6 Critical AI & Education Articles I've Read Over the Last Week
(1) Education’s future. From a powerful post by AIEdu’s Alex Kotran (a former debater).
While I lack hard data, more people are seeing the value of speech and debate as well as its added importance in the AI World. More schools are adding full-time speech and debate positions, with one school even advertising for a coach with AI skills.
(2) A SubStack post by Zach Stanford, one of the Block employees who survived the layoff of 40%+ of the workforce. While there has been a debate over how much of the lay-offs were due to AI automation vs. previous over-hiring, and business troubles, Stanford says that as an insider he knows that at least some of it was due to AI automation. To give oneself the best chance, he suggests learning to build with AI and integrate it into workflows.
(3) In her weekly email, Allie Miller makes a similar point
And adds skills debate teaches.
Once again, debate offers the key skills for the AI era.
(4) AI in Warfare. A reported in the “Deep View,” The fight over who controls AI just began. It cites three articles.
“Clawed,” By Dean W. Ball for Hyperdimensional. In this long-form piece, Ball makes the argument that the fight between Anthropic and the U.S. government is indicative of a “death rattle of the old republic.” The fight also marks one of the first times the question of who should control AI has been debated in the public eye, and the government got off on “extraordinarily bad footing” in the argument.
“Anthropic and Alignment,” by Ben Thompson for Stratechery. Thompson argues that Anthropic’s insistence on designating how its models can be used is “fundamentally misaligned with reality,” claiming that it is intolerable for corporate executives to supersede the decisions of elected officials.
“A Few Observations on AI Companies and Their Military Usage Policies,” by Sarah Shoker for fishbowlificiation. Shoker, former leader of OpenAI’s geopolitics team, takes a broader view of the subject, pointing out that frontier AI labs don’t have coherent policies around military AI use, which has allowed these firms to live in a vague grey area of “optionality.” Additionally, the use of AI in military action is largely opaque due to policy, disinformation and the fog of war creating “black boxes” all around.
(5) The National Speech & Debate Association announced its spring Public Forum Debate topic: The United States should eliminate the President’s authority to deploy military forces abroad without Congressional approval.
The voting did take place before the attack on Iran.
Working with Claude Co-Work, I co-authored an article on the topic here.
Again, debate education sits at the cutting edge of what is relevant.
(6) Anthropic vs. The Pentagon, Claude Outpaces ChatGPT, and Consulting Gets Replaced.
Across many issues, these leading experts point out that our entire civilization will be rebuilt and introduces key questions.
How will we rewrite a new social contract?
How will prepare our students for the collapse of the economic value of cognitive work?
Is anyone surprised this will contribute to wars?
What doe these have to do with “edtech”? Nothing.