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

021

Josh Brake @joshbrake.com · 13/04/2025

Interesting. That is a new term to me.

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

Maybe I’m just salty, but for all the discussion around using AI to create something new, it sure seems like a lot of it is focused on diluting the value and beauty of something that already exists. This is not the only way! But the fact that this is the path being taken should tell us something.

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?

120

Anyone aware of examples of such a model? This feels like something that the folks at @hf.co would be thinking about.

100

What we need is something like fair trade AI. Models that are built on a dataset that is clearly disclosed so that we can trace the origins. Even then, there are issues around proper citation of sources that will remain, but at least we’ll know the ingredients in the soup.

100

LLMs by their very structure cut against this grain. By nature, LLMs mix things together into a soup in such a way that it is very hard to untangle the provenance of the inputs. Of course, this is a feature, not a bug. Particularly helpful if you want to obscure the training data.

120

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

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.

121

Reposted by Josh Brake

"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

051

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

011

Let’s find ways to focus our energy on the important and valuable activities that support learning.

With that said, I understand (and agree!) with the underlying thesis: there are lots of way that schooling wastes energy. This is parasitic friction which saps us. But let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Friction is key for traction. Without it, we can’t move anywhere. Think about trying to run on ice. Friction itself is not the enemy.

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

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.

131

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.

000

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

052

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."

2154

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

Thanks for the love, Marcus.

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

041

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.

011

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

130

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

040

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

Thanks Ben. Despite it all we have much to be grateful for.

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

0345

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.

000

I’m curious to hear how others from different worldviews and perspective grapple with this idea. How does your understanding of human agency shape your thinking about AI agents?

000

The Imago Dei is a big idea, but at least one part of it is a true sense of agency and the ability to make, and be accountable for, decisions.

100

We all need to answer questions about our humanity: is there anything fundamentally different about us? The Christian worldview has a clear answer to this: yes, humans are unique because they are created in God’s image.

100

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

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.

111

Reposted by Josh Brake

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.

3508

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

021

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?

021

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.

000

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.

100

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

Adam's answer was so on point that I had to promise them that I hadn't seeded the question with him ahead of time! Thanks again Adam for taking the time to share your experience with us. We learned a lot! #E155

000

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

When I asked him what is the most important thing that engineering students should learn in school but don't, he replied "understanding how to build engineering systems." The class laughed out loud, given that this is something we stress all the time throughout our classes at Harvey Mudd.