Public education itself is a more wildly ambitious innovation than anything the tech industry has ever, or could ever, offer. Working to fulfill the promise of that innovation can help us be clear-eyed about what a volatile, diminished substitute Alpha School and its ilk are peddling.

There is of course this fantastic piece from Audrey Watters - but it's paid subscribers only (do subscribe! it's worth it!) and I need something for students ... 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ai-literacy-...

Maybe I do need to do that! Aside from all the co-option of AI literacy (even 'critical') for corporate interests it's such a get-out clause to avoid institutions and governments taking responsibility.

It’s like the people pushing AI don’t know or care how humans work. We relate through shared effort and shared struggle. Teachers want to be understood, students want to understand. Each learns from and instructs the other. That IS the relationship.

No human doctor has the time to do real-time tracking of all their patients' data. This is clearly predicated on diagnosis and prescription carried out by AI doctors too.

I'm increasingly of the opinion that measuring time saved on specific tasks misses the point entirely - we need to ask if and how that notional time saved is actually used instead.

The pick'n'mix statement bank approach to report writing, much loathed by parents, has paved the way for this further automation.

There's multiple AI/automation discussions around UK public sector where you can see this simplistic multiplication of "potential savings for a human tasks" by "number of tasks" going on

Kinda fine if it's just for PR, but if ppl are building it into business cases then could easily damage services

The important question isn't whether time can be shaved off a specific task, but how that time is then used, and the experience or impact on *overall workload*

And yes, maybe this could be helpful as a scaffold for going on to read the chapter in more depth. But really - how likely is that to actually happen in the context of current university education?

As well as not really an accurate summary of the argument.

The summary of Ch.8 in Digital Timescapes by @robkitchin.bsky.social is so bland it's useless: 'The development and adoption of digital devices and technologies are reshaping the temporal relations and organization of work and labour, leading to new dynamics such as the gig economy and automation.'

Quite!

And just ... why bother being a teacher if you spend more time fact-checking text extrusion machine outputs than developing your own thinking?

Transparency and accountability are core professional principles, but the responsibility is entirely placed on education staff.
Why let providers and companies off the hook like this?
Doing this thoroughly and consistently will likely take *more time* than that saved (so it won't get done)

This looks great! Would be great to use this for discussions with my Digital Education masters students.