Bonus Blog: Is AI Harmful to Students?

Readers of my blog may be interested in this recent event from Valparaiso University’s Christ College, where students debated the proposition “on balance, the rise of Artificial Intelligence harms students more than it helps them.” (So the “pro” team was arguing against students using AI, and the “con” team was arguing that it’s OK). If you work in education, or are just an interested observer, you might be intrigued by what these bright students thought were the most compelling reasons for and against their own use of emerging artificial intelligence technologies. I should note that both sides were explicitly instructed not to bring up the issue of reliability or AI-generated “hallucinations,” because it was felt that this would distract from the main question. That’s probably fair, as hallucinations have gotten a lot of press yet are also decreasing in frequency and severity with each new iteration of the technology. My daughter Ruth was one of the speakers for the “pro” side, but I won’t spoil this by telling you who won! https://www.youtube.com/live/iZ0FKG_O4LU?si=TZFmf1lnpubwh_Im

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Prototypes and Willingness: The Theory of Planned Behavior Revisited

You may recall my blog post from last year on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) , titled "in praise of a failed model." My evaluation of this model was that it accurately describes the Narrative Mind, which does control intentions. But the ultimate goal of the TPB is to predict behavior, and the relationship between intentions and behavior is weak at best -- in fact, it is entirely attributable to the fact that when someone says they don't intend to do something, they probably won't do it. When they say they do intend to do it, their actual results are no better than chance, a result of the intention-behavior gap as described in Two Minds Theory. The full TPB is shown in this diagram: Cognitive constructs like attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control (i.e., self-efficacy) are Narrative-system phenomena, and they do indeed have relationships with each other and with intentions (which are also products of the Narrative Mind). Perceived behavi...

Inside the Intuitive Mind: Social Support Can Facilitate or Inhibit Behavior Change

This week I'm looking at another concrete tool in the behavior-change armamentarium, social support . I have written previously about the Narrative mind's strong focus on social cues , and indeed perhaps the Narrative system evolved specifically to help us coordinate our behavior with groups of other humans. As a behavior-change strategy, social support can be used in several different ways. Instrumental Social Support . The most basic form of social support is instrumental, the type of help that a neighbor gives in loaning you a tool or that a friend provides in bringing you a meal. This type of concrete support can be helpful for diet change -- e.g., here are some fresh vegetables from my garden -- or exercise -- e.g., you can borrow my tent for your camping trip. Although instrumental support is particularly powerful because someone is actually doing something for you or giving you resources that you don't have, it is also usually short-term (I probably don't want...

Our Reactions to Robots Tell Us Something About Ourselves

Robot football players at a Valparaiso University College of Engineering event I have been thinking lately about robots, which creates an interesting asymmetry: They almost certainly have not been thinking about me. Nevertheless, I find that I often respond to robots as though they have thoughts about me, or about their own personal goals, or about the world in which they exist. That tendency suggests an interesting aspect of human psychology, connected to our social minds . We are hard-wired to care what other people think about us, and we very easily extend that concern to robots. Here's a recent article about how the language-learning app Duolingo, which features an owl-shaped avatar (a kind of robot), uses "emotional blackmail" to keep application users engaged: https://uxdesign.cc/20-days-of-emotional-blackmail-from-duolingo-4f566523e3c5 This bird-shaped bit of code tells users things like "you're scaring me!" and "I miss you" if they haven...

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