The Gartner Hype Cycle. We have not even reached the peak for Chat (AI), now just heating up with new entries by Microsoft with a new model designed to integrate ChatGPT into Search (Bing) and Browsing (Edge). Watch the video (55 min). Google announced Bard but that is still vaporware. Kind of curious to see the roles switched between the two giants.

Source: Wikipedia.

I’m guessing that AI will not get boring for a long time. With Education and Learning lagging behind, it will be even longer. I can’t hope to guess. I do see the “Trough of Disillusionment” arrive about summertime. I plan to integrate AI into my spring semester courses, though. More in another post.

John Spencer is a thinker and a teacher, long involved in Project Based Learning. He can’t predict how AI is going to change the way we teach (and work, and have fun, and live). In this post he has a similar hype cycle. Spencer thinks that boring is dangerous. That AI will some how take over if we aren’t paying attention. I disagree with this. Teachers are in no position to be able to affect how AI gets distributed in society (or, at least, no more than other individuals).

My take: Like computers in the 90’s, they were feared and eventually became boring. Thank god for boring. When I was a Treasurer for a teaching organization, my motto was “boring is good”. Same for investing. Same for advancing to new technology.

Spencer’s list of questions teachers should ask themselves before using it in class reminds me of Frank’s Rule. Frank and Charles and I were solving the problems of the world in a Mexican restaurant in the early 90’s, and he said, “If it can be done on paper, do it.” This was in reaction to the misuse of computing by putting paper-based activities online. Then SAMR came along and people started to understand that both paper and computer each had their strengths. Same with AI today.

So now we have the hard work of making Chat and AI boring. Start making those activities, and talk to each other to see which ones work and which don’t.