iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 05/08/2025

Generative AI offers a set of potential benefits for learning. But like any technology, those benefits are inextricably tied to a set of drawbacks. What might Frog and Toad’s battle with cookies teach us about engaging generative AI in the classroom? blog.joshbrake.com/joshbrake/th...

blog.joshbrake.com

The Cookie Box Principle

Generative AI and the temptation to overestimate our willpower

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 15/07/2025

It’s one thing to experiment. It’s quite another to tinker. We shouldn’t be tinkering with AI in the classroom this fall. Either do the work to articulate the question you’re trying to answer and the specific ways you hope the AI tools will fix it, or don’t use it at all.

Don't Tinker With AI in the Classroom

It's fine to play around by yourself, but if you choose to engage genAI with your students, make sure to think it all the way through

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 31/03/2025

Yes, personalized lesson plans and resources are helpful for enhancing learning. But what’s much more impactful is the personal attention of a teacher. Attention that focuses not just on academic and intellectual development, but on the whole of what it means to be a flourishing human being.

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 30/03/2025

“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery mediocrity can pay to genius.” - Oscar Wilde Says almost all you need to know about the AI x Studio Ghibli discourse of late. First Johansson, now Ghibli, what next?

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 29/03/2025

One of the best features of the Internet is the hyperlink. It makes the act of citing one’s sources seamless and helps point the reader to the origin of one’s thoughts. It is a technology that is aligned with a culture of attribution.

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Reposted by Josh Brake

Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

"What does it mean to be human? Do humans possess intrinsic moral worth irrespective of any economic value? What does it mean for us to be embodied creatures? How ought we treat our fellow humans? What does it mean to flourish?" - @joshbrake.com open.substack.com/pub/joshbrak...

Why AGI can't deliver on its promises

Mens Sine Manus

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 13/03/2025

My biggest hope for AI in education is that it increases friction. Yes, we need to eliminate parasitic friction but friction is a fundamental component of learning. Our discussion (like so many around AI) is suffering from poorly chosen words.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 10/03/2025

Trying to nail down an exact definition of AGI is a fools errand. The more important conversation needs to be focused on when, how, and why we decide to seed our agency to these systems.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 05/03/2025

In much of our conversation around AI's impact on education we're mixing up education and schooling. This week I turn again to Jacques Ellul and ask what his conception of "technique" might offer us as a lens through which to understand AI and its influence on us.

Pursue education, not schooling

Technique's Deception

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Reposted by Josh Brake

Marcus Luther @marcusluther.bsky.social · 04/03/2025

"There is no salvation to be found in efficiency." Oh boy, I needed to read this sentence waking up this morning. Stop what you're doing and go read @joshbrake.com: joshbrake.substack.com/p/techniques...

Excerpt from Brake's piece under the section "The False Promise": "The great lie of AI is the false promise of technique—that we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps to fix ourselves and our world. That in searching for a more efficient way, we can find technological solutions to human problems. There is no salvation to be found in efficiency."

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 25/02/2025

Looking at the lessons learned from pilots and autopilots has something to teach us about how we should think about the downstream consequences of AI for us and our students.

We're Forgetting How To Fly

What autopilot systems can teach us about the dangers of relying on AI

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 13/02/2025

Great piece here from @erikhoel.blogsky.venki.dev summarizing the main takeaways from the recent Microsoft paper discussing the impact of generative AI on critical thinking. Those of us helping young people to find their way toward building expertise should take particular notice.

theintrinsicperspective.com

brAIn drAIn

The enhancement and atrophy of human cognition go hand in hand

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Reposted by Josh Brake

Harvey Mudd College @hmc.edu · 30/01/2025

HMC's Department of Engineering provides Mudders with hands-on experience in engineering analysis, synthesis and practice including applied research as early as students’ first year. Learn more via this short YouTube video. uqr.to/edathmc.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 11/02/2025

Ursula Franklin is not a household name, but I'm on a quest to make her one. She continually comes to mind as I'm thinking about the questions we should ask about AI and its coming and present impact on us. I'm grateful for her work and her courage to ask unpopular questions.

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 05/02/2025

Ursula Speaks

We ought to listen

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Efficient learning is analogous to efficient weight training. There are better and worse ways to train, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to lift the heavy things. I’m all for using AI to help us learn better, but let’s make sure we’re not just shilling the cognitive version of the ab belt.

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 05/02/2025

Empathy is a core aspect of effective teaching. When you experience pain and suffering, it’s an opportunity to bring it with you into the classroom and model honesty and vulnerability with your students. It’s one of the many aspects of the human teacher that AI can never replace.

Why teaching with honesty and vulnerability matters

Beauty for Ashes

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 24/01/2025

I finally figured out what those “baby in car” bumper stickers are all about. It’s just a euphemism for “sleep deprived parent at the wheel.”

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 14/01/2025

We live in Altadena. Perhaps you've seen our town on the news. It's not been a good week. Despite it all I’m resting in God’s goodness for me, my family, and my neighbors. I know that he has a plan for us despite the pain and suffering and that he’s big enough to hold our anger too.

Clinging to God's providence in the aftermath of the Eaton Fire with open-eyed gratitude

Greetings from Altadena

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 07/01/2025

As we enter the new year, we'd all benefit from developing a personal hedgehog concept. Find the small set of things that at the intersection of your passion, talent, and value creation engine and direct your energy there.

Get In Touch with Your Inner Hedgehog

To build a career that counts, focus on the intersection of your passion, talent, and what creates long term value

lmsacasas.bsky.social @lmsacasas.bsky.social · 03/01/2025

Reposted by Josh Brake

I ended up writing about that little painted cat I found and the contrast it created for me to AI-generated content. theconvivialsociety.substack.com/p/the-cat-in...

theconvivialsociety.substack.com

The Cat in the Tree: Why AI Content Leaves Us Cold

The Convivial Society: Vol. 6, No. 1

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 02/01/2025

What technology can do is only a small part of the story. The much bigger question is how as a society and as individuals we respond.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 02/01/2025

What if—just hear me out—we spent our time and energy helping humans embrace their agency instead of trying to paste a dim replica onto AI? Agentic AI is just another quest to create a shallow simulation of a deep human trait.

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Reposted by Josh Brake

Phillip Carter @phillipcarter.dev · 31/12/2024

I should really write a blog post about how all the economic incentives around AI are pointed at less compute, not more, in the long run. That’s exactly what we saw with inference costs the past two years and we’ll likely (finally) see it with training as well.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 31/12/2024

To understand AI and its potential in education (both positive and negative) we’ve got to be clear-eyed that our patterns of behavior and the values that are upstream of them are being intentionally manipulated. We’re living in a Skinner box. Let’s pay attention to that fact.

The only sustainable way approach to AI and education is to recognize that our technological world is an operant conditioning chamber

We're The Lab Rats Now

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 19/12/2024

A simple, eye-opening question I'm asking a lot these days: to what problem is <insert AI tool here> the solution?

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 19/12/2024

More thoughtful analysis on the latest AI x Education hullabaloo from @himself.bsky.social. The challenge these days is increasingly one of finding the signal in the noise. The disputes that are happening are worth having, but arguments on both the pro and con side tend to be overwrought.

programmablemutter.com

AI Fight Club and what it hides

Ritualized combat and syllabi that speak

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 17/12/2024

If you’re not scared about agentic AI yet, I suggest you to watch a toddler throwing their weight around via Alexa. Truly eye opening.

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 09/12/2024

It’s a Heatherwick kind of day.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 08/12/2024

Our dreams matter because they shape reality—and not just our reality, but that of everyone around us.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 08/12/2024

Another great guest lecture in MicroPs this week, this time from FPGA and digital design engineer Adam Taylor. Adam shared his journey with the class, highlighting a number of the interesting projects he's worked on.

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Focusing on the direction you want to go is more fruitful than spending that time thinking about the paths you want to avoid.

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A knockout portfolio is the best credential.

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Yes to this. The semantic landscape is a mess—and has been intentionally made so by the big tech crowd in many instances. Before we can make progress and move together we’ve got to at least get the definitions straight.

Postman was a prophet. A voice I want all of my engineering students and colleagues to engage with.

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Going into my slide deck for students next year as a word of warning when they’re scoping their final projects!

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 06/12/2024

The case against is much stronger when paired with a case for an alternative.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 06/12/2024

It's MicroPs Demo Day (aka one of my favorite days of the academic year). At the end of the fall semester, each of the students in my embedded systems class (#E155) at @harveymudd.bsky.social gets to show off their end-of-semester projects. Here's what they cooked up this year: 🧵

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 06/12/2024

Had an amazing guest lecture from Ben Chelf and John Boiles over at Sol Reader today in my embedded systems class. They gave the students a live teardown with a step-by-step discussion of component selection, the firmware development process, and the challenges from going from prototype to product.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 05/12/2024

This is the best thing I’ve read this week—and it’s not close. An outstanding articulation of why reason alone isn’t going to save us from the challenges of AI. Finding agreement on the means is one thing, but only in the context of a shared understanding of the ends.

thenewatlantis.com

Ethics Won’t Save Us From AI

Why rationalists can’t answer the doomers or the boomers

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 05/12/2024

A new addition to my Christmas list: Engineering in Plain Sight: An Illustrated Field Guide to the Constructed Environment. Looks amazing!

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 04/12/2024

Stumbled on The Civics of Technology this morning, a cool org working on educating folks in socio-technical thinking. Lots of helpful ideas on their site about how to engage these issues with your students, including curriculum ideas to incorporate into your classroom.

civicsoftechnology.org

Curriculum — Civics of Technology

Our 5 Critical Questions about Technology and Inquiry Design Model Lessons can be used to critically inquire into the collateral, unintended, & disproportionate effects of technology on our lives.

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Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 04/12/2024

Most of our conversation around ethics today seems to focus on avoiding harm. But the root of ethics points to a much bigger question: not just how do we avoid harm, but how do we find flourishing?