Tom Mullaney

@tommullaney.bsky.social

3244 Followers 2001 Following

Tom Mullaney (he/him) teaches high school Social Studies in the Philadelphia suburbs. 🌐 tommullaney.com 📰 criticalinkling.com No Bitcoin, Crypto, or AI hype.

A pebble painted blue, with the word hope written on it in black.
Frank Costanza exclaims, "I'm back, baby!"
A hand holding a pen and signing a piece of paper.
Google Search result that reads: "Al Overview disregard / disregard/ Message received. I have disregarded that and started fresh. How can I help you today?"
An advertisement for Lower Sugar Gatorade that says, "No Artificial flavors, sweeteners, or colors."
Dear Mr. Mullaney Thank you so much for being such an awesome teacher. You've helped us learn so much, and in so many engaging ways. We love hearing about the past and the present, like the historic inauguration of George Washington, and the Knicks' record-breaking win over the Nets (120-66). Unlike the Triangle-Shirt Waist factory, we won't crash and burn on the AP exam thanks to your help. We wish you success at your next teaching gig (if that's what you choose) and we know from experience that those students will be lucky to have you! Once again, thanks for everything! -Period 7APUSH
A blue New York Knicks jersey with number 11. There is also a homemade card with "Thanks" drawn as the Knicks logo on the cover.
Two Google for Education YouTube thumbnails of students who do not appear very interested. Below the thumbnails is the text, "Examine the expressions on the students’ faces in the YouTube thumbnails. What do you notice? What do you wonder? Do the students look interested or disinterested?"
A typewriter with a single sheet of paper that says "Update" in big letters.
“I just want people to know that AI is being sold as this tech magic – that’s why there’s a little sparkle symbol next to an AI response,” said Sawyer. “But it’s not. It’s built on the backs of overworked, underpaid human beings.”
A subject line from my Gmail inbox: Schools doing this make yours look outdated.
Common Sense Media, the nonprofit known for its age ratings of kids movies and TV, has received funding from OpenAI—the organization wouldn’t say how much—to produce educational materials about AI for teachers and families.
But none of that is inevitable. A grassroots movement is growing among those determined to resist the proliferation of AI in schools. The Civics of Technology Project, founded in 2022 by educators and researchers, wants to instead have administrators, teachers, students and parents prioritize studying “the collateral, disproportionate, and unexpected effects of technology”—including AI. One option is to imagine, and work to bring about, an alternative future in which AI doesn’t dominate. “There are ways that teachers, caregivers and students, too, can say, ‘Well, what if I don’t want to have to use this technology?’” said Charles Logan, a research fellow at Northwestern University and a board member for the Civics of Technology Project.
I realized that, for all our conversations about how the students used MagicSchool, Fairchild and I hadn’t discussed whether he was using AI to generate lesson plans and so on, which the companies typically center in their training materials. When I asked him about this, he admitted he wasn’t. He doubted it would actually save him time, and he also had a deeper reason. “I have an artistic resistance to it,” he said. “For me that’s where the art of teaching sits—processing my students’ needs and building a lesson and then building a rubric and evaluation for it. For me that’s where the emotional and spiritual dialogue between the teachers and students is, so at this time, I’m unwilling to hand that off.” CEI’s Roberts told me that rationale made sense to her. In fact, she said, she wasn’t using AI much herself. Having learned all she had about AI and its potential role in education, she’d arrived at a sharp critique of the technology. At one point, she texted me, “The negative impacts of tech always impact low-income Black and Brown communities first and more.”
Otherwise I rarely observed the students checking its outputs. A couple of times, I saw errors or biases go apparently unnoticed, and in class debates some cited comments from “the AI” as evidence supporting their claims.
Once, when asked to pretend to be John Brown—an abolitionist who murdered five supporters of slavery—the chatbot insisted, as Brown, that violence is never the answer.
From the University of Michigan's website: "Understand that your usage of GenAI-based tools can give you the means to better not just yourself, but also society as a whole, and there is an ethical responsibility towards doing so."
A bottle of New Coke in a refrigerator.
Easter May Knox shook her head. The 74-year-old with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease lowered the KN95 mask she wore to protect herself from the pollution. “He [Musk] may be a millionaire, a billionaire — whatever kind of ‘aire he is,” she said. “But what we need here is clean air.”
Metal sided building with Thank You painted on the side in blue paint.
Oregon’s governor made a deal with Nvidia to get AI education in Oregon schools. What does it mean? Oregon is one of several states making deals with the trillion-dollar chip maker to get artificial intelligence lessons into K-12 and college classes
What About The Effects of Generative AI Chatbots on Children? What we know is concerning.
But AI’s contribution to air pollution and the public health burden is often missing from conversations about responsible AI design. Why? Because ambient air pollution is a “silent killer.” While concerns about the public health impacts of data centers, including potential links to cancer rate increases, are beginning to surface, most AI-model developers, practitioners, and users simply aren’t aware of the serious health risks tied to the energy and infrastructure powering modern AI systems.
MIT's study identified several ways talking to ChatGPT — whether through text or voice — can affect a person's emotional experience, beyond the general finding that higher use led to "heightened loneliness and reduced socialization." For example, participants who already trusted the chatbot and tended to get emotionally attached in human relationships felt lonelier and more emotionally dependent on ChatGPT during the study. Those effects were less severe with ChatGPT's voice mode, though, particularly if ChatGPT spoke in a neutral tone. Discussing personal topics also tended to lead to loneliness in the short-term, and interestingly, speaking to ChatGPT about more general topics was more likely to increase emotional dependence.
A stack of four books about Artificial Intelligence and technology: Viral Justice by Ruha Benjamin Artificial Unintelligence by Meredith Broussard More than a Glitch: Confronting Race, Gender and Ability Bias in Tech by Meredith Broussard Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism by Safiya Umoja Noble
A protestor holding a sign that reads, "Protect Trans Youth."
Being AI literate means looking beyond a ChatGPT feature update to its consequences for actual humans.
Happy National AI Literacy Day! What is this day? Whatever it may be, let’s focus on literacy rather than promoting generative AI.
AI vocabulary presentation title slide.
A Google Maps AI-generated business summary: Lu and Aug's Ice people say this ice cream shop serves up delicious affogatos and soft serve ice cream with a variety of toppings, including the popular Strawberry Supreme. They also highlight the friendly and efficient service, and the fun and cozy atmosphere.
Silicon Valley seems hellbent on creating machines which can do our thinking for us. Why should any of us want that? I certainly don’t want that - I don’t learn anything unless I do the mental work to create a complete framework of understanding in my mind. I don’t talk about things I don’t understand because that’s the fastest way you can make a fool of yourself.
AI Needs Your Help Artificial Intelligence is facing a crisis: humans are consuming far too many precious resources that AI needs to thrive. Every sip of water you take and every light you turn on could be sustaining the AI systems that uphold your digital conveniences.
Cage won the award for “Best Actor in a Film” for his role in 2024’s Dream Scenario. After thanking director Kristoffer Borgil, Cage turned his attention to AI. “There is another world that is also disturbing me. It’s happening right now around all of us: The new AI world. I am a big believer in not letting robots dream for us. Robots cannot reflect the human condition for us,” the actor said. “That is a dead end if an actor lets one AI robot manipulate his or her performance even a little bit, an inch will eventually become a mile and all integrity, purity and truth of art will be replaced by financial interests only. We cannot let that happen.” “The job of all art in my view, film performance included, is to hold a mirror to the external and internal stories of the human condition through the very human thoughtful and emotional process of recreation. A robot cannot do that. If we let robots do that, it will lack all heart and eventually lose edge and turn to mush. There will be no human response to life as we know it. It will be life as robots tell us to know it,” he continued. He left his fellow actors with a strong call to action: “I say, protect yourselves from AI interfering with your authentic and honest expressions.”
A drawing of a beach with grasses, sand, clouds, and the sun in the sky.
AI Vocabulary For Teachers Monday, February 10, 2025, Hershey Lodge Empire A 9:30 AM - 10:20 AM
From the Rethinking with Adam Grant website: Sam Altman is the CEO and cofounder of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. He and Adam discuss AI's advances in creativity and empathy, its ethical challenges, and the role of human oversight. Sam and Adam also discuss strategies for adapting to a changing world and their hopes for technology that enhances human progress while maintaining human values.
A message Tom Mullaney sent to a friend on LinkedIn at 11:36 AM Friday: "I know. I am dying for distractions. I'm upset with the NBA for not generating more news."
From the Weird Al subreddit: Moderator Post: In light of recent events, Twitter links are now banned. We do not tolerate intolerance here. If you have a problem with this the door is over there, Weird Al hates Nazis judging by his song lyrics and blue sky posts, I think you should too.
Please Don't Use Generative AI To Mimic Historical Figures. An atrocious misuse of technology. Trigger Warning: An AI-generated image of Anne Frank and “activity” from SchoolAI in very poor taste.
How can a set of technologies premised on massive data collection, concentration of compute, the need to unretire coal fired power plants and the Three Mile Island nuclear plant to feed insatiable power demands, and a huge amount of specialized equipment be anything but authoritarian?
All of this reminds us, again, that people have a revulsion to being prompted to engage with random shit posted by inhuman AI profiles for the purposes of being delivered more ads. This project, and Hayes’s quote, is emblematic of the worst kinds of AI hype, where tech executives tell us generative AI is inevitable and is definitely going to change everything, when all evidence suggests that people do not want this. But Meta is hell-bent on making us do it anyway, regardless of how many times it fails. The AI slop will continue until morale improves.
AI has not lived up to many of the promises put forth by tech companies, both big and small. In 2024, AI-specific devices fell flat. AI on Mac or PC hasn’t made a strong impression either. There hasn’t been a wave of AI applications that use new laptop’s neural processors, and most applications rely on cloud computing. The main AI applications seem to be coders finding ways to kill their own industry. Otherwise, grifters are using AI to fill the internet with fakes, junk, and slop. On-device AI pushes regular consumers to write or summarize emails with AI. That doesn’t exactly sound like the killer AI app.
The Punished For Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children And How We Heal book cover. A child standing and wearing a backpack is the letter "i" in "Dreaming."
Google Search: "is today christmas?" AI Overview generated text: "No, today is not Christmas, but it will be on Wednesday, December 25, 2024. Christmas is a holiday that celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, and is celebrated by most Christians on December 25th. The origins of the holiday are uncertain, but the Christian church in Rome observed the Feast of the Nativity on December 25th by 336."
The hype about AI and education took off like a rocket ship. Books claiming AI would revolutionize education were published and promoted widely on social media by May 2023. A next-character prediction algorithm with no communicative intent could tutor students, give them feedback on their writing, and “democratize learning,” whatever that means.
Charlie Kelly of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia explains a conspiracy in front of a corkboard. The words "Pedagogy," "Stochastic Parrots," "Inherent Harms," and "Inherent Flaws" have been added to the corkboard.
A principled alternative—by writers, for writers. We think writers should be free to express their creative vision—away from aggressive censorship and the prying eyes of AI. Your content is yours. No generative AI-ever.
Other countries level the playing field for their kids through redistributive policies like child welfare, public housing, nationalized health care, etc, all of which would require increasing the tax burden on economic elites. It should not surprise us to see which of those dreams receive fawning coverage during primetime corporate media.
If we don’t equip students with critical skills like AI collaboration, entrepreneurial thinking, and effective communication, they risk falling far behind peers who are afforded these opportunities. And as AI continues to advance, that gap only widens.
I have not seen experts such as Dr. Timnit Gebru and Dr. Emily M. Bender warn of the inherent dangers of word processing or collaborative whiteboarding. I have never typed into Google Docs and seen “You are a waste of time and resources” appear on the screen. I do not place sticky notes in a FigJam and suddenly see “Please die” on the screen.
This is all bad design, of course. Technology that actually serves people takes into account human behavior. Maybe there is a way to make generative AI useful, but in its current state, I feel tremendously sorry for anyone gullible enough to use it as a research tool.
Product Improvement and Training Allow Grammarly to train its models and improve its product for everyone by using your content. Toggle this to the left to turn it off.
I do appreciate the acknowledgment that reputable websites and textbooks are more reliable than AI. Maybe teachers and students should just use those resources in the first place?
ChatGPT's search feature was frequently wrong, but rarely unsure. The Tow Center asked ChatGPT to identify the publication, date, and URL for 200 quotes. It was confidently wrong in 146 cases.
If most of ChatGPT’s active users are students, how is that a revolutionary, money-making business?
"Students Use AI. Teachers Do Not." Two years later, neither ChatGPT nor generative AI lives up to the hype.
Two years after capturing the public’s imagination, it seems ChatGPT’s main legacy has been in padding the finances of tech’s biggest players. The next phase of AI may prove more democratic, as smaller, specialized models lower the barriers to entry. But for now, the revolution that was meant to reshape our world has mostly extended Big Tech’s wealth and influence. Who would have guessed that AI’s most astounding feature would be making the world’s most powerful companies even more powerful.
The charts in this column illustrate all the ways new money has flowed to tech giants and others in their orbit, from consultancy firms to server vendors like Dell Inc., as hype about an AI revolution gripped the market and sent businesses scrambling to remain competitive. That raises an uncomfortable prospect: that this supposedly revolutionary technology might never deliver on its promise of broad economic transformation, but instead just concentrate more wealth at the top.
A photograph of Little Italy in New York City from 1900.
A ChatGPT-generated image of New York City's Little Italy in 1900. There is a storefront with two signs that say, "Little Italy." Other storefronts have unreadable, nonsensical text. Two Italian flags are inaccurate for 1900 because their stripes are horizontal instead of vertical and they are missing arms of Savoy and crown. Clothes drying on a clothesline are red, white, and green like the flag.