4 posts tagged with "ai-literacy"

Talofa reader,

The relationship with my tools is no longer "what was that hammer? Oh right, I just use you to smash nails. The end." It's a lot closer to what it would be like if I had an assistant who's brilliant—but has no memory of what we did at 2am.

We are a few years now since the explosion of ChatGPT, and despite the many hot takes about how good or bad AI is, I can only attest to my personal experience: it's been a 20x minimum boost in the projects I've been able to build, in less than half the time I would have estimated.

Talofa reader,

The argument that "AI is inevitable" has been accepted by tech and non-tech professionals alike, largely with muted reservation rather than loud proclamation. I've led workshops on generative AI, and the feeling from participants is that AI is a foregone conclusion:

"If you don't keep up, you'll be left behind."

They're not saying it because they're convinced about the technology, but because of how it feels to be surrounded by it.

And that's the problem. This is a claim that needs to be scrutinised, because you may have more optionality than you're led to believe.

Talofa reader,

I saw a post by a Māori Entrepreneur & Investor who had recently launched an AI company, which left me flabbergasted.

In the post, he advises his followers to watch a documentary on Netflix, where the first episode discusses AI. He then remarks on the things he learned from this documentary, on Netflix, in September 2024.

This individual was surprised to learn about the extensive data requirements of large language models like ChatGPT. He only just discovered that these AI systems are trained on massive amounts of internet data, encompassing a wide variety of content. This includes not only openly available information but also potentially copyrighted material, and it's not clear how much of each was used.

The person emphasised that the training data for these models isn't limited to formal publications or books. Training datasets also absorbed personal content such as blog posts and social media interactions. As a result, these AI systems are exposed to a broad spectrum of human expression, which most likely included indigenous knowledge.

He's only just learned this, two weeks after launching his AI company that weaves AI with Indigenous knowledge.

I had to sit there, staring at the screen doing the "beautiful mind" meme, trying to make sense of the world.

How?

Talofa Reader,

I was listening to a podcast once, and the guest was explaining why there aren't as many "geniuses" and prodigies around now as there were in, say, Mozart's days.

The explanation was that historically, aristocracies often had exclusive access to the best education and intellectual resources. Children of aristocrats were frequently tutored by leading scholars, artists, and thinkers.

I sat on this and thought about my experiences growing up, my environment, my schools, my circle of friends, and my parents' friends. I looked at who was successful and who didn't quite come out on top.

Which led me to the following hypothesis:

The single factor, which paradoxically accounts for both the challenges and successes experienced by Pasifika, in my opinion, can be summed up in one central theme—

The limits to this access came in many forms:

environments that were hostile to learning things that would advance, and not hinder, us; whether that was at home, learning we needed to "play our role", or at school, where we were treated like we were too dumb to understand anything academically.

Teachers who weren't skilled in getting through to Pasifika kids; admittedly, were already hard-up against it, given theteaching industry's a bit shit(pay, class sizes etc), and then the Island kids are coming to school from stressed environments, hungry, wrong uniforms, etc.

If we got to school at all...

It wasn’t usually the best schools.

No offence to the teachers that made it to the schools I went to, but the rich schools got the best teachers, right?

Statistically, your parents either didn't finish school or can't really help you with your English and maths homework, and hiring a tutor is only what kids in the movies did.

So, poor communities, with poor schools, and poor teachers don't lead to a rich, knowledgeable learning outcome1.