You're so right about AI being overwhelming,   Kile Clabaugh . Everybody in every field is having these discussions. Just this morning, I received an email with the latest Archival Outlook publication, and the lead story was "Archives in the Age of AI." (I'm not sure if that's a password protected publication, but I'm sharing in case it's not. I just thought it had a lot in common with library questions about AI.) 

Thanks   Kile Clabaugh  for the link.  I’m passing this along so our librarians might take a look at some of the recorded sessions.  I’m pleased that in our four high schools our librarians have collaborated and taken the lead in developing professional learning on AI for our educators and students.  Quite a task for this moving target but so important to have guides and support from librarians.

I read a couple of EdWeek articles recently about AI in education that are worth checking out.

Although the title is sensationalistic—Don’t Buy the AI Hype, Learning Expert Warns—I think the expert, Benjamin Riley, the founder and CEO of think tank Cognitive Resonance, provides some good food for thought.

• "It’s good to come back to what a large language model really is. It’s a prediction device. . . . There’s no limit to the range of things it can say back to you in response to text you put into it. But that’s all it can do."
• "So a teacher says, 'Give me a lesson plan for this Friday, 60 minutes about this topic.' There might still be some stuff in that [answer] that has problems, but the teacher has their intelligence . . . [and can] decide how much of it they want to use or not."
• "The other area that I know has been positive and makes sense given the nature of the technology is creating materials for English learners. That’s playing to the strong suit of these models. They’re language models. So if what you need is translation between languages, they’re pretty good at that."

The other article—Los Angeles Unified’s AI Meltdown: 5 Ways Districts Can Avoid the Same Mistakes—provides an alternative perspective. It outlines how LAUSD went from enviable AI pioneer to cautionary tale in just five months and goes on to provide tips as mentioned in the headline.

1. Be clear about what problem you’re trying to solve with AI
2. Vet ed-tech companies carefully
3. Consider starting small and work on a reasonable timetable
4. Make data privacy a top priority
5. Don’t let LAUSD’s experience completely sour you on AI