Singapore embraces AI wholeheartedly, so I wasn’t surprised when my neighbourhood organised an AI and Innovation festival recently. I took my two kids to check it out because if nothing else, they could queue up for snacks and freebies and while some hours away. Better still, the elder son could gain some ideas on what AI is all about and how it would impact his life.
Different government departments set up booths, so it was interesting to observe how AI was incorporated into different aspects of urban living in Singapore, I was astonished to learn that an AI chatbot was based on a real-life employee still working with the Home Team Science team. That wasn’t a collusion of personal and professional lives that sit well with me.
I also appreciated the booths that brought AI down to the level of preschoolers. One particular station involved us waving our arms in the air, thus inducing a robot to imitate our movements. Good stuff
How did you, as a practitioner of using AI for educational infographic purposes, feel about what the Infocomm Media Development Authority had to say? Are they proposing limitations to your work? Or encouraging it?
thank you for looking at my photos! I doubt that teachers’ efforts are under the purview of the Infocomm media development authority. but the Ministry of Education is in charge, and it definitely heavily promotes the integration of AI into our work processes. for instance, there is a Facebook community that sorta acts as the third space for Singaporean educators. teachers who post about how they have incorporated the nation’s AI capabilities as well as other AI apps (Snorkl a speech evaluation tool is the rage these days) are regarded as the pioneers for the rest of us to emulate.
the national narrative centres on how AI can help (overworked) teachers produce work more efficiently and guide their students to access higher forms of metacognition. I think we have done well in ensuring that our nation’s usage does not remove the need for our students to exercise their brain juices. however, I think that the key priority is time optimisation - which is a stance I beg to differ with. case in point: next Monday, I intend to teach my sixth graders how to play Bingo and hopefully internalise the meaning of 16 new words. sure the lesson isn’t as glittery as AI-infused ones, but I’m sure it will be effective in making learning stick for some of my students. the core question of whether AI is superior to other pedagogies is something that I feel is crucially lacking in our national discourse. everyone seems to just jump on the bandwagon haha
I try to stay up to date with what you're reporting!
The main issue I'm seeing, around the world and cross-industry, is that because everything is still in yolo/fomo mode there isn't much opinion out there about what reproducibly works or does not work, and on top by the time you have formed an opinion you're already behind, so it's not worth the effort. At some point I guess it'll stabilize and then we'll get into a more mature environment.
Releasing early is probably the best thing OpenAI & Co have done. Hyping early is probably the worst.
I can’t speak for other countries, but in Singapore, young students are expressing aghast and are up in arms on Reddit in regard to how their institutions rely heavily on AI - to the extent that it has become ludicrous. We have art teachers getting their charges to upload their artwork on Gen AI sites because AI-generated art is more polished supposedly. While I have hopes that there will be pushback against indiscriminate use of AI, it seems that we have tolerated AI slop. We celebrate National Day on 8 August. And netizens have been circulating around AI posters in which glaring errors can be found. But the community organisations responsible for such posters have not come forth to give an explanation or an apology. So, it seems that being able to shave off time prevails over doing a decent job
Similar elsewhere. Similar outside of education too.
I had a colleague paste me a chatgpt analysis of their work when I asked why they made certain choices in their code. On signal. Someone I worked with for a decade. That used to be a capable coder. I've not been so insulted in years lol. Its also when I decided I have to take a step back from some projects because I'm not going to win that war; it will destroy me.
So I get it. It is in many cases outrageous and I feel that same corner cutting. But at the same time I also see a lot of reasonable use - yours included - and it really makes a difference if someone has attention to detail or not. Back in my corporate days we used to joke that the only qualifications for new hires was: attitude and attention to detail. It was kind of true which was sad, but it's probably even more true now.