The Design Flaw in AI?

I've been captivated by https://www.deepmind.com/ of late.  Well not so much captivated as motivated to think about it more deeply.

Since I was a middle-school student I was a student of science-fiction--  Became an avid Asimov fan the first time I read Foundation and the aspect of the singularity occurring in so much of the classic SF literature certainly captures my imagination.

I'm a teacher now.  Sort of, or rather - of sorts.  I noticed something this morning that I felt compelled to share because I want to know more about it, talk to more people about it, and I see something I've never seen before:  There is a way past the singularity.

If you don't know what I'm talking about when it comes to AI and the singularity you can go here for some context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity

The Telus School for Innovation by Design started up this year as a collaboration between Calgary's Spark Science Museum: http://www.sparkscience.ca/ and The Innographer https://theinnographer.com/ and I was welcomed as a member of the inaugural cohort.  As a teacher, this has helped me understand what it is about the Design Process that works (On Design Thinking: http://www.creativityatwork.com/design-thinking-strategy-for-innovation/ )

The fundamental take away, for me as a teacher, has been the incorporation of the double-loop learning model pitched as the energy behind the machine of Design Thinking.  It is in this that I see a path around the singularity:  Empathy.

Here's the quick and dirty of it:

Defining the Problem
HL approaches me looking for a way to reward the students who won her robotics competition.
I listen and connect to what it is she is looking to do.  Ultimately it comes down to using the new school 3D printer (An Ultimaker 2 Extended!) to do something for the students we've never been able to do before.

Ideation and Pitching.
I take the idea away and work up three potential solutions to present to her (informally)

Iteration
She chooses elements of two of those ideas that work best.  Taking advantage of our growing local Maker economy using coins for PLA we will be supplement the winner's Maker account by giving them a unique coin that can be cashed-in for an extra 150cm of plastic.

Prototyping
I work up the prototypes and have them ready for when she needs to gift them to the students.

Critical Feedback.
During this phase I have to learn the programs, rely on help from local experts and mentors, and design and redesign as I look for feedback.

Design Thinking:  Better results than I would have started with because it involved the work of many for the benefit of many.  More than that, I became more skilled AND more knowledgeable because of my work with technology.

According to the Innographer - this should count as Double Looped Learning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_loop_learning otherwise known as the engine that drives the success of Design Thinking.


Learning is not a product based economy.  Our schools often result in a product based economy because it's efficient, mobile, and universal.  Unfortunately it's why so many have argued that the Industrial Model of education is broken; learning is a process.

In my very limited understanding of the work of AI scientists I see us still living in the industrial thinking model.  At it's best - what can we make faster, stronger, and more efficiently, at it's most basic - how do we program the machine to win?  A very industrial view.

Back to the Point
What strikes me is the story of Fan Hui (really great Wired article:  http://www.wired.com/2016/03/sadness-beauty-watching-googles-ai-play-go/).

If the purpose of AI is to create a machine that learns in order to create a product then soon the product may come at the expense of the person.  This is the technological singularity that we fear.

If we employ what happened for Fan Hui - i.e., the machine learns in parallel with the improvement of the human, then we have a) empathetic learning and b) no risk of learning in order to win.

Perhaps it's a bit socialistic.  Perhaps it's Utopian.  What if our machines learned to be our companions, who pitched prototypes of their ideas to us and then relied on our intuition and interaction to co-develop the processes that would lead to the product?  That's the discussion I want to have.  I think it will improve schools, and I think it will accelerate AI.  That takes research and smarter people than I... but I suppose it warrants thinking about.

Afterall, all of us are smarter than one of us... even if the one of us is the world's smartest computer.

An Augmented Reality Sandbox

Two years ago, while sitting with my then 3yo son, and an iPad I was exploring an app called Science360 which allows you to spin a sphere of videos and articles - science related - and choose what interests you.  My son is/was a nut for science-related media and one of the videos we discovered together was this video published by Oliver Kreylos of UCDavis:

Being a science-8 teacher in Alberta meant I immediately saw how this tool could be used to open learning for Water Systems.  I added it to the list of things I wish I had time to build. Of late, the job situation has changed and I found myself with - time to build -.  Project one was to create my own Augmented Reality Sandbox, with the help of students, in the middle of the school-library during lunchtime. I spent some time with the open-source instructions published here: http://idav.ucdavis.edu/~okreylos/ResDev/SARndbox/ a National Science Foundation sponsored research project that has been published online for all to enjoy. Having established a rapport with the school I went out and purchased $2K of hardware to run the software and started developing relationships with the students and parents of the school and quickly found myself a very helpful and talented Architectural specialist, Vera Parlac who sketched up a design for housing our sandbox.

The soon to be built "Sandbox"

A $1200 box and a borrowed screen

Using calgaryfreecycle.org as a daily point of "found-treasure" I was able to locate some free wood, and incorporated an old desk that was being turfed by the school, and a defunct bookshelf from the library storage.  All of this was put together to hold my version of Frankenstein's Monster using the expertise of mostly grade 5 and 6 students who would rather cut, measure, and fasten than play out in the mild Calgary fall weather.

Learning to remove old nails

Learning to wield a saw

It took a few months to get to a point where programming would take place, and that stage (for those of us who struggle following step-by-step instructions) was easily the most difficult.  Thankfully the read-me files supplied with the programs answered the majority of questions, and there is an online forum for those who wish to participate globally in making more and more of these projects.

A bookcase on an old desk

Hockey-tape and wire... nature's solution

When the time came to calibrate, and after some major troubleshooting, my son and I stuck our hands into the sandbox, at school, in a library, and welcomed parents and students to come and play with us.

The infinite Sandbox

Playing in the dirt

The learning is obvious, but the reactions are my favourite part.  Such positive, responsive, and authentic joy being demonstrated by all ages.  The only question that comes up now; what's next Mr. C?!

Teaching Drama Online through Immersion - The ACSI Drama Xchange 2014

If there has been one event in my teaching career that I have felt "blessed" by it is the ACSI Drama Xchange. For those who follow my blogs you may have read about the inaugural event I was involved with, and certainly my reflections on the quality of the event have not changed. This remains one of the most important Theatre Immersion programs for Christian students that I have ever been a part of.

I was privileged enough to return again this year with a new batch of students, and an entirely different context.

I have been dreaming for years about the potential of Theatre in the Distance Education world. How might a course designer approach building a stage production when the students will not meet face-to-face until the day of the performance? How can a collaborative project done entirely at a distance turn into something as personal and intimate as a live performance? How can the inherent introversion that an online-student enjoys be translated into the implicit extroversion required in delivering a powerful monologue? These were all questions I've had for years, and I found myself actively researching as I prepared my students for a performance on the Rosebud Theatre Stage in May 2014.

I write this reflection as a template I hope others can follow and also as a thank you to the test-subjects (students) who participated in my "study".

Goal: To create an original short-piece for the stage collaboratively and online which would then be performed by the collaborators on the day of their first face-to-face meeting.

The Stage
Set for the Diary of Anne Frank

To begin we had to choose subject matter. One of the students found a well written play from the 19th Century called the Youthful Martyrs of Rome which, in it's form, had to first be decoded and translated before it could be reinterpreted.
Learning Outcomes: Historical Theatre, Verse, Dramaturgy

One of my students (in Grade 8) took the task of decoding the play very seriously and he became crucial to helping us all create a vision for what would become our script. He began by rewriting the prologue in elegant verse of his own.

Next students had to imagine the characters of ancient Rome as they might appear in a modern community setting. Who would "we" be? What would "we" look like? What might our conflicts entail? In an online dialogue lasting roughly an hour we were able to take the story and imagine these characters in modern time; yes we still have martyrs, yes they occur in everyday Western Culture, yes their stories are still important.
Learning Outcomes: Creating Character, Storytelling

Students at Script Analysis Workshop

With characters in place, and a setting decided on we now had to create meaningful conflict and relationship in our script. We started with an outline and over the course of three hour-long sessions we were able to construct a script that encompassed the moral and theme of the original play but had it's own original feel and personal importance. Most importantly during this approach was to have students work together in teams of two, online of course, and on one scene only. Embedded in this design is the nature of Improvisation: Expanding on the ideas of others, and letting go of the control in a story. So each student was able to put their own spin on the tale, knowing that the others would be working to support their story by "extending" the ideas rather than the typical creative work that is so often seen in groups of this age.
Learning Outcomes: Collaboration, Improvisation, Script Writing

Unfortunately it was at this point that we realized our time was up (for preparation) and our time at Rosebud was at hand. We would be meeting for the first time with a script in hand but no rehearsal (part of my research that would have to be tabled another time). Moreover we had a final scene which had not yet been envisioned. The last scene of the play, the denoument, would have to be discovered together, on-stage, in front of an audience.

Rosebud Professionals bringing Scripture to its Feet

Fast forward now to Rosebud. Having shared our situation with the staff at the Xchange they welcomed the opportunity to witness something that was entirely new, and entirely different than they had ever seen on that stage, from the students. We were afforded 20 minutes of time to acquaint ourselves with the stage, and another 90 minutes to rehearse in the hallway. It was at this point that our script was read aloud for the first time.
Learning Outcomes: Rehearsal, Acting

The students, being familiar with the story, were able to dive into the characters with little reluctance. We set our goal for the day (and ultimately the performance) as: "Make sure we have a lot of laughs among us, not because we're embarrassed but because we're having fun." I reassured them that if the project failed, it would be my failure and not theirs, and if the project was a success it was because we were all in it together. So much of what I try to teach in my "drama classroom" was being put in action in the hallway of the Rosebud Theatre.

The diversity of students and their skill was apparent immediately. Some were evidently NOT the "cold-read" type, delivering their speeches stilted, and broken. Others took to the stage as though they had been missing it -- improvising lines and reactions and thoroughly enjoying their scripts as it was "revealed". The most important discovery at this point was that in order to collaborate, tell a good story, and be entertaining to the audience we had to a) tell the truth of the story, b) tell the truth of OUR story (who we are, and what we were faced with) and c) get up on-stage and simply improv it!
Learning Outcomes: Readers' Theatre, Acting, Improv

We added some games to each scene to keep the students from staring at their scripts. Stand-up, Sit-down, Lie-down; introducing unpredicted elements, audience participation, and challenges to overcome were introduced in rehearsal to allow the students to realize that the story could happen no matter what they faced on stage, and it allowed me as the director to find ways for each students' strength to be showcased in some way. It also took the tension off them to be "perfected" on-stage, as they realized that in improv it's not what you have perfected that makes for a good show, but what you're willing to put into a scene.

When the time came to show what we had prepared we were lucky enough to be the last group to go late that night. The audience was effectively "Cooled-down" and were definitely looking for something different after five schools showed their short-stories on-stage. Credit to those students for creating excellent performance pieces of a diverse genre range, and to have taken the time to craft something worthy of the stage. We were not going to be "those schools"....

These seats would soon be filled.

We stayed true to the approach. We brought in audience members to play characters, asked for scenes to be adjusted to match what they wanted to see. We had fun. We played. And in the end, we had a show that the audience warmly received, the students I brought were glowing with smiles and comaraderie and the feedback from the adjudication essentially boiled down to appreciation for having discovered a "new style of theatre" and intense appreciation for the nature and ethic behind what we attempted.

The students were then able to dive into the workshops put on by the camp, meet other students, and enjoy what Rosebud offers similar to what was posted in my last reflection. I pause now to allow the students the space to reflect themselves having shared what I felt were the "take-aways" and "carry-with-yous" that make this type of event all the more perfect for being.

The ever-popular Fight Workshop