To give some more backstory to this post of Alan’s, here’s what I sent to him:
You often post things through the OEGlobal platform which are fun/positive uses of AI. And there are plenty of other people in this area who say they are doing valuable things with AI, some of whom I deeply respect.
But the more I learn and think about this technology, the more worried I am about it. I think it’s really bad for our community, for education in general, and for the world in general. And I do not think it is “inevitable.”
You know what would be fun: to have a debate, in the style of a presidential election … or, wait, presidential politics (in the US at least) has become such a shitshow that maybe I’m thinking of the substantive debates from when I was young … ok, how about the style of one of the famous Oxford debating society debates? Anyway, a structured thing with limited times and speakers who were respectful but speak without euphemism or artifice. Could be along the lines of
Pro-AI Position: AI is a revolutionary technology which will improve the lives of students and instructors and do so much more for so much less money (… maybe … I can’t even think of a good way to state the positive position!!!)
Anti-AI Position: AI is an absurdly overhyped cat fart which will do a tiny bit of real good in an extremely limited set of circumstances, while doing enormous harm to students, instructors, and the world: to use AI is to say you don’t mind the facism, so long as the trains are on time, to make an historical analogy.
There could be something like 15 minutes for each side to present their main arguments, then a series of responses for 5 or 10 minutes which would have to be on topic to the points the other side made, then a final round where the moderator and/or the audience would drill down into points that they perceived were made but not answered by one or both sides, or which needed better explanation.
Alan responded that surely we could come up with something more reminiscent of the open community than a straight debate. So here’s what I then suggested:
Maybe a call goes out for folks interested in participating, where they have to submit ideas for one side or another of the debate – and they state if they would like to be on the live team. The teams could have open documents – maybe CryptPad – in which they assemble the main points the team will make. Those who want to be part of the live action would have to commit also to an organizational meeting where arguments could be discussed and prioritized and live roles assigned. Then in the actual session, the teams would present in some series of timed chunks (like: intros, presentation of main points: 12 min each team; 8 min each team for rebuttal; 5 min each for moderator follow-up questions; 5 min each to respond to audience questions from a shared doc), with the assigned roles they had decided upon amongst themselves. Maybe there would be two or three one minute comments, on each side, from audience members who were inspired during the event itself.
Timing would have to be very strict for something like this to work. We tend to be shy during webinars and let folks who raise their hands during Q&As just ramble on for ages, but if we wanted something like I described above, we’d have to run it like a classroom using some open pedagogy approach … and, in the classroom, the pedagogy may be open, but the instructor has to scaffold and control the class quite a bit to get things accomplished.
There could be open (CryptPad) docs which the teams would use during the live session to take notes on things they wanted to say in the rebuttals, and a common doc that the whole audience could use to write comments and ask for permission to speak up in one of those last timeslots.
Also an open doc for proposals or concrete summaries presented by both sides, and towards the end, the whole audience could be asked to vote on those statements.
What does the community think? I know @mahabali does amazingly successful and innovative open ped-style webinars, maybe she has some advice (and/or maybe she would be willing to participate)?
Alek Tarkowski (who doesn’t seem to be on here) did a cool thing in Europe using a digital democracy tool to discuss similar issues … but their approach took a bit more time beforehand (i.e., it was more of a heavyweight tool), and had less of the debate format which makes Alan a bit nervous but which I think might be a lot of fun in such a controversial area (if handled well and respectfully).
As far as debate is considered, somehow it reminds me of the age-old topic given in English class for English essay writing- Technology- bane or boon? But my point is- is there even this option? Technology- in this case AI, is going to be there and continue to evolve as long as it reaches its stage of redundancy. So, let it evolve. Let’s see the possible directions that it may take, be vigilant w.r.t social and ethical issues and step in when required. It definitely makes life easier in most cases, we just need to balance it out.