Here is the weekly email, a little late this time – but it is fall-break and we have no class this coming Tuesday.  That said there are things that we need to keep moving forward on – as listed below in this email. Please read this email all the way through – there are some important action items that need your attention – which is why this a bit longer than my usual missives. 

But before getting into that let me start by thanking all of you for sharing your personal objects and the stories behind them with all of us. I really appreciated your openness and the discussion that emerged. I also enjoyed the ghazals that were composed from our discussion of the readings. That was fun. Thanks also to EdX for their after class reflection. 

From my side, knowingai.org is now live with WordPress installed. No content there as of yet. Building it is what we will be working on for the rest of the semester – which is the big shift coming up. 

We have 7 weeks to build the website. And this will be a team effort. Our existing groups (that we used for the Meso projects) will now dissolve and we will form a new organizational structure. Essentially, we will become The 691 Design Team, tasked with building the knowing.org website site. We have a drop-dead deadline of December 1 to launch the site. As in any organization each of us will take on a different role. My tentative list has us needing a project manager, a couple of web designers, a set of  content developers, editors, and testers. There may be other roles that I have not thought through as of yet.

I have created a tab on our signup google doc (here) with a list of roles and I need you to add your first and second choices there by midnight Saturday, October 17. I will assign roles before class so we can start working in these teams on October 20. 

And of course we have our usual list of tasks, given below.  

• Continue working on your personal project. Come prepared with ideas and prototypes. We will spend some time in small groups playing and giving feedback to each other. 
• Read Buchanan (1992), “Wicked problems in design thinking,” and “The Ten Key Properties that Define Wicked Problems” and post your questions to the google doc by midnight Saturday, October 17. Same old doc, just a new tab. You know the drill by now. 
• And of course we have our good/bad design examples and after class reflections: Perspective and KitKat respectively. 
• And yes, choose your design team-role by midnight Saturday, October 17 (see above).

A couple of things came across my desk this week.

The MIT Media Lab and its partners have released ImpactBench, which grades ten leading AI models on whether they support or undermine human flourishing, looking at learning, mental health, creativity, autonomy and human connection. They ran more than 48,000 conversations with simulated adult and teen users and give each model a letter grade and an “AI nutrition label.” I am not sure I like the metaphor of the nutrition label … but it is an interesting project and relevant to what we are trying to do. 

The latest episode of the Ezra Klein Show, “This Is Nuts.” An OpenAI Insider Explains Why He Quit, is a conversation with David Robinson, who wrote safety reports on OpenAI’s models and resigned because he no longer believes the company, or the industry, takes safety seriously enough. It is not directly about our work, but it does give the “systems” view something to think about. 

Have a good break (but also keep working on the stuff listed above). I am off to Argentina this Wednesday, and should be back on Monday the 19th and look forward to seeing you on the 20th.