Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: March 25, 2024 by Qiaochu Xu

Presenter/Guest Speaker: Kieran Forde from the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
Date: March 25, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

At the SyMETRI meeting on March 25, 2024, PhD candidate Kieran Forde from Technology Education invited us to consider our own understanding of privacy and how this is related to our experience onlife; how others might encounter us online and whether we have (or could have) any agency over this.

Kieran’s presentation was titled “The Onlife Educator: Borders and Bits.” Like our health, our privacy is something we may not give much thought to until we are given reason to do so. And, as with our health, sometimes it is “too late” to address a problem by the time we learn of it. As such, similar to health insurance, privacy is something we need to consider before a problem arises.

Kieran Forde shared insights from Cory Doctorow’s 2024 McLuhan lecture on “enshittification,”and Carissa Véliz’s book “Privacy is Power,” which advocates for reclaiming control of personal data to restore democracy and counter data-driven power imbalances. He also provided practical tips on enhancing privacy protection, such as using SIM cards, non-trackable emails, VPNs, and pre-paid credit cards for undesirable subscriptions.

He highlighted the work on the Digital Tattoo project emphasising digital rights and responsibilities, urging individuals to think critically about their online presence and the management of their digital identities. This initiative aims to empower users to make informed choices about their digital interactions. Kieran also discusses the role of Google Knowledge Panels in shaping online identities. He shared his personal experience with claiming his knowledge panel to influence its content and presentation on Google. This effort underscores the importance of actively managing one’s digital footprint in the broader context of internet identity and privacy issues, illustrating how digital tools can both challenge and reinforce personal agency online.

SyMETRI members observed that privacy considerations are not yet prominently included in the digital literacy curriculum, highlighting a gap in education that needs to be addressed. Additionally, they raised concerns about the potential for “brainwashing” generative AI, noting the risk of misinformation being used to manipulate these systems.

Bio

Kieran Forde is a PhD candidate in the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy at the University of British Columbia. His PhD research explores connections between the Right to Be Forgotten and education, especially as it pertains to the increasing commodification of children as data subjects.

Summary of SyMETRI Meeting: February 12th, 2024 by Qiaochu Xu

Presenter/Guest Speaker: Rachel Moylan from the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education, UBC
Date: February 29th, 2024
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

In SyMETRI meeting on February 29th, 2024, PhD student Rachel Moylan shared her insightful study conducted in British Columbia, Canada, shortly after the public release of ChatGPT.

Rachel’s work was titled “Artificial Intelligence in Education: Learning from Teachers’ Perspectives.” This study aimed to understand teachers’ experiences navigating the complex landscape of AI in education, teachers’ experiences of their relationships to AI and other digital technologies, and the ways in which teachers’ experiences concerning AI in education are sociotechnically co-constituted. Though it is promoted by some in the educational technology industry as a neutral tool (e.g., Cohen, 2023), ChatGPT’s perceived capacities for ideation, analysis, and written composition raise questions concerning human capabilities and the future of humanity.

Here are some slides from her presentation:
During the session, SyMETRI participants actively engaged in discussions about the challenges and ethical concerns related to using AI in educational settings. They delved into specific ways educators could thoughtfully and effectively incorporate ChatGPT in subjects such as math, science, and English for non-native speakers. These conversations highlighted the groups’ need to understand both the technical functionalities of AI tools like ChatGPT and their wider impact on creating fair and productive learning spaces.

Bio
Rachel Moylan is a PhD student in the Department of Curriculum & Pedagogy in the Faculty of Education at UBC. Her PhD research is focused on understanding power relations within complex sociotechnical ensembles and understanding what it is like to be a human within such ensembles. She is especially interested in understanding the human-algorithm relationship in the context of teacher education and is developing a postdigital ethnographic methodology that includes iterative artistic interventions intended to provoke new ways of thinking and becoming in relation to algorithmic systems.

Summary of SyMETRI meeting June 28th, 2023 by Ariane Faria

Presenter/Guest Speaker: Dr. Vered Shwartz of UBC Computer Science
Date: June 28th, 2023
Host: Dr. Cynthia Nicol

In the SyMETRI meeting on June 28th, 2023,

Dr. Vered Shwartz talked about how language models, such as ChatGPT, are changing the way human beings interact with technology and how it may affect the labor market, education, and the whole society’s interactions. ChatGPT is a general-purpose chat box trained to answer questions about various topics, retrieving the answers for each previous question and merging or elaborating on future answers. ChatGPT in a few months has appeared in different versions, being the last one (ChatGPT4) able to work both with text and image inputs.

The way that language models work is by using the prompt given by the user to find the probability of a word appearing next. It calculates the probability based on patterns related to the sentence syntax, semantics, and factual knowledge from internet data used to build the model. The two images below show this idea:

However, Dr. Vered Shwartz highlighted that these models still have many limitations. Even though they frequently sound plausible and confident in their answers, they may present incorrect and inconsistent information. The most curious factor about their inconsistency is related to numbers. Their mathematical ability relies on finding answers on the internet rather than understanding and applying bat at inductive, spatial, mathematical, and multi-hop reasoning.

Moreover, ChatGPT3 was able to go around offensive language filters being offensive and discriminatory. ChatGPT4 presents better results, but OpenAI didn’t disclose any details about the model or the data, which does not allow us to question problems that may appear because of the way the data were trained. Finally, all language models available now can’t answer questions about recent events because they were trained on data up to 2021.

Dr. Vered Shwartz is cautious on ignore the impact language models may have on us even their current limitations. She believes this new technology will change completely the labor market, education, and the whole society’s interactions. Many jobs will disappear or increase the productivity expectation under human beings given the market will assume these new tools can make the job easier and faster. The education field is rethinking what teaching and learning means and how to deal with cheating issues. Finally, the role society will have to discuss issues related to accountability for mistakes made by AI tools and how human beings may establish relationships with these tools in both their professional and personal lives.

Bio 

Dr. Vered Shwartz is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, and a CIFAR AI Chair at the Vector Institute. Her research interests focuses on natural language processing, with the fundamental goal of building models capable of human-level understanding of natural language. She is interested in computational semantics and pragmatics, and commonsense reasoning. She is currently working on learning to uncover implicit meaning, which is abundant in human speech, and on developing machines with advanced reasoning skills.

One of the cardinal goals of the SyMETRI Group is to provide a space to encourage and give constructive feedback to both students and faculty members on their research studies. On November 23, 2017, SyMETRI held its last session for the Fall term where Stella Maris, a PhD Candidate with special interest in media and technology education presented her preliminary research findings for feedback. Please find below excerpts of Stella’s presentation.

Thanks to Stella for sharing her work with the group.

Want to learn more about SyMETRI? Please contact Kwesi via email:kwesi.yaro@alumni.ubc.ca