Stephen Downes

This post reflects on the development of a teaching resource on the topic of generative AI, gender, race and ethnicity. It consists of a Powerpoint presentation and two critical reflection worksheets; access it here or here. The want learners "to reflect on how gen AI can reinforce or create new inequalities," though I would say that it's equally important to understand that these perceptions and divisions already exist in society - our literature, our teaching and our culture. 

The way we are taught infoms our sense of identity and culture more than the content of what is taught. I don't suppose that's controversial, though in some circles it might be. But as we see in this post from Larry Cuban, the content is barely registering, even if it's what's needed to pass standardized exams. "Nothing much was expected of the students beyond textbook and worksheet answers... the values, rituals, and habits favored the least amount of academic work possible." Except for football. Image: Bradley Lands.

Retrieval Augmented Generatrion (RAG) is the method of providing generative AI with text it can use as a knowledge base against which to form responses. Graph RAQ is the process of using a graph - which clearly connexts concepts together - rather than simple stand-alone text. This article gets pretty technical in a hurry, but the idea is clear, I think. Understanding requires connection and not just definition. Our concepts aren't stand-alone and universal; they form a mesh of context-sensitive meanings that depend as much on how they are used as on how they are formed.

The first part of this editorial (15 page PDF) offers an overview of the life and thought of Edward Said, best known for the book Orientalism, as he lives and studies the creation of the stereotypes and approaches to the Middle East that have been renewed and reiterated over the past two centuries. It's not hard to see this caricature in the literature of, say, the 1940s and 50s. It's more subtle today. But it is still possible to see the lines drawn in text, as arbitrary as the borders on the map, that erase indigenous identities and meanings. Erasing this sort of colonialism isn't simply a matter of drawing new lines: "true  resistance,  Said contends, requires moving beyond essentialised identities  like  'Islam'  or  'the  West'.  Instead,  Said  advocates  a cosmopolitan vision, where one's local identity is just one layer in a broader, open engagement with the world.  He  argues that in today's interconnected world, no one is solely defined by a single label – 'Indian', 'Muslim', or 'American'. These categories are starting points, not endpoints, as imperialism has left a legacy of blended identities that challenge pure, exclusive labels."

One this about philosophy is that what an article seems to be about is often not what it is about. Here we have a straightforward account of Plato's Euthyphro, which seems to be a discussion of piety and justice. In this dialogue, Socrates undermines Euthyphro's efforts to define the two terms. But poor Euthyphro never does detect the sleight of hand: Socrates is assuming that concepts such as piety and justice exist independently of instances of them, and independently of the people who instantiate them. If you accept this, there is no way out of the trap. Once we define these concepts, they become unchanging, and we lose control over them, though we - like Frankenstein - created them.

This is, as Gordon Brander demonstrates, ancient wisdom, but it is immediately practical in today's world: "Compositionality is the principle that a system should be designed by composing together smaller subsystems, and reasoning about the system should be done recursively on its structure." It's the principle that underlies the Cartesian method; it's the idea that informs the development of learning objects and open educational resources. It's how software is developed. But, as Brander notes, where you draw the lines matters. Once drawn, they are almost never redrawn. We need, as much as possible, to follow the natural divisions in the space where we're working.