AI can be liberating

In my 25 years in academia, technology often felt like a straitjacket.

Sure, technology helped. I would not go back to running a class without a proper Learning Management System. But more often than not, I spent hours bending the tools that we had available to my will, or convincing administrators to get different tools that better fit my needs. So often did I have ideas for what to do in the classroom, only to find that the technology wasn't there. And if we had the right tool, getting students to easily access it was a different matter. The classroom is a place where things just need to work.

I do not consider myself a coder. Sure, I have written code since I was 8 years old, but I did not have the time in life or the skills to build proper applications on my own. This would always require developers, grant money, or capable PhD students. This constraint is finally lifted.

You can believe in whatever you want about LLM-based AI, but it is surely useful. As Andrej Karpathy put it, the hottest programming language now is English. On the one hand, this change has been devastating; the market for new computer science grads at our Universities has collapsed. But on the other hand, this shift has given the rest of humanity the ability to perform magic.

I recently joined the board of a startup. I asked the founder where his team was located; he looked at me and said, 'It's just me.' There are now nano-unicorns, software companies that develop billion-dollar valuations with teams of less than 50. What are the implications of this development for the field of education?

I believe in educators' creativity. We live in the classroom, see how students respond, and care about creating the best possible learning pathway for those who trust us with their education. It is time to unlock that creativity. With a pro subscription to one of the main AI models and two days of work, and no line of traditional coding, you can build and deploy new applications to use in the classroom. If we build a network of developers, improve upon each other's ideas, and create best practices, we can help the field of education move into the AI era. I will share my experiences and thoughts in this blog.