AKA Review - 08.09.2024

From The Economist
A Short History of AI

Why does AI, part of academic research and pop culture for decades, often feel like it fell from the sky with ChatGPT’s release only two years ago? This short history answers that question. From the term’s invention in 1956, AI progressed through expert systems, artificial neural networks, hardware advances that enabled deep learning, large-language models, and in late 2022 the fastest takeoff of any consumer product ever: ChatGPT. These milestones illustrate how AI overcame decades of underdelivering to arrive, explosively, where it is today. Read this article

From The Atlantic
Google Wins the Gold Medal for Worst Olympic Ad
By Caroline Mimbs Nyce

Watch the Olympics last week? Then you probably know exactly which ad and, judging from the huge online blowback, had the same gut reaction. Quickly: a cute little girl wants to write a fan letter to her Olympic hero. So, dad fires up Google’s AI chatbot. All the snark aside, this article has a deeper point. “Google is pitching a world in which even the most personal interactions are mediated by computers.” It’s co-opting a celebration of human accomplishments to promote a technology that may be dazzling but that many people remain skeptical of. Read this article

From The New York Times
Notes from a Formerly Unpromising Young Person
By Rachel Louise Snyder

The author’s life story—high-school dropout to successful journalist—is a powerful counterpoint to endless tales of anxiety and woe over prestigious college admission. More compelling, however, is her worry that as college application and selection processes have become more analytical, fewer adults today will take chances on kids like her, for whom the world has so little time and attention. “I wish I could reassure them that their futures aren’t necessarily determined by their youthful decisions. But honestly, I’m not sure I can.”
Read this article

From The Conversation

5 Growing Threats to Academic Freedom
By Isaac Kamola

It’s not news that academic freedom, a cornerstone of academe, is increasingly threatened. This article, by the director of the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, describes five distinct threats. We’ve heard of them all, from state legislation that bans teaching of specific topics to the erosion of tenure protections. However, his emphasis on how their power is increased by their mutually reinforcing nature is particularly disconcerting for anyone who values free and critical thinking. Read this article

From Higher Ed Drive
A Look at 2U's Path to Bankruptcy
By Ben Unglesbee

The bankruptcy of online program manager (OPM) giant 2U rings some cautionary notes for institutions considering OPM partnerships. Growth based on a pandemic-driven shift to virtual learning was never truly sustainable. Student lawsuits over online program quality and federal scrutiny of OPM-university revenue sharing highlight reputational risks. But the greatest question about OPM’s future—largely unexamined by colleges and the federal DoE—is: with huge numbers of students enrolled, what would happen were an OPM to fail? Read this article