Artificial Intelligence and You

Few institutions are under as much pressure today as journalism and news publishing, and AI features squarely in the middle of those pressures. Disinformation, social media, automated news generation, the list goes on; we’re talking about the fabric of our information society. Here to help us understand these issues is Neil Brown, former editor and vice president of the Tampa Bay Times while they won six Pulitzers, and president of the Poynter Institute for Media Studies. For over 50 years Poynter has trained journalists and protected the ethical standards of the industry through mechanisms like the International Fact-Checking Network and the Craig Newmark Center for Ethics and Leadership. Neil spent four decades as a journalist, launched PolitiFact.com, and was co-chair of the Pulitzer Prize Board. His mission is to strengthen democracy and confront society's most complex problems by improving the value of journalism and increasing media literacy, so we are very fortunate to have him on the show to field my challenging questions!

We talk about pressures on news organizations, the evolution of the relationship between journalism and publishing, how revenue models are changing, the impact and use of AI or psychometric analysis tools, and much more.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

In our last episode of 2024, we have our traditional end of year retrospective/prediction episode. We’ll be taking a look back over the year just ending and forward to 2025, but we’re not going to focus on technology, when GPT-5 is going to drop, etc. The space is already stuffed full of that sort of thing. We’re going to look at the time through an anthropological lens, for which I am rejoined by two former guests, anthropologist Beth Singler, who was in episodes 38 and 39, and philosopher John Zerilli, who was in episodes 78 and 79. Beth is Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) and co-lead of the Media Existential Encounters and Evolving Technology Lab at the University of Zurich, where she leads projects on religion and AI. Her most recent books are Religion and Artificial Intelligence and The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Artificial Intelligence. John is a Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, with a PhD in cognitive science and philosophy, and carrying out research at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His most recent book, A Citizen’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence, was published in 2021.

We consider how AI has been reshaping public narratives and attitudes over questions like job replacement, creativity, education, law, and religion.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

Here to give us insights into some of the really cool stuff Google DeepMind is doing is Alexandra Belias, Head of product policy & partnerships. She serves as a bridge between DeepMind’s product policy organization and the policy community. She previously led their international public policy work. She has an MPA in Economic Policy from LSE and is currently a tech fellow at the Harvard Carr Center for Human Rights.

We talk about Google DeepMind's science policy, the emerging network of national AI safety institutes, the tension between regulation and innovation, AlphaFold and its successors, AlphaMissense and AlphaProteo, their SynthID watermarking detection tool, reducing contrail pollution through AI, and safety frameworks for frontier AI.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

It's tough enough being a teacher in the AI age, so can you imagine what it's like training the teachers themselves? That's what Dwayne Wood, Associate Professor at National University of San Diego does. He is the Academic Program Director for the Educational Technology Master’s program there, so he’s front and center of the question of how teachers deal with AI in the classroom and has been working on addressing the current shortage of teachers.

We talk about the possible impact of AI on essential learning skills, the difference between technical and tactical competence, the in-person educational experience, and how Dwayne sees things changing in the next year.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

It's tough enough being a teacher in the AI age, so can you imagine what it's like training the teachers themselves? That's what Dwayne Wood, Associate Professor at National University of San Diego does. He is the Academic Program Director for the Educational Technology Master’s program there, so he’s front and center of the question of how teachers deal with AI in the classroom and has been working on addressing the current shortage of teachers.

We talk about the relationships between teachers and students, the shifting base of fundamental skills in an AI world, the skills needed by instructional designers, how to teach effective and safe use of generative AI, and how to place the guardrails around learners using it.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

We are going big on the show this time, with astrophysicist J. Craig Wheeler,  Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor of Astronomy, Emeritus, at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of the book The Path to Singularity: How Technology will Challenge the Future of Humanity, released on November 19. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society, has published nearly 400 scientific papers, authored both professional and popular books on supernovae, and served on advisory committees for NSF, NASA, and the National Research Council. His new book, spanning the range of technologies that are propelling us towards singularity from robots to space colonization, has a foreword by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, who says, “The world is long overdue for a peek at the state of society and what its future looks like through the lens of a scientist. And when that scientist is also an astrophysicist, you can guarantee the perspectives shared will be as deep and as vast as the universe itself.”

We talk about the evolution of homo sapiens, high reliability organizations, brain computer interfaces, and transhumanism among other topics.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

We're extending the conversation about AI in education to the front lines in this episode, with four very experienced and credentialed educators discussing their experiences and insights into AI in schools.

• Jose Luis Navarro IV is the leading coach and consultant at the Navarro Group. He previously served as a Support Coordinator, leading innovative reforms in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
• Zack Kleypas is Superintendent of Schools in Thorndale, Texas, and named 2023 Texas Secondary Principal of the Year by the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals.
• Jeff Austin is a former high school teacher and principal who now works as a coach for Teacher Powered Schools and Los Angeles Education Partnership.
• And Jose Gonzalez, Chief Technology Officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education and former Vice Mayor of the city of Cudahy near Los Angeles.

In the conclusion, we talk about whether students need to read as much as they used to now they have AI, fact checking, some disturbing stories about the use of AI detectors in schools, where the panel sees these trends evolving to, what they’re doing to help students learn better in an AI world, and… Iron Man.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

We're extending the conversation about AI in education to the front lines in this episode, with four very experienced and credentialed educators discussing their experiences and insights into AI in schools.

• Jose Luis Navarro IV is the leading coach and consultant at the Navarro Group. He previously served as a Support Coordinator, leading innovative reforms in the Los Angeles Unified School District.
• Zack Kleypas is Superintendent of Schools in Thorndale, Texas, and named 2023 Texas Secondary Principal of the Year by the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals.
• Jeff Austin is a former high school teacher and principal who now works as a coach for Teacher Powered Schools and Los Angeles Education Partnership.
• And Jose Gonzalez, Chief Technology Officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education and former Vice Mayor of the city of Cudahy near Los Angeles.

We talk about how much kids were using GenAI without our knowing, how to turn GenAI in schools from a threat to an opportunity, the issue of cheating with ChatGPT, the discrepancy between how many workers are using AI and how many teachers are using it, how rules get made, confirmation bias and AI, using tools versus gaining competencies, and whether teachers will quit.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.