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What If GenAI Is a Nothing Burger?

Lance Eaton

Director of Faculty Development & Innovation

College Unbound

lance.eaton@gmail.com

https://aiedusimplified.substack.com/

Image source: ChatGPT

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Take out something to capture your thoughts

Imagine 3 years from now–the 5th year of generative AI. �
What if this is the actual best we get from generative AI? �
What will we have learned?

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What If GenAI Is a NothingBurger?

Lance Eaton

Director of Faculty Development & Innovation

College Unbound

lance.eaton@gmail.com

Thank you for doing that–we’ll return to that momentarily.

Before we get too far into it, I do want to start with a warning. There are parts of this talk that are provocative.

I don’t do this with malice BUT I do it with forethought and hindsight. My intention is not to cause stress or dismiss the struggles that folks have had trying to make sense of GenAI while also all the other demands of working in higher ed.

But let’s proceed. Thank you again for being here. NEFDC has been a special organization for me. When I first stepped into this career, it was one of the first organizations that I found community.

In fact, in 2013, I did a poster presentation on Hybrid Flexible Pedagogy: Engagement by Expansive Choice.

That’s right, I was talking about hybrid flexible learning 7 years before the pandemic.

In fact, I still have the QR code:

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Hybrid Flexible Pedagogy

Engagement By Expansive Choice

Lance Eaton

Coordinator of Instructional Design

North Shore Community College

leaton@northshore.edu

Poster Materials

http://goo.gl/RT3Hvn

My motivation for leaning into Hybrid Flexible Pedagogy came from students. I taught a class once a week at North Shore Community College.

I had a student who missed class because her life was on fire. She asked me what she could do to make it up and all I could think was–now she’s 2 weeks behind.

Trying to make up when you are behind is really hard in the time-focused structure of education.

For the last 18 years of teaching, I’ve always taught for at least one institution that had a significant population of non-traditional students–whatever we mean by that.

Students who had real life struggle

students whose education was not their sole focus and identity

students who teetered on the edge of believing whether college was for them–often through institutional alienation and indifference.

That led me to wonder about what would happen if there was a way for a student to stay on top of things. That if they missed class, they could still find a way to move forward because life is unpredictable and challenging.

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Envisioning the Course

Useless Aside: This format looks like a pizza.

Path 1: Face-to-Face

Path 2: Online

CLASS ENDS

Path 3: Self-Selected Hybrid

START CLASS HERE

Face-to-Face

Lecture
Discussion & activities
Blog

Online

Video lectures
Online Discussion
Blog

http://goo.gl/WWUdZu

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SNOWMAGEDDON

Image sources Internet Archive

That’s right snowmageddon struck. From late January until early March we had a blizzard or heavy snow in the first half of the week. This meant that courses that happened on Monday through Wednesday did not meet.

In fact, I had a Monday & Wednesday course. We met on the first Wednesday of the semester in mid-January and then did not meet again until the first week of March.

But my class did not miss a beat. We simply went asynchronous online for several weeks and when it was possible, some of us came back to class.

Other faculty scrambled to figure things out as class after class got canceled and they had to remake their schedule time and again. For all intents and purposes, they were out of luck.

QUESTION: Does anyone remember how they navigated through this mess?

Many of us experienced that and then, also seemed to forget it. Fast forward 5 years and…

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Image sources United Nations

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Return to your notes

What is different about your approach to teaching and learning since the pandemic?�
What did you do now that you did not do before?�
In what ways do you see your teaching different from before?

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Photo by Fallon Michael on Unsplash

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What does any of this have to do with AI?

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Mid-

December 2022

Late December

March

May

Early January 2023

February 2024

AI TIMELINE AT COLLEGE UNBOUND

2022-2024

Autumm Caines reaches out
Survey the students

Results are in
Course Proposal

Session 1 ends
Session 2 begins

Session 2 ends
Faculty review policy

Course launched
Learning together

Curriculum Committee passes them

I want to share how I’ve worked through the AI deployment at my institution.

So, November 30, ChatGPT is released.

6 days later, The Atlantic published its now infamous, “The College Essay Is Dead” spotlighting ChatGPT.

Myself and others were beginning to dabble with it and make sense of it

A friend and colleague at College Unbound, Autumm Caines reached out to me believing that one or more of her students might have used it.

We met up and talked through the situation

We both had a moment where we were like, “hot damn, way to go!” for the student–if they did in fact use it. Not even 3 weeks out and someone might be using it–we were amused and impressed.

There was something in that moment that led us to move forward with curiosity.

We decided to survey the students to see if they were using it in her class and then I extended it to the school as a whole.

As the results came in, it was clear that some students were aware of it and were using

it for different reasons such as clarifying language for English language learners or brainstorming ideas for assignments.

I then had an idea and one that felt very in line with both the mission of the college but also my own journey in education that leaned more and more on open education and open pedagogy.

I asked my provost to teach a course on AI & Education for Spring Session 1, which started January 9th.

The goal of the course would be to structure the course around generative AI, learn about it, play with it, consider its value and its problems, and what we should think about it in the higher education context.

THEN we would create a set of usage policies for students and faculty.

We did that in session one and then in session 2, we test-piloted those policies.

Students tried to use generative AI based upon the policies we created with an assignment in a different class.

They wanted to get a sense of whether it worked, was too restrictive, too loose, or if there were unforeseen loop holes.

Faculty were informed of this, yes!

The students reported back and we revised the policy once more.

We handed it over to faculty for feedback and the feedback was useful and clear–nothing extreme or dismissive–largely changes to assure parity of expectations.

Once it was cleared by the faculty, we put it before the Curriculum Committee for approvate and they became our institutional policy.

I’m not saying we’ve solved everything. But we see and feel different about AI as a result of this.

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Image sources ChatGPT & United Nations

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Return to your notes

What is different about your approach to teaching and learning since GenAI?�
What did you do now that you did not do before?�
In what ways do you see your teaching different from before?

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What if Generative AI turns out to be a NothingBurger?

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But what if Generative AI IS a NothingBurger?

I posed this talk as “What if GenAI is a nothingburger?”

And we’ve just explored one side of this question–if it ends up going down the drain–where will we be if we still take it seriously?

That answer is–in a much better space to connect, engage, and guide student learning.

Remember at the start when I said that there was going to be a part of this where I get a bit provocative…well, here were go.

There is another way to read that question–what if GenAI is a nothingburger because the threats or concerns GenAI offers up are not categorically different than what already exists.

We already know the issues.

We have already decided to ignore, acknowledge, or solve for the issues that GenAI brings up…

The real question with GenAI is what if we already know what to do but have to gain the fortitude to do so?

The pandemic surprised us. It caught us off guard. We were shocked in the world at large, but we should not have been shocked in our educational spaces.

Anyone teaching for any duration in the 2000s has seen a wide range of natural disasters close a campus.

Whether it’s hurricanes, massive flooding, raging fires–we should have known this was possible and been prepared for it.

This isn’t a case of hindsight for me–it was a case of foresight and there were others out there too prepared to engage with this challenge.

I’m going to say something and I swear–I swear, I swear, I swear–I am not trying to gaslight y’all. Are you ready? Are you with me?

There is no categorical difference between before and after AI.

There is no existential crisis when it comes to AI.

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Image source: ChatGPT

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Image source: Wikipedia

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Are these really problems with AI?

Credibility/Reliability
Bias
Copyright
Creativity
Ethics of the tool
Equity
Plagiarism
Privacy
Quality
Shortcutting learning and research

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Wikipedia Concerns

Chesney, T. (2006). An empirical examination of Wikipedia’s credibility. First Monday, 11(11). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v11i11.1413
Fallis, D. (2008). Toward an epistemology of Wikipedia. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(10), 1662–1674. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.20870
Head, A. J., & Eisenberg, M. B. (2010). How today’s college students use Wikipedia for course-related research. First Monday, 15(3). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v15i3.2830
Jemielniak, D. (2014). Common knowledge? An ethnography of Wikipedia. Stanford University Press.
Konieczny, P. (2016). Teaching with Wikipedia in a 21st-century classroom: Perceptions of Wikipedia and its educational benefits. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 67(7), 1523-1534. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23616
Lim, S. (2009). How and why do college students use Wikipedia? Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60(11), 2189-2202. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21142
Mesgari, M., Okoli, C., Mehdi, M., Nielsen, F. Å., & Lanamäki, A. (2015). "The sum of all human knowledge": A systematic review of scholarly research on the content of Wikipedia. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(2), 219-245. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23172
Reagle, J. (2010). Good faith collaboration: The culture of Wikipedia. MIT Press.

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Internet Concerns

Barabási, A.-L. (2002). Linked: How everything is connected to everything else and what it means for business, science, and everyday life. Perseus Books.
Carr, N. (2010). The shallows: What the internet is doing to our brains. W.W. Norton & Company.
DeZure, D., Kaplan, M., & Deerman, M. (2000). Intellectual property and the Internet: A study of problems in higher education. Journal of Information Ethics, 9(2), 34-51.
Howard, R. M. (2007). Understanding "Internet plagiarism". Computers and Composition, 24(1), 3-15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2006.12.005
Introna, L. D., & Nissenbaum, H. (2000). Shaping the web: Why the politics of search engines matter. The Information Society, 16(3), 169-185. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972240050133634
Livingstone, S. (2008). Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: Teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy, and self-expression. New Media & Society, 10(3), 393-411. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444808089415
McCabe, D. L. (2005). Cheating among college and university students: A North American perspective. International Journal for Educational Integrity, 1(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.21913/IJEI.v1i1.14
Nicholas, D., & Rowlands, I. (2008). The information behavior of the researcher of the future: The Google generation. Aslib Proceedings, 60(4), 290-310. https://doi.org/10.1108/00012530810887953
Smith, S. M. (2003). The constraining effects of initial ideas in creative problem-solving. In P. Paulus & B. Nijstad (Eds.), Group creativity: Innovation through collaboration (pp. 15-31). Oxford University Press.
Sparrow, B., Liu, J., & Wegner, D. M. (2011). Google effects on memory: Cognitive consequences of having information at our fingertips. Science, 333(6043), 776-778. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1207745
Sunstein, C. R. (2001). Republic.com. Princeton University Press.
Tenopir, C. (2003). Use and users of electronic library resources: An overview and analysis of recent research studies. Council on Library and Information Resources.
Warschauer, M. (2004). Technology and social inclusion: Rethinking the digital divide. MIT Press.

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Image source: ChatGPT

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Coffee/Tea

Email

Google Search

Smartphone

Drive

Generative AI

What about the environmental impact?

170 to 550 grams of CO₂

37 gallons of water

20-90 grams of CO₂

0.3 to 4 grams of CO₂ per email

30 grams to 5 kilograms of CO₂ (daily)

0.2 to 1.0 grams of CO₂

118 to 492 grams of CO₂

Dependent on charging, network, and manufacturing

Gas: 11.4kg of CO₂

Hybrid: 5.7kg of CO₂

Electric: 3.8kg of CO₂

Per 30 miles

0.1 to 1.0 grams of CO₂

I mentioned the environment too–that there is also concern about the environmental impact of AI!

There’s a young estimation that it is one gram of CO2 put into the atmosphere for every prompt.

I want to acknowledge that. The concern for that is understandable and real.

But let’s find out where we stand with AI and other things we regularly consume in educaiton.

[NEXT]

Show of hands–how many people have had a cup of coffee or tea this morning?

[NEXT]

How many people have already sent several emails today?

[NEXT]

How many folks drove here an have a round trip of 30 miles or more?

[NEXT]

How many folks have been using their smartphones

[NEXT]

How many people have googled something today? How many people have googled several things today?

Ok–now raise your hand if you ended up raising your hand at least twice during that activity.

Three times?

Four times?

[NEXT]

All of these have negative environmental impacts and it’s not just CO2 emissions.

It can take upwards of 37 gallons of water to produce each 8oz cup of coffee. Water that could be used for growing for or just actual drinking.

So I don’t want to dismiss the environmental concerns that generative AI represents and also, it feels like if that’s truly a priority, then we might also be cognizant of all the other things that we’re doing daily that are equally or even more environmentally harmful.

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The Lightbulb

Early light bulb

Present light bulb

1.4-3 lumens per watt
60-100 watts
600-1200 hours
only 5% of energy was used to produce light

80-100 lumens per watt
6-12 watts of power
25,000 to 50,000 hours

Image source: ChatGPT

There’s also something to consider about the environmental costs in that early technology is more wasteful before it's less wasteful. The lightbulb is a prime example but this is true of our cars, TVs, smartphones, computers and more.

Again, this is not to excuse or not be concerned about the environment impact and climate change.

Those are real concerns, but AI itself is not the problem.

It is the whole structure so the hyper-focus on AI comes at the cost of us not questioning the entire system and structure of higher ed.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Bryan Alexander’s book on this particular subject, Universities on Fire.

But still–we feel uncomfortable about generative AI. It really doesn’t sit right. In fact, I found a quote that really sums it up well.

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Thoughts on AI

Rather than fostering deep understanding and critical thinking, this tool promotes a passive reliance on external work, leading to a kind of intellectual forgetfulness. Learners will disengage from the active process of constructing knowledge, placing their trust in external sources rather than developing the internal capacity to think critically and independently.

Instead of empowering learners to cultivate authentic wisdom, this method merely offers them the semblance of knowledge. It allows them to accumulate information without truly understanding it, perpetuating superficial learning. This, in turn, risks creating learners who believe they know much but lack the critical depth to meaningfully engage with the world, leading to intellectual arrogance and detachment from true wisdom and transformation.

Let me read you this quote about AI:

“Rather than fostering deep understanding and critical thinking, this tool promotes a passive reliance on external work, leading to a kind of intellectual forgetfulness.

Learners will disengage from the active process of constructing knowledge, placing their trust in external sources rather than developing the internal capacity to think critically and independently.

Instead of empowering learners to cultivate authentic wisdom, this method merely offers them the semblance of knowledge.

It allows them to accumulate information without truly understanding it, perpetuating superficial learning.

This, in turn, risks creating learners who believe they know much but lack the critical depth to meaningfully engage with the world, leading to intellectual arrogance and detachment from true wisdom and transformation.”

How many people feel like this quote captures a good deal of the angst about AI?

Ok–that makes sense.

Except that–you know who said this?

AI said this. In fact, AI said this when I told it to update the following quote:

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Thoughts on Writing (By Socrates)

In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.

You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.

“In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own.

You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality.

Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing.

And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”

Any guess what this is about or who said this?

[NEXT]

That’s right, our good ole pal Socrates…about writing about 2.5 millennia ago.

Much of our concerns about technology worry us because it is something profoundly different than what came before.

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The Age of Technopanics

"A “technopanic” refers to an intense public, political, and academic response to the emergence or use of media or technologies, especially by the young....a “technopanic” is simply a moral panic centered on societal fears about a particular contemporary technology (or technological method or activity) instead of merely the content flowing over that technology or medium."

Thierer, A. (2013). Technopanics, threat inflation, and the danger of an information technology precautionary principle. Minn. JL Sci. & Tech., 14, 309.

We live in an age of technopanics.

"A “technopanic” refers to an intense public, political, and academic response to the emergence or use of media or technologies, especially by the young....

a “technopanic” is simply a moral panic centered on societal fears about a particular contemporary technology (or technological method or activity) instead of merely the content flowing over that technology or medium."

I’ve been dealing with them all my life.

Video games were gonna make me violent. I mean Mike Tyson’s Punchout didn’t turn me into a bruiser but it did improve my hand-eye coordination when I started driving.

The Internet did not make me stupider. It made me much more aware of other people’s ideas, pain, and circumstances.

When we’re hit with a technology, there are ways that we get really critical and that can be helpful in this–but also, we sometimes go beyond the pale–we can get too fixated without realizing it.

And, of course, it’s not just AI, Wikipedia, or the Internet, we’ve been worrying about our technology’s impact on us for centuries…

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Image source: Pessimist Archives

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“1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

Douglas Adams,The Salmon of Doubt.

CREDITS: This presentation template was created by Slidesgo, including icons by Flaticon and infographics & images by Freepik and illustrations by Storyset

“1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.”

It’s a grounding quote from Douglas Adams. At least, it has been fro me as I crossed the 35 year old threshold a decade ago.

Now, I don’t want to be #3 and honestly, I don’t like the idea of being #2, but #1 doesn’t entice me at all either.

But I do think we have to reconcile with the challenge this presents. The thing is, what this shows me more than anything else is that technology is a perpetual problem; not a solvable problem.

There is no solving technology; there is no technology–it should always be plural–technologies.

And with technologies, there is only an ongoing negotiation and navigation.

And many of the perpetual problems that AI represent, we have yet to solve or address with everything that’s come before.

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Privacy & Security

Photo by Jose Fontano on Unsplash

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Canvas Privacy Rating, 2022

Personal information is sold or rented to third parties.
Personal information is shared for third-party marketing.
Personalised advertising is displayed.
Data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
User's information is used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
Data profiles are created and used for personalised advertisements.

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Blackboard Privacy Rating, 2023

Personal information is shared for third-party marketing.
Personalised advertising is displayed.
Data are collected by third-parties for their own purposes.
User's information is used to track and target advertisements on other third-party websites or services.
Data profiles are created and used for personalised advertisements.

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Image source: ChatGPT

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Are these really problems with AI?

Credibility/Reliability
Bias
Copyright
Creativity
Ethics of the tool
Equity
Plagiarism
Privacy
Quality
Shortcutting learning and research

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Take a moment

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Turn & Talk

What makes you great at your work?�
What is the thing or things that you bring to work that make it YOUR work?

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What do we need in the Age of AI?

Image source: Autumn Caines

Maybe we’re starting to see a pattern, yes? We all are doing deeply meaningful, relational, connective work.

We bring care, forethought, and passion to our work. We often operate both as a shield of protection for faculty from administrative BS and also as a cultivator and curator of faculty excellence if we work in educational support

And if we’re faculty, we try to convey the meaning, importance, and deep value of our disciplines to our students with a recognition of who they are.

In the end, what we all bring to this space is the desire to make teaching and learning better.

And I know it’s corny as hell but THAT is what is going to help us.

I wanna bring attention back to my friend, colleague, and collaborator and all around wonderful human being, Autumm Caines–yes, I spelled it right on the slide. She wrote a post a over a year ago, called “Looking for ChatGPT Teaching Advice? Good Pedagogy is Nothing New”.

And the headline says it all. But be sure to go read it.

We already know what good pedagogy is.

What we need is the fortitude, the self-confidence, and the trust-building amongst ourselves and with our students to do it.

Because good pedagogy is not a checklist. It is not a set of best-practices that you can look to and easily enact.

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Good pedagogy…

Time

Contextual

Messy

Emergent

Relational

Personal

Political

Transformational

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We need EVERYONE!

Image source: ChatGPT

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We should be skeptical and hesitant– that’s our job!

Photo by Shane Aldendorff on Unsplash

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We need imagination, not just skepticism

Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

We need imagination, not just skepticism.

Even if we have skepticism, it should not keep us from engaging with AI and learning more, understanding how it relates to our work, our teaching, our learning.

We also need to imagine–to see what AI might be or could be in our disciplines in positive and neutral ways.

Just like we tell our students many of the lessons of our disciplines that they can’t learn it from a book.

I mean I teach literature and it’s even true there–it requires more than just reading, it requires immersion.

We have to do some immersion into AI.

We have to explore and simulate a world in which these tools are permanent and change how we approach our subjects and teaching.

And we can’t just do it with skepticism; we need imagination and curiosity.

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We’re still better by engaging with it—

that’s learning!

Image source: ChatGPT

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We should understand AI well enough to guide students.

Image source: ChatGPT

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What if AI does turn out to be something?

Image source: ChatGPT

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Image source: ChatGPT

Because if we’re critically engaging with generative AI–we’re recognizing its affordances, wary of its problems and harms–and recrafting our teaching and learning to move towards more process-focus activities and other forms of assessment that feel more authentic, get more nuanced, allow for more creativity–then we’re still better for it.

Our students are still going to be better for it because we’re changing and adapting our pedagogy. We’re responding to the students in front of us in the world they currently live in and have to navigate through.

We’re taking their agency seriously by not pretending these tools don’t exist or there is no actual value to them.

That is powerful and transformative.

Of course, it’s not easy, but it’s also not impossible.

It’s part of what teaching in the modern world requires–to grapple with technologies, to build relationships, and create learning experiences that students can see themselves a part of.

Teaching and learning is dynamic and while we don’t have to love or irresponsibly deploy AI, we do need to learn about it, share it with our colleagues, and engage with our students about how it's likely to impact all of our disciplines.

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Image source: ChatGPT

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Thank you!

Lance Eaton

Director of Faculty Development & Innovation

College Unbound

lance.eaton@gmail.com

Image source: ChatGPT