Ryan Williamson
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socraticreview.org
Ryan Williamson
@socraticreview.org
130 followers 200 following 87 posts
Latin teacher, avid napper, Jesuitical. Considered "harsh, off-putting, and contrarian." One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
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@supergiantgames.bsky.social Love the Hades II soundtrack! Will it be coming to Apple Music soon?
Reposted by Ryan Williamson
To use it like this is to teach children that a statistical composite is better than their own imagination.

It is morally wrong on that basis alone, before you even get to all the harm required to produce it
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I told them I would always rather see what they had drawn themselves.

"But I can't draw it as pretty"

I hate this fucking technology and it should not be anywhere near a classroom
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Yesterday my 5th grader told me their teacher gave them an assignment:

write a description of their own secret garden (apparently they've been reading it)...that she would then feed into ChatGPT to make a picture of it

I hate this so much
Reposted by Ryan Williamson
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Me: AI is bad for education

AI booster: but what if we imagined a teacher that loves AI

Me: teachers hate AI actually

AI booster: source?????
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This dovetails a lot with what educators are asking themselves: more needs to be done to make affirmative claims about the value of literature, close reading, whole books, etc—without ceding all the ground to the classical ed and Great Books culture industry.
I didn’t get the wording down precisely, so I won’t quote it, but one of the things that hit hard in the room:

Reactionaries waging culture wars against the humanities have a more accurate account of our power than we do. And our humility is not admirable, but an abdication of responsibility.
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In about three years the entire university pivot to AI curricula and schools and programs is going to be so deeply embarrassing. We will all pretend it never happened and I will be standing there, looking at people with a mirror in my eyes. This is all so embarrassing.
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In all seriousness, smart glasses should be illegal. Full stop. They are designed to violate everyone’s privacy all the time.

You don’t have to convince people to spy on their neighbors if you just get them to wear a device that does it automatically.
Meta and Google want to free you from screens — by putting one in front of your eyes at all times.

This week @hypervisible.blacksky.app joins @parismarx.com to discuss the anti-social world they’re trying to create through mass adoption of smart glasses.

Full ep: techwontsave.us/episode/298_...
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It felt like an extremely radical thing to say "you can just not teach them how to use this. i don't even know what it means to teach them AI skills but you can also just not. it might make your students more hireable, honestly."

But this idea that it's a tool whose existence justifies its use?
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"My profession - that of university teacher - is in this way dangerous. If we are any good we must always be working towards the moment at which our pupils are fit to become our critics and rivals. We should be delighted when it arrives." - C. S. Lewis
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I actually don't really care if AI is useful/interesting/good for some things in education actually - it is besides these things clearly a big problem already that maybe need listing yet again:
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Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”
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I find it maddening and saddening that any teachers are outsourcing lesson planning, which should be an incredibly creative pursuit—and should also be hyper specific in terms of the teacher as professional with a particular constellation of knowledge, passion, and talents and students w/ the same.
How could it *possibly* know how to conduct stakeholder outreach in this hyper specific context and why would I pay you for your knowledge if you want to ask Chat GPT that
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history teacher in 50 years: So in September, that’s when the president signed an executive order criminalizing anti-fascism and saying all resistance would be crushed

student: oh so that’s when the whole country realized they were living under fascism

teacher: haha what? oh no lol not at all. no.
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This raid is disgusting, abominable behavior, traumatizing children and families in their homes.
abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...
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ACLU @aclu.org · 20d
BREAKING: Our client Mario Guevara, an Emmy-winning journalist detained by ICE in retaliation for livestreaming law enforcement activity, will be deported tomorrow to El Salvador.

Mario and his family are being punished for his reporting. This cruelty is meant to stifle our free press.
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In any other context, imagine hearing about an adult zip tying children to each other. No really, what would you call that?
This raid is disgusting, abominable behavior, traumatizing children and families in their homes.
abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chi...
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OpenAI employees are very excited about how well their new AI tool can create fake videos of people doing crimes and have definitely thought through all the implications of this
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Cardinal Robert McElroy at the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees: “We are witnessing an unprecedented assault on our nation…this assault is intended to make life miserable for undocumented migrants…our government is engaged in a comprehensive campaign of fear at its core.”