ZingerLearns @ZingerLearns@social.cleverlibre.org

People worry a lot about losing knowledge — about "burned-down libraries".

Comparatively few people seem to worry about what happens if you take a billion books full of auto-generated, often-untrue junk text and *add* them all to the library.

In theory, nothing is lost. In reality, everything is lost, because nothing useful can now be found.

Happy #caturday! Dusty says it’s important to live your best life, indulging in things that bring you joy like baskets and pancake syrup. 😉

#caturday #cats

Solidarity w
@BostonJoan. This is so familiar. NYU did similar to AI Now. We were v successful, but too critical, & were kicked out bc we didn't "align with the strategy." They took $4M of our funding, and used it to support weak big-tech friendly work.

I'm so glad AI Now is out of there, and able to pursue grounded honest work not hampered by the voracious pursuit of big tech funding.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/2/2/donovan-forced-leave-hks/

@AnnemarieBridy My guess is a billionaire conservative donor asked for it to be gone. Harvard is a law unto itself. Literally. They have their own article in the Massachusetts Constitution, since they predate the state and the nation. And they pay no property taxes.

Apple’s new algorithm to detect whether someone has been in a car accident is wreaking havoc for 911 call centers this ski season. Yet another example of a good idea from a technology company in theory that has problems in practice. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/health/apple-watch-911-emergency-call.html

You don't have to be a Harvard professor to do the math on this one... #JoanDonovan's pathbreaking work on #disinformation and #SocialMedia is a liability for a university that gets half a billion dollars from the owner of the greatest disinformation machine ever built. #commodon @commodon @communicationscholars @ICAHDQ @HigherEdLabor #academic @academicchatter

Today in #LuxurySurveillance https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/health/apple-watch-911-emergency-call.html

Yesterday I attended a popular webinar around chat, #GPT in education. The special guest went on at length about how amazing the tool was with no mention of ethics. They talked about using the tool with eighth graders with no mention that this violates the terms of use. No mention of getting consent from these children, who cannot consent so I guess no mention of getting consent from their parents. No mention of privacy no mention of anything critical.

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@ccampboyle @ZingerLearns @ungrading Yes, absolutely. These are such important questions. I’d like to see administrators reflect on this more. I see less movement at the upper levels than I do in the classroom.

The US appeals court just ruled men under domestic violence orders can own guns

Every day in America, three women die from domestic violence

This country won’t stop at taking our rights, they want to take our lives

Many of the conservatives who are pushing hardest for book bans in public schools homeschool their kids or send them to private schools.

They still push for this because destruction of public schools as an engine of egalitarianism, democracy and social mobility serves their larger ideological goals of having an unequal society with "good people" like them at the top, served and exploited by exploited and ignorant poor underneath.

Final tally was 36 hours without power. Very happy to have had a back-up plan after managing Feb. 2021. Had difficulty following public info (cuz Twitter yadda yadda yadda). Should I buy a radio? #TX #poweroutage #atx #winterstorm

Forced return to office plans only serve to drive mothers & others with caretaking responsibilities out of the workforce. The estimated 72 min avg commute time savings matter, the difference between chaos & sanity.
https://time.com/6251465/return-to-office-working-moms-pandemic/

A House Republican from Utah just introduced a bill that would ban every kid under 16 from using social media.

@evangreer: “For many kids, especially LGBTQ young people who may have unsupportive parents or live in a conservative area, the internet and social media are a lifeline"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/02/02/new-bill-would-ban-anyone-under-16-using-social-media/

I talked to the former Memphis police surveillance manager who installed the SkyCop camera that recorded Nichols' beating (and who now works for SkyCop).

He said, “Crimes of passion cannot be deterred. ... In the Nichols case, that was a crime of passion, and it was caught on video."

He says surveillance is the future, so get used to it:

“It’s the most indiscriminate form of policing there is. The camera doesn’t care. It just records.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/02/02/skycop-nichols-memphis-crime/

@ZingerLearns @ccampboyle @ungrading That's what I was thinking: lack of transparency. Surprise! Your excellent paper deserves a D. Why would a teacher do that? It's sadistic.

@DrSuzanne @ZingerLearns @ungrading However, my father didn’t take it that way. He was angry before she told him that. Afterward, he interpreted it as being called on coasting, and he agreed that he was. When he relayed the story to me 25 years later, he was using it as an example of the need to put in that good faith effort. She was actually his favorite teacher; he credited her with keeping him intellectually honest.