Truth, machines that listen & visiting the ocean when my mind begins to leave me
Sharing a meal with my eldest daughter Edwina is time spent wisely. We continue to navigate the shift from father and child to father and young adult.
She is truthful, bold, resilient and intelligent. She questions and thinks deeply. Edwina reminds me that truth is important. It cannot be ignored because it is ultimately the reason for our individual and collective existence.
Truth, and its connection to authenticity and responsibility brings purpose and meaning, security, calm, strength and wisdom.
We ignore truth at our own peril because that which is true is in accordance with fact and reality.
During the meal our conversation moved to people who had been significant in our lives. I spoke of my grandfather and how important he had been in shaping the person I am and how I missed his wisdom, insight and truth. For a significant time I felt lost and anxious as his mind slowly drifted away in his last few years.
I was sharing this past struggle with Edwina and wanted her to understand that a truth I had discovered was that as his mind drifted, it was also preparing me, somewhat painfully, for my role in becoming a part of him that would continue on.
I don’t know exactly how to describe this realisation. It was like the feeling I get when I am near the ocean, or a small country town, when the sun is in its golden hour, just before it is time to eat dinner and the air becomes cooler.
The truth gradually came to me as a collection of moments and a calm realisation that if I lived my life where I made decisions through what I believed and valued, I would be fine and might help others who shared their lives with me to be finer versions of themselves.
Truth comes to us when we personalise and connect and when we set a daily. goal to be a better version of ourselves than we were the day before.
Our conversation turned to some of the fears that my grandfather had developed as his mind increasingly left him. I shared the story of how he was worried about the large rock that was hanging from the ceiling in his minds eye and that he was fearful that it might fall and injure a child. I talked about the way my Aunty calmed him by going along with his reality and telling him she was carefully removing the suspended boulder by lowering it. That she would have someone remove it and all would be safe and ordered and as he needed it to be in his confusion. I talked about how telling the truth was simple and also at times complex. I wanted to know what she thought and felt about that?
In true Edwina style she explained that when I was old and if I feared dragons had taken over the bathroom, she would battle them for me and reassure me that they had been slayed. I smiled thinking how beautiful this was and at the same time chuckled because she told me I would be required to slay one of the lesser dragons so I maintained a level of independence.
Staying with the flow of this conversation I requested that if my mind did begin to slip from me that I wanted her to take me to the ocean and let my feet touch the salty water and that I was confident and hopeful that this would give me a moment of reconnection to her and to myself. We spend family time at the ocean as a family. Building memories, strengthening connections, growing meaning. It is a true place of home for me made all the more powerful when shared with those I love and care for.
Which brings me to the title of this piece.
Edwina smiled her googolplex smile and assured me that she would ensure that my wish was honoured frequently.
I will act as though it is true Dad and that way I can focus on the solution that will work for you.
As our meal arrived I picked up my phone and said that I wanted to get a picture of this spectacular meal and interestingly quite a few of the other diners seemed to have the same thought.
This is where it gets creepy. I opened the facebook app and there in front of me was the following post in my feed:
Preparing for the Impact of Artificial Intelligence
Was this a coincidence? How could it be so specific? Edwina looked at the expression on my face and asked if there was something wrong? In that moment I wasn’t sure. I felt a slight unease. A moment of vulnerability and exposure. The phone went from something that I always kept in reach to something that had a sting, a bite, a……… something not quite right. In hindsight this experience led me to the uncanny valley effect.
The uncanny valley idea has been around since the 1970s, first proposed by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. It suggests our emotional response to robots and CGI creations becomes more positive the more life-like they become — but then dips again right before the point where these artificial beings become indistinguishable from the real thing.
In other words, the creepy feeling isn’t brought on by robots that are obviously fake, or humans that are definitely real — but there’s a strange unnerving sensation somewhere near the boundary line.
I realised that even as a person who works in the area of learning technology I had spent very little attention and time on considering the ethical questions that AI and machine learning are generating as a consequence of their infiltration into our lives.
As machine learning embeds itself into the tools and actions of our everyday lives I want mechanisms and legislation to protect my data privacy and require transparency in why particular things are given to me. The CSIRO has made a start.
Erica Southgate, one of the best thinkers in the space of AI and education, shares that there is still significant work to be done though:
communicating that ethics is both procedural (i.e. regulatory & legal) and an ongoing professional practice (known as ethics-in-practice)
a lack of definitional clarity on the concepts that underpin the ethics in the document and of the ethical traditions that inform the document
taking a position that embeds social norms and values in AI for it to behave ethically misundertands the dynamic nature of these amongst humans
a number of sectors are mentioned in the Discussion Paper but AI and education receives scant attention, despite it being designated an ethical ‘high stakes’ domain
more serious considerations of the consequences of unethical conduct is required: The case for professional registration
What does it mean to opt-in rather than opt-out in our complex and fast paced lives?
What does it mean when high-stakes corporations and institutions implement autonomous agents into their systems and the blackbox scenarios that may increasingly be given decision making power? Wether proprietary or due to the way the AI calculations are made.
One thing I know is true is that critical digital literacy is now more important than ever. Together with those of us who work, teach and learn in educational context to become more aware of AI and machine learning. What it does, what it can’t yet do and where it might be moving.
I am glad that a simple pleasure of dinner with my daughter has resulted in a deeper dive to what, how, when and why my datified self is getting the attention of my phone. I am also concerned that blanket bans on mobile phones in schools is potentially a very short sighted reaction and that a more fitting, learning response that addresses the growing implications for learning technology and its role in our educational systems needs to be more about raising awareness, attention and understanding of how the technology might be used for good.
It is already here. It is already doing things. To ignore it is similar in my experience to the Kodak disruption but not in the way that you might first think. I get told regularly in my work to make it simple and I see many people doing the same thing. Why? Because simple stories let people believe in easy answers and solutions. Kodak were stupid and their people silly so the stories goes, then we can not repeat their fate by not being dumb and shortsighted. Here’s the thing though, when you start digging into the familar and often repeated story and surface the subtle complexities of reality at the time, those simple, easy explanations and change management lessons are no longer true.
Kodak shows us that we not only need to prepare, we also need to adapt. Digital photography could have never replaced the photo developing business. It had 20 years to invent a new market, but never did. AI and machine learning are going to be owned in many ways not by the educators who co-construct learning with children, young people, families and communities but by corporations and political agendas. While not entirely problematic, it is not the whole story.
As educators we are in a position to work in partnership with children, young people, families and communities to invent a preferred future. A risk is that we will fail to realise the full potential of the emerging technologies that surround us and technological thinking but that we pursue the wrong agendas and issues. When you have something that’s truly new and different we have to rethink in new and sometimes uncomfortable ways. The time to start having this dialogue is today!
Even more challenging, influencing the educational agenda in a post truth world with any level of significance is incredibly complex and difficult. THe truth might save us though.
There are no easy answers in this space but together, co-coperatively, collectively and compassionately we can move closer to them. We are not simply what we know, we are most importantly what we are learning.
So when anybody tells us that they know a simple, easy fix, we should have some questions. Truth is messy and sometimes uncomfortable at first but if we stick with it we are lead to responsibility, purpose and meaning.
