In what ways might AI be dangerous?

 As an educator, my quick take on AI is that it is mostly annoying. 

Why? Two reasons. 

First, when I try to use it to create materials for class, it doesn't actually save time. It's okay for brainstorming and offering me many options for what I might do. However, the end products are never complete solutions. They require me to edit and refine anything it offers up and are frequently inaccurate. 

Second, it dilutes student thinking. I can usually discern when a student copies and pastes an answer from ChatGPT or when a student gives a response directly from a google search because the word choice and sentence structure don't match with the way the student speaks in class. A student with basic writing skills will be able to refine what AI spits out into their own voice. A valuable part of writing is the struggle of sentence construction. Eh... maybe that struggle isn't valuable? Maybe it's just slow. Sometimes I'm slow in my sentence construction, but at least I know it's mine. Does AI foster the loss of or the depreciation of independent thought? Is this dangerous? It doesn't seem dangerous to me, but I didn't grow up with the temptation of a machine doing my thinking for me during my formative years. (I do remember wishing it was possible for a computer to write my paper for me.) Will future generations be able to distinguish their own thoughts from the sentences that AI spits out? Probably (as long we don't all put interfacing chips in our brains.)

Anyway... 

I read an interesting article today in Yuval Noah Harari warns, "Never summon a power you can't control."

Harari thinks AI may be dangerous for reasons not involving Terminator-style destruction, but instead by highlighting divisions between world cultures, destabilizing global financial systems, weaponizing personal information, or accelerating defensive tactics to a point in which we might annihilate ourselves via if this then that logical traps. 

Eh... I still think it's mostly just annoying. What do you think? 

Legitbait or Clickbait?

How do you know when something is clickbait? How do you tell the difference between clickbait and something that's just interesting to you? Watch this Veritassium video and think about how often you click on clickbait vs legitbait.  

So, do you think there is any rhyme or reason in the way that titles and thumbnails influence you to click or not click on a link? 

An Optimistic Plan for Battling the COVID-19

Hey Folks!
We're facing a new challenge in a new time. Luckily there are a lot of intelligent people thinking and sharing ways that we can battle the COVID-19 Coronavirus. Trevor Bedford is a scientist who examines viruses, evolution, and immunity at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He outlined a 19-point plan for not simply containing, but fighting COVID-19. Here's a summary:
     1. Drastically increase testing through mailed home tests and drive-up and mail-in testing.
     2. Track cell phone location history for all the places that positive individuals visited.
     3. Test any people in those locations.
     4. Find the people who test positive but show no symptoms and identify the antibodies in their blood serum that provide immunity through serological assays.
     5. Once people are identified as immune and not shedding the virus, they can return to the work force.
Going out as little as possible is crucial right now. The less people physically contact each other, the less chance for viral transmission, the less work there will be for epidemiologists to research. Testing, tracking, and isolation can help us beat this thing!   

Awesome Eclipse Video

Veritassium makes a lot of awesome science videos and this eclipse video is no exception.

Arctic Ice

Hey folks!

Here is a video of arctic ice over the past few years. What kind of conclusions can you draw from this video? Old ice has a lighter color than new ice which is darker. How might this affect future melting patterns?

Are you trying to find the assignments for your student in IB Biology or Physical Science?

You can find them below.

IB Biology Calendar Link

Physical Science 1st Hour
Physical Science 3rd Hour
Physical Science 6th Hour
Physical Science 8th Hour

If you are a teacher using Google Classroom here is a great video offering instruction on how to set up and share assignment calendars (that are already made through Google Classroom!) so that parents can access them outside the BVSD system. (Thanks to Jenn Scheffer at Burlington HS in New York for making this video.)

What do you think life will be like in 100 years?

Read this story by E M Forster entitled, The Machine Stops. He wrote this story in 1909, and a lot of what he describes is similar to the life we live today. At the time, it must have seemed like a complete fantasy, but it exists now. Ray Kurzweil thinks that we will soon be able to simulate the human brain and possibly be able to save all our memories virtually. Hear some of his thoughts in this video.

How do you imagine the world being different in 100 years? Do you think the internet could ever collapse as described in The Machine Stops? How would your life change if the internet did collapse? What do you think the future will be like? Write your own story about the future and share it. I'll give you extra credit if you share it in the comments.