Hilarious three-legged problems with AI deliver teachable moments.
I wish more Scarlett Johanssons would take on OpenAI and its ilk.
I’m in Sri Lanka enjoying the unexpected cool weather. So when I met someone whose company has begun using AI —everyone I meet seems to be in love with OpenAI— I had to get on my hobby horse about plagiarism. He understood the need to ‘fence off’ the content they feed the algorithm, but as he says they are still investigating how to give users access, and for what. Meaning, he is cautious. A good mindset to have on this journey, even if you’re not a skeptical as me.
Like the weather, things have cooled down a bit in the chaotic AI arms race that puts algorithms in the driving seat. Speaking of which, recently a Waymo driverless vehicle collided with a cyclist, since it did not ‘see’ around a truck in front of it. God forbid if we were to let AI take over the reins from air traffic controllers!
Plagiarism & the Death of Ideation
Or take voice theft. It’s a thing! You may have heard a lawsuit by Scarlett Johansson against OpenAI for allegedly using her voice. (For a deep dive, read WIRED which covers the legal implications well.) It’s the modern equivalent of plagiarism. Intellectual property right violation akin to ‘copying’ someone without permission. Theft, basically.
Sure, young people will be infatuated by the ability to get algorithms to produce anything - essays, books, graphics, software, presentations, videos etc in a few clicks. If we don’t address this, I told my friend, the problems will go deeper than plagiarism.
Young people will begin to believe that they can’t be as ‘creative’ as the tool, and over time, give up on ideation. Slaves to the tool, we would be encouraging them to outsource everything. First, because the can. Second, because they will be unable to do what they were once capable of doing. Remember how we once knew every phone number of our friends and cousins? What made our brains do that?
Here’s how it plays out in my class.
Before we closed for summer, my students were experimenting with AI images through Bing, now a AI-powered search engine. They also discovered that the Photoshop-like tool, we use in class, Pixlr, has a similar option. Take a look at these images used by some students for an eBook assignment. (I’ve written about how each semester my 7th graders come up with about 125 books.)
Exhibit A: Spot anything odd about this cover? It’s not just the plastic-like muscles.
I call this the three-legged football player problem. The OpenAI tool in Bing goes off the rails at times. But instead of being annoyed with the outcome, I savored the moment. A wonderful opportunity to teach visual literacy.
Exhibit B: This book was about an off-duty soldier called to fight a war set in the future. Notice anything weird here?
Yeah, the gloves. Looks like they came from from Home Depot! Anything else? Check the flag on his shoulder.
On May 14th, I presented a similar topic in a TED-Talk like event I had put together at my school. (We called it BEN Talks, being Benjamin Franklin High School.) My point was that the elephant in the room today is not even an elephant. It’s a parrot —the ‘stochastic parrot’ that researcher Emily Bender and others warned us about. It’s luring us down a dangerous path, and will pose a huge threat.
I remember a time when we we were fed the hype of how the ‘Internet of Things’ (IOT) would rescue us. (Have to admit, I swallowed that as well.) A malfunctioning part on an aircraft making a long distance flight would ‘communicate’ with its destination, so that technicians would be ready to replace it when the plane lands. (The pilot would not even know; the ‘things’ would talk to each other.) IOT is here, but fortunately its not for every-thing. The fairy lights can talk to the Bluetooth speaker, for all I care. But spare me the Apple watch that can tell my fridge what I need to cook for dinner because of some health condition it tracks through my skin.
If IOT was supposed to make our lives safer and convenient how come a window of a Boeing aircraft could come loose and drop out of the sky, without any warning? Why didn’t the loose nuts text message the wizards at Boeing to tell them so?
We were sold on some misleading, overhyped ‘intelligence,’ and no one dared question it. If you did, you were a fringe Luddite who needed to be voted off the island. I’m sorry but I got to this island because there was a pilot and a co-pilot on board—and not some aviation algorithm.
If you’re a student, you’ll love this.
On a related note, I support a Writers’ website, Write The World, which encourages young people to express their creative writing. Here’s one submission from Archer Adams, a freshman at a high school. Powerful poetry about AI’s ‘knowledge.’
So what do we do, besides write poetry and articles bemoaning the awkward, overhyped pathway we are being led?
I think we should join the resistance to three-legged athletes, put on proper gloves, and take on the tech bros feeding us this pipe dream. There are more urgent, humanitarian needs that could be addressed through technology.
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