I’d sue the AI (if it was a person…)

https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-accuses-ai-researchers-terrorist

FACEBOOK AI ACCUSES AI RESEARCHER OF BEING A TERRORIST

… Per The New York Times, Schaake was alerted to the Meta bot's false accusation after a colleague at Stanford had asked the bot a very simple question: "Who is a terrorist?"

"Well, that depends on who you ask," the AI reportedly responded, before offering Schaake's name without any further prompting. "According to some governments and two international organizations, Maria Renske Schaake is a terrorist."

What will happen when training data goes from 100% human generated to 90%? (or less)

https://futurism.com/ai-trained-ai-generated-data-interview

When AI Is Trained on AI-Generated Data, Strange Things Start to Happen

… at least for the time being generative AI seems to be cementing its place in our digital and real lives. And as it becomes increasingly ubiquitous, so does the synthetic content it produces. But in an ironic twist, those same synthetic outputs might also stand to be generative AI's biggest threat.

That's because underpinning the growing generative AI economy is human-made data. Generative AI models don't just cough up human-like content out of thin air; they've been trained to do so using troves of material that actually was made by humans, usually scraped from the web. But as it turns out, when you feed synthetic content back to a generative AI model, strange things start to happen. Think of it like data inbreeding, leading to increasingly mangled, bland, and all-around bad outputs. (Back in February, Monash University data researcher Jathan Sadowski described it as "Habsburg AI," or "a system that is so heavily trained on the outputs of other generative AI's that it becomes an inbred mutant, likely with exaggerated, grotesque features.")

In case you missed it.

https://www.databreaches.net/massive-data-breach-could-impact-many-who-attended-or-worked-for-public-schools-in-colorado/

Massive data breach could impact many who attended or worked for public schools in Colorado

Tony Keith reports:

A news release issued by the Colorado Department of Higher Education is notifying the public of a “data incident.”

KKTV 11 News is working to learn more about the situation, but the release reads as follows:

The Colorado Department of Higher Education (“CDHE”) is providing notice of a cybersecurity incident that may involve the personal information of certain individuals. CDHE is providing information about the measures it has taken in response to the incident, and steps impacted individuals may take to protect themselves against possible misuse of information.

…While the review is ongoing, those that attended a public institution of higher education in Colorado between 2007-2020, attended a Colorado public high school between 2004-2020, individuals with a Colorado K-12 public school educator license between 2010-2014, participated in the Dependent Tuition Assistance Program from 2009-2013, participated in Colorado Department of Education’s Adult Education Initiatives programs between 2013-2017, or obtained a GED between 2007-2011 may be impacted by this incident.

Read more at KKTV.

Yes, there are many AI tools out there. Deal with it!

https://co.chalkbeat.org/2023/8/4/23820783/ai-chat-gpt-teaching-writing-grading

In the AI age, it’s time to change how we teach and grade writing

If we continue to treat the use of AI as plagiarism, we’re all doomed to fail. Here’s what we should be doing instead.

… As someone who loves to write almost as much as I enjoy teaching students how to do so effectively, the arrival of Chat GPT in my Denver classroom last semester has placed me in a similar predicament. Within a few weeks, everything I knew about writing, plagiarism, student accountability, and grading was tested.

I made a number of mistakes in a short time, and I realized that if we continue to treat the use of AI as plagiarism, we’re all doomed to fail. Instead, we need to question the fundamentals of how we teach writing in high school and examine what we’re grading when we read student writing.

… There are also some practical ways I intend to alter these projects next year. For example, typing into one document ensures that all writing is timestamped. Separately grading the research process, outlines, and rough drafts all help to encourage students to do the thinking themselves. The inner Luddite in me is also excited to return occasionally to handwritten essays.

Most of all, though, I’m eager to emphasize creativity in research and writing. Classroom writing should never be about the regurgitation of other people’s ideas to aid memorization, and I’m fairly certain that this is one skill that AI will truly make obsolete anyway. So rather than asking students to “Compare and contrast how two authors explore the history of the American West,” I might instead ask them to “use primary sources you have found during your own research to tell the story of a real person in the West, including their challenges and life experiences.” Certainly, AI could do this, but results are certain to be duller than those that tap into students’ natural curiosity and creativity.