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DL 292

Stochastic Parrots

Published: May 22, 2021 • 📧 Newsletter

Welcome to Digitally Literate, issue 292. Your go-to source for insightful content on education, technology, and the digital landscape.

🔖 Key Takeaways

Hopefully giving you just what you asked for.

This week I posted the following:

📺 Watch

At Google I/O 2021, they demonstrated how LaMDA technology could make conversations with products more natural. The demo looked super cool—but not so fast.

In this video, Kevin Marks makes the connection to the Stochastic Parrots paper and the firing of Timnit Gebru. This presentation helps make sense of their points.

Take time to dig through these materials and let them marinate as you make sense of the exhilarating, dangerous world of language AI.

📚 Read

Michael Hansen, CEO of Cengage, suggests there's a disconnect between education and employability in the U.S. Employers view universities as gatekeepers of workforce talent, yet those same institutions aren't prioritizing job skills and career readiness.

To create change, we must provide greater credibility to alternate education paths that allow students to gain employable skills. Employers need to remove stigmas around vocational education and create equal opportunities for all students.

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the New York Times writer behind the 1619 Project, was denied a tenured professorship at UNC's journalism school.

The 1619 Project sought to spur reexamination of how America teaches and celebrates its history. It caused debate among academics and journalists. Criticisms of accuracy led to edits and clarifications, but Hannah-Jones and the Times stand by the project, which won her the 2020 Pulitzer for commentary.

The story raises questions about whether tenure is subject to forces outside the institution.

Graeme Wood offers a useful distinction:

Cancellation is not criticism; cancellation is the absence of criticism. It is the replacement of criticism with a summary punishment... meted out instantly and without deliberation, often as the result of a mob action. When this switcheroo becomes a habit, the normal way of doing things, we can call that "cancel culture," and it is indeed a sign of intellectual and institutional rot.

Educational Attainment Does Not Influence Brain Aging

Research from Nyberg et al. challenges the view that higher education slows brain aging.

Using longitudinal structural MRI data (4,422 observations), researchers tested the hypothesis that higher education translates into slower rates of brain aging. Cross-sectionally, education was modestly associated with regional cortical volume. However, despite marked mean atrophy in cortex and hippocampus, education did not influence rates of change.

Yikes. :)

Nearly half of all 3-year-olds and a third of all 4-year-olds in the U.S. were not enrolled in preschool in 2019—largely because many parents can't afford it.

A new study from NBER gives a glimpse of what universal pre-K could look like. It adds to burgeoning research showing just how valuable preschool is—maybe not for the reasons you'd expect.

I've been testing the Wyze Watch with my oldest child—enjoying the opportunity to play with tech together.

One of the original wearables, Pebble, has a thriving community devoted to keeping it running even after shutdown and purchase by Fitbit. Check out RebbleOS on GitHub.

A reminder that communities can preserve what corporations abandon.

🔨 Do

Replacing Nuzzel: Curating Your Information Streams

Nuzzel was one of my essential tools for making sense of Twitter and Facebook streams—giving me an overview of where to direct attention.

Nuzzel was shut down last week after being purchased by Twitter. This caused me to return to RSS feeds as I curate content online.

Doug Belshaw shares guidance on how to tame your Twitter feed.

🤔 Consider

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Alan Kay

Kay's statement about inventing the future connects to this issue's threads—language AI that may shape how we communicate, educational institutions resisting change, and communities keeping abandoned technology alive. The future isn't something that happens to us; it's something we make.

Bonus: Alabama Lifts Its Ban on Yoga in Schools. For the first time in three decades, yoga can be taught—but the law still bars teachers from using Sanskrit names for poses.

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