Google has announced the latest in a sequence of upgrades to its
popular online learning platform Google Classroom, and it’s all about
injecting more artificial intelligence into schools. Classroom was
popular with teachers all around the world before Covid-19, but has
experienced enormous growth since 2020. Google’s announcement of new AI
functionalities reveals its continued plans for expansion across the
education sector, and beyond, and its technical and economic power to
reshape learning through automation.
# Autopedagogy
The adaptive learning technology, it claims, will provide ‘one-to-one
feedback,’ providing a ‘round the clock tutor for each student.’ It
‘identifies relevant learning skills’ while students are using the
feature within Classroom assignments, then ‘finds relevant hints and
resources’ which appear as ‘recommended video and content cards for
each learning skill.’ Practice Sets also features ‘autograding’
functionality, giving teachers ‘visibility into their [students’]
thinking,’ and ‘automated insights’ into ‘class-wide trends’ to provide
a ‘quick view of class performance,’ as well as ‘actionable insights’
they can use to improve their teaching. [...]
the head of Google for Education said ‘applying recent AI advances’ to
adaptive learning ‘opens up a whole new set of possibilities to
transform the future of school into a personal learning experience.’ He
added, ‘Adaptive learning technology saves teachers time and provides
data to help them understand students’ learning processes and patterns.’
These marketing materials are presented in a highly persuasive way.
They tap into contemporary problems of schooling such as providing
adequate support and feedback to students. They also promote the idea
that education is about ‘learning skills,’ resonant with contemporary
education policy preoccupations with skills and their value.
But the Google marketing is also highly technosolutionist.
It proposes that datafied forms of surveillance and automation are
ideally suited to solving the problems of schooling. [...]
Its ambitions for scalability exceed the Classroom alone, however.
It is also positioning itself as a ‘learning company,’ dedicated to
‘Helping everyone in the world learn anything in the world’, whether
at school, at work, or in everyday life itself.
# Technomagic
What is striking about the Practice Sets announcement is the way it
presents adaptive learning technology. For teachers, it will
‘supercharge teaching content,’ and ‘when students receive
individualized, in-the-moment support, the results can be magical.’
As MC Elish and danah boyd have previously argued, ‘magic’ is
frequently invoked in tech marketing materials, especially in relation
to AI, while minimizing attention to the methods, human labour and
resources required to produce a particular effect:
When AI proponents and businesses produce artefacts and
performances to trigger cultural imaginaries in their effort to
generate a market and research framework for the advancement of AI,
they are justifying and enabling a cultural logic that prioritizes
what is technically feasible over what is socially desirable. [...]
AI is of course not magic. The discourse and imaginary of magical AI
obscures the complex social, economic, technical and political efforts
involved in its development, hides its internal mechanisms, and
disguises the wider effects of such systems. [...]
Invoking ‘Google magic’ therefore erases the underlying business
interests of Google in education and the internal dynamics of its
data-driven AI developments. [...]
Google extracts personal data from students, skirts laws intended to
protect them, targets them for profits, obfuscates the company’s intent
in their Terms of Service, recommends harmful information, and distorts
students’ knowledge.
Continua con un lungo elenco di criticità serissime su
https://codeactsineducation.wordpress.com/2022/03/17/google-magic/
Che dire?
Ringraziamo il Ministero dell'Istruzione (ed in particolare la
ex-Ministra Azzolina) per aver trasformato 8 milioni di studenti
italiani in cavie da laboratorio per Google & friends.
E ringraziamo l'attuale Ministro dell'Istruzione per continuare nel
solco del suo predecessore, abbandonando quei milioni di futuri elettori
all'indottrinamento automatizzato, personalizzato e sorvegliato di una
potenza straniera.
E naturalmente, non possiamo mancare di ricordare il nostro Garante
della Privacy, che si guarda bene dal metter becco in affari che non lo
riguardano, come la protezione dei dati degli studenti.
E cosa dire degli insegnanti che si stanno rendendo obsoleti da sé?
La Storia li ricorderà. Come eroi, probabilmente.
Che la Storia ormai la scrivono le "AI" al servizio dei vincitori.
Giacomo
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