AI Educational Utopian Myths Abound: Be Skeptical

Check to be sure that you have not fallen for the utopian dreams of endless prosperity and freedom offered up by AI Evangelists and Ed Tech consultants. Those will turn out to be empty dreams.

Vincent Mosco wrote in his 2005 book "Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace:

"American history in particular is replete with visions of technological utopia spun by mythmaking optimists." (p. 36)

Mosco captures in 2005 the same spirit of the so-called "Age of AI." Today, we still have an abundance of "mythmaking optimists" who peddle their "visions of technological uptopia" powered by AI. It is a myth.

Those optimists are at it again, as the Silicon Valley mob share their mythical visions of utopia. But it is an old story:

First, they brought promises of a utopian community through social media that has resulted in a world of massive polarization and division. False promise number one.

Second, they promised an internet that would provide us with knowledge at our fingertips, but instead they gave us a deformed web where paywalls and data extraction/exploitation must be the ransom paid before you receive that knowledge.

What Silicon Valley ultimately gives us is a deformed, mutant versions of its utopian promises.

You can bet Silicon Valley's mythical vision of AI utopia will turn into a mutated version that somehow makes us all worse off.

#AI #EdTech #AIEducation #Education

Are Our Screens and Devices Harming the Very Students We Serve? Perhaps, Here's a Book to Spark Critical Thinking about Device Addiction in Schools

 In order to Disrupt the passive, uncritical acceptance of all things technological into schools, I recommend that school leaders and all educators add Jared Coooney Horvath's "The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms Our Kids' Learning—And How to Help Them Thrive Again" to their reading list.

It really isn't about "banning all screens" in schools; it's about not allowing devices and tech determine what happens in our classrooms and with our students.

Horvath rightfully captures how we as educators have been complicit in turning the control of education over to companies who have made big promises that have not panned out. In fact, the evidence is growing, despite dismissal by the tech evangelical movement, that there is some actual harm caused by this proliferation of technologies.

Don't forget, the smartphone and its apps, especially social media apps, are designed to be addictive and to "capture eyeballs" and we have invited these into our classrooms with open arms. 

Horvath is correct in his whole premise that we need to wrestle back control of our education system, our schools, our classrooms, and our instruction from devices.

It doesn't mean a complete ban; it means removing tech from its central pedestal on which we have placed it.

I could see using this book as a faculty-wide read with some powerful and lively discussions on the rightful place of technologies in our schools and in our lives.

Horvath even offers many hands-on ideas to implement a EdTech Detoxification Process in schools or even in our lives as parents.

If we are going to foster critical examination of EdTech and the constant flow of gadgets from Silicon Valley this book is a good place to start.

The Label "Smart" Device Might Not Be a Good Thing: Read Jathan Sadowski's "Too Smart"

 Here is a book to add to your critical Edtech and critical thinking about technology list, even though it goes back a bit to 2020.

"Too Smart: How Digital Capitalism Is Extracting Data, Controlling Our Lives, and Taking Over the World" By Jathan Sadowski

Sadowski takes you through a critical overview of how companies are purposefully making their products "smart" products in order to facilitate data extraction for exploitation purposes. 

When a device is labeled "smart" you can bet it is gathering data about you and not always for your benefit. 

• Free consumer apps companies use this data to sell. 
• Insurance companies use this data against you in their pricing schemes and to manipulate you in your driving habits.
• Government entities use it in their surveillance activities.

After reading this book, when a salesperson touts that a TV or a dryer is a "smart" device, you will not automatically see that as a plus. You will know that it is more of a tactic of exploitation at best and manipulation at the worst.

A lot of money has been spent on convincing us as consumers that the quality of being "smart" is a good thing for our devices. It is not.

Sadowski even suggests ideas of how to disrupt and avoid all this, from turning off these features or anything related to them to the idea of purposefully sabotaging the whole smart enterprise.

There is a lot to be said about shading parts of your life out of reach of Big Tech. 

Why Promises of EdTech Disruption Fail: What Should Educators Do Instead

One thing educators can expect—a continuous barrage of new product pitches that claim to have disruptive and transformative abilities—and that is happening as Tech Companies churn out their new gadgets.

AI is just the latest iteration of that pitch. This time, the AI evangelists claim, there is finally going to be profound changes in education.

This prediction is wrong.

Schools are conservative institutions. They resist disruptive change because that’s the way they are built, for better or worse. 

If they change, the do so incrementally and slowly and that is purposeful, because if schools radically changed at the arrival of every technological or pedagogical whim, they would be “fad-surfing institions.”

Institutions that surf the lastest fads don’t every really fundamentally change in ways beneficial to anybody. Once the hype and the money has been spent on EdTech and AI consultants and technological hardware, the school is still there, and history shows it is no better or worse mostly.

Schools spend millions on these so-called “disruptive and transformative initiatives and when the hype dies down and has moved on to the next thing, they are left wandering why things are still the same and where all the money has gone.

True incremental educational change does not come from adopting new gadgets and paying off EdTech and AI consultants.

True incremental change happens when educators as a community of teachers sit down and do the hard work of examining where they are and working to find solutions.

You don’t start with a solution looking for a problem to solve which is what AI seems to be. We did that with PCs, the web, social media, online learning, only to discover that our long-time problems were left behind.

Silicon Valley Big Tech Innovation Model and Ed Tech's Role in It

 Silicon Valley Big Tech Innovation Model…

Big Tech engages in the “BIG Search.” This is where the companies search for the next Tech that will capture and enslave and addict users.

Discovery of Next Thing. Big Tech companies find a technology, device that has addiction/enslavement potential. (Variation, sometimes they transform and invention into an addictive technology).

Marketing for Addiction. Tech companies market their product as: a) a must-have tech or you will be left behind/irrelevant, or worse a Luddite, b) everybody is using or will be using, so you will be left out, c) you might as well adopt and adapt because the tech is already changing the world for the better. (NOTE: This is said even if it is not or if its negative consequences are substantial.)

Getting the Ed Institutions On-Board. Tech companies next get educators and Ed Tech involved by getting them “integrate” or “usage-promote” for students. This ensures future and sustainable users and markets for the companies. Also, Ed Tech consultants get a cut of the pie through consultant fees, keynote speaking fees. (NOTE: This is usually done on hearsay and no evidence. Educators who want to do what’s best for students are guilt-tripped until they get on board.)

Maintenance of the Addictive Solution/Technology. Tech companies maintain usage through continued marketing tactics above. They use uncritical acceptance of their product to their advantage. Ed Tech evangelists attack anyone who questions and criticizes. (NOTE: The Luddite Name-Calling Tactic is common.) They market their product as an unequivocal societal good, even as negative consequences stack up.

Big Tech Innovation Cycle Repetition. Tech companies search for more “innovative” addictive tech products. (NOTE: Variation—Big Tech companies buy out other technologies by small new companies and repeat the process above.)

As an educator what is most worrisome is the uncritical, entanglement of Ed Tech with these companies. This forces educators to subject students to these technologies uncritically. 

Educators are expected to sanitize and Tech-wash these products by Big Tech and the Educational Establishment.

Another AI Company CEO Boasts About AI: Educators Need to Be Aware of a Used Car Salesmen Here

Another AI Company CEO Matt Schumer is promising major disruptions due to his pet technology. His X post hyping up his AI systems are below.

Schumer Something Big Is Happening (and I stand to make a bundle so you need to purchare my Hyperwrite Product)

Those who are sharing this individual's AI braggadocio, have you even asked the critical questions of these claims? 

First of all, have you considered that this individual has a biased interest that would make him say such things? After all, he wants users to sign up for his product and stands to make a bundle.

Educators, use some critical thinking before you buy into this nonsense. This just continues to fuel the AI bubble which is going blow at some point.

These AI CEO Shysters are out for your money and anyone's money and don't really care how their predictions harm others.

Educators should avoid doing anything or subjecting students to any Tech gadgets based on what these CEOs say.

EdTech Consultants and Some Educators Suffer from the Borg Complex: They See Resistance to All Technologies as Futile

I think I have found an effective diagnosis of the condition currently suffered by EdTech consultants and evangelists who can't help slobbering over AI: it is called the "Borg Complex."

The Borg Complex is described in an article entitled "Borg Complex: A Primer" in 2013 by L.M. Sacasas.

These EdTech AI boosters suffer from Borg Complex because they "explicitly assert or implicitly assume that resistance to technology is futile. The Borg is a cybernetic alien race in the Star Trek Universe that tells their victims that they will assimilate them biologically and technologically into their own and that "Resistance Is Futile."

Our EdTech consultants and boosters tell us educators that we might as well adopt AI because its here. In other words, "Resistance is futile." 

They might also exhibit some of the other symptoms as well:

For example, in this article, 

Symptom 1: "Makes grandiose, but unsupported claims for technology." How often have we heard that "AI is a gamechanger" or that it is "revolutionizing education" with absolutely NO support? 

Symptom 3: "Pays lip service to, but ultimately dismisses genuine concerns." This is repeatedly done when they are presented with new research that points to cognitive outsourcing issues, or when the environmental costs of all these AI server farms are mentioned.

Symptom 4: "Equates resistance or caution to reactionary nostalgia." If you resist AI, you are simply clinging to old inefficient, unproductive ways.

And Symptom 8: "Refers to historical antecedents to solely dismiss present concerns." How many times have I heard an AI booster nostalgically call resistance to AI like the resistance to calculators when introduced.

Borg Complex Rhetoric is designed to short-circuit any critical thought and critical examination of AI.