Handan við skyndilausnir: Skynsemi, skrun og vísindaleg vinnubrögð

Rýnt í gjána á milli rannsókna og tilfinningalegra/pólitískra viðbragða í Torginu á RÚV

TL;DR – Hvers vegna kallar stjórnmálafólk eftir lausnum sem vísindin segja að virki ekki? Í þættinum Torginu 10. febrúar 2026 mættust fræðin og stafrænt paník almennings. Umræður sýndu að lítil sem engin greining á vandanum hefur átt sér stað og rannsóknarniðurstöður um gagnsleysi síma- og samfélagsmiðlabanna voru hristar af höndum líkt og um hálfsannleik væri að ræða. Í þessari grein fjalla ég umGjánna milli vísinda og almenningsálits/stjórnmála: Af hverju rannsóknir á neikvæðum áhrifum banna voru hunsaðar í Torginu. Mýtuna um valdalausa notandann: Hvernig við getum í raun stýrt algrímunum í stað þess að láta þau stýra okkur. Leiðina fram á við: Nauðsyn þess að valdefla unga fólk okkar með dýpri skilnig á tækni og samskiptin við hana.

Fyrr í þessari viku var áhugavert málþing hjá HÍ þar sem voru kynntar nýlegar niðurstöður gagnöflunar og rannsókna á samfélagsmiðlanotkun ungs fólks. Því miður komst ég ekki á málþing en sótti þess í stað útsendingu Torgs þátts RÚV í Helgafellsskóla í Mosfellsbæ. Þar var til umræðu snjalltækja- og samfélagsmiðlanotkun ungs fólks og umræðu um að takmarka með einum eða öðrum hætti aðgengi ungs fólks að slíkri tækni. Það var margt áhugavert sem kom fram í umræðunum. En eitt og annað truflaði mig afskaplega. Fyrst fannst mér frekar ómerkilegt hjá sumum að draga í efa gildi nýlegrar rannsóknar sem fræðafólk í HR hefur framkvæmt, m.a. Inga Snæland, menntamálaráðherra. Hitt var, hvað virðist vera lítill vilji að greina áskorunina/vandann sem um ræðir áður en stokkið er fram með lausnir (sem umræddar rannsóknir gefa til kynna að muni ekki hafa tilætluð áhrif). Continue reading

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Generative AI Is already here: Why schools cannot opt out

TL;DR: Public discourse tends to treat generative AI (genAI) as a monolithic threat to be managed through avoidance or bans. Here, I use the concept of affordances to argue that these tools have already fundamentally transformed the environments in which students live and learn, making “opting out” an impossibility. The path forward lies in integrating genAI as an essential component of modern education, empowering teachers to lead the development of critical AI literacy and preparing youth to leverage the evolving capabilities of these tools to do more and to do better.

Screengrab from the CNN SOTU episode.This weekend I attempted to watch Jake Tapper’s State of the Union on CNN. I have to admit that I didn’t make it all the way through. Not because the topic was unimportant, quite the opposite. It was because the discussion itself was so conceptually muddled that it was difficult to take it seriously. However, I have read the transcript of the entire episode since it was aired.

The episode focused on artificial intelligence, particularly in relation to children and young people. Questions about AI and learning featured prominently, and it was this that caught my attention because it connects with the primary focus of my research at the moment (especially AI literacy). What followed, however, was a discussion that exemplifies many of the core problems in today’s public discourse on AI.
There were two issues that particularly frustrated me:

  • Conceptual ambiguity – Tapper and his guests repeatedly referred to “AI” when they were obviously talking almost exclusively about generative AI (genAI), and more specifically conversational chatbots such as ChatGPT. What applies to genAI does not automatically apply to AI as a whole.
  • Policy responses that amount to avoidance – The recommendations that guests offered in response to perceived risks associated with genAI largely boiled down to restricting access, banning use in schools or delaying engagement altogether, in the apparent hope that the problems might somehow crawl into a dark corner until they automagically resolve themselves.

In what follows, I want to unpack these two issues in some detail. While my critique is prompted by this specific episode of State of the Union, it is not directed at the program alone. Rather, it reflects my broader concerns about how the rapid development and diffusion of AI, and genAI in particular, is currently discussed in public, political and educational contexts. In my view, much of this discourse is not only superficial but actively misinformed. Continue reading

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AI literacy – my current position statement

Recently, most of my work has been focused on AI in education, particularly genAI. There’s a lot to be said and a lot to be done and I’m hoping to get back into some blog action and start posting somewhat regularly here.

First up is what I would essentially call a position statement. I’ve been teaching courses on AI literacy. I like the concept of AI literacy as it encourages us to focus on the specific competences that are needed to navigate contemporary info landscapes. However, I’m not fond of the idea of introducing “yet, another literacy” to the vast, and overly complex, array of literacies that have emerged in recent years (I partly blame PISA for this). The notion that every little thing constitutes a “literacy” creates endless layers of complexities as each one seems to require a new curriculum to add to the already full plate of curricula. So, obviously, the question has come up (far too often for my liking), whether we now need a new AI literacy curriculum, in addition to the technology literacy, information literacy, media literacy, etc. curricula that we already have in most educational systems? I say, no. Continue reading

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AI and education

AI in education. It is, as we say in Icelandic “the topic of all topics” at the moment. Whether we like it or not, AI is here and is impinging on education and drastically changing the way people learn. No matter what is happening in schools regarding AI, we can be sure of one thing: students at all school levels are using AI and they are using it in ways that affects how they are learning and how they will learn in the future. So, like it or not, teachers have to deal with AI and probably the best way to deal with it, is to embrace it (anything else is really nothing more than a temporary fix). However, my sense is that a lot of teachers are delaying familiarising themselves with AI – for whatever reasons. I hear a lot of, “Oh, I know. I have to start looking into it. I’ll get around to it soon.” Soon, is probably too late. The rate of development of generative AI has been astonishing, to say the least. Any delays are likely to mean that the technology will have undergone significant changes between whenever “now” is and whenever “soon” will be. And, with each new iteration, the learning curve grows steeper…

I jumped on the generative AI train pretty much as soon as OpenAI started offering subscriptions to their ChatGPT, or early in 2023. I had been Continue reading

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Hvers konar gervigreind: um þýðingar

Ég held að þetta sé fyrsta grein sem ég birti hér á Education4site á íslensku. Vanalega hef ég birt íslenskar greinar á Upplýsandi tæki, vef mínum á bloggkerfi Mbl.is. Ég hef h.v. engan áhuga á að pósta efni mitt þar enda á enga samleið með bloggsamfélaginu sem hýsir sig þar. Ætlunin er að setja upp íslenskan vef hér á Education4site en ég hef ekki komið því í kring.

Nokkur umræða hefur verið meðal skólafólks um hvernig skuli þýða enska hugtakið generative artificial intelligence (AI). Nokkrar hugmyndir hafa verið settar fram:

  • skapandi gervigreind (nýskapandi gervigreind)
  • mótandi gervigreind
  • myndandi gervigreind
  • spunagreind

Það eru ólík rök sem fylgja hverri tillögu og skiptar skoðanir um bæði ágæti þýðingarinnar og rökstuðning.

Sjálfur hef ég tileinkað mér mótandi gervigreind. Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson birti um daginn pistil á vef sínum um þetta þýðingarverkefni og styður helst skapandi gervigreind (eða jafnvel nýskapandi gervigreind). Ég er ekki sammála Eiríki og ætla að útskýra hér af hverju. Rök mín er þrenn:

  1. Skapandi gervigreind er ekki rétt þýðing á því sem átt er við með generative AI,
  2. Það að vera skapandi er mannlegur eiginleiki sem við erum ekki tilbúin að ljá tækninni,
  3. Við verðum að geta átt von á því (þótt það gerist mögulega aldrei) að gervigreind framtíðarinnar verði meira skapandi en nútíma gervigreind. Hvað köllum við hana ef við erum búin að nota hugtakið skapandi?

Continue reading

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Competence Frameworks for Futures Education and Sustainable Development Education: A Comparison

Futuring - Art by Eva & Adele

Installation piece by artist couple Eva & Adele. Photo by Ferdinand Feys

Edit (Jan. 20, 2023): An expanded peer-reviewed article based on the research described here has been published. See here:
Thayer, T. (2023), “Identifying similarities and differences in sustainability education and foresight and futures education: a comparative analysis of competence frameworks”, On the Horizon, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/OTH-11-2022-0066

I recently attended a kick-off meeting for a new project, Partnership for Sustainable Development and Social Innovation (PASSION), that is meant to explore and address contemporary needs and challenges in higher education. In our kick-off meetings we read about and discussed various things such as competence frameworks and needs assessments. Here, I want to discuss two things in particular that came up in our meetings:

  1. Competence frameworks for sustainable development education (SDE) – not surprisingly these are very similar to frameworks for foresight and futures education (FFE) but with some notable differences that I think could prove helpful to highlight.
  2. Systemic elements of change – the framework introduced (but not much discussed) is similar to a framework that I have used in my teaching and work, but, again, with some notable, and I think helpful, differences.

While what follows here is more or less just me working my way through some of what I picked up at our kick-off meeting, I think it may also be helpful for our project, but also anyone involved with, or thinking about, sustainable development or foresight and futures in education. Continue reading

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