What do you notice, what do you wonder?
Visions of the AI future are staring us right in the face—and I want to know what you see
In education circles, the prompt “what do you notice, what do you wonder?” is often used a starting point for inquiry into pedagogical tasks and decisions, and I’ve found it useful to spur thoughtful reflection. And so for all the things I’m about to share, I ask you:
What do you notice, what do you wonder?
This is a four-year-old boy in Texas who’s dad—who posted this picture on social media—has him using “Synthesis Tutor,” an ed-tech spinoff from the SpaceX lab school. Synthesis claims it has developed “the first superhuman math tutor that actually works,” though it does not appear to provide any data on its website to support this claim. The website does, however, contain a note from its co-founder talking about his relationship with Elon Musk.
What do you notice, what do you wonder?1
This is a screengrab from a short news story on a private school in the UK that plans to teach students certain subjects exclusively through use of AI. This students is quoted saying “teachers don’t know exactly precisely what I’m able and unable to do, where[as] the AI can figure out, with just a few questions, what I’m weak in, and what are my strong points.” Later in this video, John Dalton, the co-principal of this school, affirms this perspective, saying “if you really want to know why a child is not learning, I think the AI systems can pinpoint that more effectively” than human teachers.
What do you notice, what do you wonder?
In eleven days ABC will air this full televion special on AI hosted by Oprah and featuring Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Christopher Wray (the former director of the FBI), and Marquess Brownlee. Here in this clip, Oprah says to Altman, “you’ve invented something that will help us invent everything else,” to which he replies, “yeah.”
What do you notice, what do you wonder?
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Here is a TikTok video of a student talking about Gauth, an AI app created by ByteDance (owners of TikTok) that allow you to upload pictures of math tasks and have Gauth solve them for you. This student says Gauth “really helped” her with her schooling, though she doesn’t specify how.
What do you notice, what do you wonder?
This is a drawing of Chanea Bond, an English teacher in Texas, from a recent story in Edutopia. After experimenting with letting her students use AI to help draft their essays, she’s now banned it completely. Why? “I realized that they’re not using AI to enhance their work. They are using AI instead of using the skills they’re supposed to be practicing.” Meanwhile, here is story in Forbes headlined “Students And Teachers Of Color Are Embracing AI In Schools At Greater Rates Than Others. Why?”
What do you notice, what do you wonder?
The cyberpunk novelist William Gibson has memorably said, the future is already here, it’s just unevently distributed.
And so I must ask again, after taking all of these together and not just individually, upon seeing all of them as part of the broader social fabric we share, and having thought about what sort of world we want to live in, and perhaps having reflected on what meaning and purpose we want to preserve in the act of educating, after doing all that, I ask you once more though surely not for the last time:
What do you notice, what do you wonder?
My friend Michael Pershan, a math teacher, noticed this boy is staring out the window rather than at his screen. I confess this made me feel better.
I notice the juxtaposition of an AI tutor with the examples of AI doing the work for students. I wonder if we will ever stop chasing magic bullets for learning and, Instead, work with the greatest tool on the planet: our brain and it's cognitive architecture.
Nice Ben. Love me a good facilitation prompt like this one.