In the discussion around generative AI a lot of the debate has focused around this same binary - truth and falsehood. Many are worried that the ability of generative AI tools to produce images, audio, video, and text may be used, or is already being used, to produce lies. Fake images, fake video, fake audio. That these powerful AI systems are a means of obscuring the truth or outright lying. We need, then, to clarify just what a lie might be, and why there is something more worrying hiding in plain sight.

If bad actors decide to release an AI-generated or computer-manipulated video or images of Joe Biden doing something that would sink his chances at a second presidential term then the world’s attention will fall upon them and every pixel will be minutely dissected by the best in the field. If images circulate purporting to show microbes in the soil of Mars, they will be examined forensically by the world’s experts. In both cases, I suspect the truth will out. But what happens when it’s not the headline-grabbing images that are manipulated, invented, or created by AI? We’re taking in hundreds, even thousands of images a day - the vast majority of which we’re giving no second thought to. It’s here that we’re most vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at BETT - the global Education Technology show in London. I was asked to speak on behalf of Google, as one of the educators speaking at Google’s Teaching Theatre. I’ve long been a vocal advocate of Google Apps for Education and have seen its transformational effect in my own teaching practice and in that of my friends and colleagues – at my own institution as well as on-line.

I gave a talk that focused on what might seem like a pretty dull aspect of education technology – being efficient. Being efficient is not exciting. Being efficient isn’t attention grabbing but, I hope I argued, everything that is exciting and attention grabbing becomes possible when you become more efficient.

I’ve been working an awful lot lately on the educational technology front. In particular I’ve been working within my institution to manage some of our transition to the use of Google Apps for Education. I’m an enormous fan, advocate and enthusiast of these apps and have been working with them for the best part of a school year now so I was very pleased when I heard that Google were overhauling their entire Certified Educator system.