Greetings, All,

Below I’m sharing some relevant reading and watching from this week.

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have published a paper on “AI as Normal Technology,” which offers a rhetorical and analytical framework for thinking about AI developmental timelines, social impact, and policy responses. Lengthy and complex, but a tremendous overview and approach that, like their other work, offers a clear eyed perspective on the factors driving how AI is coming into our lives, and where the levers of intervention might be.

• Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, AI as Normal Technology, 25-09 Knight First Amend. Inst. April 14, 2025.  https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology [https://perma.cc/HVN8-QGQY].

The following three pieces are about AI in the classroom and interactions and relationships between teachers and students. Neither address the labor implications of AI adoption.

Derek Bruff, author of Intentional Tech, has been writing frequently about the instructional impacts of AI. Here he delves into custom chatbots and offers an interesting model for their use which builds upon the strategies offered by Mollick and Mollick. Targeted chatbots trained on more specific data offer one potential pedagogical counter to use of the larger models.

• Bruff, Derek. “Structure Matters: Custom Chatbot Edition – Agile Learning.” April 10, 2025. https://derekbruff.org/2025/04/10/structure-matters-custom-chatbot-edition/.

You may have seen this piece in the NYT this week, which offers a simplistic and uncritical take on AI in the classroom, but does offer detail on how tensions around AI are playing out in public education, and insight into the rhetorical strategies and business practices industry and educational technology firms are using to embed their tools, services, and worldviews within schools.

• Goldstein, Dana. “Teachers Worry About A.I. for Students. For Themselves It’s Another Matter.” The New York Times, April 14, 2025, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/schools-ai-teachers-writing.html.

Campus Technology reports on but offers little detail on a new AI Virtual TA deployed in the University of Michigan Business School, developed in collaboration with Google.

• Kelly, Rhea. “University of Michigan Launches Agentic AI Virtual Teaching Assistant.” Campus Technology. April 11, 2025 https://campustechnology.com/articles/2025/04/11/university-of-michigan-launches-agentic-ai-virtual-teaching-assistant.aspx.

In late March Pioneer Works hosted a conversation between Ruha Benjamin and Kate Crawford entitled “AI and Us” as part of a Science and Society series curated by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The video of that conversation is available here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gEp4gMV9g3o.

Crawford’s Anatomy of an AI System and Ruha Benjamin’s “The New Artificial Intelligentsia” offer essential reading for those of us grappling with the social impacts of AI.

More soon-

Luke

Greetings, All,

Below I’m sharing some relevant reading and watching from this week.

Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor have published a paper on “AI as Normal Technology,” which offers a rhetorical and analytical framework for thinking about AI developmental timelines, social impact, and policy responses. Lengthy and complex, but a tremendous overview and approach that, like their other work, offers a clear eyed perspective on the factors driving how AI is coming into our lives, and where the levers of intervention might be.

• Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, AI as Normal Technology, 25-09 Knight First Amend. Inst. April 14, 2025.  https://knightcolumbia.org/content/ai-as-normal-technology [https://perma.cc/HVN8-QGQY].

The following three pieces are about AI in the classroom and interactions and relationships between teachers and students. Neither address the labor implications of AI adoption.

Derek Bruff, author of Intentional Tech, has been writing frequently about the instructional impacts of AI. Here he delves into custom chatbots and offers an interesting model for their use which builds upon the strategies offered by Mollick and Mollick. Targeted chatbots trained on more specific data offer one potential pedagogical counter to use of the larger models.

• Bruff, Derek. “Structure Matters: Custom Chatbot Edition – Agile Learning.” April 10, 2025. https://derekbruff.org/2025/04/10/structure-matters-custom-chatbot-edition/.

You may have seen this piece in the NYT this week, which offers a simplistic and uncritical take on AI in the classroom, but does offer detail on how tensions around AI are playing out in public education, and insight into the rhetorical strategies and business practices industry and educational technology firms are using to embed their tools, services, and worldviews within schools.

• Goldstein, Dana. “Teachers Worry About A.I. for Students. For Themselves It’s Another Matter.” The New York Times, April 14, 2025, sec. U.S. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/14/us/schools-ai-teachers-writing.html.

Campus Technology reports on but offers little detail on a new AI Virtual TA deployed in the University of Michigan Business School, developed in collaboration with Google.

• Kelly, Rhea. “University of Michigan Launches Agentic AI Virtual Teaching Assistant.” Campus Technology. April 11, 2025 https://campustechnology.com/articles/2025/04/11/university-of-michigan-launches-agentic-ai-virtual-teaching-assistant.aspx.

In late March Pioneer Works hosted a conversation between Ruha Benjamin and Kate Crawford entitled “AI and Us” as part of a Science and Society series curated by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. The video of that conversation is available here: https://youtube.com/watch?v=gEp4gMV9g3o.

Crawford’s Anatomy of an AI System and Ruha Benjamin’s “The New Artificial Intelligentsia” offer essential reading for those of us grappling with the social impacts of AI.

More soon-

Luke