Why Educators Need to Embrace AI

A few days ago, a professor posted their AI policy on social media, and the policy was just "no AI." No nuance, no consideration that using AI is already a valuable skill and will only be more valuable in the future, just...no AI. OK, then.

This is, of course, an absurd take lacking in all nuance, and will age about as well as those old "no using Wikipedia as a primary source" rules I had to deal with years ago. There's a vast gulf between feeding an essay topic into ChatGPT and copying and pasting it into a doc (that's unethical, but also very easy to spot on any close read) and using AI for research, generating topic ideas, or spelling and grammar checks. Is it ethical to use an AI-powered virtual human to practice before a presentation or to brush up on foreign language skills? What about using Midjourney to generate illustrations in a report, instead of pulling stock photos from the web?

The rule is not only silly and impossible to enforce meaningfully, it also does students a massive disservice, as using AI is going to be a critical skill for the next generation of workers. Using new technology to augment work, alongside critical thinking and analysis skills, are the skillsets the future workforce needs to have -- and students who don't have access to that will be far behind their peers that do.

In the next few years, we'll finally reach the end of "teaching to the test," a concept meant to promote equity but which in fact has sucked the joy and creativity out of learning. This is going to require a massive shakeup in the way we teach kids, as they'll be required to practice social/emotional skills (machines are not yet smart enough for those) and higher level thinking and analysis, and simply memorizing rote formulas won't be enough. It will require more work, sure, but will lead to far better outcomes.

Every generation, a new technology comes along and educators freak out, then cautiously accept it, then embrace it. Rather than going through this whole ridiculous cycle again, we need to start talking about reasonable use cases for AI at every grade level, and then introducing concepts to students. Their future economic prospects depend on it.

WWDC Recap: You Can't Win 'Em All

For me personally, it's probably a good thing that the most recent WWDC was sort of...mid, as the kids say. Last year, I declared WWDC the best day of my life on the heels of the Vision Pro announcement, and then had to do a mini-apology tour with my loved ones. So this year's spate of useful and interesting but not earth-shattering VisionOS developments was good for both my professional and personal relationships.

The ability to go back and spatialize photos is fantastic, and I'm excited to have a play with that. I still think Apple is underselling the potential killer app of hands free spatial video and photos; that's what I probably do most with my headset outside of Zoom calls and watching movies. I'm a little bummed that my prediction about a new entertainment partner didn't come to pass, although they did announce some cool new content.

But we can skip over almost everything else, except the ability to pause and resume Apple watch fitness streaks -- as someone with 2,071 day streak, not having to do jumping jacks in an airport lounge to close my rings is pretty great. But that's just me, and I'm just crazy.

OK, so now it's AI time, or as Apple referred to it, "Apple Intelligence." And unfortunately, it was more of the same -- solutions without real problems. AI cartoons are charming and fun, but does anyone really need them? Cutting a few steps out of searching in emails or photos is nice, but not a game-changer. ChatGPT integrations are great, but the ChatGPT app also exists.

I read somewhere that Apple is being more cautious in general on the back of the failure of the Apple Car, and I get it. The continual emphasis on privacy was a way to set them apart, but it also limits the utility of what they're building. At the end of the day, it's a lot of flash, just like Sora and Midjourney and many of the others. Creating weird images to fool boomers on Facebook is all well and good, but I think most people an AI that calls customer service for them and solves a problem without wasting their time.

There are good AI products out there right now for training and education and conversation, and those are exciting. Meeting transcripts and summaries are sometimes imperfect but generally fantastic. Even the image generation platforms are fun and useful for creating clever decks. But in general, we're not nearly as advanced as we think we are, and Apple didn't really move the needle in that regard.

The Fast Future Blur: VR/AR and the Future of Work

I try to stay away from overt self-promotion in my newsletter, but just this once, I'll break my own rules. I'm super proud to announce the launch of the Fast Future Blur, which is in stores and online now. The book features all the members of the faculty of the Fast Future Executive program collaborating on chapters to show that all of the technologies we talk about are interconnected. I co-wrote my chapter on VR/AR and the Future of Work with the great Rajan Kalia.

I don't want to give too much away (buy the book!) but we spent a lot of time last fall digging really deep into how leaders can use this technology to solve real world problems and created a framework for applying it across an organization. There are clear and actionable steps for creating and deploying content and measuring outcomes. If this is interesting, I also lead workshops for companies and educational institutions that go even deeper into defining problems and figuring out what works in VR/AR, and then how to actually make the stuff.

While I can't quite claim this book is a beach read, it's definitely a good and educational read -- maybe something to turn your brain back on after a few weeks lounging in the sun. Is "flight home read" a thing? Maybe it should be.

And if you're interested in learning even more, we're doing a launch summit on June 11th at UC Irvine. You can register here. And the book is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Waterstones for you Brits.

The Future of Work is Pivoting

When I was giving a guest lecture up at Brown last week, one student asked me about my career journey, and how I got to where I am now. It was a long answer, partly because I've been in the workforce for twenty years and partly because I've pivoted, a lot. I haven't always wanted to pivot, and it hasn't always been fun, but it has paid off in the long term. And whether we like it or not, it's going to be the reality of how we work from now on.

When I finished college, I thought for sure I'd work in politics. After all, I'd been interning at various non-profits since I was 15; I'd served on non-profit boards as an undergrad; and I'd even done the Wellesley in Washington program, interning in the Senate. But the universe had other plans, and that other plan was discovering that making a living wage wasn't really a thing as a young person who wanted to change the world, and if you didn't have a trust fund, you weren't going to get very far. I spent a year mindlessly answering the phone at a law office and freelancing on the side until a job at an alt-weekly opened up, and I pivoted to journalism. I kept at that, and by the time I was thirty, I was an editor at a national publication. Except, oops, magazine journalism started going up in flames. So I pivoted to music tech, and then to XR. I pivoted in XR from doing entertainment to training and education. And I am quite sure that in some number of years, I'm going to have to pivot to something else.

Am I jealous that certain workers have politicians falling all over themselves to protect their jobs where I was told to just "figure it out?" Sure, but I also realize that the days of anyone fighting to protect those jobs are numbered. The forces of technology and innovation aren't going to stop anytime soon. Sooner or later, we all have to pivot.

The real issue becomes how we set people up for success with those pivots. Most schools in the US sadly do a poor job at teaching critical thinking, analysis, and communication -- they're still stuck in the days where they trained people to churn out widgets. This is not to slam teachers, who are overworked, underpaid, and forced to teach to largely meaningless tests on top of managing out of control classrooms. Rather, it is an indication that we require a radical rethink of what skills students need to learn to make them flexible, adaptable adults.

From there, we need to start retraining those workers who are about to be displaced. If you're reading this, you're likely safer than many, but people who do rote work that can be automated are going to be in trouble very soon. The answer is not to go backwards or be protectionist -- it is to move forward, re-skill, and hopefully wind up in a better position. Put it this way -- if taxi companies had immediately launched an Uber competitor, Uber would have probably gone away. But they dragged their feet and complained while customers -- quelle suprise -- opted for better service. By the time they launched their own apps, they were far behind the curve.

There's a great scene in the Taylor Swift documentary Miss Americana, where she learns her latest album hasn't been nominated for any Grammys. Rather than ranting and blaming the Recording Academy, Swift simply says "I'll make a better album next time." Workers need to be ready to improve and be one step ahead of the curve, lest they fall completely behind.

AI is Nothing for Women to Be Afraid Of

Spend about five minutes poking around the internet, and you're likely to find some sort of clip or post about a clueless dad asking his wife the name of their child's doctor, or soccer schedule, or when their anniversary is again. Time and time again, it's been proven that women have to carry a higher cognitive load when it comes to care work, and even when people try to equalize the work, outside parties often can't quite grasp it. A friend went on a two week overseas work trip and let her children's schools know that they should reach out to her spouse in case of emergencies -- they ignored her and continued to call her until she told them she was literally in China and couldn't just run her son's lunch over.

In my last newsletter I talked about practical use cases for AI, and here's a great one -- making women's live easier. Not having to remember your mother-in-law's birthday and what type of flowers she likes. Not having to remember that this kid is due for that shot, or that you need to call your dad's doctor about his new meds. All the unseen, unheralded, draining work -- AI could easily do this.

Because most of the leaders in the AI space are men, we're not going to see this unless we push for it. But there is a massive market of women who'd love to outsource all this thankless work to a machine and get on with what they actually want to do. I talk a lot about how automation can help people stay in their zones of genius, and it can do that, or just allow you to have more time to read a book and spend less time thinking about who is bringing what to a holiday dinner.

Women should stop fearing this technology and start embracing it and building products they want to see. Imagine a world where everything just ran in the background and women were free to pursue their dreams without the cognitive load of organizing play groups. That would truly be a revolutionary change.

The AI Usefulness Gap

We're being promised flying cars. What we want is 140 characters.

I had high hopes for the return of John Stewart at the Daily Show; like many Xennials, he was my primary source of news in my twenties. Alas, after a strong start, he fell off with a recent piece about AI that was ill-informed, fear-mongering, and quite frankly silly. He mugged over shots of CEOs saying all the things CEOs say about their tech changing the world, without stopping to realize that the reason they say most of those things is to attract investor dollars and juice stock prices. His conclusion was that the sky is falling, AI will take all our jobs, and a handful of billionaires will live it up while everyone else starves.

This is clearly overblown for laughs, but the fact remains that many people are terrified of AI without actually understanding the nature and limits of the technology. In certain circumstances, AI has proven extremely useful -- for instance, the subject of my last newsletter, AI powered virtual humans that people can use for training and conversation practice. These avatars aren't meant to actually replace people; if you're a doctor, you still have to talk to a real patient. They're meant to help and supplement and guide.

But the bottom starts falling out shortly thereafter. AI generated music is nice for background noise, but people love artists and see their concerts because of who they are what they represent, along with their music. AI-generated film scripts are gibberish. Images made by Midjourney and other platforms are fun until you notice shark teeth or ten fingers or a weird sheen; essays generated by ChatGPT are generally just a bunch of other ideas squished together. It's whole lot of flash for VCs to get excited about.

In the real world, meanwhile, I was trying to book a train ticket on a university's travel site to go do a lecture, and it wouldn't let me delete part of a trip. I wound up on the phone with a very nice and patient human who sorted it out, but this is truly the type of thing any functional AI should have been able to do in five seconds. But nope...hey, want to see a picture of cats skiing? THAT we can do.

The hope for the near future is that the hype cycle around AI will cool off a bit and then we'll start getting towards functionality. We've all been predicting that AI will steal all of the jobs, but we've been predicting that since the rise of the cotton gin and the industrial revolution, and unemployment is at historic lows. Some people will be displaced and need to retrain, but as someone on her third career, it's really not the end of the world.

The best thing all the AI honchos can do right now is chill with the rhetoric and actually start making useful things. I don't care about creativity -- I care about never having to wait on hold for customer service, never having to file an expense report, and never having to argue with an airline. And I bet that's what most people want, too.

The Next Generation of AI Powered Avatars Are Here

Back in the mid-aughts, those swoopy banged and white belted days of yore, I spent hours upon hours updating my MySpace page. What started as sloppy code turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to the site, as people were able to customize and turn their sites into personalized seizure-inducing landing pages. But as the internet evolved, we moved away from customization and on to standardized, super clean pages that delivered information, if not joy. But now, with the rise of web3 and AI-powered virtual humans, we are finally getting some of that back.

On a call a few days ago, a colleague kept using the term "talk to the manager" and the first thing that sprung to my mind was the episode of Arrested Development where George Michael wants to be called "Mister Manager." Once the call wrapped, I went onto Virti (full disclosure, I work with them, and if you click the link you can try it for free) and in about twenty minutes, I was chatting about frozen bananas and the whereabouts of George Senior with my Mister Manager avatar. Later that day, I made a Sopranos-obsessed friend a virtual Tony to try to convince he was ready to move up in the family.

One on level, this is all just fun time wasting. But this is also a possible future of fandoms and fan fiction, not to mention education and training. I'd have much rather been interviewing Abraham Lincoln in school than reading a chapter about him in a book. It is also much better for students to be able to practice negotiations or employers to practice difficult conversations with an avatar then just watching a video. But it would also be fun to whip up a virtual version of a fictional character and find out more about their story and motives and iterate from there.

One of the reasons fan fiction has become so huge is because young people without a ton of life experience can use celebrities or fictional characters are jumping off points for their own stories. Imagine letting them run wild and create and tweak conversations that lead to more independent thinking and problem solving.

There are obvious downsides to this, in the form of intellectual property and consent; but then again, how are the locked down journals where I imagined long conversations with various nineties rock stars any different? As long as there are ways to distinguish between a fan-created avatar and the actual person and guardrails to make sure the avatar doesn't dip into territory the real person would find problematic, this is a great way to let creativity flower.

Over the last twenty years the internet has become part of our daily lives, and on balance much less fun and weird. The AI powered virtual humans are a way, at least for now, to bring a little bit of play back.

SXSW: Stuck in the Middle With You

To be clear: SXSW is still fun, and very much worth attending. I did two panels with absolutely brilliant people; went to events to launch fantastic new initiatives; had worthwhile meetings; and saw incredible work. There was live music, there were tacos, there was Shiner Bock. But overall, the festival feels just a bit less essential then it did five years ago.

Part of this is the nature of live events post-Covid, but there's something bigger that SXSW can't really control. We seem to be stuck in an in-between place, where the second wave of the web is cresting and coming back down, and the third wave has yet to build up. All the great tech that drove the buzz at SXSW in past years (Twitter! Uber! Foursquare!) has either disappeared, been en-shittified, or is just something we take for granted. Meanwhile, AI is getting booed and despite a strong market, crypto is has lost its buzz. XR continues to grow slowly but steadily, but we're not all hitting the streets in headsets quite yet.

We're hanging in a trough of disillusionment for several reasons. While the AI products we've seen have a whizzy quality, they haven't managed to solve that many real, day-to-day problems. We're going to hit a massive infrastructure hole that not even all of Jensen Huang's leather jackets sewn together can fix -- digital money is the future until the internet in the store blinks out and the terminals don't work. How exactly do we think all this will work when major countries can still just shut off the internet?

So here we are, stuck in the middle of two eras. For those of us building, it's a good time, albeit a strange one -- we just have to keep our eyes on the horizon and plug away. For everyone else, just hold on -- things are going to come back around soon.