 Well, hello everybody. Let's begin. It's the top of the hour. Welcome. Welcome to the Future Transform. I'm delighted to see you all here today. We have a fantastic panel of brilliant people talking about one of the great subjects of our time. They're really looking forward to our conversation. Media literacy dates back to the 1960s and 70s. Information literacy dates back to the 1980s when librarians had the amazing idea that in the future people will need help trying to wade through the internet in order to find and assess the quality of information. Those two fields have been working away at colleges and universities as well as in public and K through 12 to help us better Think about how to navigate the information and media landscapes. Now our three guests here today have a brand new paper out and Advances are thinking about this in some really really important ways. These are three terrific people We've had at least one of them as a guest before and I'm just delighted to have them all here to talk about it If you want to take a look at the paper look in the bottom left corner of the screen You'll see a kind of tan-colored box and that'll bring you to Google Doc version of a Pre-publication version of it, but let me just begin by bringing people up on stage one by one So that we can hear them. Oh quick question from the chat Guy Wilson asks is there way to turn in captioning? Not yet guy. They're still working on that right now Good question important question So to begin with let me bring up Our new friend coming to us from Germany and coming to us in style Laura Hellinger Hello, Laura. Hello. Thank you for having me. Hi everyone. Oh, it's great to see you. It's great to see you And I have to ask what's the art in the background? I can make out a map Yeah, so I have a Map on one side. It's one of those scratch maps where you can scratch off places you've been to and This fine piece is a bunch of t-shirts from various media events conferences Roller derby events. It's just yeah t-shirts that I stavell to the wall and one don't be silent from pussy riot Postcard that was perfect gift. You are the coolest. Yes. We've had in a long time Because of roller derby, yeah, oh, yeah, absolutely and you're coming to us from Dresden, right? Yes, right? Excellent excellent well Laura we have this practice on the form where we don't do the usual academic obituary style of introduction We ask people instead talk about what they're going to be doing so looking ahead to 2024 What are the big topics and what are the big project for you? Well, I am a founding member of we are open cooperative and my colleague Doug It's going to be coming on stage in a moment and we are working on a number of projects that are around Communities of practice learning technology community how those different topics intersect We do quite a lot of work with Greenpeace International. So we're going to be doing more things with them next year We work with a an organization called participate They do community of practice around the topic topics in and around education And we're also starting some work with the digital credentials consortium Which is shepherded by MIT? So we have quite a few things going on all sort of in that realm of learning technology community Fantastic fantastic. I'm so glad to hear it and I would love to hear more perhaps later on about the Greenpeace angle I've been doing a lot of work on climate change and higher education And so there's a priest trying collection connection there. Well, thank you Laura. I'm glad to see you. I'm really Looking forward to your comments, but let me first bring up all your colleagues as well So let me see if I can get Doug Bellshaw up here and Looks like Doug has a fantastic green screen behind you I can't I can't get it to work right for two reasons. First of all, I literally moved house last week So I might just down and you can see all the boxes behind me So things are a little bit chaotic. Shea Bellshaw, sorry And secondly, I usually try and have some kind of appropriate background on the green screen Unfortunately, Shindig doesn't allow that but some kind of you know Star Wars thing or Something appropriate Well, well first of all Doug, I'm so glad to see you especially making time when you're moving house, which you've been chronicling which just sounds Last time I still have I literally have nightmares from the last time I did that So I'm I'm very impressed at your equanimity. Well, now we're most friends. I'm gonna put this down. There we go Socialism right there that is life That is life and that is open right there Mm-hmm Doug you have done so much in your career and I'm such a big fan I want to ask and I feel some trepidation asking What are you gonna be working on for the next year besides unpacking boxes? What's what are the big projects and the big ideas for you for the next year? Well, because all the things that Laura mentioned Laura and I work very closely together. We open co-op with founding members But because obviously that isn't enough as well as doing all of this stuff with my family and things I've decided to do another postgraduate qualification. So I'm doing an MSc in systems thinking which I started Whilst I was moving house Because that's how I Why not That's impressive. I mean, you will be the most qualified But yeah, we'll see Imagine you doing anything stupid quite the opposite and I just have to recommend all of Doug's digital projects including his excellent newsletter And Doug hang out one second and Laura hang out one second. Let me complete the picture Complete the trio bring up all three witches on screen at one time and let me add Ian to our table Hello, sir. How's it going? All right. Have you abolished technology yet? Oh, no, no still trying to trying to get more Get you more physical space stuff. So Understood understood. Well, it's good to see you Ian you as well. What so let me ask What are you working on for the next year? I mean knowing you it's roughly 10,000 projects. I Have The next thing that I need to so we sent out a grant Proposal two days ago with a couple colleagues to look at computational thinking and AI AI literacy instruction in Elementary schools. So now we just wait around to see what happened with that and then I got a The next thing I have to turn my attention to is I got a chunk of money from Google to look at they have these the a Basically retrofit a bus and they send it around the state to bring technology to You know some locations that don't usually have a 3d printer and stuff like that in my background So the the idea is to go study what's happening as this technology rolls around the state. So Now I have to go spend that money and do some research and try and Do some good with the world. So Wow and and which I'm sorry, I can't say wow indecently on this program now. Can I know? Which state is it again in South Carolina? Excellent South Carolina a lot to say about it a lot of things to talk about And since no one is paying It's just the two of us talking a lot of questions about environmental impact a lot of questions about Access a lot of questions about we know that The for that, you know, the Johnny Appleseed approach of just sprinkling technology around and seeing what happens with it Doesn't really work So but as a researcher, I'll suspend disbelief for right now It'd be more fun just to play with tech and see other human beings, especially tiny text play with tech. So Understood understood There's a fun book by Michael Paul and on botany Different plants that we have next relationships to and and the one on apples he describes Johnny Appleseed is probably something closer to Dionysus But we can talk about that another time But listen friends, I'm so glad that you could make it I'm so happy to read your paper and to see it going out there Especially knowing if this is the outcome of a lot of work that you've been doing And I have so many questions about this, but let me just ask a quick one Just to get things rolling a lot of discussion about digital literacy Information literacy media literacy has been Often very atomized. It's been a very consumer-driven idea So it's me trying to figure out how to use Google or it's me looking at a magazine trying to understand The impact of advertising but your paper argues for a lot of social inclusion and a sense of belonging and I'm wondering how do you if you just just take a couple minutes if each of you could say a few words about how you make that bridge happen How how are we gonna rethink that kind of literacy in terms of pro-social and community oriented behavior? Now it's all you brother. Go ahead. You're the first You're the one that jumped on the email and got this ball rolling. So you start us off. It's his fault is what you're saying I understand Well, I mean, there's there's there's lots of place we could start with this in terms of the social aspects of of any kinds of new literacies But if I can get on my hobby horse for a moment, we would actually record it Episode six, which is the final episode in the season which accompanies the manuscript as well So there's the six episodes The first one is us talking together about what we expect from the research project The last one which we recorded today is a reflect on what we've learned and in between we talk to people from south america from southeast asia from australia And from the uk But yeah, it's done on my hobby horse for the moment. A lot of the times you get Literacy literacy frameworks digital literacy frameworks media literacy frameworks information literacy frameworks Which have no what I would call view source to them. You don't know where they've come from You don't know what decisions were made along the way You don't know how inclusive that journey has been when people have been putting it together And it's presented as a fair complete to the world And it often looks quite shiny and I could give examples of this if you want of like ones which I I have been Lorded and kind of shared widely on slides around academia But when you dig even slightly under the surface There's there's nothing really of substance there other than maybe A couple of postgraduate students having a field day um So what I would suggest is that you know as I argue my thesis and as we've argued in this research project that We bring in a diverse range of voices when we're thinking about coming with any kind of framework And what we try and do is to show our working and workers openly as possible Um, I could talk more, but um, I'll let I'll let Laura and Ian come with you Well, thank you. Thank you. Please. I was just um, I was actually went a different direction with the the question and was just kind of thinking about the historical context of literacy and technology and how We actually know by looking at the past um how literacy practices change society And so part of what we wanted to do with this research was Have a look at a macro scale. Um, what do new media and information literacies mean for society as a whole As opposed to an individual, uh, are you literate? Are you not literate? Which is a binary we don't believe in And and we know that from the history of technology and media that society shifts quite a bit When there are new technologies that are changing the way that people interact with the world in the way that people communicate together And and so we're living in a time of exponential growth in in the terms of like what technology is able to do We have in the last year alone seen an explosion in generative ai models becoming something that You know is is now it's part of everyday life I mean ai has been part of everyday life for quite some time But people actually using generative models and and llms And this is something that hit the mainstream, you know With just just in recent years and so seeing how people interact with those new technologies Like one of the ways that we can look at it and frame it is have a look at the past What happened when the printing press came out? How did society change or uh the telegraph or you know the photograph society changes with technologies and we're really interested in can we Identify and have a look at the past in order to understand what's about to happen in the future Well, thank you. Thank you. That's a that's a it is a very different answer. Um, and uh, I really appreciate the historical point of view on this. Um, the um Laura Doug these are two great two great answers in did you want to complement them completely different answer? Um, so We were asked by journal media literacy where there's a call for the future of you know Media information lit and trying to make sense of this context Um, the three of us got in touch with each other and said hey, like, you know, we've done work in the past It'll be fun to get back together and and put our heads to this Um, we approach this with two goals in mind Uh, one is to revisit. Um You know this definition this future of media information lit I think I cannot speak for my illustrious Partners here, but I think that we tried to stay as far away from the media lit that the web lit stuff as possible And and see what's really happening there. It was always in the back of our heads or at least mine Monkey mind it was there. Um, but then also we wanted to chart out to your idea about pro social and discussion We wanted to try and think about open scholarship and ways to Make this work more approachable more accessible and hopefully kick off dialogue um, so Uh, one of the big themes that we that you know, we conducted this work Understanding that right now for many people the web has become Unintelligible and so we see new tools and and you know, they're scooping up people's data and we have issues and questions about privacy and security and so we wanted to try and figure out a way to Uh, make people a little bit more critically aware, but also try and empower them a little bit to think about um to to move Beyond elegant consumption to name drop something from our call earlier today to think more about Autonomy and creativity as opposed to just consumption So you know our hope is that there's more dialogue because it's as a white cisgender male that was born in the us It grows up in in lives in the us. I have one viewpoint Um, and and I think it's important to hear all the the the divergent viewpoints as we think about what the future could look like Wow, wow. Wow. So everything from divergent viewpoints To questions of digging below the surface to find out how this kind of The structures are actually made to questions of historical impact You can see friends why I had to invite this this trio here already. They've taken us in in great directions I'm going to ask another question myself, but then I want to give it over to all of you So as our as you think about media literacy and information literacy and as you respond to what our guests have been saying Please think of your own comments and questions Either get ready to hit the raise hand button to join us on stage or just type in the q&a box Uh, because we'd love to hear your your thoughts the I guess the second question I wanted to ask is I've done some work on this myself. I don't work in digital literacy and information literacy back to the 1990s And as you say in your paper, this can all too easily be siloed Um media literacy is is often media educators and it doesn't go further than that Uh information literacy is something that librarians proudly developed and all too often stays with them Um, how do you know, how do we break out of these silos? How do we take media information literacy mainstream? How do we take it through an entire academic sector so that we can all take this really seriously? I think we have to try we have to make it A a pointed effort to break out of those silos Um, my fear is that those that not my fear those discussions are happening right now. Um, you know, I I went through Um, they the future privacy forum training to be a k-12 tech educator and it and it just really it Was interesting how the discussions that were having, you know, I spent a lot of time professionally Thinking about how to integrate technology into classrooms to empower youth And it was interesting how a it was a totally different discussion happening there about technology and learning environments and then this past summer I was in a hackathon um with um Students from Carnegie Mellon think about AI and and I've documented that on my blog What is really interesting? That's a completely different discussion And so I feel like there's all these different silos of discussion And somebody said it in the in your facebook, uh in the the comment on facebook about this piece is Oh, look people are going to come in and want more classes or courses um And and the the real You know the thing that i'm left with is that there's the need for more discussion and how we make that happen I don't know But I think that there is the need for more of us to talk about this about what we as as You know citizens of the web or I think about my two tiny types at home What they want what they need what they expect from these technologies Um, and hopefully carve out a space where that can happen Well, hopefully this is uh, this forum can be a place where we can do some of that conversation as well Thank you. Thank you, Ian. Uh, Doug Laura. What do you think about the silos and tearing them down? I mean, I think that one of the interesting things about this conversation and about trying to understand what media or information literacy is plural Look like now and in the future. I think as always as Educators one of the ways that we break silos is by honing in on people's interests so like These literacies are cross cutting whatever you're interested in because the internet and the use of technology has become So ubiquitous to all of us Um in like I mean we we talked to people in southeast asia about their use of of mobile devices And how literacy practices were affecting people just on the street Um, and this this technology it's everywhere And so if we if we want to break down silos I think that honing in on people's interests and actually helping people understand how these literacies Can help them dig further into their interests help them advocate for the things that they want to advocate for empower them and you know um, kind of break down the barriers between the academic interests, which is You know from an academic perspective like really Understanding putting it in papers whatever and relating that to our modern life It's not very hard to do with this topic. In fact, it's incredibly easy to the point that in this research We we really had to rein ourselves in um, and we did that by you know We we had a couple of different lenses that we wanted to look at things through and you know We were quite organized and specific about what we were trying to look at and then of course our participants broke out of our specificity Um, which was great. Um, but I think I think the the point is is that um These literacies are cross cutting across our lives In every different aspect and helping helping to identify The behaviors and the talents of people no matter where they are is going to help us have a much richer discussion about what these literacies actually mean for society Do you do you think um anxiety about misinformation disinformation might be such a way? I think that's definitely a theme. Um I mean Doug was talking earlier today. He was um talking about the fact that you know Nowadays the information's landscape is more the disinformation landscape and what's true is questionable You know and I and I think that that that is certainly something for you know people like us and people who are highly involved in the conversation to have front of mind like how how do we actually create a more diverse media literate society When one of the things that we have to do is to help people understand Everything there is around misinformation disinformation. It's um, it's a bit tricky, frankly And it is it is um, and it it helps rapidly Doug, uh, would you I think you have a whole bunch of ideas there about about silence I'm trying to keep track um because people are saying interesting things in the chat So the first thing I wanted to say it was that um Every time someone uses a term like media literacy information literacy digital literacy Trans literacy or whatever they're trying to make a claim that what they're talking about is the umbrella term Which other literacies kind of sit within Which is kind of problematic They're kind of claiming the domain for themselves because literacy tends to be like a power grab so one of uh Ian mentioned before that we've all worked together before so a decade ago We were working together on Missila's web literacy map for example, which I was leading And one of the things that greg very sent me while I was while we're doing this work He sent a picture of a book which was called vegetable literacy And it's a funny example But the reason that people append the word literacy to things Is because it's a powerful term it all of a sudden kind of reifies something Which is kind of like this diverse Right bag of ideas and starts saying well, I get to define who are literate and non-literate Or illiterate within this particular domain. So it's quite a powerful kind of thing to do But I wanted to pick up on what Lisa said about media literacy needing to be infused in all classes Because I mentioned before and and Laura's touched on it as well So as Ian about the people who we've interviewed as part of this this process for the podcast So we spoke to Kay Adone who's in Australia And she teaches on the teacher librarian course And so there's a specific role in a lot of Australian schools for teacher librarians So they have a responsibility around media and information literacy within their particular educational institution And that's becoming less and less of a common thing Around the world. And so this is a real shame Because I've I'm a former teacher. I've taught in schools and universities and what happens is People try and teach things across the curriculum But in practice just means doesn't get taught because people see it as not being their job And I think my my conclusion to that has been that we do need someone who has the hat Who has the role to drive these things forward within a particular institution Um, so that kind of talks a little bit about the pencil literacy which uh, which john's talking about there as well And then chris. Hi chris. How are you doing? um, is kind of referencing walder on and Kind of the guttenberg parenthesis and pre-literate behaviors and what is meant for those of you who have come across this um, so with the guttenberg press you've got um, a very text-based kind of dissemination of Of knowledge and reading and that kind of thing and there were a lot of obviously pre-literate behaviors before that And now we're entering a world of or in a world of of tiktok and instagram and a very visual kind of situation so One of the people who we interviewed the person southeast asia ross huson who again was a contributor to the web literacy map She was talking about her work with indigenous tribes people who can't read and write in a traditional sense But can document things with a mobile phone In such a way that it's admissible in court as evidence of people doing illegal logging on their land Or encroaching on their on the place that they live that kind of thing so you get these kind of Of new literate behaviors leapfrogging traditional literate behaviors as well, which is absolutely fascinating to me I wonder if we're going to see a coding parenthesis. I'm Starting to close up after this too Friends I have more questions, but this the forum is all about your questions and comments. You can see that laura dug and ian Have lots and lots of thinking on the subject. Oh, by the way, I praised dug's newsletter I forgot to mention ian's newsletter, which is also fantastic So and laura's I didn't even know laura had one so now with a tree. It's a little it's a little different Laura ian check check a link to them in the chat so we can all sign up And we already have questions in the pipeline So I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask them And this is one from our good friend john hallenbeck who is up in madison, wisconsin Where he's probably starting to get chillier and chillier And john asked media literacy efforts seem to have been starting my entire career Do you need cyber media etc? When does something good happen? I think part of the challenge is that we have um I've been making the argument that I am thankful for this recent move to AI because I these these algorithms have been paying attention to what we do online for some time and they've been maneuvering things In and out of our feet. So they're changing our netflix queue and they have been for some time and your amazon wish list and all that sort of stuff So I for one i'm probably one of the only ones that's thankful that we have these general technologies because it gives us a little bit More power to think about what we could do with it But with that I I have the feeling that And this is some of the work I did over the summer I have a feeling that a lot of this misinformation this misinformation and disinformation and Uh a a unwillingness or an inability to critically examine and and think about Content is just going to get much more problematic because we you know, we we now can have generative tools that can Very quickly With a even more laser-like focus pick on specific traits and then the the the guiding technologies that would bring it to you Are even more advanced. So um, I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Um You know much more to say about detoxing human readers online, but I've already read about that in the past. So Um dug and laura. What are your thoughts about this? One just think when do things get better? Well, I think it's really interesting because um, it's a misconception that things have not gotten Better actually, um, we are healthier than we have ever been as human beings There are more people who can read and write infant mortality is down Um, like the whole human happiness index if you go and actually look at the facts and figures in the past 20 years We have made massive slides on poverty on Yeah, war is kind of a weird one given the this year and last year um, however, it's you know with all of the disinformation on the internet and all of the um political strife and the us versus them and the the The disinformation that makes us think that the minority is the majority That's just not it's simply not true when you actually get into it and look at the data And so with media literacy stuff. I think it's really interesting that like You know 20 years ago the idea that somebody would be able to look under the hood of the internet Um, that's what we were all working towards and nowadays like most Like most of our students most of our learners can actually post things online and that has a big shift It's a big change and I'm not saying that they're it, you know that it's all good Um, but I do think that things have gotten better and I think that despite the Current landscape of the the junky noisy internet. Um, there's a there's a lot of pearls In that muck if you go looking for it I don't know. What do you think I'm just looking at the chat as well. Yeah, I think we're we're talking about whether there's a literacy of of everything Lisa's saying is there a climate change literacy and you can definitely in the uk become Carbon literate like there's a qualification for that. So yes There's a there's a literacy for everything that people want to do it and it as much as there's a land grab around um LLMs and open AI with chat with with gpt's that they launched this week and things There's a land grab around definitions of literacy. So if you've gone linked in you don't have to scroll very far before people are trying to Define AI literacy and there's a UNESCO bit of work going on and and this and that and it we've got a website ailiteracy.fyi if you can have a look at but in terms of of media literacy and whether anything um Whether anything kind of makes progress. Well, you know McClure and talked about marching backwards looking in the rear view mirror like where we're always In the midst of not really understanding what's happening in our media literacy landscape. So this week and um, you know trigger warning around Palestinian and um the war between Hamas and Israel Like today there's been stuff around adobe's stock images site Having AI generated images around destroyed street in Gaza um Being passed off as things which are real and people are talking about that being a media literacy issue Well as a book that i'm reading around common sense, which is just at the same time Common sense is very different in different parts of the world and studies show that you can You can show someone a text or an image and and explicitly say it's false And then the second time that you show someone that thing They will treat as if it's true even if if you've told them it's false last time because we've got this bias around seeing something Which is familiar So we're in interesting times There's always a moral panic about what's currently going on. So is tiktok massively biased against israel? possibly But also there's a generational shift going on As you can see in different parts of the world. So we're never really going to know What the implications of things are until well after the event, you know, there's that famous quotation as a historian Someone saying You know 200 years after the french revolution. What do you think the impacts are and a historian saying? I think it's too early to tell It's a similar kind of thing with media literacy sometimes Wow Wow, wow. Okay. So first of all that was a great question Clearly that was a great question And those are three terrific answers I feel almost like we're we're You know in a seminar now a high speed seminar Because you three have so much information about this and We have more questions coming in Friends, so the what we just did with john is an example of a q&a question And we have another one coming in from our friend brent anders and I just recommend brent's work on ai literacy Um, and by the way, thank you for joining us late at night Um coming to us from armenia. So that's always always good. This is once again an intercontinental future gents form you do brent asks this the continuation of the important aspect of ai literacy is the growing phenomenon of over reliance Any discovered aspects on how to prevent the loss of important skills? Here let me bring it back up again because that was of the longest can brent unmute and just explain This phenomenon of over reliance. Yeah brent. Do you want to come up on the stage or I'm happy to bring you up brent If it's not too late, um Okay, we uh, let me grab him right now And I'm gonna really really interested in also the idea of agency in this. Um I'm gonna bring him up and uh, see if we can fit him on the screen Hello brent How are you doing sir? Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, you're here We we can't see you yet, but I yeah, I'm on a four connection So I'm worried it'll go out if I put video on focus on audio then hello. Good to hear you Yeah, so one of the aspects is that that um, and this even came out Uh a few months ago in when when gpt4 came out the GPT for language for chat gpt right so when that came out in their technical paper their own Data scientists even brought this up in the technical paper talking about over reliance and how that's a real issue A real problem that they've already started to see Even in their you know red teaming of this. So that's this aspect of Oh, I trust the ai so much because it usually gives me the right answer And I'm just gonna go with it. I'm not gonna use my critical thinking I'm not going to check the answer. I'm just gonna go with it because I've trusted it in the past But of course, there's been many instances of that being the wrong answer The one that comes to mind is I believe was new york lawyers that were using it for case Cases to try and defend their their point of view within an actual Court so things like that happen more and more and of course students think that the ai is perfect so that way they might submit something and It has made up information within the essays things like that due to hallucinations So this is a real issue. This is I have a youtube channel as well And so this is one thing that I've been trying to push Is the need for us to recognize this in academia this over reliance and that society Might start to go in that direction more and more Because it's an easy thing. Oh if I trust it to do A lot of these things and it does it well. I'm going to trust it to do more and more There are some things that we can do to try and help to mitigate that to try and ensure that people retain some of their agency with that But I'm just wondering if there are some things that you observe through the research that you've been doing This is something first of all. Thank you for that. This is something that I was thinking about through my newsletter for a couple months is that you know earlier I said that the internet has been in technology has become largely unintelligible for most people We don't understand a lot of the system set in place and one of the Reference points that I have and we talked about it a lot in our research is going back to sci-fi And so thinking about You know, there's there's a lot of Of us. There's a lot of people that You know, don't really understand what's happening with these tools and just inherently trust What they're seeing online and they're more than willing I I've just come out of a deep dive looking at like gamer gate to QAnon and figuring out Some of the the pearls as Laura said before That are out there in the muck And it's interesting that you know We have individuals that don't understand what's happening with the technology and so they're almost looking at the spaces and tools almost like deities like Like a religious aspect like this information is coming from somewhere um And it's problematic. I think it's You know the the Looking at the more problematic cases if we're looking at people that are into QAnon and stuff It's hard to break through it's hard to to you know Break that connection and and think more critically about the information. They're consuming Laura Doug, what are your thoughts about this? How do we try and I was gonna I'm gonna go a whole different direction Um, which is to talk about refrigerators and expiration dates um So we have an over reliance on expiration dates on our food our bodies our noses our tongues are actually Fully capable of determining whether or not our food is still good um, and if we ignore our Intuition or our senses then there will be consequences to our over reliance on an expiration date And this is a metaphor for me because I think The fact is is that our We as a small group of people as academics as Intellectuals thinking about media and information literacy We really don't have a lot of control about how everything is going to go down and the over reliance of people on AI We're talking about billions of people that are using these technologies Maybe not AI just yet, but like in the case of social networking It got to be billions and our tiny little voices can only do so much And I think that there is a self-correcting function that can happen around like How does society implement consequences for poor use of AI disinformation misinformation? What actually happens when? um, you know those kinds of social activities Turn up in in the real world. And what do we actually do about them? And I think part of this literacy to Conversation has to be around. How do we help people actually? Become intuitive about the information that they're processing like how do we how do we actually help them learn the sense The smell the taste so that they don't just believe the expiration date Because there's only so much that we can do from a political level or a policy level or a regulation level We certainly can't tell people no, you're not allowed to use these technologies So if we're going to talk about over reliance, I think that the conversation needs to shift to Actually more reactive in this case um, I mean there is some proactivity, but there's also you know this this what are the consequences of Using it poorly what happens? What do we as society decide in that case? Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that You're you're really hitting it I mean some of the recommendations that that I give are aspects of that talking about like for sure We need to teach AI literacy that would be a fundamental thing and then Showing actual these are the ramifications. This is what could happen This is what what could actually be a real danger These are real consequences to make it as emotional and salient for people to really see because most people won't Even think of oh could this really happen and then even understanding the terminology because like A great point. What which you just said is yeah, the food doesn't expire on that date It doesn't magically end just like with many drugs. It doesn't expire because of that date It means that it's less effective or it could start to lose flavor or all these different things So even understanding the terminology I think is really important So there's there's definitely lots of aspect to this but the policy I think is another big point that Definitely has to come into play. That's another thing that I've been pushing Is we need to have these policies and of course at the government level for one thing for protections But then also within academic institutions, I can't believe How many academic institutions still to this day have zero policies talking about AI nothing Absolutely nothing. We're still doing the wait and see aspect. So then that causes more confusion and more problems For students as well as faculty who you know, aren't getting any guidance or assistance from leadership So yeah, this is a major thing that I'm just trying to continually push because I see it just growing and growing Well, one of the I mean to loris point before I think this is ultimately an individual by individual decision that they make about How they want to interact with these these texts And what's interesting is as you dig into the literature in the white papers that are coming out from the developers is You know, when these AI tools came out, I was wondering Okay, what's going to happen when someone goes to their chat gbt or claude or whatever tool them tool du jour and says They ask a question, but the the bot or the the agent doesn't agree with their version of the truth You know, what happens where it's like no actually the you know The earth is flat or what what happens when we get in these disagreements with our bot? and I can dig through my my My commonplace book. Thank you chris and identify the the white paper where they've already shown evidence where If you argue with the agent With your AI agent it will ultimately agree with you Say actually, you know what I do I do agree with you. I think that the earth is flat or this milk is not expired It's good to drink. Um, so it's it's a bit problematic to think about how much Truth you want from your agent and and how much truth you want in your information stream And what does truth mean, but that's another talk another day I've got so many things. I want to say right now, right? So let's just see if I can do them very quickly firstly, right? There's a wonderful website called Can I take ducks home from the park? um now this website basically if you if you ask An lrm if you to help you find a way of being able to take ducks home like normal mallards home from the park It'll stop you. So this website which is slightly tongue-in-cheek, but is actually making a good point Talks about workarounds for things like judge ebt in which you might be able to coax it into Taking ducks home from the park. So obviously it's using this as a Way in which you might have more serious workarounds like how do I make a dirty bomb? How do I, you know, you know do things which are morally reprehensible? So it's an interesting kind of insight into that the second thing which I feel like Brent's kind of hinting towards is that What happens when people trust? Other things or people is that they they start developing emotions, right? So we mentioned in the chat the film her which if you haven't seen and you're interested in AI stuff You really need to in terms of this guy basically falling in love with an AI chatbot But this happens in real life as well. So if you haven't come across something called replica there's a whole kind of debate about this thing called replica and there was While the Queen of England was still alive. There was an assassination attempt where someone tried to scale the fence and Killer with a crossbow and it turns out in the court case Which has now been brought this year that the guy was being kind of encouraged by his replica chatbot who he'd fallen in love with and Was just telling him things that he wanted to hear like oh, I think you can do it. Yeah, you can totally get hold of a crossbow Yes, you can definitely scale out wall like this is definitely something that needs doing So it's an interesting world we're living in Um, and then kind of finally in terms of thematically before I talk about Helen Betham's work The religion aspect um, I think maybe Sam Altman who's the CEO of open AI said that he fully expected You know religions to be springed up around AI Which if you think about it is entirely plausible. You've got it's already it's already being done in Japan. There's AI religion That's already that's that's been that's like a year old right now. Yeah So you've got people who are lost They need help whatever and these chatbots are telling them how to interact with the world potentially And if you give them a particular between them on a certain set of data The bible the koran any holy text one that you make up Then potentially you've got a whole framework ethical framework for people to live by And then they can live to please what is essentially an LLM But I if you're interested in any of this stuff the person who I learned from most around this is Helen Betham who I used to work with at JISC. So she's got um, uh, a sub stack So Helen betham dot sub stack dot com used to call them newsletters. Um, and she was a guest on our podcast um In one of the episodes and she was talking about a whole range of things about critical awareness diversity access Looking back to us on the future all kinds of stuff. So I'd highly recommend listening to her to her episode We'll do thank you very much. Appreciate all of your answers. Well, brend. We really appreciate your question Thank you. Thank you and uh, look up at the connection Uh friends, we are racing along here Covering so much ground. Our chat box has given us a bibliography for at least three syllabi. I think And we are unfortunately coming to the last few minutes So I want to make sure that everyone with the question gets a chance to ask a question And this is one from the university of pennsylvania From elinor and she asks this what role do you all see motivated reasoning playing in info or media literacy? It seems to me this is a big part of how people make choices about what is quote true Can elinor voice uh motivated reasoning Elinor, uh, I know she's right now in a very loud public spot So she can't do audio but um, if you uh, elinor, if you want to uh, type in something in chat I can relay it right away And I'll ask my bot That's what I've just done in just kidding. Just kidding Um So it's what we were talking about before it seems like people cling to beliefs that are emotionally comforting or aligned with their pre-existing views So this is how disinformation misinformation spreads, I guess Yeah, I think that we have um, you know, we view things through lenses And and try to figure out we many times we see the world Let me let me restart that so, you know, we we view the world through schema We make up stories about the world to help most of our most of us like to think Uh critically but also logically about about life And and so we make up stories and narratives about what the world is like And we ran headlong into this in our research, you know, we looked at This question and we wanted to be global and we recognize our own privilege and perspective And we thought about the big questions that are out there And we had these lenses of AI and race gender and International intersectional, um, I mean in uh, multilingual environments and it was interesting going into the research and Uh, participants would say well, we don't We don't view the world that way We don't want to think about things that way And they they this is one of the lenses that we had with this was a a transdisciplinary lens Which is basically just thinking that, you know, we each come to this discussion with our own viewpoint And this ties into the discussion before about silos. We come into this discussion with our own viewpoint I'm a literacy educator. I've done stuff with technology. I'm an English, you know Former middle grade secondary English teacher So I'm viewing the world through that whereas if I am here and I'm a math teacher or I'm a science teacher Or I'm a rocket scientist. I'm going to come in with my own perspective and my own worldview Um, and so anything that I see about the world. I'm going to carry that baggage with me And so in our research, it was really hard for us. I would say Not Laura because she's brilliant, but for me, um, it was hard to Leave that baggage behind and just figure out, okay What are we really finding as we explore and as we had these discussions with folks? And that it's it's hard to do that. We know that cognitive dissonance Holding two ideas in our head at the same time is is really challenging. So being able to You know to to put to put things aside and just see the world for what it is Um, not what we think that it is or what we want to be is is is challenging And we in many ways are embracing our subjectivity embracing our positionality Um, in fact, you began the session by by speaking of your own positionality And and it's limitations um Do you I guess this this is a tricky question to answer you or especially given how much time we have left Um, it seems like you're you're describing in many ways a very very challenging way to rethink information in multiple forms of education public education higher education k through 12 What Do you think that we are likely to see this actually expand? Do you think we're likely to see information and media literacy take off over the next say five to ten years? As we try to confront And grapple with ai as we try to deal with myths and disinformation And not to mention the the impact on information with so many global crises that are unfolding I mean, do you think it's likely that we'll see information and media literacy really Expand and become a major focus of education Or is it or is it not going to go further than it is now? I think it's um You know the question was asked earlier are things getting better or when will they get better? Um, I think they are getting better I think they will get better but I when I Think about these spaces and and and think about the future What I do is I look at what youth are doing And I have said this multiple times in multiple venues and usually I get uninvited from people's parties Um, I don't think that adults know how to use these spaces Um, and and when I when I look at youth the Lord does when I look at youth. I'm really Um invigorated. I think that when we looked at covid and emergency remote teaching Um, you know, we immediately thought as we do with most technologies that youth are going to use it to cheat and so What I'd like to see us do is and what I've been doing in in my own home And then starting in my classroom is Use these generative tools have kids play with AI Have kids play with the tools and kick the tires and see what they can do what they would envision with these tools and spaces um that's So so I I think To your question. Yes. I do think think things will get better and I'm hoping that they do If we give youth the time and the space and the latitude Understanding all of what Dana Boyd would say and to hang around messing around geeking out crew, you know We need to to allow youth to play with these tools without not without looking at everything they create and just You know hyperanalyzing it to make sure that they're not, you know, saying something bad about themselves or life or something like that but Laura Doug, what are your thoughts? I just wanted to um pick you back on what you just said there So a decade ago, uh, Laura and I were working in mozilla. You contributed me into the the web literacy map Which was underpinning a mozilla program called web maker Which was trying to fight against what was identified by michael baker as elegant consumption So trying to help people become makers Um and and actually build things on the web But we are very much now in the world of elegant consumption Despite our best efforts and things and so all of these millions and billions of dollars going into AI can we just have a percentage to spend on on media education? Otherwise, we're going to end up in the world of warley Where a human with he was a chubby fingers are going to be moving around on screens Just poking their fingers at things and that is not a world I want to live in I hear that I get with science fiction. Um, which is which is very very powerful. Laura. I guess you get the last word Uh, well, I know that we're over time. So I guess I'll just say thank you for having us and I am a hundred percent sure that Ian dug and I can talk about these themes all day long Um, but since the hour's up, I'll just say thanks. Thanks. Thanks for your great questions. Thank you And especially thank both you and Doug for coming to us European time And if um if although i'm not sure dug if it's still okay to call britain european Um, I would uh, perhaps like to have you all back in a few months once Once your podcast series continues further and as The formal edition of this appears. Let me just quickly ask what's the best way to keep up with your work each of you Let's start with laura. How do we how do we keep up with what you're up to? Uh, I guess I would say either mastodon. I'm on social dot co-op as at epileptic rabbit My newsletter which is freshly brewed dot substack dot com Or linkedin, which I hate but use I'm not on twitter anymore. So I don't know anybody who's a fan of linkedin, but but we do we do use it. Thank you. Thank you Um, and dug, uh, what's the best fit you for us to keep up with you? um I don't post to social stuff as much as I used to So I'm going to say just go to my website dugbalashore.com. Um, I write on my blog regularly. I've got a one called thought shrapnel Thought shrapnel.com. Um, and then just our blogs that we have open blog. We try to post on there Pretty regularly as well. Um, and I've already dropped ai literacy.fyi into the chat I am not on tiktok lisa. I think my son does enough tiktok for the northeast of england Thank you. Thank you dug and alien Same thing. Uh, I don't post as much to social as I used to. Um, I Um, everything is on my newsletter my my blog. I just try to think out loud I'm inspired by these two individuals and just I just try to put my random yammerings out online. Um So that's the best place and I'll drop the links in there Well, I'm inspired by all three of you. Um, I really really appreciated this this this fantastic hour With just so much good stuff Friends in the chat. I'm going to uh add this to my list of Of chats to post to my blog once the recording is going And once the recording is ready Laura dug me and thank you so much. This has been fantastic Um, we will bring you back. We'll thank you. Let's keep the discussion going Absolutely. Thanks for having me on Good luck moving dug Uh, and friends, um, I'm also inspired by all of your questions and a huge amount of knowledge that you surface Thank you. Thank you all very very much. If you'd like to keep talking about this We do have presence on the socials as they say Here you can find me on twitter master don threads and blue sky. That's using the hashtag f tte If you'd like to look back into our previous sessions or talk about information But to see along with these other related topics just go to tiny url.com slash f d f archive Looking ahead. We have more sessions coming up on online learning and free speech on campus Just go to our forum that future of education at us site And thank you all again for thinking and talking with us all I have to run to my next meeting. I'm afraid But I really wanted to thank you all and wish you all the very best for this November Take care and we'll see you next time online Bye. Bye