Way to go Sun Devils!
404 Media is sizzling with coverage these days, with today’s spotlight where I spent much time 1987-1992, Arizona State University (though I di not think the 404 folks are zeroing in on the Geology department or whatever they call it now).
But holy chili peppers, ASU Atomic is hot.
Arizona State University rolled out a platform called Atomic that creates AI-generated modules based on lectures taken from ASU faculty by cutting long videos down to very short clips then generating text and sections based on those clips.
Faculty and scholars I spoke to whose lectures are included in Atomic are disturbed by their lectures being used in this way—as out-of-context, extremely short clips some cases—and several said they felt blindsided or angered by the launch. Most say they weren’t notified by the school and found out through word of mouth. And the testing I and others did on Atomic showed academically weak and even inaccurate content. Not only did ASU allegedly not communicate to its academic community that their lectures would be spliced up and cannibalized by an AI platform, but the resulting modules are just bad.
https://www.404media.co/asu-atomic-ai-modules-arizona-state-university/
Through different mechanisms, and maybe “better” / “fancier” AI, it sounds to me not too far from the machination of Webinar TV that, without asking, grabs recordings your zoom recordings and as a ‘service” creates “podcasts” out of them. Or
It hardly seems much different, except ASU is “taking” the videos from its Canvas learning platforms.
And in a similar fashion, naturally, ASU profs are not quite excited about this “service”, which looks like right now you can only sign up for information, it’s i beta. I fished around as I do still have an ASU university ID, even an asu.edu email alias, but I could not find a way into Atomic.
Whether these things fly or fizzle, arent we seeing the rip the lid off of the box of Pandora precedent set by OpenAI et al, that “content” they can grab, regardless of any creators issues or interests, and is free game to churn through the GenAI sausage machines. Why? because they can?
Yet on the other side, you have to start thinking, or wondering, about the things we consider as “content”, fixed assets- books, courses, OERs, blog posts, they are all maybe going by the wayside, or they are just the raw material, for these new kind of entities.
That’s where David Wiley has been scratching out for a while, whether you like it or not, how GenAI rips apart the “traditional” conception of OER into something we are not all quite familiar with. Now the “book” on Pedagogy is a Promptbook.
Can’t say I like it, but who am I to get in the way of the train flying downhill? Who is driving this train?
Maybe I can get a customized on the fly set of videos plucked from lectured videos by ASU Atomic.
Our assembly engine recommends a custom learning module with content, practical assignments, and knowledge checks related to your goal. Atom can also update the module based on your feedback to the preview – before you buy.
https://atomic.asu.edu/ emphasis added by me
So let’s see if I understand Atomic energy – it hoovers video from different ASU courses with the knowledge of the professors who create and teach with them, wraps them in a package of a magical module, then sells them to customers.
How could I not miss the altruistic beauty of this machinery?
I would count on the dynamic duo of Phil and Amy over at Webinar TV beaming with pride. Atomic is a chip off the block.
Featured Image: ASU Atomic web page screenshot with an overlay of my photo I Really Gotta Get a New ASU Cap flickr photo by cogdogblog shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) along with the WebinarTV logo.
