Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 14d

Chatbots (*the* interface for LLMs) are more like "chit" -- a voucher, an obligation, an IOU, a bind -- than "chat" 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/chit-chat/

Chit Chat

Chit: an official note, sometimes a voucher or an IOU; a slip of paper that grants permission Chat: an informal conversation; a friendly talk Chit-chat: "A reduplication with vowel variation of chat...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

3 9

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 19d

The purpose of education, if there is "education" under techno-fascism/Christian Nationalism, is compliance and control. "AI" serves this perfectly. 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/how-do-you-w...

How Do You Want to Be Remembered?

"The best way to honor Charlie’s memory," California Governor Gavin Newsom said, "is to continue his work." And so we've seen in the last week: the targeted harassment of those who've spoken out about...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

10 19

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 21d

Today's bird is the screaming piha. Just a wee little thing, but one of the loudest birds in the world. 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/voices-carry...

Voices Carry

I'm truly at a loss of what to say today. (Last week. It lingers, doesn't it.) So (I guess) let me just repeat a point I've made repeatedly: one of the saddest rationales for using "AI" is for "brain...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 4 14

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 26d

Sowing and reaping etc 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-watch-li...

The Watch List

In a children's literature class at Texas A&M University this summer, a student interrupted the professor as she began to recap some of the previously covered material, "remarks on gender and sexualit...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

9 12

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · 28d

Someone asked me to listen to the latest Hard Fork episode on AI in schools, and I tried. 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/booster-shot...

The Booster Shot

A couple of weeks ago, Ed Zitron published one of his epic rants -- the kind that, as he warned newsletter readers, is probably better read on the web than via email: it’s 16,000 words long; so long t...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

7 12

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Sep 5

Brood parasitism is not a perfect metaphor, by any means, for AI, for the offloading of ed-tech development onto teachers and students, for the vampiric practices of VCs ... but it's the bird I went with to head this week's news round-up...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/brood-parasi...

Brood Parasites

Humans have always invested great meaning in birds. No surprise, what with the feathers, the flight. Each week, when I look at all the stories that've been told about education and technology and try ...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 16 34

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Sep 3

Talk of "inevitability" is a thought-terminating cliche, as Robert Jay Lifton called it -- language associated with brainwashing and cults, with shutting down criticism and agency 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/thought-term...

Thought-Terminating Clichés

Last week, Max Read asked "Is the 'AI' 'bubble' 'bursting'?" – those scare-quotes strategically deployed to encourage readers to question what we mean when we talk about "AI" or "bubbles," when we pre...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

5 10

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 29

How did public education in the US end? "Gradually, then suddenly." 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/i-know-what-...

I Know What You Did Last Summer

If you were to tell the story of the end of public education in the US, you wouldn't begin with the Trump Administration's bluster about closing the Department of Education. You wouldn't begin with Tr...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 13 16

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 27

Addressing "AI" (and the technofascism accompanying it) is going to take more than a little blurb on the syllabus this fall 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/back-to-scho...

Back to School Talk (Obligatory)

[Depending on your geographic location] It's almost/already back-to-school season, which always means a flurry of aspirational, inspirational stories (and their opposite) about ed-tech gadgetry, along...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

2 11

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 22

AI is automating the mistrust between faculty and students 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/education-as...

Education as Prediction Market

In their bestseller AI Snake Oil, Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor open their chapter on "How Predictive AI Goes Wrong" with a story from Mount St. Mary's University: how, in 2015, the school had co...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 12 29

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 20

Americans love a hoax. Maybe it's culture. Maybe it's capitalism.

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/llm-as-mlm/?...

LLM as MLM

No one likes to be wrong. But perhaps what bothers people even more than making a mistake is being made a fool, being tricked or duped. It's no surprise then that many folks bristle at the assertion ...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

6 13

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 15

We are dismantling our shared future – quite explicitly – by embracing the ideology and practice of the tech industry, one that promises radically individualized optimization but that is predicated on prediction, prescription, and compliance. 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/prescriptive...

Prescriptive Practices

Math teacher Michael Pershan wrote an excellent newsletter this week, and I'd like to start there rather than with the ubiquitous stories about the underwhelming roll-out of OpenAI's latest GPT. Mich...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

2 14 46

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 12

Our society has prioritized productivity and efficiency over learning for a century now, so when Altman et al say AI is a "PhD in your pocket," they don't mean "smarter" as much as "cheaper" and "faster" 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/education-an...

Education and the New Cult of Efficiency

Raymond Callahan's 1962 book Education and the Cult of Efficiency remains a classic study of public education in the US, chronicling how in the early twentieth century schools' goals became business g...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 22 47

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 8

Education and ed-tech have always been bound up in arguments about national security 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/ballistic-mi...

Ballistic Misses

Simon Ramo published his essay "A New Technique in Education" in 1957 in Engineering and Science, a journal published by Caltech to showcase the institution's research. "A noted scientist proposes som...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 2

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 5

We have had a century of “big data,” seventy years of “AI,” decades and decades of Bill Gates' bullshit and “computers in the classroom.” It's batshit to believe that this time this time, the ed-tech is going to be good 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/degenerate-a...

Degenerate: Against Education at Scale

Ed-Tech Criticism. AI Refusal.

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

2 39 110

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Aug 1

When the "AI" boosters reduce the Socratic method to a system prompt: "Aim for a good back-and-forth." 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-alpha-be...

The Alpha Bet

Sometimes you have to repeat yourself. Sometimes you didn't say things clearly the first time. Sometimes your intended audience didn't hear you or they didn't listen. Sometimes there were louder voice...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

8 19

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 28

"AI" promises friendship without risk of conflict; it promises relationships without the burden of reciprocity; it promises frictionlessness in all things 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/push-button-...

Push-Button Promises and (Not) Doing Hard Things

Although I linked to it in Friday's newsletter and even embedded the Instagram clip, I have not been able to stop thinking about Ocean Vuong's remarks on how social media has shaping students' thought...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 13 45

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 25

The ed-tech vision: Everything and everyone is a machine to optimize and control. Everything and everyone is a market to be exploited. Teachers and students are utterly, utterly expendable 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-prime-di...

The Prime Directive

Over a decade ago, at the height of the MOOC madness, many people crowed excitedly about "the end of college" – not because the various technologies they believed would enable this were any good (by "...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 36 79

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 21

"AI" is designed to make us feel like we need it, feel like we're bigger better faster stronger cleaner smoother jazz hands... 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/how-does-it-...

How Does It Feel?

Abetted by technological and military might, finance capital has achieved its hegemony over the Earth by annexing the core of human desires – Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics Last week, METR released th...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

8 16

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 18

Imagine a future without "productivity software" -- no, not because "AI" but because, you know, liberation 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-agents-o...

The Agents of Unproductivity

"Could AI slow science?" Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan ask, and proceed to poke a sizable hole in one of the major claims about "AI" – about its application in healthcare, in education, and beyon...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

8 18

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 14

This is about Johnson & Johnson and corporate malfeasance, and health. And, of course, it's about education technology, corporate malfeasance, and health 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/bad-company/...

Bad Company

For decades, Johnson & Johnson was one of the most trusted brands in the world. The maker of bandaids and baby shampoo, its name was associated with care for our health and our bodies and, more import...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 9 26

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 11

Ed-tech is sponsored content 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/into-the-bre...

Into the Breach

There's been plenty of ink spilled in the last week in response to The New York Times's story on NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and his college application to Columbia University, in which he ti...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

1 8 7

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 7

On "selective moral disengagement," and the "Gernsback Continuum" in ed-tech (but above the fold, for free subscribers, some thoughts on reading books vs "brainstorming" with the bullshit machine) 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/read-receipt...

Read Receipt

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

5 15

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jul 4

It's an all-out war on children 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/the-raw-and-...

The Raw and the Cooked

You know how last week I had some good news? Yeah, well... that was nice, wasn't it. Because this week – Happy Fourth of July! LOLSOB – everything isn't just bad, it's dire. Trump's "Big Beautiful Bi...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

8 20

Audrey Watters @audreywatters.bsky.social · Jun 27

You might think "AI" offers a meaningful vision of a better world, but damn, "AI" is some Andrew Cuomo level shit: just this empty but entitled presumption that we will all keep going along with the exploitation. 2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com/a-better-wor...

A Better World is Possible

Greetings from Maine where Kin, Poppy, and I are visiting family for a few days. As such – as summer – today's missive is a little shorter than usual. And, quite unlike recent emails, today's newslet...

2ndbreakfast.audreywatters.com

2 9