Talking with machines
Hosted by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes · Mark Corbett Wilson
- 13
- Episodes
- 2024
- First episode
About Talking with machines
Communicating through language, images, maps, and tools
- Publisher
- Mark Corbett Wilson
- Category
- arts · education · education
- Language
- en
- Explicit
- No
- First episode
- 31 Aug 2024
- Latest episode
- 24 Jun 2025
Latest episodes
13 episodes in the feed.
24 Jun 2025
Advocacy, access, equity, and support for students and faculty, as AI is adopted in a multicultural urban college.
Professor Chris Weidenbach shares his experience with Mark Corbett Wilson, Tom Haymes, and Bryan Alexander regarding AI adoption, student access, and faculty support at a multicultural urban college in this interview.
28 May 2025
Storytelling, Education, and AI in this Chaotic Political Moment
Digital storytelling innovator Joe Lambert discusses his work using technology in education and global settings, reflecting on adapting to the current political climate in an interview with professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander.
25 Apr 2025
Artificial Intelligence, Abolition, and Luxury Surveillance
A conversation with Dr. Chris Gilliard, Co-Director of The Critical Internet Studies Institute, about his approach to writing, privacy, and “artificial intelligence.” We are joined by professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander to discuss our experiences teaching and learning, and Chris starts by explaining his stance as an “AI abolitionist.” He shares his critiques of the many aspects of “AI”: their creation, use, and the culture that produces these digital tools. Chris asserts that ideology is built into digital technology, and he quotes Rob Horning: “GenAI is a tool of power that masquerades as a tool of knowledge.” Chris goes on to observe: “Some of the worst people in the world want us to use these tools.” Chris taught rhetoric and composition in community colleges for decades, but left to pursue other opportunities before the explosion of “AI” in academia. This has allowed him to be an absolutist: he hasn’t used LLMs or ”AI” at all. Chris insists that writing must be embodied and cannot be generated by algorithms. He is currently writing “Luxury Surveillance,” defined as “consensual surveillance that users pay for directly, and whose tracking, monitoring, and quantification features are understood by the user as benefits that they are likely to celebrate” on the Critical Internet Studies Institute website. In our conversation, Chris summarized it as “Ankle monitors and Apple watches are essentially the same thing.” Resources The Critical Internet Studies Institute https://www.criticalinternet.org/ (https://www.criticalinternet.org/) Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities and The Writer’s Practice: Building Confidence in Your Nonfiction Writing by John Warner Defining AI by Ali Alkhatib 06 December 2024 https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai (https://ali-alkhatib.com/blog/defining-ai) Rob Horning AI - GenAI is a tool of power that masquerades as a tool of knowledge. https://robhorning.substack.com/p/practico-inertia (https://robhorning.substack.com/p/practico-inertia) https://robhorning.substack.com/p/artificial-intentionality (https://robhorning.substack.com/p/artificial-intentionality) David Golumbia https://davidgolumbia.medium.com/chatgpt-should-not-exist-aab0867abace (https://davidgolumbia.medium.com/chatgpt-should-not-exist-aab0867abace) Brian Merchant https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/openais-studio-ghibli-meme-factory (https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/openais-studio-ghibli-meme-factory) On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922 (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3442188.3445922) Facebook Has a Genocide Problem by Alex Shephard March 15, 2018 https://newrepublic.com/article/147486/facebook-genocide-problem (https://newrepublic.com/article/147486/facebook-genocide-problem) Allies and Rivals: German-American Exchange and the Rise of the Modern Research University by Emily J. Levine https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo22804958.html (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo22804958.html) Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
13 Apr 2025
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality as Critical Instructional Design
A conversation with Dr. Maha Bali about “Intentionally Equitable Hospitality” (IEH) and how this professional development journey emerged from her earlier projects Virtually Connecting and Equity Unbound. A professor of practice at the Center for Learning and Teaching at the American University in Cairo, we were joined by professors Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander to discuss our experiences teaching and learning with digital technologies. IEH offers opportunities to engage with marginalized perspectives, encourage critical thinking and accessibility, and create more welcoming and equitable learning spaces. We explored the many literacies needed today, including visual thinking, creating and using images, and the use of “AI” models despite their limitations, especially for language translation. Mike Caulfield’s SIFT model to assess information was mentioned and his latest version designed to use with Claude.ai. As always, we approached these issues from both ‘open’ and institutional perspectives, and in the context of our current political climate. Maha’s cake baking and decorating metaphors added the frosting to this episode. Intentionally Equitable Hospitality Series for May 2024 https://equityunbound.org/ieh-series-may-204/ (https://equityunbound.org/ieh-series-may-204/) Intentionally Equitable Hospitality as Critical Instructional Design by Maha Bali and Mia Zamora https://pressbooks.pub/designingforcare/chapter/intentionally-equitable-hospitality-as-critical-instructional-design/ (https://pressbooks.pub/designingforcare/chapter/intentionally-equitable-hospitality-as-critical-instructional-design/) Equity Unbound is hosting MYFest again this year! June through August 2025. The “Mid-Year Festival” (MYFest) is a “recharge and renewal experience” exploring community building, critical pedagogy, socially just education, AI in education, open educational practices, digital literacies, and activities that support wellbeing and joy. https://equityunbound.org/ (https://equityunbound.org/) MyEssayFeedback uses AI to offer students detailed and fast formative feedback on their essays under the guidance of an instructor or tutor. https://myessayfeedback.ai/ (https://myessayfeedback.ai/) SIFT Toolbox for Claude Released: I don’t know how to explain how much this changes everything, so I’m just going to ask you to try it. By Mike Caulfield Mar 31, 2025 https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/sift-toolbox-for-claude-and-chatgpt (https://mikecaulfield.substack.com/p/sift-toolbox-for-claude-and-chatgpt) Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
30 Mar 2025
Challenges in higher education from a new federal administration
This episode of “Talking with machines” features a conversation with Professor Robert Brem from California State University East Bay and the College of Alameda community college. I was joined by Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander as we discussed recent challenges in higher education, the US Department of Education, and the political factions supporting change. We talked abut the structure and administration of our institutions, how they adapt to new technologies, and then compared our different positions, experiences with learners, viewpoints on recent trends, and what the future of education may hold. Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
14 Mar 2025
Augmented Info, Ethics, and the Duty of Care
This episode of “Talking with machines” featured a conversation with Stephen Downes. I was joined by Tom Haymes and Bryan Alexander as we discussed “Augmented Info, Ethics, and the Duty of Care.” Stephen touches on his contributions to the origins of Massive Open Online Courses and Connectivism Theory (MOOCs and cMOOCs) before sharing his ideas on completely open courses like his “Ethics, analytics, and the duty of care” in 2021. He starts with the origins of higher education before discussing some possibilities for using the affordances of digital technologies to offer new ways of thinking about learning and teaching. We share the ways we are all using digital tools and then Stephen discusses his research on ethics and leads the conversation on ethics in educational institutions and the duty of care implied in our learning and teaching relationships. Resources from Stephen Downes CList: Personal learning and communications application Online: https://www.downes.ca/CList/ (https://www.downes.ca/CList/) Source code: https://github.com/Downes/CList (https://github.com/Downes/CList) Ethics, analytics, and the duty of care report by Stephen Downes 2023 https://www.downes.ca/files/docs/2023_10_23_-_Ethics_Analytics_and_the_Duty_of_Care_-_Published_English.pdf (https://www.downes.ca/files/docs/2023_10_23_-_Ethics_Analytics_and_the_Duty_of_Care_-_Published_English.pdf) Ethics, analytics, and the duty of care cMOOC: https://ethics.mooc.ca/course_outline.htm (https://ethics.mooc.ca/course_outline.htm) Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
26 Feb 2025
Homegrown LLMs and Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technologies
In today’s conversation Ruben Puentedura acknowledges the limitations of “AI”, shares his research and experience with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) technologies, and talks about the affordances of home grown LLMs (Large Language Models) combined with external resources. We are joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes. Dr. Puentedura is the Founder and President of Hippasus, a consulting practice focusing on transformative applications of information technologies to education. From Local to Global: A Graph RAG Approach to Query-Focused Summarization https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.16130 (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2404.16130) Code a simple RAG from scratch https://huggingface.co/blog/ngxson/make-your-own-rag (https://huggingface.co/blog/ngxson/make-your-own-rag) More from Ruben Puentedura https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenpuentedura/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenpuentedura/) Tom Haymes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/) Bryan Alexander: https://bryanalexander.org/ (https://bryanalexander.org/) Mark Corbett Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/) Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
9 Feb 2025
The AI Revolution Will Be Small
In today’s conversation, I’m again joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes. We started our discussion around Tom’s recent post “The AI Revolution Will Be Small.” Tom wrote “Bigger is not better in computing technology. Small tech is where the actual power has been over the last 50 years. When we democratize computing power (or power in general), we create the seeds for actual change. In doing so, we have harnessed the power of millions of imaginations. That is where the actual power lies. Every technology goes through a phase where people can’t wrap their heads around what the new technology is for, how it works, or how it changes our social and economic paradigms. This is where we are now with Generative AI.” https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-revolution-small-tom-haymes-paqac/ (https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ai-revolution-small-tom-haymes-paqac/) More from Tom Haymes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/) Bryan Alexander: https://bryanalexander.org/ (https://bryanalexander.org/) Mark Corbett Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/) Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
11 Jan 2025
AI in Culture with Bryan Alexander & Tom Haymes
In this premier of the Talking with machines podcast, I’m joined by Bryan Alexander and Tom Haymes. Inspired by Bryan’s recent post “Some notes on how culture is responding to generative AI”, we discuss this horizon scan where Bryan asks, “How are we responding to AI through stories, art, religion, relationships, media, and symbols?” Link: https://aiandacademia.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-how-culture-is-responding (https://aiandacademia.substack.com/p/some-notes-on-how-culture-is-responding) More from Bryan: https://bryanalexander.org/ (https://bryanalexander.org/) Tom Haymes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhaymes/) Mark Corbett Wilson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/ (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markcorbettwilson/) Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
30 Dec 2024
The WISR Way
The Western Institute for Social Research (WISR) is an accredited alternative graduate school in Berkeley, California. I created a RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) using Google’s NotebookLM to collect dozens of documents and ‘chat’ about “The WISR Way” - WISR’s personalized learning method based on on the Dreyfus model of skill acquisition. I generated this podcast using NotebookLM’s podcast generator, edited all the places the ‘hosts’ mispronounced ‘WISR’ and added an introduction. Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
7 Dec 2024
Stories about digital storytelling: past, present, and futures
Join Mark and Joe Lambert, co-founder and director of StoryCenter.org, innovators in digital storytelling (formerly the Center for Digital Storytelling). They have been leading digital storytelling workshops that employ storymapping (GIS) and “artificial intelligence” to explore possible futures for storytelling. And perhaps a surprise guest! We’ll be using digital technologies to tell stories about telling stories with digital technologies. Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
30 Sept 2024
ePortfolios for Lifelong Learners "podcast" generated by NotebookLM
Using Google’s NotebookLM, I added 50 eportfolio documents from my Drive. They were mostly journal articles. I included slides from a seminar I gave and a document I generated using Calude.ai. Then I used NotebookLM’s new “Audio Overview” feature to create this “podcast”. The LLM did a pretty good job of summarizing key points, but the references, especially to the slides, are made up: BS, or, bafflegab, if you prefer. Slide 37 was referenced several times. It was the end slide with the organization name and contact information. It will be a big improvement if Google adds the ability to edit the audio by editing a transcript. Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
31 Aug 2024
Earthquake on live ds106Radio
Earthquake! Talking with machines by Mark Corbett Wilson @mcorbettwilson on social media
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