A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. – John Shedd
7 links for the week ahead
- Julian Bajkowski (2024-09-25). Victorian Welfare Agency Banned From GenAI After Child Protection Debacle. “…information about the child protection case was entered into ChatGPT but, consistent with how LLMs operate and the associated risks mentioned above, ChatGPT failed to properly understand the relevant context and generated inappropriate and inaccurate content as a result.” Note: AI isn’t going to save us from ourselves.
- Rob Hardy (2024-06-17). Manifestos Are Magic Spells. “The process of writing a manifesto, at its core, is the process of clarifying your desire. In a world that’s constantly distracting us with digital noise and shiny objects… getting clear about what you want, deep down, is a radical act.”
- Al Kahn (n.d.). The One Thing You Need to Learn to Fight Information Overload. “The first rule is you should not consume content just because it’s handed to you. The second rule is you should not read passively. The third rule is you should always make what you read your own.”
- Steve Krause (2023-25-02). The Problem Is Not the AI. “I also like to believe that because of the way the assignments are structured, students become interested in their own writing in a way that makes cheating seem silly.”
- Emanuel Maiberg (2024-10-09). The Editors Protecting Wikipedia From AI Hoaxes. “A group of Wikipedia editors have formed WikiProject AI Cleanup, a collaboration to combat the increasing problem of unsourced, poorly-written AI-generated content on Wikipedia.”
- Ethan Mollick (2023-17-03). Using AI to Make Teaching Easier & More Impactful. “AI is an incredibly exciting tool for teaching. It is widely-available, inexpensive, and fast to experiment with.”
- Jessica Tappin (2024-09-10). AI-Human Collaboration: From Quant to Qual, Turning Data Into Meaning. “I would argue that there is a time and place for AI in qualitative research— when the free-text data is overwhelming for human analysis… and/or when rapid analysis is important, such as during a global pandemic.”
Validity matters more than cheating
Dawson, P., Bearman, M., Dollinger, M., & Boud, D. (2024). Validity matters more than cheating. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2024.2386662
We begin by questioning what cheating is, why it is wrong, and how justifiable the approaches used to address cheating are. We then propose a reframing of cheating as subsumed by assessment validity. In this view, cheating is addressed without moralising, as part of the broader positive mission of assurance of learning. This perspective highlights how attempts to improve validity by addressing cheating can sometimes make validity worse, for example when an anti-cheating technology reduces cheating but creates problems for inclusion. In shifting focus from cheating to validity, we hope to draw renewed attention to what matters most in assessment: that we know our graduates are capable of what we say they are.
This used to be impossible
A little overview of ChatGPT’s new Advanced Voice Mode, Google’s NotebookLM (plus a mention of Open NotebookLM, an open source version), and AlphaChip, Google’s new approach to AI chip design.
Personal update
- My application for promotion to Full Professor was denied for a second time so I’ve been reflecting on that process a lot during this past week. I’m trying to be more open about rejections in general, to hopefully normalise this practice. We often see colleagues celebrating their successes in academia, with very few sharing their failures. This can make it seem like you’re the only one getting rejected. You’re not.
- I’ve been invited to give the Founder’s Lecture for the Chartered Society of Physiotherapists at the 2025 CSP Congress, and have accepted (see previous presenters here). I’m very much looking forward to this.
- Next week I’ll be travelling to SUPSI in Switzerland to run 2 workshops on AI in physiotherapy practice and education.
- I’ve also recently been invited to speak to 120 course instructors for the Canadian Physiotherapy Association in early 2025, although this hasn’t been confirmed yet.
- I started a process of building a writing dashboard in Obsidian, that serves as a Home page. Every time I open my ‘writing’ vault, I have a dynamically updated list of all my open writing projects. The dashboard is purely functional at the moment (it’s just a list with headings), but I want to improve the layout and add a banner image at some point. I already feel like it’s given my writing projects more structure and focus.
- I did a deep dive into the subculture of carry-on luggage after realising that I have a 1-2 day bag, and a multi-week bag, but not a 3-5 day bag. I eventually opted for the Thule Subterra 40L carry-on, which includes a removable laptop bag. There’s a newer version (the Subterra 2) but I didn’t think it was worth the extra cost.
- I’ve been getting back into playing Friday night football in my village, after a couple of months absence because, Reasons.