Infrastructure on Bodong Chen

The Many Faces of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Fri, 06 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

(Photo Credit: ChatGPT 4o)

AI is often the elephant in the room, surfacing in everything from high-stakes policymaking and academic research to casual conversations with my barber. It permeates so many aspects of life that it’s hard to escape its presence. Yet, because AI is so vast and varied in its applications, it remains a “hyper-object”—something so complex and multi-dimensional that it feels impossible to fully grasp. It impacts education, healthcare, law enforcement, entertainment, and more, each in dramatically different ways. AI is not just one thing; it’s many things, depending on where and how it is deployed.

Let's complicate the idea of infrastructure in conversations about GenAI

Wed, 15 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

First, a blog post

Rethinking AI Infrastructure: Beyond the Surface-Level Conversations

The current excitement around generative AI has sparked a wave of discussions about its potential to transform various aspects of our lives. Amidst the hype, there’s a growing tendency to refer to AI as “infrastructure.” While this comparison might seem fitting, it oversimplifies the complexity of AI systems and, more importantly, obscures the critical questions surrounding control, benefit, and impact. As we hurtle towards an AI-driven future, it’s essential to pause and reexamine our assumptions about AI infrastructure.

Infrastructuring sustainable innovations in education: A quick update

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I am excited about the emerging body of work on infrastructuring in the Learning Sciences and beyond. In this post I am sharing a few quick updates on this topic.

New JLS paper on infrastructuring

A paper titled A framework for infrastructuring sustainable innovations in education is published online in the Journal of the Learning Sciences. This paper was inspired by many and has been in the works since 2022. I have received amazingly thoughtful feedback from anonymous JLS reviewers, as well as several colleagues I collaborate with on this topic.