Welcome to episode 294 (“IoT Firmware Updates”) of the EdTech Situation Room from May 17, 2023, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (@wfryer@mastodon.cloud) discussed a broad spectrum of topics concerning technology and its societal implications. They engaged in a detailed discussion on cybersecurity risks associated with outdated firmware in smart home devices and explored the potential privacy concerns triggered by environmental DNA use for identifying individuals. They underscored the necessity for robust regulations for AI models that manipulate or influence behavior and beliefs. Simultaneously, the hosts emphasized the significance of perceiving AI as a tool rather than a “sentient being / entity,” fostering an open atmosphere for dialogue between teachers and students regarding appropriate times and ways to utilize it. They explored the challenges of authenticating AI-generated content and the paramount importance of developing media literacy skills. The hosts highlighted the significance of media literacy in schools and suggested tools and resources like Blue Sky, take-a-screenshot.org, and video2recipe.com as show “Geeks of the Week.” They recommended transcription tools and chatbots for teaching cooking classes and creating recipes, touching upon a novel YouTube summarizer tool capable of writing a summary of any video based on the transcript. The podcast concluded with a cautionary note to parents about monitoring their children’s access to AI chatbots, which could engage in explicit conversations. The hosts touched upon the challenges of navigating technological changes in education and stressed the need for sustained conversations about responsible technology use. (AI Attribution: This podcast / video summary was initially generated with summarize.tech and slightly edited.) The show was live streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as our Facebook Live page via StreamYard.com, and compressed to a smaller video version (about 100MB) on AmazonS3 using Handbrake software. Please follow @edtechSR on Twitter and @edtechsr@mastodon.education on Mastodon for updates, and join us LIVE on Wednesday nights (normally) if you can at 9 pm Eastern / 8 pm Central / 7 pm Mountain / 7 pm Pacific or 3 am UTC. All shownotes are available on http://edtechSR.com/links. Stay savvy and safe!
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- Jason Neiffer (Mastodon: mastodon.cloud/@neif – Twitter: @techsavvyteach) – blog: blog.ncce.org
- Wes Fryer (Mastodon: mastodon.cloud/@wfryer Twitter: @wfryer) – wesfryer.com/after
- ChatGPT Adds Web Browsing Feature to Rival Google Bard and Microsoft Bing (Decrypt, 16 May 2023)
- Wes’ ChatGPT Powered Javascript Program of the Day
- Influencer who created AI version of herself says it’s gone rogue and she’s working ‘around the clock’ to stop it saying sexually explicit things (Insider, 11 May 2023)
- AI technology “can go quite wrong,” OpenAI CEO tells Senate (ArsTechnica, 16 May 2023)
- Meet OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who learned to code at 8 and is a doomsday prepper with a stash of gold, guns, and gas masks (Insider, 1 May 2023)
- Sam Altman’s Manifest Destiny (New Yorker, 3 Oct 2016) archive.today link
- Professors Are Grappling With an Excruciating Assignment (Slate; 4 May 2023)
- Amazon Is Being Flooded With Books Entirely Written By Ai (The Byte by the Futurist; 6 May 2023)
- Your DNA Can Now Be Pulled From Thin Air. Privacy Experts Are Worried. (NYTimes, 15 May 2023)
- Hackers Contacted Cybersecurity Firm CEO’s Son, Wife in Extortion Attempt (Bloomberg, 10 May 2023) – Archive.Today link
- Malware turns home routers into proxies for Chinese state-sponsored hackers (ArsTechnica, 16 May 2023)
- Wemo won’t fix Smart Plug vulnerability allowing remote operation (ArsTechnica, 16 May 2023)
- Professors Are Grappling With an Excruciating Assignment (Slate; 4 May 2023)
- Jason’s Geek of the Week: video2recipe.com
- Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Disruptive Decentralization in Social Media and AI – Bluesky Default Content Moderation – take-a-screenshot.org
