Welcome to Episode 299 (“Truth Over Trickery”) of the EdTech Situation Room from July 26, 2023, where technology news meets educational analysis. This week, Dr. Jason Neiffer (@techsavvyteach) and Wesley Fryer (wesfryer.com/after) discussed recent developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and generative language models. They reviewed several articles, including concerns that ChatGPT is becoming less functional over time and may be losing capabilities. The hosts explored issues around copyright infringement and intellectual property regarding large language models trained on copyrighted content, sparked by comedian Sarah Silverman’s lawsuit against OpenAI. They dove into the implications of AI influencers, election interference threats, and new AI products like Anthropic’s Claude model and Google’s Notebook LM note-taking tool. Throughout, Jason and Wes emphasized the need for transparency and ethical principles in AI development. They argued homework and assessments may need to be reconsidered in light of generative language models. The hosts also covered social media trends, security issues, and the importance of media literacy. They promoted critical thinking and authentic creation in classrooms. In closing, Jason and Wes shared their “Geeks of the Week,” including the historical audio tour app autio.com, the “Airalo E-Sims” product for travelers, an upcoming free AI conference, and several upcoming edtech conferences with option presenter calls: NCCE 2024 and DLAC 2024. The show was live-streamed and archived simultaneously on YouTube Live as well as Facebook Live via StreamYard.com. Please follow @edtechSR on Twitter and @edtechsr@mastodon.education on Mastodon for updates, and join LIVE on Wednesday nights if you can. All shownotes are available on edtechSR.com/links. AI Disclosure: An initial draft of this episode summary was generated using youtubetranscript.com and claude.ai, as well as options for our show title!
Shownotes
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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
- GPT-4 is becoming less functional (Ethan Mollick, Twitter)
- The Homework Apocalypse (Ethan Mollick, One Useful Thing; 1 July 2023)
- What to Know About Claude 2, Anthropic’s Rival to ChatGPT (Time; 18 July 2023)
- Claude 2
- AI learned from their work. Now they want compensation (Washington Post; 16 July 2023)
- NotebookLM is Google’s new AI-driven notes app that is official as of today (Chrome Unboxed; 12 July 2023)
- Apple Tests ‘Apple GPT,’ Develops Generative AI Tools to Catch OpenAI (Bloomberg; 19 July 2023)
- Intelligence nominee warns generative AI poses threat to 2024 elections (Politico, 20 July 2023)
- Fully AI-Generated Influencers Are Getting Thousands of Reactions Per Thirst Trap (Futurism, 20 July 2023)
- Digital Avatars and Our Refusal to Die (LongNow, 21 July 2023)
- ByteDance Releases CapCut Plugin For ChatGPT (Search Engine Journal, 15 July 2023)
- The Once and Future ISTE (eSchool News; 13 July 2023)
- Threads now has ‘tens of millions’ of daily users. But its honeymoon phase may be over (CNN Business; 19 July 2023)
- Twitter replaces its bird logo with an X as part of Elon Musk’s plan for a super app (NPR, 24 July 2023)
- Wes’ Geeks of the Week: Autio and AI x Education Conference (Aug 5-6)
- Jason’s Geeks of the Week: Conference Presentation Opportunities at NCCE 2024 and DLAC 2024 – Travel pro-tip: Airalo E-Sims
