Change will happen, either through design or disaster.
7 links for the week ahead
- David Adam (2024-10-15). The Early Days of Peer Review: Five Insights From Historic Reports.
- Sam Altman (2015). The Days Are Long but the Decades Are Short.
- Linus Lee (2017-11-12). Starting a Company Is the Most Educational Thing I’ve Done.
- John Naughton (2024-08-24). AI cheating is overwhelming the education system – but teachers shouldn’t despair.
- Dean Shareski (2024-10-24). Saving Time for What?.
- Ben Thompson (2024-10-15). Elon Dreams and Bitter Lessons.
- Ben Werdmüller (2021). 42 admissions
AI and focus on meaningful work
Hoffmann, M., Boysel, S., Nagle, F., Peng, S., & Xu, K. (2024). Generative AI and the Nature of Work (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. 5007084). Social Science Research Network.
While an emerging literature documents wide-ranging productivity effects of AI, relatively little attention has been paid to how AI might change the nature of work itself. How do individuals, especially those in the knowledge economy, adjust how they work when they start using AI?… We find that having access to Copilot induces such individuals to shift task allocation towards their core work of coding activities and away from non-core project management activities. We identify two underlying mechanisms driving this shift – an increase in autonomous rather than collaborative work, and an increase in exploration activities rather than exploitation. The main effects are greater for individuals with relatively lower ability…
The mind-blowing scale of The Milky Way
I’ve always been fascinated with space, especially the awesome sense of scale that comes with zooming out and away from our little corner of the galaxy.
Personal update
- Presented a lecture on a Smart Health programme for a cohort of health professions students in China (created this AI-generated video of me introducing the session in Chinese, which I don’t speak).
- Presented a webinar on using generative AI for personal productivity, for the Physiopedia AI MOOC.
- Presented a webinar for FAIMER, on the use of generative AI in health professions education.
- Presented a webinar on generative AI in clinical practice, for the Orthopaedic Division of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association.
- Completed a full outline for an editorial on generative AI and scientific publishing.
- Finalised my preparation for travelling to Goa in India next week, for the Scientifica conference, where I’ll be presenting a keynote and workshop on AI in physiotherapy.
- Showcased some of our digital innovation work (VR and social robots) at the Greater Lincolnshire LEP conference.
- Developed a new content creation pipeline for the work I do at Head space, which will help support a more systematic and academically rigorous approach to expanding the project library and materials.