Though artificial intelligence is not your friend, it should not be solely considered your enemy. Like many technologies, it has it positive and negative aspects and applications.
Joaquin Phoenix getting friendly with an AI operating system named Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) in the film HER
Amber MacArthur wrote "AI is not your friend. Any friend that stops working when the power goes out is a machine." She is at least partially referring to the idea of people becoming friendly with AI in the way that we saw in the film HER. That film premiered more than a decade ago and now looks like something very much is not only possible but is already happening in many ways.
"AI-based social media platforms are not free speech platforms. These platforms curate, amplify, promote, and - yes - demote. Think about it like yelling in the public town square, but depending on what you say, Elon Musk's army of agents is there to either put a hand over your mouth to quiet you down or give you a megaphone to pump you up."
Schools should not ignore or ban all AI applications. "AI training in schools should be a priority since AI skills in the workplace are a priority. Kids who grow up in an age when they are taught that AI is only a threat and not also a tool will be at a competitive disadvantage."
On the negative side - "AI warfare is the most frightening reality of our time." And it is already here and guaranteed to increase.
On the positive side - "AI healthcare is the most exciting opportunity of our time."
She knows that her list is not definitive and admits that it is "fluid, so if there is something you would like me to add, please let me know on my socials or via email so I can check it out.."
When I first started consulting on social media in 2005, I was introducing blogs, wikis, podcasts and the newly -emerging social networks such as Facebook. Both with my academic colleagues and with clients, one of the persistent questions was "How do I know I'm getting any benefit from these social tools?"
Seeing the impact of your social marketing relies on attribution, which is similar to the older metric of ROI (return on investment). Both are sometimes difficult to quantify.
As someone who taught writing for many years, when I first heard the term attribution I thought of giving credit to the original source of information, ideas, images, or language used in a piece of writing. Attribution in writing is important because it shows respect for the work of others, helps to prevent plagiarism and those sources often provide additional information. (see my attribution at the end of this post)
That ROI (return on investment) is a much older dollars-and-cents measurement used well before the Internet and social media For example, you invested $1000 for an advertisement and it produced $5000 in sales. (Some might call that ROAS - Return on Ad Spend - but I'm being simpler here.) Or perhaps, you spent a $1000 on an ad and saw no increase in sales.
Attribution in the social media sense assigns value to the channels that drive an outcome. That might mean dollars but it coukd also be a measurement of a purchase, web visit, download, or subscribing to the site or a newsletter.
It is a bit of reverse engineering or backward design in that you are looking at the effect and trying to determine the cause.
My own tracking of the referring sites for posts on this site allows me to see if traffic to a post came from LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, one of my blogs or just a search engine. When someone finds me via Google, I can see what search terms they used. Those results can be surprising. I might get a surge of traffic from a search that found the mention of "Erik Satie" or "flat web design" or "social media attribution."
I have little control about search engine attributions, but I can control what I post on social media and how I word the posts.
Attribution is generally broken down as being in three modes: Last-touch, First-touch Multi-touch attribution. (Take a look at this diagram from digitalthought.me about more on multi-touch models called Even, Time Decay, Weighted, Algorithmic, etc.)
The first-touch attribution credits the first marketing touchpoint. For example, you run an ad and monitor how many contacts came from that ad.
Last-touch attribution credits the channel that a lead went through just before converting. Maybe you ran an ad on Facebook which someone later tweeted and the lead came from the Tweet that linked to your site for a purchase, so Twitter gets the attribution.
Last-touch is easier to measure, but both single-touch models fail to show the complete and sometimes circuitous customer journey. That's why multi-touch attribution is used. This gets much more complicated and more difficult to track. More complicated than the scope of this post. But as an example, the time decay attribution gives more weight to touchpoints closer to the final conversion event. If your original ad is the starting point but the final purchase came after a tweet that was retweeted and then posted as a link in someone's blog a week later, the blog gets more credit (as a personal endorsement) than the ad although obviously none of this would have happened without the ad.
Back to that question I started getting in 2005. It is important to remind clients that social media used for marketing and as engagement and brand-building may not always generate leads or sales directly but rather indirectly. Getting visitors to your site alone is a kind of success. It may not lead to sales (ROI) immediately, but it increases awareness of your brand for the future.
I will crosspost this on my business blog, Ronkowitz LLC, and measure which post gets the best results.
Attribution is more complicated than this primer, so you might want to check out these sources:
ChatGPT has received a lot of attention for about a year, and it has also garnered competition. Google's entry into the AI for the masses is Gemini which has excellent web browsing and Google app integrations. Gemini provides results with often cited sources and links and has ‘Search Related Topics’ feature under some of its results allowing you to explore other search avenues you might have not considered initially. ChatGPT's paid version crawls the web but is not as effective as Gemini and for citations you need to explicitly prompt it to do so.
Gemini and ChatGPT generate images but Gemini does it for free while ChatGPT limits this function to paid plans with access to DALL-3. Then again, ChatGPT paid version might be worth it because the quality of DALL-3 images are better than those of Gemini.
I saw the term " rhizomatic learning" used in an article about digital pedagogy. I know about rhizomes because I am a gardener but the use of it for learning was new and not immediately clear.
As introduced by the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, the rhizome takes that botanical term that refers to a root structure that expands and connects in multiple directions. It creates a decentralized, horizontal structure. Applying it to learning, particularly in higher education, means that students navigate their learning based on the cognitive conflicts they encounter.
Rhizomatic learning encourages students to acquire knowledge through the interconnectedness of curricular content, prompting them to explore diverse perspectives and methods. This is not a traditional approach or path but one that can lead to a critical, reflective learning experience.
September is when I divide my iris rhizomes based on their nodes - a common networking term too.
Rhizomes help plants spread and survive in various conditions. Rhizomes often store nutrients and energy, allowing the plant to regrow if above-ground parts are damaged or destroyed. Unlike roots, rhizomes have nodes from which new shoots and roots can emerge. In my garden, I am most familiar with the types of iris plants that have rhizomes. Other examples are ginger and the part of ginger we use as a spice is a rhizome. Many species of bamboo spread via rhizomes, which can form dense clusters and cover large areas. Near water, you often find cattails (Typha spp.), a wetland plant that has rhizomes that anchor them in muddy soils and help them spread across wetlands.
Applying this concept to the principles of critical pedagogy and to generative AI could offer a new dimension to the relationship between learning situations and the digitization of learning processes. The rhizome, in this framework, symbolizes a non-hierarchical, decentralized network of ideas and knowledge, in contrast to traditional, linear models of learning.
The term is new to me but the idea is not completely new. I have used approaches that seem to fit into this framework.
Platforms like forums, social media, and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and Online Learning Communities often embody rhizomatic principles, where learners can pursue diverse interests and create their learning paths.
PBL (project-based learning) students explore real-world problems and collaborate on projects, allowing for a more flexible, student-driven approach to acquiring knowledge.
Inquiry-based learning is an approach that encourages students to ask questions, conduct research, and explore topics of interest, promoting a more decentralized and learner-directed way of learning.
Learning that can be described as Self-Directed Learning where individuals take charge of their own learning journeys, choosing what and how they learn based on their personal goals and interests, are engaging in rhizomatic learning.
