Practical AI Strategies 2 – Amba Press

Building on the foundation of the bestselling Practical AI Strategies, Leon Furze returns with an essential guide for educators navigating the rapidly evolving landscape of generative AI. This timely ...

ambapress.com.au

How I’ve Used Claude for Book Marketing

The use of GenAI in writing, the arts, music, and pretty much any creative industry is highly contentious, and for good reason. The copyright concerns alone are enough to infuriate most writers, and the constant onslaught of AI slop is flooding social media platforms and online spaces. I've written extensively about my position on AI: somewhere in the middle, seeing the potential and the risks.

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Why is AI so generic? And can we do anything about it?

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Problem Patterns in AI: Beyond Hallucinations

The article discusses the rise of "AI slop", characterised by generic, uninspired content produced by AI, often resulting in stylistic and substantive issues, rather than just factual inaccuracies. It categorises these problems into seven types, highlighting the reputational risks associated with careless AI use and the need for nuanced discussions about AI-generated outputs.

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Rented Expertise

This article examines the evolving nature of expertise in the age of AI, particularly GenAI. While AI can generate seemingly expert outputs, it lacks the depth of human knowledge and judgement. "Rented expertise" highlights the risks of cognitive offloading and the illusion of competence.

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Australia Just Set the Terms for AI

Earlier this week, the Prime Minister delivered a one-two punch on copyright and data centres: two of the most contentious national conversations on AI. Speaking at the University of Sydney, Anthony Albanese announced a set of national Australian standards for AI: a single framework covering copyright, data centres, energy, water, and the workforce, coordinated by a new Office of AI inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, with legislation to be brought to Parliament early next year.

leonfurze.com

LLMs are Digital Skeleton Keys

Skeleton keys functioned by exploiting shared mechanisms in older locks, similarly, Large Language Models (LLMs) can act as digital skeleton keys. They perform versatile tasks within code-accessible environments, yet their potential remains underutilised in conventional chatbot interfaces. Users should explore beyond chatbots to unlock LLMs' true capabilities.

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AI;DR: What Happens When Readers Stop Trusting Writers?

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AI;DR: When readers stop trusting writers

In February this year, a safety researcher named Mrinank Sharma resigned from Anthropic with a long, public letter. Resignation letters from AI labs are a genre of their own now, and this one was widely shared and picked over. One reply stood out, from a developer named David Minnigerode posted on Threads: "Sorry that is. definitely tl;dr. But also kinda ai;dr Some of those sentences…yeesh."

leonfurze.com

Where does expertise live?

Explore the critical role of situated expertise in AI, its impact on trust, and how it influences the interpretation of expert knowledge.

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What are AI hallucinations?

This article discusses the reality of AI hallucinations in chatbots, why they occur, and how to mitigate their impact. Understanding AI's limitations is crucial.

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Building a Voice Assistant with Claude Code

I turned a $40 pocket computer into a hands-free voice assistant for Claude Code — talk to it, and a Mac mini does the thinking. Here's how I built it.

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Exams Are Not the Answer: Part Two

This is part two of a pair of articles exploring the "exam reflex" facing schools and universities, and being driven by the news. In part one I looked at the AI cheating panic sucking up all the oxygen in mainstream media. I wrote about the “urgent threat” headlines, the Learning First report that is more nuanced than its coverage, and the knee-jerk reaction underneath it all: 

leonfurze.com

Predictive text in 'demonstrable decline' with AI-based language models

If internet chatter is to be believed, the intuitiveness and efficiency of predictive text and autocorrect have fallen off a cliff in recent years. But while researchers agree there has been a demonst...

abc.net.au

Exams Are Not the Answer: Part One

Teachers at Mazenod College in Melbourne discovered that several Year 12 students likely used artificial intelligence for their oral assessments, resulting in marks being deducted for about 50 boys. This incident highlights a wider concern regarding assessment integrity in the age of AI, prompting calls for a reevaluation of coursework and testing methods.

leonfurze.com

IYKYK Part 6: Practice to Principles

A few weeks ago I ended the fifth post in this series with an open call. My argument up to that point had been you can't teach everything AI can do, because the list is unbounded and constantly changing, but you also can't wait for people to discover capabilities on their own, because the interface actively prevents it. What you…

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How is AI connected to the Techlash?

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AI and the Techlash

There’s a groundswell of negative public sentiment towards digital technologies at the moment, and AI is part of it. In this article I’ll look at where GenAI sits in the current techlash, and suggest that the real target of the techlash isn't the technology at all; it's the system that produced it.

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Students hate AI, and they can’t stop using it

The booing kicked off before Gloria Caulfield could finish her sentence. At the University of Central Florida's College of Arts and Humanities graduation on May 8th, real estate exec Caulfield told the graduating class that "the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution." One student yelled, "AI sucks", and the crowd erupted. Caulfield turned to the other speakers onstage, visibly confused: "OK, I struck a chord.

leonfurze.com

Beyond Scales – In Practice

This is one half of a pair of articles dealing with the theory and the practice of moving "beyond scales" in AI and education. The two posts together demonstrate how our thoughts have developed since 2023, and the examples from practitioners around the world of work which has gone beyond the original AI Assessment Scale. The posts can be read in either order…

leonfurze.com

Beyond Scales – In Theory

This is one half of a pair of articles dealing with the theory and the practice of moving "beyond scales" in AI and education. The two posts together demonstrate how our thoughts have developed since 2023, and the examples from practitioners around the world of work which has gone beyond the original AI Assessment Scale. The posts can be read in either order.

leonfurze.com

What Can AI Actually Do? Share Your Examples

This fifth post in the IYKYK series is a call to action. In order to "lift the ceiling" on teachers' mental models of what AI can do, we need to share as many examples as possible. And not just the obvious examples, but the weird, awkward, slightly broken examples of people pushing and poking at the edges of the technology.

leonfurze.com

PhD Retrospective Part 2: Finishing the Journey

This is part two of a long read reflecting on my PhD journey, which began just before the release of ChatGPT in 2022. The articles look at the ways in which AI technologies, and our attitudes towards them, have shifted and changed in the past four years.

leonfurze.com

GenAI is Normal Edtech

In GenAI is Normal Edtech, Leon Furze draws on Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor's framework of "AI as normal technology" to argue that GenAI is following predictable patterns seen in previous technological shifts. He acknowledges widespread exhaustion among educators—whether from vendor hype and student misuse, or from negativity against a potentially helpful tool—and suggests these feelings are normal responses to technology cycles we've experienced before.

leonfurze.com

PhD Retrospective: Three Years of GenAI in Education

This is part one of a long read reflecting on my PhD journey, which began just before the release of ChatGPT in 2022. The articles look at the ways in which GenAI technologies, and our attitudes towards them, have shifted and changed in the past four years.

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Moving from knowing to doing with GenAI

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