📢 The online #CriticalAI seminar series returns ✨Anna Schjøtt Hansen Tobias Blanke and I are thrilled to announce the program of the 24–25 series🙌 ✨Once again, open to everyone to critically engage with, critique and challenge #AI regimes across different fields of application

1. Neuralink's grand vision of augmenting normal humans has a serious problem: we probably have "merged" with computers as much as we can. Humans are surprisingly limited in terms of input/output to ~10 bits per second *regardless* of medium (even pure thought, etc).

More snouts in the trough of children’s social care. This 🧵is about Keys Group, owned by the private equity firm G Square Capital, which is responsible for 1,200 young people in care (and a similar number of young adults.

"[C]ourt records show AllHere’s few remaining employees are preparing for 'the wind down of the company' and officials acknowledged during Tuesday’s proceeding that AllHere was unable to fulfill the terms of its contract with L.A. Unified." the74million.org/article/allher…

Ben Williamson Charles Logan This entire debacle sounds like a cautionary tale about speculative investment, both financial and intellectual, in the hype around AI in education, but in reality, it is being cast a series of failures at the level of the individual and the company. Alas

'The obsession with school uniform in this country is weird. Really, really weird. In terms of state education, you could travel from one side of Europe to the other and barely see a school uniform.' heraldscotland.com/opinion/245816…

new podcast! Fascinating conversation with Sonia Livingstone about how EdTech products & data protection policies fail to protect children’s rights at school ... with a deep dive on how children's rights are put at risk through the use of Google Classroom: buzzsprout.com/1301377/episod…

To the public, Microsoft uses its reputation as an AI & sustainability leader to tell a compelling story: AI will do wonders to help solve the climate crisis. To fossil-fuel firms, Microsoft has a different message: AI will help them drill, baby, drill. 1/ theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

"In this new generative-AI paradigm, uncertainty reigns over certainty, speculation dominates reality, science defers to faith [...] while the technology consumes unprecedented amounts of energy." An amazing piece from Karen Hao about AI and climate: theatlantic.com/technology/arc…

Where are we at with edtech and Big Tech in education? The FreshEd invited me back to talk about platform business and AI in education and academic publishing freshedpodcast.com/367-williamson/

Adelaide University stops face-to-face lectures. theguardian.com/australia-news…

That came out rather well! Thanks Neil Selwyn - it was fun to discuss all things #data #EdTech #Googleclassroom #ChildRights #Critical #Education #Research with you!

"If administrators believe that increased use of digital tools will lead to a more consistent student experience, they are likely to be disappointed"

Just published. Special issue of the International Review of Education International Review of Education on "The Sustainable Development Goals and the Global Governance of Education", co-edited by William Smith, Melanie Ehren and Sotiria Grek. link.springer.com/journal/11159/…

New FreshEd with Janja Komljenovic on Data Driven Universities: freshedpodcast.com/368-komljenovi…

A new podcast has just been published, in which I discuss datafication in higher education. It was a pleasure recording this episode with Will Brehm. Thank you, Will and the FreshEd team for having me.