Friday Follow Up

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I’m in Paris and just finished the Open edX conference, which I’ll write up in a separate post, but I’ve discovered the French have changed their approach with Americans. Gone are the days of not helping tourists with their weak French, and instead they seem to have convinced Apple Maps to avoid some useful information. Yes, there was a label “includes stairs” when I chose to walk from the train station instead of using the crowded bus, but come on. I think these stairs qualify for more of a warning.

Someone put a hand written sign “Encore un effort!” on this last section of stairs.

A Real Discussion on Privacy and AI in Europe of All Places

There was a plenary panel nominally on the topic of “Algorithm & Access”, but the best section came when Anant Agarwal (founder of edX) had a contrary take on the prevailing views around privacy.

In US higher education circles, but even more so in the let’s outdo GDPR approach of the European Union, there is an assumption bordering on axiom that we must protect personal data in our management of generative AI in education. Courtney Hills McBeth (provost at WGU) and Francois Taddei (from The Learning Planet Institute) described their organizational efforts to deal with this problem, but Anant almost reluctantly shared his contrary view. That privacy axiom is often not shared with younger generations, who assume data can’t be controlled but want better and more useful AI. They’re willing to focus on benefits and often do not care about privacy, as least as much as people crafting policy and guidelines. We should focus on the transformational benefits that will come from this new technology.

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