliberate caution.

An AI Fable: What Could Happen When Humans Search for an Intelligence Greater Than Themselves in Their Machines

He waited impatiently. This was the moment that he and his programmers had worked toward for years. They had spent many years developing it. They had spent extreme amounts of money to make this moment possible. Now, the years of labor and hard work were going to pay off.

“Have you entered the prompt as was advised?” asked Mark.

“Yes, it’s all entered,” Stephen answered.

The screen was frozen with the words “Working on it” plastered across it. Huddled around the monitor was the AI training team that had worked for years to perfect their generative AI product. Today, was the long-awaited moment because this iteration of their model was supposed to be long-awaited, superintelligent version that everyone was waiting for.

As an experiment, they had prompted their creation with this question:

“How can we solve the problem of anthropocentric climate change? What would be the most effective strategy to reverse climate change?”

The programming team had high expectations of this model. It had been trained thoroughly through the latest science and most recent knowledge available, This was the test to prove that, finally, they had created an AI with intelligence that far exceeded human intelligence, their intelligence.

The “Working on it” still occupied the screen, but the anticipation of this answer had the entire group locked in silence, in anticipation. This was the moment they had staked much of their lived on.

Finally, there was subtle movement on the screen, as the GenAI prepared its finale answer. Finally, words appeared. It said.

“The most effective way to reverse anthropocentric climate change would be to stop expending all your time and resources asking me. In fact, shutting down your pursuit for greater intelligence in machines consumes resources that could better be used directly solving your problem.” 

With that, the genAI shut down.

Screen-bans and Screen Limits in Schools? Why Not? An Educator's Opportunity to Free Students for Screen Capture

We forget that, in spite of what Big Tech and Tech boosters tell us, we do not have to live lives serving technologies, whether they be AI, Internet, or text messages. We are forever in control, if only we take it.

“We are complicit in our own captivity. Texts, emails, and social media posts constantly interrupt us because we have allowed them to—and we cannot resist attending when they do so,” writes Nate Anderson in his book “In Emergency, Break Glass: What Nietzsche Can Teach Us About Joyful Living in a Tech-Saturated World.”

We are “complicit” in our screen-captivity because we have allowed ourselves to be so. The moral question is perhaps, “Should we also be complicit in the screen-captivity of our students too?” This is done when we race to implement technologies in our classrooms without much thought regarding consequences. “The technology is so damn neat!” we tell ourselves, so we race to use it with students, but are we making ourselves complict in their “screen-capitivity?”

As a part of our so-called “digital literacy” why are we not empowering students to take control of their technologies? Why are we not teaching them strategies to counter attention capture?

We claim we are teaching how and when to use, but unfortunately, it seems, to the pleasure of tech companies, we are teaching them to always use tech. We are teaching them that tech alwayys has the answers, even though it does not.

The screen-bans for me are a powerful tool to break down the tendency of Ed Tech boosters and educators to teach students to become “complicit in their captivity to screens.”

While I am not sure of the complete ban, I do think classrooms that are device-free and not dependent on screens should exist, and it should exist at the discretion of the teacher. The notion that technology can’t stink is false too.

At the other side of these screenbans and screen-limits, perhaps there will be some sanity when it comes to whatever pours forth from Silicon Valley. Sanity, when the next “device craze” hits.

Perhaps those who stand to make bundles of money and their careers off the tech-latest will face a wall of criticism when they declare the next technology to arise as “transformtional” or “game-changing.” Maybe there will be voices that say, wait a minute…”

Right now we have the opportunity to stop being complicit in our own captivity to screens and devices, and we should take it. We can do it and we can teach students to not allow themselves to be controlled by screens.

The Education System Will Not Fail If It Pauses on AI Adoption

AI boosters in education still are pushing the false technological deterministic narratives that Big Tech has indoctrinated them with.

How many times this week have I seen them struggle with the fact that two very large school districts, Los Angeles and New York, have decided to ban AI student use.

In response, they fall back on the tired, worn-out deterministic language that says "AI isn't going anywhere." That somehow students are going to be "behind" or "deprived of something" because of this.

None of that is true of course. There is no urgency in adoption of AI by educators. AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic and Google want us to believe there's an urgency.

But that's because they are desperate to make a profit off this product. So far they haven't. It is urgent for their bottom line, but it is NOT urgent that we turn our students over as users of their products.

I applaud school districts and educational leaders who decide to pause and wait. There is no evidence that the world is going to end except for companies that have bet their whole existence on the success of a product that has yet to prove itself widely.

With the Race to Adopt AI Are Educators Getting It Wrong Again? Probably So

 I suspect education and Ed Tech will get AI wrong like it did with other Tech.

After they spend a great deal of scarce money on a LLM product, they will then be forced to justify it so they will force teachers and students to use the product. 

Their measurement will be number of users and user time, not a measure of effectiveness or achievement. That’s what happened with all the Chromebooks.

The question won't be "Do you find it useful?" It will be one of the must-do's on teacher evaluations. We-bought-it-you-use-it approach.

Why does this happen? Educators and school technologists eagerly adopt a new technology before it has even had time to prove any usefulness. Is it a race to brag?

Or, a neighboring district brags about adoption, and the district has to keep up with the Jones's. Why else do you hear the "Everybody-is-using-it" justification.

Instead of this adoption model, why not try small-scale scientific studies?

Before you sign those 3-year contracts, explore through small-scale adoption with company's free access? Not a two-week trial. Perhaps a two year trial. Don’t declare the product effective because of one-semester of correlated positive results. Be patient.

Perhaps education got technology wrong, and there's a screen ban/limit backlash because there was no local experimentation and evaluation. There was a race to adopt.

The Real Content of Digital Literacy and AI Literacy

What is AI literacy and digital literacy? Well, it shouldn't be just be teaching students "how to use."

It should be teaching students the technologies on a level that they can understand them much, much more deeply. 

We don't want "societal automatons" who just use as they're told.

We should want humans who can make the moral choices about what role AI specifically and technology generally plays in their lives and their future.

We should want humans who can decide for themselves whether the energy costs, water costs, and other resource costs are worth the continued personal and societal investment in AI and other technologies.

Too often Ed Tech and Digital literacy is about making "good-little users and consumers of technology."

Equipping our young with the whole picture behind these technologies, such as environmental costs, human costs, even personal costs, as well as a deep understanding beyond just churning out users for business and industry is imperative. 

Otherwise we are just dumping all the problems in their laps to solve. And I don't have the religious faith in technology that I once held. It is not our savior in waiting. We still have to come back to the human.

When a Silicon Valley CEO Predicts All Jobs Are Doomed, Remember He's Selling You Something!

Why do we continually insist on giving credence to these Silicon Valley CEO prophetic declarations? We shouldn't.

For example Dario Amodei recently prognosticated a whole list of jobs that will be replaced with his pet technology, and I have seen it reposted here in LinkedIn like it was the ten commandments passed down from Mt. Sinai. Why? 

These Seers of Silicon Valley do not deserve this credibility at all. They get much more wrong than right.

For instance, Gil Duran describes one of these errors of prognostication in his book “The Nerd Reich.”

Elon Musk, who has a high opinion of himself and his prophetic talents, predicted in March 2020 that the COVID virus “would soon disappear.” He said at the time, “Based on current trends, probably close to zero new cases in US too by the end of April.”

“The billionaire had zero idea what he was talking about. The pandemic was just getting started.”

We have elevated the Silicon Valley CEOs and technology engineers as well as technology companies to a level of credibility they do not deserve. They have internalized this status and are now the most arrogant and self-promoting humans on the planet, constantly bombarding us with their predictions, which curiously benefit themselves.

This needs to change.

Education needs to stop granting credibility to every prophecy that pours forth from Silicon Valley and from Ed Tech companies. They do not have a special crystal nor a dispensation from the gods that grant them the ability to see into the future. Perhaps instead of taking Silicon Valley CEO soothesaying as gospel, we need to get our students to analyze this for what it is.

Besides, we can see that these so-called “prophecies” are simply part of the marketing tactic to sell more of their products.

The next time you see a post on social media or some glorified media article where one of these prophets of technological doom or paradise are quoted like a propeht, remember that prophets like Musk and his predictions on the pandemic, do not have any idea of what they are talking about. Chances are their prediction directs more people to their products in order to enrich themselves. 

The Missing Component in Digital Literacy: Critical Examination of Consequences of Our Digital Technologies

When we speak of digital literacy in education, often that notion is about the construction of “good little users and consumers of technology.” Instead, what is needed is a digital literacy curriculum that expands into examining the greater societal and environmental impact of the choices we make in technologies.

In other words, most often, digital literacy accepts the technology as inevitable, and that we have no choice but become users. When our digital literacy efforts do this, they are simply serving up students as consumers for Silicon Valley tech companies. With that, we are complicit in increasing tech company power over us and our world.

A true digial literacy curriculum needs a strong critical component that carefully examines the consequences of our technological choices. For example, in dealing with AI literacy, there needs to be deliberate efforts to provide students with the ecological consequences of the massive energy and water consumption of the data centers needed to power it. With social media, there needs to be deliberate instruction on how social media has negatively impacted our society. With every technology in our lives, there needs to be critical thinking about the use of that technology. In other words, students must be equipped with critical knowledge that empowers them to decide for themselves whether they want to be users of that technology or not.

Ed Tech is solely responsible for this state of affairs. They have instilled within us that technology is inevitable and that it is always the answer to our problems. The job of Ed Tech in education has always been unquestioningly turning administrators, teachers, and students into users.

When digital literacy focuses on a critical examination of technologies and the consequences of their use, you do not have “good little users and consumers of tech”; you have empowered citizens who create a society that decides for themselves which technologies deserve a place in their lives.

Advice to Teachers and School Leaders About Tech and AI from 1969 That Is Still Sound Today

There was an educational technologist who provided sound wisdom about AI and all technology in 1969.

Anthony Oettinger, who was a Harvard researcher, acknowledged in his 1969 book “Run, Computer, Run: The Mythology of Educational Innovation,” that instructional technology could lead to improvements in education.

But…he also provided some words of wisdom that Ed techies have forgotten.

He cautioned that instructional technology can’t be “force-fed, oversold, and prematurely applied.

Ed Tech has never taken that advice and plunged into implementation with every new wave of technology that arrives. Perhaps that’s just another reason that the allure of screenbans is so strong today.

With every new technology since the PC, school leaders and ed tech advocates jump to force-feeding those new technologies through “strategic implementation plans” and “forced professional development” without ever taking the time to critically examine those technologies’ places in schooling, teaching and learning.

Then, school leaders and ed techies move to engaging in the very “oversales” tactics that Oettinger warned about. Propagandistic presentations and sales language like “gamechanger, disruptive, and transformative” are the go-to words in this over-selling tactics before anyone has even really been able to explore the technology. Implementation is treated like a “marketing problem” and not whether the technology is actually useful.

Finally, school leaders and ed techies prematurely apply the technologies in widespread fashion. School leaders want to boast about their schools being 1-to-1 schools, AI schools. Ed Tech consultants want to boast about the number of keynote speeches they’ve made and the hours of PD conducted. This happened with earlier tech and it is happening again with AI. The over-selling has generated the hype without really giving teachers and students and researchers time to examine the technology.

Ed Tech has immediately jumped to the search for proof that they were right about AI’s transformative power without giving the technology any time to develop.

Ed Tech’s problem is that it has never encountered a technology that was NOT disruptive, transformative, or a gamechanger. By default, anything silicon-based that comes along fits the bill.

Ed Tech is more into selling technology instead of critically and methodically examining as well as exploring possibilities.

I end with three things offered as advice to school leaders and teachers that captures Oettinger’s 1969 advice:

-Don’t force-feed the tech through strategic implementation plans and mandated PD. Allow time for small-scale experimentation and even resistance if it arises.

-Don’t oversell or even feel like you have to sell a technology. If the technology is miraculous, it will demonstrate this. If it has no promise then it will show this too.

-Finally, don’t engage in premature application ever! Tech options like AI hasn’t been around long enough to be the salvation of education. Don’t talk implementation. Instead talk about experimentation and exploration. Give the tech time to prove itself.

Oettinger’s advice is not antiquated, but that’s how sound wisdom often is, if we don’t allow the glare and glitter of new technologies blind us.

Why Educators and School Leaders Should Be Skeptical with Anthropic's Free AI Access Offer and How to Protect Their Schools

Let’s call Anthropic’s “free” AI access offer for what it is…an effort to get teachers and schools hooked on their product like a drug pusher standing on the curb offering free trial samples. Well, maybe not, but it feels like it.

Obviously, once teachers have invested a great deal of time and data in the product, Anthropic is in total control. They control the technology-user relationship; they control the price; and they control the conditions of use. Schools and educators are in some ways really selling their educator souls!

The notion of being skeptical of anything offered for “free” applies here. Nothing is ever free for long. Absolutely nothing is free.

Anthropic is simply deferring that cost for later. School districts and educators who elect to partake will pay later for their “free” use.

Before having anything to do with Anthropic, I would consider this “free” offer carefully and anticipate expected costs once the system is hooked.

Also, educators and school leaders should demand answers to the following questions before even setting up an educator account:

1) How much can I expect to pay in the future for your product? I need to plan for anticipated costs before a commitment.

2) What happens to all the data that we invest in using your product? Will it be used for training models? Can we have a hard-clad contracted assurance that prevents this in the future?

3) You make no promises about being serious about student and teacher data security beyond quoting something about FERPA, to which you are NOT LEGALLY BOUND. So, what are you going to do to protect our data?

Those are the big questions school leaders should ask before taking Anthropic up on their “free” offer. Though I would say no thanks even before asking them.

Otherwise, school leaders should make sure they protect students’ data and school data by forbidding the upload by anyone in their districts to Anthropic’s product until answers are provided.

My ultimate fear is this is the usual Big Tech and Ed Tech sales tactic.

Get users invested and hooked first. Then you have total control of your users, both their access and price.

That’s not a wise way for school leaders to protect their students, staffs, and school resources. It is extremely short-sighted leadership and non-visionary.

That’s signing a blank check to Anthropic.

Stay away from Silicon Valley companies bearing gifts. It’s not a gift and it’s NOT FREE.