"I had one friend who told a colleague that he was going across campus to an Al workshop, and the other professors said, 'Don't, we're leading a boycott against the workshop.' Okay. I mean, I don't… | Mike Caulfield
"I had one friend who told a colleague that he was going across campus to an Al workshop, and the other professors said, 'Don't, we're leading a boycott against the workshop.' Okay. I mean, I don't remember that kind of thing happening with Wikipedia or other tools for online learning..."
For me at least, it's pretty simple. People are using these tools, and they are using them poorly. We are educators and if we can teach them to use them more effectively we should. If we refuse to do that, where we end up as a society is at least a little bit on us.
But I disagree with Bryan a bit. We went through this before in miniature. In 2010 I was trying to convince people in civic education conferences we should teach people to use social media more effectively, including checking things online. The most common response "We shouldn't be teaching social media, we should be telling students to subscribe to physical newspapers instead." Those students we could have taught that year are thirty-five now. We could have had 15 cohorts of college students knowing how to check the truth of what they see online. Our entire history might be different, and maybe we wouldn't be seeing this rampant conspiracism.
The thing is those professors who said we should just give students physical papers will never realize their role in getting us here. I wish others would consider that history before they treat boycotts of AI workshops like a noble act. When you engage in politics you are judged by results, not intentions. And the results of this approach are not risk free.
