Caleb and Dan Discuss ChatGPT and Education
I had a visit today from a friend and colleague, Caleb Curfman. Caleb was a History Major at my university just before I arrived there five years ago. Since then, he has earned a Masters Degree and gone to work at a Community and Technical College in the same state system in which I work, on the North Dakota border. Caleb is really innovative and has shared several really good ideas about educational techniques that I’ve implemented in my classes. He contacted me earlier this week, wanting to talk about how generative AI would change what we do in the classroom. I suggested if he wanted to come to Bemidji I would make a video of our conversation that we could both use on our channels.
We talked for about 90 minutes, about education and about AI and technology disruption. I thought I might edit the talk into a couple of episodes, but then I thought better of it and made a single video of the entire discussion. I stopped recording a few times, because my camera likes to make video clips of 30 minutes or less. At the very end, the battery died so the last point I was making was cut off a bit. But I think it still makes sense.
Available as video above or as podcast audio at https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/cye4akfsEAb
Caleb described the "digital divide" respecting access to the Internet. I think we are maybe a couple of decades away from yet another and deeper digital divide over the integration of computer processing and biological processing. This will first appear as a way to deal with nervous-system injuries such as to the spinal cord that makes it impossible for an injured person to walk--think, Christopher Reeve. Then it will become a matter of treating Parkinson's and maybe MND and ALS. Once we're into the brain and devising technologies for substitute-processing, how long will it be before we can offer co-processing that may enhance brain function. This might allow us to treat epilepsy and schizophrenia. But then, some will want further enhancements -- brain co-processors, in effect. This will be expensive and ... with who-knows-what consequences.