Monthly Archives: February 2023

Milestones

Today my youngest turns 21. It sounds so cliche to ask ‘Where does the time go?’ And yet it feels like a legitimate question.

One day you are bringing a bundle of joy home from the hospital… The next you are making sounds for them to repeat.

First steps, first time on a bicycle, first time without training wheels, first big fall from a bicycle.

First day of school, first day of middle school, high school, university.

Thousands of firsts, thousands of milestones, skipping past as fast as a skipping rock across a pond.

The firsts may come farther apart now, but they are to be cherished. Each ripple, a new moment, a new milestone, a new memory.

AI, Evil, and Ethics

Google is launching Bard, its version of Chat GPT, connected to search, and connected live to the internet. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, shared yesterday, “An important next step on our AI journey“. In discussing the release of Bard, Sundar said,

“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

Following the link above led me to this next link:

“In addition to producing responses that humans judge as sensible, interesting, and specific to the context, dialog models should adhere to Responsible AI practices, and avoid making factual statements that are not supported by external information sources.”

I am quite intrigued by what principles Google is using to guide the design and use of Artificial Intelligence. You can go to the links for the expanded description, but here are Google’s Responsible AI practices:

“Objectives for AI applications

We will assess AI applications in view of the following objectives. We believe that AI should:

1. Be socially beneficial.

2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.

3. Be built and tested for safety.

4. Be accountable to people.

5. Incorporate privacy design principles.

6. Uphold high standards of scientific excellence.

7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.”

But these principles aren’t enough, they are the list of ‘good’ directions, and so there are also the ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ added below these principles:

“AI applications we will not pursue

In addition to the above objectives, we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.

  2. Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

  3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

  4. Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve.”

I remember when Google used to share its motto “Don’t be evil”.

These principles remind me of the motto. The interesting vibe I get from the principles and the ‘Thou Shalt Not’ list of things the AI will not pursue is this:

‘How can we say we will try to be ethical without: a) mentioning ethics; and b) admitting this is an imperfect science without admitting that we are guaranteed to make mistakes along the way?’

Here is the most obvious statement that these Google principles and guidelines are all about ethics without using the word ethics:

“…we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.”

You can’t get to, “Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risk“… Without talking aboutethics. Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we believe’? Who is deciding what benefits outweigh what risks? Who determines what is ‘substantial’ in the weighting of benefits versus risks? Going back to Principle 2, how is bias being determined or measured?

The cold hard reality is that the best Google, and Chat GPT, and all AI and predictive text models can do is, ‘Try to do less evil than good’ or maybe just, ‘Make it harder to do evil than good.’

The ethics will always trail the technological capabilities of the tool, and guiding principles are a method to catch wrongdoing, not prevent it. With respect to the list of things AI will not pursue, “As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve“… Is a way of saying, ‘We will learn of ways that this tool will be abused and then add to this list.

The best possible goals of designers of these AI technologies will be to do less evil than good… The big question is: How to do this ethically when it seems these companies are scared to talk directly about ethics?

Public by default, private by choice

This is the world we now live in. Almost everything we do is public by default, private by choice. But even then we can’t guarantee our privacy. Share something, anything online privately and it’s only as private as the least privacy-minded person.

Send a photo to just your closest friends, but one friend finds it funny and passes it on.

Send an email to a few people to try to resolve a private problem, but one recipient decides to forward it beyond the group… or worse yet, shares it on a public forum because they disagree with how you are dealing with the situation privately.

Send a direct message to someone rather than having it in your public timeline, and they respond by sharing your message on their public timeline, along with their response.

Privacy is hard to do in a world where so much is easily made public. It’s hard to do when the default is public. This speaks to how important it is to act as if anything you share is public. Because while we might make the choice to be private, we are only one part of the sharing equation. Private by choice means keeping something just to yourself, and not saying/sharing it with anyone or on any social media platform.

All communication is public by default. Privacy is an illusion that can be broken at any time.

Back inside

While visiting Barcelona I said, “It’s fascinating to see how the city is designed for pedestrians.” I loved that streets were converted to one-way so that there could be more sidewalks, and every nook and open space between buildings would be transformed into courtyards and places to sit and be outside.

Now, after returning home I realize that I’m always indoors. Yes, I enjoy walks with a friend and with my wife, and the trails we walk on are beautiful, and I’m surrounded by trees. Living here gives us amazing access to the natural beauty of the west coast rainforest.

But other than a few walks, the last 5 weeks at home have been almost entirely inside. My outdoor time is spent going from my house to my car, and from my car to work or whatever other destination I was heading to. Other than that, I’m in a building or in my car. I have made one walking trip to our neighbourhood donut shop, in the same way I’d walk to a pastry shop in Spain, and beyond that my travels have all been by car. Even my beautiful walks I go on are destinations I drive to.

I miss the liveability of Barcelona and Madrid. The buzz of people all around. The convenience of small neighbourhood stores, pastry shops, and restaurants. I am fully aware that I was on vacation and that’s different than being here at work full time, and if I had the same job in Spain, I’d spend most of my time indoors. But there is something about living in a city made for walking that I’m drawn to. I want to be able to park my car and leave it behind when I go to pick up groceries. I want to walk to restaurants. I want to walk 10,000+ steps in a day as part of my routine and not just on designated walks 1-2 times a week.

I know it’s more challenging because I live in the suburbs. Yet some of this I can do, if I allow myself the time. Our grocery store is walking distance, as long as I’m not buying too much to carry. I can walk to work if I allot myself 40 minutes each way, and if I don’t have out of school meetings. I could sacrifice the convenience of my car, and walk a bit more, but it will take an effort and time that I’m not sure I’d be willing to give up. It’s much harder to do this in a city designed around roads rather than sidewalks… but I will make more of an effort.

Shades of grey

Just a simple reminder that we don’t live in a dichotomy. The world isn’t either black or white. Most ideas sit somewhere in between.

Nuances in politics, in culture, and in our communities create opportunities to learn, to explore, and to be empathetic. Not sympathetic, empathetic. I remember interviewing a friend of my aunt’s for an essay about discrimination. He was in a wheelchair and I quoted him in my paper, “The only place sympathy belongs is between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

We don’t learn if our ideas aren’t challenged. We don’t learn by talking but by listening. We can disagree. We can even argue and debate. We can research and support our ideas. We can walk away… and maybe we can change our minds. Maybe we can find the grey that allows us to coexist without feeling like we have to change others minds.

Nuances. Empathy. Shades of grey.

The ugliness of war

Last night we went to the play Forgiveness: A Gift From My Grandparents. It’s two juxtaposed stories of Canadians during World War II. The main characters are a Japanese woman from BC, and her family who are sent to an internment camp after the attack on Pearl Harbour, and a young Canadian from Quebec who joins the war, is sent to Hong Kong, and spends years in a a Japanese prisoner of war camp, first in China, then in Japan.

The story culminates into a dinner between her son and his daughter dating, and the PTSD suffering former prisoner of war being invited to dinner to meet her daughter’s boyfriend’s family in Medicine Hat, Alberta. This Japanese family lived here after they lost everything in BC, and had no reason to return when they were finally permitted to many years after the war.

It’s a story of family, love, and friendship through hard times. It’s also a story of patriotism, racism, and death. Yet humanity prevails. Ultimately it is a story of the ravages of war, the impact it has on those who fight, and also the civilians who suffer. It tells both of these sides of the story beautifully and leaves you feeling compassion for all the victims war… those who die and those who survive.

I am left reflecting on the fact that despite this being a Canadian story about World War II, it could also be a story about Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, or the Ukraine today. A story of war does not just come from history, there are similar stories happening today. Continuing and enduring stories of patriotism, racism, and death. They leave behind survivors that have suffered the ugliness of war. An ugliness that takes many lives and leaves both emotional and physical scars on those left behind. Survivors search for humanity in an inhumane world. We are fortunate if we do not face such hardships and we should be compassionate to those that do.

It was a beautifully sad play.

It’s going great!

Ever find yourself feeling hesitant to say things are going well… or even worse, ‘Going smoothly’? You don’t want to jinx it, to turn your luck around. So things at work and home are going good, even great, but when someone asks you how thing are going you just say ‘fine’, or respond ‘ok’.

You might share that things are good, but preface it with something challenging. Or worse yet you might add that you are busy:

“How are things going?”

“Busy, but good.”

Like Dean Shareski says, Everybody’s busy. Busy is not a badge of honour. So, why mention it? Why preface your well-being with a statement about being busy or any other statement for that matter:

“How are things going?”

  • “Great, but have you seen the price of eggs?”
  • “Great, except for my favourite hockey team lost again.”
  • “Fantastic, if only I had one more hour of sleep.

It’s not bragging to say things are good, when someone asks. Be good. Be great. Allow things to be wonderful. It’s not going to last forever, so why make it unnecessarily conditional? Enjoy the fact that sometimes things are going well without adding stipulations and parameters.

“How are things going?”

“Great! How are things with you?”

Reexamining the term FAILURE

Six years ago in Philadelphia I ran a session at Educon on Failure. Bill Ferriter came to the session and after the interactive presentation he created this image:

This was the premise I was working from,

When is failure really a success? When we engage students in EPIC projects and challenges, the journey to success is often fraught with failures that can prove to be amazing learning opportunities. 

Do we need to reexamine the use of the term ‘Failure’?

Our present education system is built around always finding the ‘right’ answer, but when can the wrong answer be valuable? How can we provide rich, meaningful opportunities for students to make mistakes, iterate, persevere and develop alternative approaches to problems relevant to what they are learning?

4 years before this presentation I created this image:

I shared an acronym that I came up with:

F ailure
A lways
I nvites
L earning

I share in an accompanying post,

Think of this: If students (regardless of skills and abilities) have only ever met success, and accomplished every task, assignment and project they have needed to do for school, then they weren’t pushed hard enough. In this case, it is the program that is the failure, because the students were not challenged as much as they should have been.

The learning potential of failure is significant. If the work is meaningful enough, there can be more learned from an epic failure, than a marginal success, where the measure for success was set too low.

We talk a lot about ‘learning through failure’ in education, but we don’t really mean failure. Because when a student takes lessons from something not working, then it’s a learning opportunity and not actually a failure.

When you think about it, lack of knowledge is where the learning begins. If you give students the knowledge, they don’t really learn, you actually rob students of their learning. You want them to struggle and to find the learning challenging. And if the challenge is authentic, if it’s really a challenge, then it’s not something they’ll get on the first try. So hitting the ‘failure point’ is part of learning. Trying to achieve too much needs to be part of the process… and so bumping into failure is an essential part of learning.

So a failure is only a failure if the challenge lacks reflection, resources, support, or effort. If these things are provided (by the teacher and more-so by the learner) then the learner didn’t actually fail. They may not achieve their original goal, but they invited learning into the attempt… and learning is achieved. That is not a failure.

The idea of learning through failure is actually not a failure at all. It is accepting that there are opportunities for learning in not achieving the intended goal but still identifying that there was learning to be acquired and often the struggle is something that makes this kind of learning stick.

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Related: This Ignite presentation on Transforming Our Learning Metaphors: