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Too Late

education

agi

competition

What does it mean to have to compete against the best in the world?

Why do we play?

education

agi

ai

determinism

free will

wall-e

Have you ever played the card game “War”? It’s kind of dumb. The deck gets shuffled, each player gets an equal share of the cards, then the players each put their top card…

A scientific coup

ai

politics

ethics

policy

“Do not fall for the trap. Democratic participation and representative politics in government are not”waste.” Nor should arguments focus on the technical limits of…

AI 4 Ed

ai

education

There’s a gold rush underway right now in educational technology. Everyone is trying to cash in on generative AI to “democratize education”, to offer the ultimate…

Crystals of Thought

gpt

thought

metaphor

ai

llm

future

When salt is mixed into water, the atomic components of salt, sodium and chlorine, dissolve. The ionic bond between the atoms is broken. The individual ions are freed to…

GPT Is Not All You Need

gpt

ai

expertise

ethics

policy

One of the pillars of my life mission is that humans don’t have to earn the right to think critically. The sneering “You’re not an expert, so you’ll just have to let your…

Caves

ai

llm

gpt

future

The allegory of the cave from Plato presents a model of human interaction with the world as human imprisoned inside a cave, chained against a wall so all we can see are the…

Sports Metaphors

ai

llm

gpt

future

sports

training

How many kids play youth sports every year? All of them? To a first approximation.

Unit Tutor

ct

units

physics

js

I’ve had this idea for years to make a unit-conversion calculator tool for use by students as they are learning dimensional analysis and unit conversion. I was imagining…

Labelling Demo

ct

labelling

students

education

In the high school class I teach about AI and the Future, I’ve been struggling to figure out which concepts we’ve covered the students really get and which they don’t. In my…

The Skiing Magee

ct

sngn

physics

modelling

Learning to Ski with Mr. Magee by Chris van Dusen is a fun story about a guy and his dog who don’t know how to ski.

Four Circles

circle

geometry

trigonometry

algebra

problems

construction

safety

letting go

I showed the hole in the floor solution to the colleague who had told me about the problem yesterday– he was really pleased with the answer. The key insight for him was the…