🤔What's your P(doom) score?
At this week's Oregon AI Cadre meetup, Dr. Luke Neff shared some thought-provoking insights on AI’s role in education. Not all “AI in education” keynotes start with poetry, but All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan (1967) set the stage for a great conversation about how we view AI - individually, as a society, and within education.
Here are my five key takeaways from his keynote:
AI's Dual Potential: AI can be a powerful tool and a source of concern. Both things can be (and are) true! It’s essential to balance its innovative capabilities with an understanding of its limitations.
Gartner's Hype Cycle & P(doom) Score: Dr. Neff introduced the Gartner Hype Cycle to illustrate AI’s journey from inflated expectations to the trough of disillusionment - that phase where excitement fades as real-world applications fail to meet the hype (are you there yet?). He also discussed the P(doom) score, prompting attendees to reflect on their perspectives regarding AI’s future impact.
AI Literacy Matters: A study from Sage Journals found that lower AI literacy often correlates with higher AI receptivity. This highlights the importance of educating ourselves about AI to approach it with a well-informed perspective.
Data Quality is Crucial: AI systems are only as good as the data they’re trained on - which, for the most popular AI models, includes the entire internet (disinformation, misinformation and bias included).
Think of AI as a Toddler: Dr. Neff suggested replacing the term "AI hallucinations" with a more relatable analogy - AI as a toddler, mimicking adults without full comprehension. This analogy is a great reminder to continually evaluate AI-generated information rather than accepting it at face value.
So, what’s your P(Doom) score? Do you see a future where AI and humanity exist in Brautigan’s utopian harmony, or are we headed somewhere else entirely?