Toward a Luddite Pedagogy in the "Age of AI" w/ Charles Logan

1
00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:13,280
2022 was a system reboot. 2023 broke the doom loop. This year is all about turning vision

2
00:00:13,280 --> 00:00:20,840
into reality. Conference to Restore Humanity 2024 is an invitation for K-12 and college

3
00:00:20,840 --> 00:00:26,900
educators to build your joyful reimagined classroom. Our conference is designed around

4
00:00:26,900 --> 00:00:32,260
the accessibility and sustainability of virtual learning, while engaging participants in an

5
00:00:32,260 --> 00:00:37,860
environment that models the same progressive pedagogy we value with students. Instead of

6
00:00:37,860 --> 00:00:43,700
long Zoom presentations with a brief Q&A, our flipped keynotes let the learning community

7
00:00:43,700 --> 00:00:50,700
listen and learn on their own time, then engage in a one-hour Q&A with our speakers. Dr. Mary

8
00:00:50,700 --> 00:00:56,560
Helen Imordino-Yang makes the neurobiological case for progressive education rooted in her

9
00:00:56,560 --> 00:01:03,040
groundbreaking work in affective neuroscience. Dr. Carla Shalaby demonstrates the power of

10
00:01:03,040 --> 00:01:09,880
education as the practice of freedom, honoring young people's rights to full human being. Dr.

11
00:01:09,880 --> 00:01:16,360
Sousan Jaber elevates the voices of Arab and Muslim students as an advocate for global equity

12
00:01:16,360 --> 00:01:22,560
and justice. And Orchard View Schools' Innovative Learning Center showcases healthy, sustainable

13
00:01:22,560 --> 00:01:27,880
community learning spaces for teenagers and adult learners alike. Beyond our flipped keynotes,

14
00:01:27,880 --> 00:01:34,320
participants will be invited to join week-long learning journeys. Join Trevor Alio on a journey

15
00:01:34,320 --> 00:01:39,500
to learn interdisciplinary inquiry-based methods to equip students as knowledge producers,

16
00:01:39,500 --> 00:01:45,920
communicating with zines, podcasts, and more. And understand the ripple effects of modern

17
00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:52,200
imperialism with a focus on Palestinian resilience and classroom tools for fostering global

18
00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:58,560
solidarity in our second workshop led by Abir Ramadan Shinawi. We're also featuring virtual

19
00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:04,840
school tours so you can see progressive practice in action at the Nova Lab, Olin Tangi STEM Academy,

20
00:02:04,840 --> 00:02:11,600
Community Lab School, and more. The mission of reshaping education systems, of turning vision

21
00:02:11,600 --> 00:02:18,560
into reality, is vital for a sustainable and just future. Conference to Restore Humanity runs July

22
00:02:18,560 --> 00:02:25,600
22nd through the 25th, and as of recording, early bird tickets are still available. It's $150 for

23
00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:31,680
four days, with discounts available, group rates, and parity pricing. Plus, we'll award certificates

24
00:02:31,680 --> 00:02:37,920
for teacher training and continuing education credits. See our website, humanrestorationproject.org,

25
00:02:37,920 --> 00:02:41,600
for more information, and let's restore humanity together.

26
00:02:48,560 --> 00:03:04,480
Hello and welcome to Episode 150 of the Human Restoration Project Podcast. My name is Nick

27
00:03:04,480 --> 00:03:09,760
Covington. Before we get started, I wanted to let you know that this episode is brought to you by

28
00:03:09,760 --> 00:03:15,560
our supporters, three of whom are Kimberly Baker, Simeon Frank, and Corinne Greenblatt. You can

29
00:03:15,560 --> 00:03:20,120
learn more about Human Restoration Project on our website, humanrestorationproject.org,

30
00:03:20,120 --> 00:03:31,600
and connect with us anywhere on social media. Were we required to characterize this age of

31
00:03:31,600 --> 00:03:38,280
ours by any single epithet, we should be tempted to call it not a heroic, devotional, philosophical,

32
00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:45,320
or moral age, but above all others, the mechanical age. It is the age of machinery in every outward

33
00:03:45,320 --> 00:03:51,720
and inward sense of that word, the age which, with its whole undivided might, forwards, teaches,

34
00:03:51,720 --> 00:03:58,760
and practices the great art of adapting means to ends. Nothing is now done directly or by hand.

35
00:03:58,760 --> 00:04:05,480
All is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments,

36
00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:12,040
some cunning abbreviating processes and readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited and

37
00:04:12,040 --> 00:04:17,960
thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop to make room for a

38
00:04:17,960 --> 00:04:24,040
speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver and falls into iron

39
00:04:24,040 --> 00:04:31,480
fingers that ply it faster. This is how Scottish historian and writer Thomas Carlyle characterized

40
00:04:31,480 --> 00:04:38,520
Great Britain's mechanized, steam-powered industrial era in 1829. These changes in

41
00:04:38,520 --> 00:04:43,400
the human relationship to production rippled through the world economy with profound social,

42
00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:49,320
political, and environmental implications. One loosely organized group, the Luddites,

43
00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:54,840
emerged early on to smash the new machines and resist mechanization of the mills.

44
00:04:55,800 --> 00:05:03,640
200 years after Carlyle's age of machinery, we find ourselves sold a new age, the age of automation

45
00:05:03,640 --> 00:05:10,600
and AI, which promises another transformation in the way we live, work, and learn with similar

46
00:05:10,600 --> 00:05:16,520
social, political, and environmental consequences. At least, the AI hype cycle is real.

47
00:05:17,240 --> 00:05:23,720
Sal Khan's new book, for example, Brave New Words, How AI Will Revolutionize Education and Why That's

48
00:05:23,720 --> 00:05:29,480
a Good Thing, promises to be, quote, required reading for everyone who cares about education,

49
00:05:29,640 --> 00:05:36,440
end quote. But what should be the relationship of education, automation, and artificial intelligence?

50
00:05:36,440 --> 00:05:42,920
Should there be one at all? How much power, not to mention student data, should educators seed

51
00:05:42,920 --> 00:05:49,880
to the new machine in the age of AI? Or should the answer be a 21st century Luddite revival

52
00:05:49,880 --> 00:05:55,320
and mass resistance to the vision of the future offered by Google, OpenAI, and Microsoft?

53
00:05:56,280 --> 00:06:02,200
That, anyway, I suspect, will be the argument of my guest today, Charles Logan, a learning sciences

54
00:06:02,200 --> 00:06:08,040
PhD candidate at Northwestern University. Writing earlier this year for the Los Angeles Review of

55
00:06:08,040 --> 00:06:14,440
Books, ultimately, the Luddites' militancy and commitment to resistance might be a necessary

56
00:06:14,440 --> 00:06:20,520
entry point for how laborers and teachers, students, and caregivers can take an antagonistic

57
00:06:20,520 --> 00:06:27,560
stance towards AI and automation and create a new commons. Thank you so much, Charles,

58
00:06:27,560 --> 00:06:31,240
for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be chatting with you all today.

59
00:06:31,800 --> 00:06:38,600
So I think in the popular imagination, a Luddite is like an octogenarian congressperson who doesn't

60
00:06:38,600 --> 00:06:45,000
use email or someone who's entirely technophobic, perhaps even culturally conservative, right?

61
00:06:45,080 --> 00:06:51,160
Preserving the old ways against progress. One of the earliest pieces that you shared with me is

62
00:06:51,160 --> 00:06:57,960
from hybrid pedagogy, and it was written in 2014, fully a decade ago, right? And by an author going

63
00:06:57,960 --> 00:07:03,720
by torn halves called Toward a Luddite Pedagogy. And I was reading back through that and saw that

64
00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:11,000
it makes no mention of AI. So it's clearly an idea that existed alongside tech for at least

65
00:07:11,000 --> 00:07:17,960
that long. So help us understand who the Luddites were. What were they about? And what can we learn

66
00:07:17,960 --> 00:07:21,320
from how they approached technological change in their own time?

67
00:07:22,440 --> 00:07:28,120
Sure thing. Yeah, I will do my best to situate the Luddites in history. And working on a piece

68
00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:33,480
right now with Phil Nichols and Terrell Garcia that tries to track what we've come up with three

69
00:07:33,480 --> 00:07:39,480
different waves of Luddites. But I think it's important to start with the OGs, the original

70
00:07:40,120 --> 00:07:46,280
Luddites. So as you mentioned, it's the early 19th century in England, and you have the long

71
00:07:46,280 --> 00:07:53,000
history of different sorts of cloth workers who all of a sudden are faced with automation. And so

72
00:07:53,000 --> 00:07:59,720
you have early industrial capitalists who are building factories, who are shifting the nature

73
00:07:59,720 --> 00:08:08,040
of labor because of these technologies that are displacing people, are allowing capitalists to

74
00:08:08,040 --> 00:08:13,960
depress wages, and that are having these rippling effects on workers themselves, but also their

75
00:08:13,960 --> 00:08:20,920
communities. And so these automating technologies are threats to both the livelihood of these

76
00:08:20,920 --> 00:08:26,120
laborers, but also the dignity in which they conceive of themselves and their work and the

77
00:08:26,120 --> 00:08:32,280
great traditions that have brought them to this place in history. And so the Luddites are actually

78
00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:41,640
named after a fictional character, Ned Ludd, who, the story goes, was punished by one of his bosses,

79
00:08:41,640 --> 00:08:49,240
essentially, and then decided to destroy the automating machine, Spinning Jenny, or one other

80
00:08:49,240 --> 00:08:57,880
kind of mill. And so emerges as this folk hero, again, in a part of the world where it were not

81
00:08:57,880 --> 00:09:02,360
strangers to folk heroes like Robin Hood. And then you have, as you mentioned, this loose,

82
00:09:03,000 --> 00:09:10,360
but also connected set of political projects that go under the name of the Luddites across England

83
00:09:10,360 --> 00:09:18,040
in the early 19th century. And you have folks who are strategically under the cover of darkness,

84
00:09:18,040 --> 00:09:26,040
breaking into factories, breaking into factory owners' homes, and destroying what they call

85
00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:31,080
the obnoxious machines, the machines that were threats to their livelihood, to their dignity.

86
00:09:31,080 --> 00:09:37,720
And so again, I will emphasize it is strategic sabotage. It is not haphazard. And so as you

87
00:09:37,720 --> 00:09:44,600
mentioned, over the last 200 plus years, Luddite has become a pejorative. I think I was looking

88
00:09:44,600 --> 00:09:50,120
at what Dictionary.com has those words of the day and a corresponding image. And the corresponding

89
00:09:50,120 --> 00:09:56,280
image was, as you said, an octogenarian looking at her phone as if it were a fish.

90
00:09:56,280 --> 00:10:03,000
And so we've seen these sort of projects then to rehabilitate and sort of reframe the Luddites

91
00:10:03,000 --> 00:10:10,600
over the last 250 plus years. And so that happened with historians in the early to mid 20th century.

92
00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:16,440
And then you have moving into the 1970s, what Phil and Antero and I have called the second wave

93
00:10:16,440 --> 00:10:25,480
of Luddism. And that is a different group of people. You have folks like Kirkpatrick Sale is

94
00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:32,040
one of the leaders of these new Luddites who are questioning technology at a time of the Cold War

95
00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:39,160
and sort of the growth of nuclear energies and weapons and environmentalists and pacifists,

96
00:10:39,160 --> 00:10:44,360
Quakers. And so there's more of a sort of this motley crew and this big tent,

97
00:10:44,360 --> 00:10:51,240
but unlike their predecessors were often avowed pacifists, as I mentioned. And so they're moving

98
00:10:51,240 --> 00:10:58,120
away from that original tactic of physical destruction of infrastructure and more of a

99
00:10:58,120 --> 00:11:05,480
kind of set of beliefs to organize around. And then the term kind of falls out of favor again.

100
00:11:06,440 --> 00:11:12,600
And it's only been, I would say, in the last sort of, well, you mentioned Torne Havs piece from 2014

101
00:11:12,600 --> 00:11:17,800
and Audrey Waters picks up on that work from a few years ago. And then you also have this sort

102
00:11:17,800 --> 00:11:24,120
of growth in a lot of tech critics like Brian Merchant and Paris Marx and others who are

103
00:11:24,120 --> 00:11:32,840
reclaiming the name and the identity of a Luddite. It is a very fluid term. I think that is something

104
00:11:32,840 --> 00:11:38,200
to acknowledge that it has changed over the course of time. Now, I think, as you mentioned,

105
00:11:38,920 --> 00:11:45,160
as we have the Solcons of the world who are doing their best to infuse our classrooms with

106
00:11:45,160 --> 00:11:49,880
their proprietary chatbots, I think we can look to the Luddites again and think about, well,

107
00:11:49,880 --> 00:11:55,560
what would it mean to practice this Luddite praxis and what kinds of interventions, what kind of

108
00:11:55,560 --> 00:12:02,200
tactics, what kind of sabotage, what kind of organizing can be done and inspired by the Luddites

109
00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:09,240
in the year 2024? Well, let's go ahead and bring in, since you mentioned Solcons,

110
00:12:09,240 --> 00:12:14,120
since we're kind of transitioning into talking about what would be considered the third wave

111
00:12:14,120 --> 00:12:20,280
in your take on third wave Luddism here. So you've been skeptical of announcements from

112
00:12:20,280 --> 00:12:26,280
OpenAI's Sam Altman, Microsoft's Bill Gates, and kind of working in tandem here. And you've been

113
00:12:26,280 --> 00:12:31,080
sharing your criticism of Solcon's newest book on social media, which I've enjoyed reading there,

114
00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:36,840
too. So what even is that transformation that they're promising? What tactics of the new

115
00:12:37,640 --> 00:12:43,480
modern industrial capitalists are the third wave Luddites reacting to? Can you outline that for

116
00:12:43,480 --> 00:12:49,720
us? Yeah, I mean, a lot of it comes down to the same dog and pony show that Solcon has been selling

117
00:12:49,720 --> 00:12:55,000
for a long time, and that is personalized learning. And he has this real sort of superpower to

118
00:12:55,000 --> 00:13:00,360
forget any sort of history, maybe never learned it in the first place, has been strategic about

119
00:13:00,360 --> 00:13:06,680
his own ignorance. And again, as an avowed Audrey Waters fanboy, she's written about the

120
00:13:07,400 --> 00:13:12,120
history of personalized learning and begins her book, which is, I believe the title is the

121
00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:16,440
history of personalized learning, or teaching machines, the history of personalized learning,

122
00:13:16,440 --> 00:13:23,080
MIT Press, go buy it now. And she starts with an anecdote about Solcon and how he sort of makes

123
00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:29,160
this entree into education after having been a hedge fund analyst, which, again, I don't want

124
00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:34,440
to discount the possibility that someone could move from the business world into education and

125
00:13:36,120 --> 00:13:42,120
bring with them and develop a critical pedagogy. I'd argue Solcon is not that person.

126
00:13:42,120 --> 00:13:48,120
And so it is, again, I think the story of personalized learning of we can all of a sudden

127
00:13:49,480 --> 00:13:54,040
flip on this chat bot or open up the chat bot. And here you have a personalized

128
00:13:54,040 --> 00:14:01,640
tutor who is capable of getting to know you, providing real time feedback, and all of a sudden

129
00:14:02,600 --> 00:14:12,440
you can achieve greatness. Reading the book, as painful as it is, I think that sense of automation

130
00:14:12,440 --> 00:14:18,600
of what it's like to be a student, what it's like to be a teacher, I think has the echo of early

131
00:14:18,600 --> 00:14:22,760
industrialists who are pushing similar sorts of automating technologies. And again, I mean,

132
00:14:22,760 --> 00:14:27,880
you see who's blurted the book. You mentioned Bill Gates, the current CEO of Microsoft,

133
00:14:27,880 --> 00:14:33,960
blurted the book. Wendy Kopp blurted the book, who's the founder of Teach for America and his

134
00:14:33,960 --> 00:14:42,520
very problematic approach to sustainable teaching in our most vulnerable and undersourced communities.

135
00:14:42,520 --> 00:14:47,560
And again, technology being turned to as a kind of panacea, which again, there's a precedent for

136
00:14:47,560 --> 00:14:52,920
that. And that's B.F. Skinner and his teaching machines who sought to bring these teaching

137
00:14:52,920 --> 00:15:00,440
machines into Harlem and other under-resourced communities, as again, answers for complex social

138
00:15:00,440 --> 00:15:06,280
problems that date back decades, if not centuries. And so this technosolutionism, as again, the kind

139
00:15:06,280 --> 00:15:12,920
of panacea that Khan is pushing in conjunction with folks like, he refers to Sam Altman as Sam,

140
00:15:12,920 --> 00:15:17,320
and he went to go see Bill Gates right after he saw Sam. And so there's this very sort of

141
00:15:17,320 --> 00:15:22,520
chummy group. And so reading this and thinking about Audrey Waters' work and others who have

142
00:15:22,520 --> 00:15:29,080
been very influential and thinking about, well, this turn to Luddism, what does that offer us?

143
00:15:29,080 --> 00:15:33,800
Because I think it's important to acknowledge that, and this is something that I've wrestled

144
00:15:33,800 --> 00:15:40,040
with and thinking about, well, what are potential shortcomings of Luddism, is you can't easily smash

145
00:15:40,040 --> 00:15:49,160
a chat bot. You could smash the Chromebook that you're using and then have to turn around and

146
00:15:49,160 --> 00:15:55,480
probably pay your school. And so there's a real kind of limitation to what Luddism looks like

147
00:15:55,480 --> 00:16:03,320
in the 21st century that I don't think enough folks who have claimed that as an identity

148
00:16:03,320 --> 00:16:11,320
acknowledge. And yet, I think that that spirit of sabotage of a more militaristic

149
00:16:11,320 --> 00:16:18,280
stance towards the technology, a more intentionally aggressive stance is helpful because there are,

150
00:16:18,280 --> 00:16:26,200
right, these emerging technologies. Nightshade, I think, is one of them where you can upload images

151
00:16:26,200 --> 00:16:32,520
that essentially will poison a data set. And so there are these tools that exist that, again,

152
00:16:32,520 --> 00:16:38,040
I would argue are Luddite tools. Their makers may not claim them as Luddite, but I think we

153
00:16:38,040 --> 00:16:45,240
can view them through that lens. And then I also think, right, that skepticism, that organizing

154
00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:52,360
was, I think, an important piece of the Luddites. The original Luddites are organizing under the

155
00:16:52,360 --> 00:17:00,920
cover of darkness and these sort of backroom taverns and trying to figure out, what do we

156
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:07,640
do about this technology? How do we counter it? And so I think there's a lesson there for teachers,

157
00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:14,040
for students who are all of a sudden facing these technologies and being told that this is the

158
00:17:14,040 --> 00:17:21,880
future of education and that organizing is an important piece to pull out from the Luddites,

159
00:17:21,880 --> 00:17:28,920
as well as those tactics of sabotage, as well as the playfulness of Luddites. So, you know,

160
00:17:28,920 --> 00:17:35,880
they're writing poems, they are inspiring poems, but Lord Byron is, I think, the most famous poet

161
00:17:35,880 --> 00:17:41,160
who kind of came to the Luddite cause. They're sending these missives to various political

162
00:17:41,160 --> 00:17:47,800
leaders and nailing these threatening notes to doors. They're dressing in drag. And so I think

163
00:17:47,800 --> 00:17:53,720
there's this sense of deadly seriousness alongside that playfulness. And I think there's a lot to be

164
00:17:53,720 --> 00:18:01,320
said about that playfulness and as sort of like a public pedagogy that we see in education. And

165
00:18:01,320 --> 00:18:07,080
we see, I think, also, you know, folks who I'm thinking of like Emily Bender and Alex Hannah

166
00:18:07,080 --> 00:18:15,720
have a wonderful podcast. It's like a live stream. It's called Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000,

167
00:18:15,720 --> 00:18:22,280
something like that. And they basically just like, I don't know if I can say this on the show,

168
00:18:22,280 --> 00:18:29,480
shit talk, these latest AI hype, like an article or whatever it might be and across different

169
00:18:29,480 --> 00:18:35,080
disciplines, including education. And I think it's a profoundly like, educated act to like

170
00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:40,360
have this show that they then put out and, you know, in a podcast and a newsletter, you know,

171
00:18:40,360 --> 00:18:45,800
the video and it's hosted, not on YouTube, like, you know, you're not putting money in

172
00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:50,920
Alphabet's pocket. And so, again, I think there are those tactics of sabotage, of organizing,

173
00:18:50,920 --> 00:18:56,360
of playfulness, and also acknowledging that even with the historical Luddites, the Luddites and

174
00:18:56,360 --> 00:19:01,640
their kind of projects were connected, but they were also hyper local to the different regions.

175
00:19:01,640 --> 00:19:07,320
And so acknowledging that like what we as educators are doing with our students is always

176
00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:12,760
contingent on context. It's always contingent on the people in the room and the constraints that

177
00:19:12,760 --> 00:19:18,440
we're facing, given who we are and where we are. And so I think that's an important piece to uplift

178
00:19:18,440 --> 00:19:25,000
from the original Luddites as well, is that a lot of these different projects, while loosely

179
00:19:25,000 --> 00:19:31,640
connected around, you know, sabotage and organizing to protect their livelihood and dignity against

180
00:19:31,640 --> 00:19:37,480
the incursion of these automating technologies that do not have, you know, uniform sets of

181
00:19:37,480 --> 00:19:42,280
beliefs or uniform goals. And I think that's something that we can also hold on to as we

182
00:19:42,280 --> 00:19:49,240
think about our own kind of like heterogeneity in 2024 and thinking about what would it look like

183
00:19:49,800 --> 00:19:57,320
to, you know, practice a Luddite praxis in response to, you know, this age of generative

184
00:19:57,320 --> 00:20:02,040
AI that we find ourselves in. And I don't even like calling it the age of generative AI.

185
00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:08,520
I feel like puts it up on a pedestal that it should not be. We don't need to see that ground

186
00:20:08,520 --> 00:20:17,240
to them. You know, it's this flashpoint of this sizzle of AI in education that will more than

187
00:20:17,240 --> 00:20:23,400
likely burn out, hopefully sooner rather than later. And I think that's a great way to get into

188
00:20:23,400 --> 00:20:31,080
the obfuscation that the AI hype cycle, it's the age of AI hype, if it's not the age of generative

189
00:20:31,080 --> 00:20:36,440
AI, right? It's the age of the AI salesman or, you know, lump cryptocurrencies somewhere in there,

190
00:20:36,440 --> 00:20:43,000
too. But, you know, as I'm looking at the blurbs for Sal Khan's book, right, from Arne Duncan,

191
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:48,280
Tony Blair, you mentioned Wendy Kopp, formerly of Teach for America, now Teach for All,

192
00:20:49,000 --> 00:20:54,520
again, Sam Altman, Adam Grant, Bill Gates, right, all of these people. And in their blurbs,

193
00:20:54,520 --> 00:20:58,680
obfuscating something that's a little bit deeper. And I think it's something that you really had

194
00:20:58,680 --> 00:21:04,760
elaborated on in some work that you shared with me about understanding an ecological framework

195
00:21:04,760 --> 00:21:10,680
that actually helps us see past that hype cycle and understand the relationships between generative

196
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:16,200
AI and how it's entwined with so many other aspects of life. And I think as far as a third

197
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:22,120
wave Luddism go, I think those ecologies are really important to recruiting people to see past,

198
00:21:22,120 --> 00:21:26,920
you know, that obfuscation and that veil of, hey, here's how it's going to transform education. But,

199
00:21:26,920 --> 00:21:32,200
hey, how is that going to impact the environment or human labor or any of those other features?

200
00:21:32,200 --> 00:21:36,920
Could you explain what you mean by that ecological framework and why that matters?

201
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:44,600
Yeah, I'd be happy to. And so let me start by contrasting it, I think, with the more common

202
00:21:44,600 --> 00:21:52,680
framework that I've encountered when working with young people and teachers about AI and learning

203
00:21:52,680 --> 00:21:58,440
with AI, and that's AI literacy. And so I think, right, AI literacy, one of the critiques of

204
00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:05,480
literacy as a framework that I'm familiar with is that literacy tends to focus on representative

205
00:22:05,480 --> 00:22:11,880
forms. And so I think that's where you can see, you know, the let's develop an AI literacy curriculum

206
00:22:12,520 --> 00:22:17,000
that is going to be based on the assumption that these technologies should be used,

207
00:22:17,000 --> 00:22:23,320
but let's be careful about how we use them because the technology, they're bullshit machines,

208
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:28,360
and they're just, you know, mathy math that is going to spit out like predictive text,

209
00:22:28,360 --> 00:22:32,520
and that text is biased. And so let's attend to the bias and let's be careful

210
00:22:33,080 --> 00:22:40,120
not to just take whatever comes out of a chat bot as the truth. So there's like that conversation,

211
00:22:40,120 --> 00:22:43,800
obviously, there's the whole plagiarism conversation, and those are important

212
00:22:43,800 --> 00:22:50,600
conversations to have, but I don't think they do the work that we need to really understand

213
00:22:50,600 --> 00:22:57,880
how these technologies are operating, and then also don't open up enough space for interrogating

214
00:22:57,880 --> 00:23:05,720
and intervening in the technologies. So I'm all for an AI literacy that is expansive in its approach

215
00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:12,120
that pushes back against the assumption that AI should be used in schools. I'll also note that,

216
00:23:12,120 --> 00:23:17,160
and this is work that Phil Nichols has done and others around what they call the capture of

217
00:23:17,720 --> 00:23:23,560
AI literacy and the notion that literacy as a project is a speculative one of sort of thinking

218
00:23:23,560 --> 00:23:29,080
about what the world could be and in a hopeful place. And so that's when, you know, literacy

219
00:23:29,080 --> 00:23:36,600
is at its best, but that big tech companies are able to use these literacy frameworks as a means

220
00:23:36,600 --> 00:23:42,040
of what Lucy Pongrather calls our soft power of governance and framing the technologies as

221
00:23:42,040 --> 00:23:47,080
necessary, again, with some caveats of like, we know they're biased, and we know they're potentially

222
00:23:47,080 --> 00:23:52,360
discriminatory. But you know, that's for you all to figure out. And here's this curriculum you can

223
00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:58,600
use to figure it out. So that, you know, AI literacy, I've got a complicated relationship

224
00:23:58,600 --> 00:24:03,560
with. The ecological framework, I think, is something that I find more compelling in part

225
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:10,680
because it moves beyond just, you know, the interface of a platform on your device. And it

226
00:24:10,680 --> 00:24:17,640
takes into account these, I just mentioned these obfuscated systems of labor. So you have, right,

227
00:24:17,640 --> 00:24:23,960
folks often in the Global South doing, you know, ghost work is often referred to the notion of

228
00:24:23,960 --> 00:24:30,680
unseen labor, where they're training the data that makes AI, AI, and right, AI is people all

229
00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:36,680
the way down. So they're doing this really gruesome work of labeling toxic material,

230
00:24:36,680 --> 00:24:44,040
traumatizing material. And so I think that's one dimension of the ecological framework that's

231
00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:49,080
important to note, labor. I've said it's people all the way down, AI is, but it's all the way down

232
00:24:49,080 --> 00:24:56,760
into the very, you know, waters and earth and soil and water that make up our planet. And, you know,

233
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:04,840
from the mining that goes into producing the computer chips, the materials for the data centers

234
00:25:04,840 --> 00:25:10,440
in which, you know, the infrastructure of AI is rapidly, you know, being spread throughout the

235
00:25:10,440 --> 00:25:16,280
world. And again, the amount of water required to cool data centers, to cool the servers that make

236
00:25:16,280 --> 00:25:22,440
not just AI, but the internet possible. So there's like a real material aspect to the technology that

237
00:25:22,440 --> 00:25:27,080
I think is important for students to interrogate, especially because, right, these are the young

238
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:33,480
people who are going to bear the brunt of climate change. And so I find it increasingly difficult

239
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:40,440
to square the narrative that technology, AI technology specifically, is going to revolutionize

240
00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:46,760
education at a time when that same technology is increasing the effects of climate change,

241
00:25:46,760 --> 00:25:51,960
is further entrenching the power of fossil fuel companies. There's a headline today about the US

242
00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:59,080
continuing coal production because we need, you know, for energy consumption for AI production.

243
00:25:59,080 --> 00:26:05,960
So it is this, I think, hypocrisy and a real set of compromises that I think folks need to

244
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:09,560
confront. And this is what I try to do with my own students, is like, if you're going to use these

245
00:26:09,560 --> 00:26:15,800
technologies, there are real material harms that they're doing to people, to planet, to humans,

246
00:26:15,800 --> 00:26:19,400
to more than humans. And, you know, you kind of alluded to this, but we also see, right,

247
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:24,840
the ideological and financial benefits that go to people like Bill Gates and Sam Altman.

248
00:26:24,920 --> 00:26:31,240
There's been writing about what's called the test realistic bundle from people like Emil Torres and

249
00:26:31,240 --> 00:26:37,400
to Nick Garou and this sort of set of ideologies essentially is like eugenics and like the notion

250
00:26:37,400 --> 00:26:44,680
of like AI as some sort of superhuman, you know, project that is going to, I'm doing this a very

251
00:26:44,680 --> 00:26:50,440
slapdash version of the test realistic bundle. We'll add some notes in the show notes, I suppose.

252
00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:56,760
In short, I think what an ecological framework offers is a more expansive set of questions,

253
00:26:56,760 --> 00:27:03,160
a more expansive set of sort of lines of inquiry than these kind of traditional corporate AI

254
00:27:03,160 --> 00:27:09,720
literacy curricula offer. Yeah, I was just going back and reading your tweet in response to

255
00:27:09,720 --> 00:27:15,800
the plan to, or to unretire coal fired plants as power demand from AI surges. And you wrote,

256
00:27:15,800 --> 00:27:19,880
AI is supposedly revolutionizing the future of education while making the actual future

257
00:27:19,880 --> 00:27:25,000
increasingly bleak. I don't know if there's like a sci-fi analogy or a monkey's paw or something

258
00:27:25,000 --> 00:27:30,200
like that, but it's literally as, you know, we're revolutionizing one space and immiserating the

259
00:27:30,200 --> 00:27:34,680
future in another one. It's just like there's a direct cost related to all of those things.

260
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:42,600
I think perhaps like a criticism that I've seen of this Luddism when I had kind of posted a preview

261
00:27:42,600 --> 00:27:48,920
of our conversation that came up was about its potential to help with assistive technologies,

262
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:56,360
the possibility to be a huge boon for disabled people or to even be assistive in the sense of

263
00:27:56,360 --> 00:28:01,720
providing accurate translation services or transcription services. And I think I'll mix

264
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:06,200
my literary analogies a little bit more. My brain is kind of thinking in the sci-fi space, but

265
00:28:06,200 --> 00:28:11,400
I went to almost kind of like this William Gibson Neuromancer cyberpunk space in the sense where

266
00:28:12,040 --> 00:28:18,360
you have this overarching corporate structure and evil technology sort of predominates,

267
00:28:18,360 --> 00:28:24,520
but you have these niches of DIY mutual aid and the like kind of coexisting alongside that.

268
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:31,720
That's invisible to the mainstream. I suppose that's not ideal. Or is it like the one ring?

269
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:37,480
Should AI be buried deep in a mountain or thrown into Mount Doom? Because simply interacting with

270
00:28:37,480 --> 00:28:44,040
it has such a profoundly negative and transformative consequence for users and the environment as a

271
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:50,280
whole, as you said, like embedding these ideologies at the cost of this invisible human labor. And

272
00:28:50,840 --> 00:28:56,920
it's a miseration of the environment. So I wonder like, I just don't know how, this is the question

273
00:28:56,920 --> 00:29:02,440
that I grapple with, right? Like how do we, oh gosh, I don't want to say take the good, but

274
00:29:02,440 --> 00:29:09,000
you know, like use it for where it could be like for more humane, pro-human purposes, or is it

275
00:29:09,000 --> 00:29:13,240
radioactive in the sense that it's better off just not to touch it and develop some other

276
00:29:13,240 --> 00:29:16,600
technologies? I don't know how to resolve this. I'm hoping you'll help me out.

277
00:29:18,600 --> 00:29:19,160
What do we do?

278
00:29:19,160 --> 00:29:23,240
I came here for you to figure out my problems, not for me to figure out your problems.

279
00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:27,080
Yeah. So I mean, again, I would think, you know, what is the, what are the historical

280
00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:31,560
Luddites from, you know, the early 19th century tell us? And one of the things I get to emphasize

281
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:36,600
is that they're not, they're not anti-technology, but they're anti the concentration of power

282
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:42,280
into the hands of a very few, you know, white men and corporations. And flash forward, we look at,

283
00:29:43,240 --> 00:29:51,240
you know, one example that I think can provide a kind of blueprint for assistive technologies

284
00:29:51,240 --> 00:29:59,960
that you're talking about is there's an organization, Tehuku Media, and they are based in New Zealand

285
00:29:59,960 --> 00:30:06,280
and they, which is the, the Westernized name of the indigenous lands. And they produce

286
00:30:06,920 --> 00:30:13,960
Maori chatbots and other AI for like language acquisition and language revitalization.

287
00:30:13,960 --> 00:30:20,280
And I just saw one of their, like the chief information or chief technology officer came

288
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:24,440
and spoke at the university recently. And there's a great episode featuring him on the podcast,

289
00:30:25,000 --> 00:30:32,200
Tech Won't Save Us. And so, you know, a few attributes of this company and the technology

290
00:30:32,200 --> 00:30:39,240
that stand in stark contrast to the open AIs of the world is that they take data sovereignty

291
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:47,240
very seriously. And so they have these from like cassette tapes to like CDs to digitized

292
00:30:47,240 --> 00:30:53,640
audio of several generations of Maori people speaking and telling stories. And they've

293
00:30:53,640 --> 00:30:58,920
approached these people and received their consent to use these stories, to train these

294
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:04,120
models to revitalize and maintain their language and to teach people, Maori people, their language.

295
00:31:04,120 --> 00:31:13,400
And so that to me is one example of care for people, for their stories, for their data.

296
00:31:13,400 --> 00:31:19,640
It is not an attempt to scale. I think that notion of scale is so problematic in so many ways,

297
00:31:19,640 --> 00:31:28,360
especially when it comes to AI. But it is a community-based project where, yes, there are

298
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:34,520
compute consequences. And I think they're wrestling with how can they use solar? How

299
00:31:34,520 --> 00:31:40,600
can they use other renewable energies for their projects? But it is done in conjunction with

300
00:31:40,600 --> 00:31:47,640
the community. And so they've been approached by, I think, OpenAI and Google and others

301
00:31:47,640 --> 00:31:53,880
to kind of hand over their model or to help them train their other models, these automatic

302
00:31:54,760 --> 00:32:01,480
speech technologies. And they've said no. And so I think, again, we're thinking about assistive

303
00:32:01,480 --> 00:32:08,440
technologies in schools or in other spaces. And again, you mentioned these sort of DIY,

304
00:32:08,440 --> 00:32:15,640
let's fund the DIY groups and learn from one another in a more decentralized way rather than

305
00:32:15,640 --> 00:32:23,320
concentrate the funding and the compute power in the hands of three companies. Or like NVIDIA is

306
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:31,320
the only company who's making the chips to run these technologies. So that, again, I think it

307
00:32:31,320 --> 00:32:38,280
is in the spirit of the history of glutites. And again, they may not call themselves,

308
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:42,600
these Maori folks doing this work, they may not call themselves glutites. And I think that's

309
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:49,080
something to acknowledge, too, that if these sets of ideas are helpful, I think that's one of the

310
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:53,720
arguments we make, then great. But we also, you know, the glutites, and predominantly the people

311
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:58,360
who have claimed that are white men. And so that is something to acknowledge and something to

312
00:32:58,360 --> 00:33:03,240
grapple with. And even today, I mean, I think, you know, that the group has become more expansive

313
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:09,320
over time. So I think that's important to acknowledge. But I think that those tactics,

314
00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:15,160
the notion of playfulness, of organizing, of sort of community-based solutions to technology

315
00:33:15,160 --> 00:33:20,520
that embrace technology, and work with people on the ground to think about what are problems that

316
00:33:20,520 --> 00:33:27,960
we as a group face, and how can we use our traditional knowledge to address these problems

317
00:33:27,960 --> 00:33:34,040
without then, you know, having to rely on the Googles and, you know, the metas of the world.

318
00:33:34,040 --> 00:33:38,840
That, I think, is a promising example, is the best example that I've come across

319
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:46,600
that I can point to to say it's not either we have AI or we don't. But it's, again,

320
00:33:47,240 --> 00:33:55,160
these sorts of very grounded projects in community that I think offer a third way forward that I

321
00:33:55,160 --> 00:34:00,840
think also is in the spirit of glutism. I think that's a great point to bring it back to

322
00:34:01,400 --> 00:34:06,600
not the notion of technology, but the notion of power really situated in the work of the

323
00:34:06,600 --> 00:34:12,200
Luddites in really all, perhaps each of those waves. So I'm wondering if you have, you've

324
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:18,920
mentioned a whole bunch of different authors, podcasts, anything else. Are there some highlights

325
00:34:18,920 --> 00:34:26,040
or are there like your top tier hits for people to go find out and learn more about these ideas?

326
00:34:26,360 --> 00:34:31,160
Where would you point people who want to kind of learn more, perhaps join the third wave of

327
00:34:31,160 --> 00:34:37,880
Luddism? Yeah, so someone who's been writing about Luddites for a while is Zachary Loeb,

328
00:34:37,880 --> 00:34:45,320
and he publishes under the name of Librarian Shipwreck. And that is on social media, and he

329
00:34:45,320 --> 00:34:54,920
has a blog. And he's got a few posts where he also has like a top 15 readings on Luddites,

330
00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:00,680
because I'm not an expert. Let's be clear, I've done some light reading. And so hopefully,

331
00:35:00,680 --> 00:35:06,280
if any Luddite experts out there are listening to this, please take anything I say with an asterisk

332
00:35:06,280 --> 00:35:13,880
next to it. Brian Merchant's book that came out that Phil and Tero and I reviewed for the LA

333
00:35:13,880 --> 00:35:18,200
Review of Books is called Blood and Machine. I have it here in front of me, The Origins of

334
00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:24,200
the Rebellion Against Big Tech. That one's great. And that gives you, again, sort of on the ground,

335
00:35:24,200 --> 00:35:29,080
historical Luddites, but then he fast forwards to contemporary times and looks at different,

336
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:35,320
sort of like the gig work economy and draws parallels between the kinds of organizing

337
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:41,480
and resistance that contemporary gig workers are doing. Gavin Mueller has a book that came out a

338
00:35:41,480 --> 00:35:48,040
few years ago called Breaking Things at Work. And that's another one. So I'd say, start with

339
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:54,120
those three. And if you really want to do deep dives, folks like David Noble, who's a historian

340
00:35:54,120 --> 00:36:02,760
and tech critic and others, there's no shortage of work on the Luddites. And I think that is

341
00:36:02,760 --> 00:36:08,520
in part because they've become a source of interest, again, really only in the last 100 years,

342
00:36:08,520 --> 00:36:14,840
as historians have sought to kind of rethink and reframe who the Luddites were and the kinds of

343
00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:19,160
political projects that they were engaged in. Because there is, I think, some debate about

344
00:36:19,800 --> 00:36:25,560
how organized and how much of like a political project around unionizing and as like a political

345
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:30,360
class. And so if you're into that kind of stuff, there's certainly reading for you to find.

346
00:36:31,320 --> 00:36:32,920
Thanks so much, Charles, for joining me today.

347
00:36:33,720 --> 00:36:35,560
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Nick. I really appreciate it.

348
00:36:40,120 --> 00:36:43,880
Thank you again for listening to our podcast at Human Restoration Project. I hope this

349
00:36:43,880 --> 00:36:48,200
conversation leaves you inspired and ready to start making change. If you enjoyed listening,

350
00:36:48,200 --> 00:36:51,720
please consider leaving us a review on your favorite podcast player. Plus,

351
00:36:51,720 --> 00:36:56,200
find a whole host of free resources, writings, and other podcasts all for free on our website,

352
00:36:56,200 --> 00:37:05,240
humanrestorationproject.org. Thank you.

‍