 Let me welcome you all. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. Today we have one of our special live session events that combines the virtual and the in-person and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. The physical event is really exciting and there's a lot of good conversation happening. I'm really glad to cross the streams and blend all these ideas together. Again, this is one of those live sessions where we are meeting with a whole in-person group and this is a group that is in Arizona State University. Just in case you think this sounds a little bit familiar, that's because we have hosted one of their first introductions. I'll put this in the chat box. This is the 100 years of ed tech project which tries to take a look at educational technology by looking backwards 50 years and forwards 50 years. They try to see what we can learn from the past and how we can prepare educational technology for the future. Now today at Phoenix Arizona, at Arizona State University's campus, they're hosting a design summit which is all about trying to think of new ways that education can respond to these future developments. Now that means that they have all kinds of things going on. They've had panel sessions, multiple panel sessions, they've had a lot of conversations and right now there are a whole bunch of small groups that are broken up looking into different ways that education can get really future. Everything from genetic engineering, to neural links, to climate change, to medical education, all kinds of great stuff. Now what I'd like to do for the next hour is I'd like to bring up on stage all kinds of people who are there right now, who are in Arizona State University's fine campus, who would like to share some thoughts and conversation about what they're learning and what they've seen. So if you are there right now, I feel a bit like at a Ouija board, you know, if you're there please knock twice. Now if you're there right now I'd like to bring you on stage just so you could just for a few minutes so you could talk about what you're learning, what you're thinking, what you're making and so you could we can combine these two streams, face-to-face conversation with the virtual audience. And I'm gonna begin this actually by bringing up one of the organizers. This is our dear friend and just for me a hero of mine, Joe Lambert, one of the creators of digital storytelling and he's one of the organizers of this great event. So let's bring him up on stage if he's got time. Hello Joe. Yeah I got time. We're sitting in one of the rooms. Oh great. Where a group is working on the issues of historical revisionism in the ARXR VR world that we can expect because of the way you know who owns truth. So we have eight groups today and they're gathered in different ways. This is part of a conference and if you do me the favor of calling up Samantha who's sitting next to me, let her tell you a little bit more about the larger project. I can definitely do that. If I can have Samantha Becker. Can you hear me? Life is great. We can hear you just fine Sam. Can you hear us? There we go. Can you hear me? Yes. Can you hear us? Yeah. Sorry about that. Thank you for making time because I know you're running around like crazy to keep everything going. So we've got we've got eight sessions. Joe was just describing one of the topics having to do with how augmented reality can lead to historical revisionism and then he wanted me to bring you up Sam so you can tell us all more about the event. Yes so it's really a future focused events event. We started the day of course when we talk about the future it has to incorporate student and learner voice. So we started the day with a panel of learners from ages I think 19 to 80. Life long learning people currently engaged in taking courses and we heard about their biggest challenges right now in education a lot of it had to do with access, with equity, with unequal distribution of resources and opportunity, also having to do with meeting continual support beyond just academic. Then we heard from a panel of subject matter experts which we were so delighted to have you on Brian and we really considered larger societal shifts especially related to technology around generative AI, around spatial technologies and health tech. All of these discussions are now informing eight working groups who are focused on addressing eight future focus scenarios, some way more realistic sounding than others but I think all potentially very likely. So Joe mentioned climate impact in the role of the two groups. Right now we're working on a new group response of a high curriculum. Yeah, teaching in a post-truth era. So it depends on the digital age. So lots of subjects that are around and involve technology but are very human centric. How did you all come up with these eight groups? I'm gonna actually pass that back over to Joe since we're such a partnership here. You meet yourself. I'm gonna mute. In case you're curious folks you just need to hit the mute button. Right next to each other this is great. So yeah the way this started is that we had a retreat at Ghost Ranch back in June. It was gathered by LeBronik and we had people from all over the country come in and we came up with some design principles. We came up with approaches. Our original intent was to gamify the conference in some way and the way we decided the game would be is a series of what I call postcards from the future. So based on we started with six emerging trends against the context we came up with these eight stories. And the idea for me was you know somebody in their year of 2074 saying helpful. We went back in the 20s to do this thing to make you know higher education more robust and to deal with things that we're seeing happening in the now like all science fiction is really about now. We're using those stories to just initiate a discussion that will lead them to solution. And each of the groups either aid or some subdivision of it will come back tomorrow with a kind of quick and dirty shark tank like presentation of a solution in the area of resource, in the area of technology, in the area of the way social capital will be built. And the theory is you know those solutions will be part of the outcome document that this crew of us and again Sam and our friends Stephanie Karate from shaping you and Peggy Snyder who we knew for years at Autodesk and Adobe and lab himself. That group formed by our design committee of 25 will come out with this document hopefully in a month or so. There will be you know if not a manifesto because there are a lot of those a sort of reconstitution of the group that many of us were part of the new media consortium the intent to help lead the way technology is used in education going forward. So mostly the work that you do every week, Brian. We just got a lot of people in the same room in reality and you gather each week virtually. So it's the same spirit. Well thank you that that's a great story of course and I love all the creativity involved here and I love that the two of you working with Lev and Stephanie have brought together so many cool people in one spot to bring this up. And there's already been with you there's been a panel this morning on the students there's been a panel on future topics that we put the jar got to leave. I'm curious if what are the what are the major things that you're hearing from the session so far? What are people talking about? What's up with people's minds always. You go. I think it's what's interesting is that it's not necessarily like it's the same it's different challenges every year. It's honestly like there are a lot of the same conversations around access around accessibility around making sure that learners and students are the center of design. So it's of course you know things like generative AI and extent reality in the mix. Those have been brewing for years although generative AI is really exploded. But I think what actually never really surprises me is how actually the root issues and challenges don't seem to change. It's just that fresh perspectives and how to address them. Something that I think it was Angela Gonder on the subject matter expert panel was talking about how academia may have previously kind of viewed itself as like a ship that takes forever to turn or I think one of the metaphor was like a turtle with a backpack. But I think that what we're realizing is we were really forced in the last four years to make some pretty big changes to expand access and opportunity during the pandemic. And I think that taught us that we can be a lot more agile and nimble and it doesn't have to be in the response of a disaster. We don't have to wait for it. And so I'm really hoping that that will come out of this. Excellent. Excellent. That kind of nimbleness is great. What are some of the other perennial causes? I think I heard one talking about the difficulty in transforming an entire institution when people say they could only work on one particular part of it at one time like in a lab or in a learning center. Where are there other other perennials that we should have in mind here? I'm happy to answer that. I think that a lot of I think our organizational structures are being called into question and it really is not just the responsibility anymore of dedicated academic centers and teaching and learning centers anymore to build institutional capacity. I think it's about empowering everyone by building a culture of collaboration where you don't have to have innovation in your title. How are we bringing communities together? How are we connecting students and faculty with education leaders and including everyone in those conversations is going to continue to be vital. And I saw and one of our amazing grad students just come sit down to he sat in on our and participated in our student panel and had some things to share too. Well thank you Sam and hello Amanda. I'd love to hear from you. Tell us first what do you do as a grad student? What are you studying? Okay Sam needs to unmute and then. Sorry my audio was off. Well what I was asking was if you could introduce yourself by saying what do you study as a grad student? What are you working on? Yeah so my my grad program is secondary education and I'm actually studying that to teach theater. I was doing it from math and then I switched it because I was not ready for the challenge of the math classroom and I recognize that. But yeah so that's what I'm studying right now. Oh excellent excellent. We're gonna need a lot more of you out there doing this kind of great work. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. So I mean what did you what did you get to talk about on the panel this morning and and what did you see what were or hear what were some of the big ideas about the student perspective of education technology going forward? Yeah so it seems like what I noticed that across the panelists the student panelists is that we're all looking at student-centered education and I feel like for the most part the education sphere higher ed and secondary ed etc we say that we always want it to be student-centered and this and this and that but in practice a lot of the time especially in secondary ed you know you have to do these core subjects and things like that. So I think a space like this we were talking I really like that we had the opportunity to think of like if we had our perfect world in 50 years like our perfect vision of education and for the most part a lot of us wanted kind of like a complete revamp right we wanted everything like really student-centered like students choose their own like choose what they learn rather than like oh I got to learn physics I got to learn like mechanics and like all this stuff it's like I don't I don't want to learn that I want to do creative writing I want to do you know I want I want to do theater and so I feel like a lot of us were like let's have the students pick what skills they actually want to learn and what skills they're actually going to use and have them learn that in school rather than you know forcing them to learn a bunch of things that they're not going to use although some students think they're not going to use some things but then they do so there's also that as well yeah that's a perennial issue trying to figure that out I'm sorry it's Amanda right yes excellent excellent well this is I'm I'm curious thinking about technology how can we reshape technology to support that kind of student-centered goal I mean for example you know should we push more content to mobile devices is there your interfaces I mean is this where we should think about maybe supporting the creation of more media I mean how do you connect technology with that goal I think some of the like ideas that were thrown out there during the student panel was you know leveraging AI to like personalize learning journeys for students and we also mentioned that you know we can't we can't have technology or AI do everything there needs to be that human touch and empathy involved in that and so I definitely think that you know AI could be leveraged for that but also just engaging students with technology like modern up-to-date technologies that are being used in industries because I feel like that's what a lot of programs were missing and even for me in undergrad I did my undergrad in animation and we we used some programs like we used like Maya which is sort of used in the industry but nowadays a lot of people are using Blender and Blender was not part of like the required course lists I don't even think we had a Blender course until after I graduated go figure but I wish that I had learned Blender because that's what everyone's using and so that's just an example but have like giving students that opportunity to learn industry technologies and things that are actually being used yeah friends if you're new to those two applications they're both 3d animation programs my is very very powerful proprietary program and Blender is a open-source program so yeah that's an excellent point thank you thank you for answering that's that's a terrific one I have one last question for you which of these working groups are you in right now are you in the AI group the augmented reality group which one I'm in I think it's scenario for it's teaching in the post-truth era and I decided to pick that scenario because I'm going into education and you know since starting my grad program and going into these classrooms and you know reading about different policies and like what are all these restrictions that what teachers can and can't teach especially in Arizona yeah I was really interested in kind of seeing like how we can combat like misinformation spread online or people that are unwilling to learn about you know objective facts and one thing that we were talking about over there earlier was critical race theory which is a I guess a subset of just creative thinking in general or not creative critical thinking in general and critical thinking is obviously and I would hopefully say objectively a useful skill that people need to use in their lives being able to discern information what you know what is you know not said in good faith and things like that and using critical thinking to navigate history and life and society but unfortunately there are some people in administration in the government that have the wrong idea about critical race theory and one thing that I've noticed is on like the US not US the Arizona like Department of Education websites there was a whole page saying that critical race theory is about teaching white people to be ashamed of their themselves why why is this on the government website this is it's just not true if you read any scholarly article about critical race theory it does not say that at all and so that's one big thing that I was looking to sort of address and combat in that scenario group well thank you I mean first of all thank you for that for that detailed description I think you'd be a fantastic person to work with in a group like this let me let me just stop interrogating you myself though let me ask the group everybody here if you're new to the forum this is a place for your questions in your comments so again if you have a question for our excellent grad student Amanda before we have to release her to go back to work either click the raised hand button if you want to join us on stage or hit the Q&A box in fact we have a raised hand let me bring on mcgarn up on stage hang on one second let me add him to the screen well it looks like we have your audio no video make oh let's where did my little button go for that oh it says activate camera all right let me see if I can do that yeah so Amanda this is perfect timing I was actually just reading an article this morning and it was talking about how AI would affect different disciplines differently and one of the ones they said would have very little effect on was theater I'm curious since you know a lot about technology you're getting this do you what's the thinking in the theater community about generative AI and those kind of things I mean when a lot of people think theater they think like Broadway show we're gonna go sing and dance on stage and we're watching people in costumes and things like that which you know at that at that level AI doesn't really have too much of an influence when we think about the creative process behind that the writing the costume designing the you know even even the music right if it's gonna be a musical generative AI could be leveraged for those things and when it comes to like creativity and the arts and things like that and using generative AI a lot of people you know are a little turned off by that for obvious reasons you know like a lot of people think like oh I'm just gonna have generative AI make this picture for me I don't have to hire an artist to do it or people are like oh like I don't want to draw that I'll have AI do it but what a lot of people don't realize is people enjoy doing that stuff people enjoy drawing people enjoy making costumes so for I think a lot of people that are involved in the theater are just people that love doing that work so they don't really think about using generative AI to do that because they want to do it themselves but what's also interesting is people when people like I said people think here they think probably musical but there's actually a really large group of people that are doing experiential theater immersive theater integrating technologies into a theatrical performance there's there's one that's pretty popular right now I can't remember the name of but it's like an actual like immersive like building that you go in and there's actors running around the space and like you can follow an actor and like see what they're doing and you're like peek into that actor's life or not the actor's life but the actor's character and so there's lots of interesting experiential theater that is being made that I guarantee people are using generative AI to you know come up with some you know unique designs or like or just like the artistic side of things and design part of things so I mean I think AI could be used in in theater but for the most part people that are in theater don't really they typically don't really think about it because they just want to do the work you know right right sounds like faculty to me like thank thank you for the great question thank you for the great if you're if you're new to the forum there's an example of a video question and we did have a quick note Amanda in in the chat Andrea Bjork corner for Karen sorry Andrea I'm trying to get your name right so that the production sleep no more did an example you're talking about which is great which is great Amanda can we keep you on stage for another minute more yeah because I want to introduce another person here who is just taking Samantha's place I believe this is director Davis hello there we go let's try to get Georgia Georgia Davis yeah hi getting my audio fix here okay yes you're from the other University in Arizona right well there's three of them but yeah one of the other universities hour and a half south of Phoenix right the University of Arizona well excellent excellent and we have a we have a tradition in in the forum we asked will they introduce themselves we we ask it in a forward-looking way so so we asked Amanda what she was studying and I'm curious what are you working on for the rest of the year what's a little big topics ahead for you and and your role is your director of creative initiatives at University of Arizona right right in multimedia so I come out of broadcast television and radio and news and I did that for a decade and then I got a PhD in health geography and now I'm back in our teaching and learning center running our multimedia teams and our creativity creative team and of course the definition of multimedia is changing on a regular basis so the new initiative that I'm involved in is serving augmented reality and we just received a large grant to study what is actually happening on our campus right now we've got a lot of people who are moving into the world of using augmented reality how are immersive reality I guess I should say that because we want to encompass VR and they are but they're starting to move into it but people are working still in these kind of silos trying to figure out how to use this from their particular discipline and so we're going around we're trying to study what everyone is doing and then start matching people up like we discovered there are people that have lab space but don't have equipment there are people that have equipment they don't have lab space but people that are doing research to understand how XR can actually impact student learning and attention so we're trying to get all these people together in one space and then start thinking about what a roadmap for the future could like which could look like for the University of Arizona and hopefully turn this into some bigger campus-wide initiative and really start thinking about the way immersive reality could be used in disciplines not just in STEM we heard a lot about STEM earlier today at our conference but in digital humanities we have a lot of people doing work in that field right now or arts right across the disciplines oh it's so glad to see augmented reality really coming into it I'm so glad that you're leading this at this university this is I have so many questions before I ask questions let me just make sure that the group knows please everybody if you have questions for either of our guests right now please put the questions forward either click the raised hand button like mcdarn did to join us on stage or hit the Q&A box and you can type in a queue and I'll raise that up while people are thinking about this Dr. Davis let me just ask which of the groups are you part of that I've taken you out of I'm one of the facilitators for the mental well-being in the digital age and so what we are exploring as you're 50 years down the road this notion that with digital tech like this kind of hybrid beam that we spoke about earlier where people aren't quite human and aren't quite technology but this kind of hybrid beam so knowledge and maybe even part of us physically part of us how we can use these technologies in ways that help us while acknowledging the harm of digital addiction granted I think that we may end up going in a number of different directions that aren't related specifically just to digital addiction so we're trying to look for maybe policy or financial or social or institutional kinds of solutions that we can start to implement now that might set the stage for 50 years from now for yeah this kind of total immersion in technology oh excellent excellent that's a that's a tall order and you said you said you got your phd in health geography right that's correct um how does how does that inform your thinking in this group well it's interesting that you were just speaking about critical theory because I come very much of a critical theoretical perspective and so my research was very much involved in how in defining the object that we are studying or the process that we are using or even the disease entity that we are we're investigating how not only does that allow us to know certain things it also creates gaps in what we can actually know and if there's gaps I think the fastest thing is to study and so it's not just the things we can't know it's also the way we can't even conceptualize things because the way those gaps exist so in tangential to that work I also think a lot about health social movements and so there's more and more space for individuals to contribute to knowledge and science for example we get crowdsourcing of like rainfall data and then that's aggregated and used to well in various ways but when it comes to health we often we tell people that they're responsible for their own health we even heard earlier today that we're moving toward individuals taking care of kind of the basics of their health and going to their doctors for other kinds of things but at the same time we often block people's ability to participate as like we deny people's experiences of health in many ways and so we get health social movements out of this and so through the pandemic it was really interesting to watch because on the one hand you know there was a lot of misinformation out there but on the other hand we have to remember that when we make individuals responsible for their own health they're going to become responsible for their own health right I don't think we have enough of appreciation of that facet of what was going on through the pandemic I also think that people develop these ideas because they feel powerless and in some ways like conspiracy theories for example can be a way that people bring or give find power for themselves within the system so sometimes it's not the theory that's so important but it's some of the motivations behind the theory and then the power arrangements that are being like questions or reformed in some of the theories that arise. This is so true especially a global pandemic is so vast and so scary this is excellent friends I'd love to hear your questions both for Amanda and for Georgia and in fact before you finish saying that sentence there's one that's come up now this is for you Amanda this is from our good friend John Hollenbeck who's up in up in Madison Wisconsin let me put this on the screen he asks what one change would you make to the practice of school if you were queen of the universe. Wow okay is there some echo okay we're good all right well one change what I make one thing I talked about at the student panel was how I if it were if it was my perfect world I would want every student to have their own life coach so not just a career coach but a life coach that is like a student mentor you know and a good role model for that student that will be able to guide them along a personalized learning journey to help them architect their own education and so and that means you know not the typical things you learn in like k through 12 or you know even college I feel like college might come close if you have like an interdisciplinary major which luckily I was fortunate enough to have a major that was pretty interdisciplinary but high schoolers typically don't have that opportunity and depth and certainly not you know younger than that either so I think that is something that I would like to implement into schooling for students to get the opportunity to learn more than you know you know math science like just scratching the surface like get them into like marine biology or you know pharmaceuticals like more like cte type courses but like a plethora of them so that's my ideal educational world just just quickly uh define cte uh just if you could just define cte yeah cte is career technical education so it's kind of like a program that's implemented in a lot of schools across the country um at least at least in Arizona I'm pretty sure it's in schools all across the country but it's things like computer science it's like a cte course um that I actually did take in high school they also have nursing um they even have some some schools have like programs where the students go to school half the day and then the other half they go to like a sort of trade school so that's the program um so they do exist but um I mean they're not at the scale or like it's not as normalized as I would personally like it like them to be understood understood would you would you accept a AI in that role or would you would you rather have a person I think sorry it's getting a little loud in here it's lunch time but I think I do think AI could be leveraged in that space and like I said I feel like there still needs to be that human touch so that students have a role model that isn't you know not a human um but I definitely think AI could be leveraged to help help make that curriculum for the student and the the mentor or the life coach could use that AI as a resource as a tool um to assist them with that and I think a lot of people I said this in the student panel but I think a lot of people see AI as something that can do something for them and it can like replace something or it's like I don't want to do this thing entirely I'm going to have AI do it for me but I would I would personally like to challenge people and personally use AI as a tool or a resource rather than something that will just do everything for me like how can we leverage AI as as a tool for us um to do things ourselves hmm well well thank you thank you so much uh that's a great answer and uh John thank you for the question if you're new to the forum that's an example of a q and a box question right there by the way in the chat our dear friend Roxanne Riskin says life mentors are often senior citizens uh which is a great way of thinking of intergenerational um um learning um well uh this is terrific Amanda thank you so much uh if you have to run I don't want to keep you any longer um but good luck um I really look forward to seeing what you get to do in this world thank you and thank you guys for having me a pleasure a pleasure um Georgia um I have I have one question while I'm waiting for everybody else's questions to come in um we were talking about some changes to the huge point it needs to be human we were talking about uh narrow link we were talking about uh changing through biology and lifespan uh and with the technology can really impact um the what it means to be human I'm curious how do you think that might form an addiction so hopefully it could be should we expect a uh a narrow infant which could help short soak it some of the neurology of addiction wow um yeah I know that's a complicated question um because we're trying to weigh this notion of human agency and preference against what we can do with the technology at the same time that we're weighing the notion that technology can benefit us it can extend our capacities at the same time that we're concerned with addiction so I think it's it's a really thorny question because we start thinking about things like let's put time limits on how long somebody can be engaged with technology in some way are we starting to impede in people's autonomy so I'm not really sure honestly how to answer that question because I think we've got to weigh multiple factors um and maybe maybe perhaps some of it is giving people control over the technology and their ability to I don't know put their old time limits in it's so hard for me to conceptualize what 50 years from now is going to look like in all honesty too um but I think that's it I think that's what we have to grapple with we have to grapple with personal agency we have to grapple with what is the role of technology in in governing things like digital addiction and then we also have to grapple with privacy yeah I think that's a really factor in all of this too and I know maybe that doesn't really fit with this topic of mental well-being well but I think it does I mean I think it does because when we're talking about these connections between the human and the machine like these intimate connections we're talking about right complete invasion of privacy in some ways how do we ensure privacy if we're implanting in people's head and because we're not talking about this thing that lives independently within the space of the body we're talking about this thing that lives in the body and is connected to the world around it in kind of profound ways that I think we have a time even understanding um so I don't know that I really got it your answer I think I or your question I think I tried to feed it more than anything you're great that's that's a great answer I really really appreciate you you taking the time to to explore that thank you thank you so much I'd love to follow up and learn more about your work I'd love you know to connect you to my students in some ways um but let me let you go back to your group uh Georgia and uh let's um thank you so much for joining us uh so let's see if you can bring um our our favorite guest uh favorite friend Tom Hames in on that setting and uh while we're doing this uh Ruben um actually can you uh all right so hi Brian we're both here uh we're going to migrate the laptops to a different location because our noise level here is kind of fine so understood just a second okay no problem no problem uh we hello and a great a great side effect of this is that if we don't have audio for a second we do have the visual so you can see the different people moving around we can see the crowds I think it's lunchtime there people are feeding which is great um and I also enjoy just hearing the positive buzz of all of this um we have a great question coming up in the pipeline from Victor Villegas so we're going to bring that up as soon as our our two local guests get a chance to uh settle down um in the in the chat Brent Presley says my science fiction love kicking in here could something like Neuralink help with addiction but then cause addiction to itself definitely classic themes Brent absolutely that's you know you wonder about taking care of one thing but then leading to the other uh also in the chat uh Roxanne says AI AI anxiety is infused in digital addiction but it might not be included in the DSM fee yeah I really am curious to see where that ends up um thank you uh and Mark Horbert Wilson adds a great political observation which will problematize the power of the owners of these technologies so not just the technology itself so thank you um uh Sam you look a lot like um um Tom Hames good to see you sir good to see you how you doing very well I can actually hear you and you could theoretically hear me as well yes yes uh Rubens machine is is having connection issues well so while while he works on that uh and listen you might want to just pounce on that and see if that can if we can solve that I got a little it got a little there he sees back now you're back it's taking certain aspects of this lobby that are not well covered on Wi-Fi that may be uh before before I get asked a question um uh former student of mine and then Albert Tao asks what is the name of the current speaker so the gentleman with the excellent hair and facial hair is Ribbon Plantadora uh from Massachusetts who is a wonderful computer scientist creator designer consultant in many ways best known for creating the SAMR method um over on the on the right is our friend uh Tom Hames coming to us from the who is from the Houston area who is also an instructional designer uh an educational space designer and just a great thinker by educational technology um he does have this problem of not having a beard but we allow him in anyway as a result um friends but before you get to talk we we have a question that came in um and I wanted to share it with you because I think you both would have a fun time uh tackling this this is from uh Victor Riegas uh who is coming to us from Oregon State University uh and yes what are some of the examples or discussions around culturally responsive AI well we just really had a conversation about that in the post-truth group and Ribbon's you might want to mute because I think it's better than me um we just literally had a conversation about that in the post-truth group uh and uh one of the participants thought that uh we were going to be colonized by AI in the way that uh that the countries had colonized other indigenous peoples around the world uh and basically uh rebooted their cultures uh and um through that contact I'm not sure I share that belief uh because in some ways AI is us I mean yes it's going to do that but it's going to do that in a way that I don't think is I wouldn't say it could be oppressive if we handle it wrong but I you know that the other point I made there was um are we going to be AI's partner or it's servant uh and I'm hopeful that we're going to be a partner uh and I think openness is a big part of that I think we need to get past that that mindset of black boxes because that is not understanding what's happening is a good way to become a servant uh we just follow directions of whoever or you follow the the prompts of whoever's spitting your information you go okay that's true I'm going to go for that um but if we use it as a partner as a way of assimilating lots of different ideas and perspectives we can bring some of those hopefully bring some of those lost perspectives back into the into the picture something I said a few weeks ago in the forum with another guest excellent excellent people are people are skeptical of that and rightfully so it's something that there is a threat there but the threat is us and the people who we allow to control the technology I'm a big fan of for that reason we're only going to get to open this you never get to through through closed do you think that um if we rely and if we use more and more open uh open source uh AI and more open data for training AI do you think this will allow us to uh have more and more cultures represented yes I mean there's no I mean I don't see how you do it otherwise to be honest to get that level of diversity of thought of meaning um and of an understanding of the processes that the AI is is going through to assimilate or to not assimilate to a process that that's that information and synthesize synthesize that information well thank you thank you um why don't you mute so we can allow um this George Lambert cosplayer I don't know who this uh we allow Ruben to take over yeah so Ruben we need your audio yeah so yeah uh okay so turn on your speaker sorry we're we're negotiating across a lobby here echoes and some weird effects all right so you know it's interesting because one thing that I think is a common feature in most of the conversations I've heard so far about AI in this group is an assumption of abundance in terms of AI once upon a time about that long ago the assumption we've been this is a scarce resource that requires huge amounts of material huge computing power you know only a few can access and I think the conversation you know ever since the launch of chat GPT has completely shifted the dynamic you know you have that now it's present in Microsoft across the board you've had Google with some missteps but nonetheless incorporating in other words people are taking it as a given the same way they take you know search online as a given the same way they take Wikipedia as a given so it's very interesting because that shifts the dynamic you know it changes from a conversation of scarcity to a conversation of plenty that has both pros and cons the pro is that people aren't so concerned about how will I access this and are thinking what can I make of it the downside is it tends to take the form of well all AI looks a lot like chat GPT so you're not hearing about other venues of AI so you're not hearing as much about other forms of whether it's different types of generative or machine learning etc and you're also not hearing as much about open source Libre AI which as you know I said public it's near and dear to my card but I'm also encouraged that I think you can get the conversation going in other words once people no longer see AI as something remote alien and distant that only you can for having can say well okay what if you have your own or you could roll your own or you have other alternatives that weren't just a default so that's one feature I've seen you know this this shift of the conversation from you know in years past to this conversation of scarcity to a conversation of plenty and the second aspect I would say also that to me is intriguing in terms of what you're seeing some a starting around the conversations with the eyes comes already done to it you know which is the fact that people are still thinking in terms of wholesale job replacement whether that's bad I'm not lose my job or it's good when a post labor society and I'm even though there are some aspects of beginning to talk about task replacement or task modification or task redefinition etc around AI that still isn't embedded as much in the conversation as the other two so again I'll be interested to see is if from these groups conversations we're going to see an evolution from the job replacement with a good or bad to more the task replacement thinking about the AI so those are two aspects that I would have noticed in the conversation that's fascinating that's right so first of all victor thank you for the great question I mean that's that's I think one of those provocative group topics that that you have there at the summit and thank you both you know Tom and Ruben for these really really good answers I mean I think you know I mean just personally I think open is a great way for this now I'm curious okay friends we only have five minutes left so I'm going to take advantage of the moderator's position to be able to ask a question myself but if you have any other questions that are left please please feel free to either you know jump on the stage in fact here I'll I'll enable an open podium so you can just do that or you know click the the Q&A box I'm curious about how people were talking about climate change there's a climate change group working away right now and I spoke to this briefly on my on my brief appearance on the panel how is this coming is is it are you seeing people talk about climate change in terms of climate justice linking it to other topics has anyone made connections between for example AI and the enormous carbon footprint you can have what what kind of discussions have you seen about that and we've we've got Ruben on on the mic right now you can throw it off okay yeah okay so I would say that it'll be very interesting to see Brian because so far we haven't seen that much in terms of what was discussed in the different panels it came up a little bit other than of course your own contribution but it wasn't a major topic now that being said and done I have had some corridor conversations with people you know by the by the coffee maker well you know we're all trying to convince the machine to make the perfect cup of coffee etc but one of the key topics that keeps coming up in that context is in the context of water whether as you know it's a huge topic here in Arizona and I'm hearing a lot of conversations around that so it's early of course in the series we've got today and tomorrow for the discussion but if I had to gauge for what I've heard thus far and I'll know more of course once I've spoken with the groups that are working specifically on the topic I would hazard that we're going to see water and water resources and how water resources are managed handled etc as a key topic around which a lot of the climate discussion will focus but that's what I've seen so far that makes sense for Arizona very very much um thank you thank you for the staff shot Tom would you like to add to uh yeah sorry now you're gonna have to meet everything we're sitting five feet away this platform is not designed for people sitting across the room across the small table from each other yeah just you know trade the same machine in that case right um I will say one thing that you know our scenario for the post-truth group did feature a uh educational tech technology I mean a educational design or someone who's a facilitator for um struggling with post-truth in a in a clearly habitable southern Arizona near uh college town um and one of the thoughts that occurred to me around that and the it came up in my group and I I mean I brought it up but was I had a very distinct canticle for Lieberowitz vibe coming off of that and the idea that you know this this isolation the climate that the climate the environment drove the isolation of this environment to where they were having struggling with these discussions in part because they're so isolated and the communities were very much tied down by the the circumstances of what southern Arizona is going to be like in 50 years if we don't make some serious changes um and that that that in and of itself drove the conversation around knowledge and communication and discourse um in in a very fundamental level um and it affected this conversation about again what is you know how we are we are we talking about our local conversation here how we connected to the broader conversations of the world that sort of thing and the same sort of thing that that uh Miller was struggling through with in canticle for Lieberowitz and and I thought that was I don't know who made the video or they seemed as they read the book but I just thought that was kind of an interesting and maybe I'm just I'm just crazy that's entirely possible to that's been very unlikely um by the way if you haven't if you haven't read it canicle for Lieberowitz is one of the great American novels I put a link to it in the chat there um if you haven't read it you should just grab a copy um gentlemen we are we are at the end of our hour um let me just quickly ask as a as a as a parting gesture what are you looking forward to for the rest of the day Tom why don't you start us off well I mean we were just getting through the reactions to the video but we were already starting to talk about um you know my personal bugaboo is we need to have as broad a information environment as possible how do we use technology to create that and enhance that AI visualization mapping that sort of thing um but that's that idea of you know narrow views versus broad views was very much a theme in my group and so uh I'll be interested to see what kind of ideas come out of that in terms of how do we exactly create environments where people will trust views that are not part of their own narrow communities uh there's a lot of description about that how big a lens how wide a lens versus how narrow a lens and the post-truthers are very often very much operating with a very narrow lens because they deliberately exclude a lot of stuff or let me rephrase the alternative truthers I don't think they're post-truthers I think I don't think we ever had a trick but that's another story okay so I'll hand it over to urban thank you thank you for my part you know my role now for the rest of the sessions is going to be to go among the different groups and sort of cross-pollinate question etc so what I'm most looking forward to to be perfectly honest is why I call the sense of surprise when I join a group and something of that I said oh wow I never thought of that that's amazing that's a great idea or yeah that that's that's wild you know so so that's what I'm looking for that you know the unexpected the surprise aspect that's the best that's the best well thank you thank you both so much please go back go back to the sessions give our best to the whole community there at the summit and we look forward to hearing what comes next and please give our best to Joe and Sam for starting off this hour with us thank you so much we will thank you so much and friends thank you for joining with us in this hybrid live session I really appreciate your questions and comments Mark Hobart Wilson actually suggesting the chat one of my other favorite novels blood meridian thank you sir if you'd like to talk about this there's already some discussion on the socials about the summit so you can head to them use the hashtag ftte if you'd like to link back to our session and you can see there are all kinds of links for me on these different platforms if you'd like to look into our previous sessions where we've discussed everything from environment to AI to creativity to open source just go to our into our giant archive tinyurl.com slash ftf archive if you'd like to look ahead we have a whole series of sessions coming up on other topics including one on abundance that that Ruben was mentioning we have our new paradigm project conversations with Department of Education leading from the margins still more thank you all for joining us for this fun session I really appreciate your your comments and your thoughts I hope all of you are doing well if you are either at Arizona State University or somewhere else in the world please take care we'll see you next time online bye bye