Marilyn's Photos - July 9 2025 - Fear of Missing Out
The New York Times has an article on AI int he classroom and reference the tech companies' sales strategy as being based on the "fear of missing out" - that students will be set up for failure if they don't use AI.
My generation is genuinely marvelling at what can be done by chatbots. For people with low skills for composing, they are amazed at what is written on their behalf. I listened to a conversation amongst people who I thought were educated. They had math and science skills and felt they didn't have good composing skills for emails and correspondence. AI gets them up to and beyond the threshold of good writing.
That makes me think this is about the fear of missing out - of not being "good enough" or being able to "keep up." So would we expect it to improve their general writing skills? I expect it will replace their correspondence and they will be dependent on it. Is that what we want of school learning?
And I sure hope AI gets better at writing. To me, a lot of what it writes is ingratiating, unctuous, flattering, insincere, obsequious, and fawning. There needs to be some AI to develop authenticity.
Me, I seem to be going backwards. I've turned off spell-check. Gerry showed me where I could do this in my MAC so there's almost no word replacement, except for some programs online. I would rather have to read my work carefully than just blast along with a trail of weird words dangling behind. Some of them were fun, though, and I will miss those surprise moments.
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