MIT Open Aggregated Podcast Feed

In late November of 2022, ChatGPT was released to the public as a free research preview. Students quickly realized ChatGPT was pretty good at doing their homework for them. Schools scrambled to figure out what to do:  Ban it? Embrace it? Teachers and students found themselves adapting to a new reality. 

Buckle Up, Here it Comes kicks off “The Homework Machine” a mini series in the Teachlab podcast. Hosts Jesse Dukes and Justin Reich share stories of teachers and students reacting to the arrival of an exciting, alarming, and strange new technology. 

Producer: Jesse Dukes

Editors: Ruxandra Guidi and Alexandra Salomon.

Reporting and research: Holly McDede, Natasha Esteves, Andrew Meriwether, and Chris Bagg. 

Sound design and music supervision: Steven Jackson. 

Data analysis: Manee Ngozi Nnamani and Manasa Kudumu. 

Special thanks to Josh Sheldon, Camila Lee, Liz Hutner, and Eric Klopfer. 

Administrative support from Jessica Rondon. 

The research and reporting you heard in this episode was supported by the Spencer Foundation, the Kapor Foundation, the Jameel World Education Lab, the Social and Ethical Responsibility of Computing initiative at MIT, and the RAISE initiative, Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education also at MIT. 

Additional support from Google’s Academic Research Awards program. 
InTandem facilitated some of our student interviews. 

Full episode transcript. 

Generative AI is not like other education technologies, which schools often invite into the classroom. This one crashed the party. And then, it started re-arranging the furniture. We wanted to learn more, so in a little over a year, the Teaching Systems Lab has talked to over 90 teachers and 30 students about the impact of Generative AI. 

Some are excited about AI's potential to transform education for the better. 

Others are troubled by the temptations of a machine that can quickly and convincingly do many homework assignments. 

And some think AI is just a shiny object – a distraction from the much larger problems facing education.

Over the next seven episodes, we'll try to answer the question: Is AI a game-changing tool, a threat to critical thinking, another ed tech fad? … or something else? 

Media requests can go to [email protected]. 
 

Generative AI is not like other education technologies, which schools often invite into the classroom. This one crashed the party. And then, it started re-arranging the furniture. We wanted to learn more, so in a little over a year, the Teaching Systems Lab has talked to over 90 teachers and 30 students about the impact of Generative AI. 

Some are excited about AI's potential to transform education for the better. 

Others are troubled by the temptations of a machine that can quickly and convingly do many homework assignments. 

And some think AI is just a shiny object – a distraction from the much larger problems facing education.

Over the next seven episodes, we'll try to answer the question: Is AI a game-changing tool, a threat to critical thinking, another ed tech fad? … or something else? 

Media requests can go to [email protected]. 

 

Self-driving cars have been heralded by many as the future of transportation—promising safer roads, reduced traffic, and greater mobility for all. Yet despite rapid advancements in technology and a surge in assistive driving features, acceptance of full vehicle automation remains elusive. As the public grapples with questions of trust, safety, and responsibility, the road to widespread adoption of automated vehicles is anything but straightforward. The stakes are high: how we navigate this transition could redefine the way we move for generations to come. So, how far are we from acceptance, adoption, and implementation?