Thread by @brennacgray

Listen, my critical EdTech pals: can we talk about Generative AI? Because I think we need a different kind of conversation than just “ten classroom prompts to try” or “what does this mean for academic integrity” and instead have a real talk about the ethics of the profession.

It’s increasingly clear to me that Generative AI is fundamentally rotten at the core. The racism. The labour exploitation. The carbon cost. The volume of clean drinking water. The consent-free scraping. All of it. The Sudowriter stuff this week is just another example.

But I also don’t get to opt out. My job is to help faculty use — and understand, and make ethical choices about — technology. I don’t get to sit this one out as these rapacious fuckers run roughshod over education. I need to help my colleagues navigate this world.

My traditional framework for understanding new technology is play. This has always served me well; it allows me to imagine, to make mistakes, to stay nimble, to be approachable. But playing with this shit feels fucking dark.

In March, I made the decision to stop doing live demos with these tools. I had plenty screenshots and the estimate that a 20-50 question ChatGPT thread costs 500 mL of clean drinking water haunted me.

It’s not that I don’t see the potential for some learners. The flattening of barriers to writing, improvements to the quality of auto captioning and alt-text, I welcome these things.

But what is the framework for understanding how and when to choose to engage, to assess risk, to measure harm? I started trying to tease this apart in a talk I gave yesterday, and I’ll try to blog those early thoughts this weekend.

I really struggle with how much of our profession is, like, “Well this technology is rotten to the core and lines the pockets of the very worst people in our society, but here’s how to make it work for you!” Like. Fuck.

We are at the opening stages of this gambit and we are in the moment to decide the terms of engagement and all around me I hear the equivalent of, “Welp, we can’t do anything about it, it’s here to stay.” Tech determinism is depressing as hell.

I’m not trying to say I’m some beacon of climate justice. I love me some Formula 1 racing (El Plan) and I fly across the country three times a year to see my mum. We’re none of us perfect.

But it feels sometimes like somewhere along the way we took to saying “there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism” to mean “so don’t bother trying.” Since when is it the position of progressive educators that we are powerless in the face of the world’s ills?

I don’t have an answer. I feel incredibly trapped by the question. But not least because it feels like no one else is having the conversation that matters. I honestly don’t give a shit about academic integrity unless we’re talking about our ethical integrity as humans.

Critical pedagogues don’t get to roll over in the face of so much harm. Not if we are living our values.

I’m tired too. But we can’t.