How do emotions impact learning and mental effort? Maybe not as we think

I’m deeply suspicious, not of the claim that emotions are important in learning, but of the assumption made on the back of this, that emotion is quite simply a good thing in learning. It leads to all sorts of wrong assumptions about fun, gaming and no end of odd theorising about happiness.

Like the shallow side of social constructivists, who simply conclude that all learning should be ‘social’, whatever that means, there is a tendency to see ‘emotion’ as a good thing, no matter what. This problem has been exacerbated in recent times by the therapeutic assumption that emotions are somehow intrinsically virtuous.

New study

So this study caught my eye (thanks Carl Hwenrdrick) as it digs into something I had always thought may be true, that positive emotions don’t work the way you think. 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1041608024001900

While feeling good (like being happy or motivated) definitely helps with learning, it doesn’t seem to do so by lowering the mental effort (via cognitive load) needed to process new information. This challenges earlier ideas that positive emotions expand your mental resources.

Emotions aren’t set in stone and shift while you learn. For example, frustration at the start of a tough task can turn into satisfaction as students figure things out. So, frustration isn’t always a bad thing—it can be part of the process. Emotions also shape cognitive load. We usually think of cognitive load as tied to how complex the information is, but this study points out that emotions directly influence how much mental effort a task feels like it takes. Finally, not all positive emotions are equal. While being in a good mood generally helps, too much excitement or overconfidence can backfire. Students might rush through material, miss details, or oversimplify because they are ‘feeling too good’. This last point is important. 

Emotions and learning

Affective learning deals with the emotional side of learners, their emotions and feelings. These feelings cover a wide range of positive and negative attitudes, interests, beliefs and motivations before, during and after learning. 

Teachers, lecturers and trainers are professional learners and often understate the role that emotions play in learning. Yet speak to any learner and many learners will report not what they achieved in learning but how they felt. Few get through school without feeling bored or indifferent to lessons and subjects that seem dull, remote and irrelevant. Fewer still get through a degree without feeling numbed in boring lectures. On the other hand, successful learners report excitement, engagement and feelings of pride and achievement. The point is that this can go both ways.

This complex world of feelings and emotions is often sidelined by the dominance of the purely rational, academic cognitive side of learning theory. This is partly down to the dominance of Bloom’s silly taxonomy, the cognitive domain being only one of three, the other two the psychomotor and affective are often completely ignored. 

Kahneman

Kahneman posits the idea that we have two brains, in Thinking Fast and Slow; System 1 - fast, emotional and instinctive, also System 2 - slower and rational. I am no longer convinced that the distinction is as clear as we think it is (sometimes expressed as elephant and rider). Our brain has substantial weaknesses, due to its long and messy evolutionary history. We know that it stubbornly procrastinates, fails to remain attentive (attention being a necessary condition for most learning) and easily distracted. It is also subject to emotional pulls and mood swings, even depression. This is both a blessing and a curse. The emotive dimension of learning is often underestimated but it can also distract and over-stimulate. 

Krathwohl

Everyone knows Bloom, but we hear little about the man who completed Bloom’s work in the affective domain, the less known David Krathwohl. Although Bloom's original taxonomy consisted of six categories, when Krathwohl revised it in 2001, he put emphasis on the interaction between the cognitive and affective. With Lori Anderson he also helped reduce Bloom’s cognitive taxonomy down to four categories or knowledge dimensions:

   Factual knowledge

   Conceptual knowledge

   Procedural knowledge

   Metacognitive knowledge

For each of these four, smaller dimensions were identified. He also changed the cognitive processes to verbs and renamed Evaluation and Synthesis as Creation.

Krathwahl then proposed six levels of affective learning:

   Characterization

   Organization

   Valuing

   Responding

   Receiving

My own view is that this Affective Taxonomy suffers from the same hierarchical rigidity as Bloom’s taxonomy in the Cognitive domain. It is far too rigid and hierarchical. Some even argue that there is no real taxonomy of affective learning as it emerges from or is part of the cognitive domain. Affective factors are also difficult to identify and assess as they involve feelings, attitudes, and beliefs, so ignored as something difficult to measure, vague and unimportant. While there is recognition that feelings and emotions play a strong role in motivation and learning, it is rarely be seen as being on a par with its cognitive counterpart.

There is certainly the tendency for schools and academia to focus on text-based, pure reason, as their primary skillset, at the expense of other aspects of learning. This has led to a paucity of research in the area. 

Speak to workplace trainers or sports coaches and you will hear far more about affective learning, as it really does matter. These are ever present in learning and can also be internalised, either to hinder learning or harnessed and used positively by the learner to move forward. So feelings play a strong role in both demotivation and motivation. Understanding their role is essential if you are a learning professional, yet few could name a single theorist in this area.

Panksepp

Jaak Panksepp introduces the evolutionary origins of emotions and warns us that although emotions are vital in learning, they can also hinder learning. Panksepp saw life as being empty without emotions, emotions being survival features, as part of our evolutionary heritage. We do not teach or learn these seven PRIMARY affective systems, as they are innate:

  SEEKING (expectancy)

  FEAR (anxiety)

  RAGE (anger)

  LUST (sexual excitement)

  CARE (nurturance)

  PANIC/GRIEF (sadness)

  PLAY (social joy)

We can learn from these emotions, but we do not learn them, only learn to modulate them,  He did think that they formed the basis of our personality, different emphases producing different personality types. SECONDARY emotional processes are learnt through classical and operant conditioning and TERTIARY emotions are sensory (taste, pleasure, pain) and homeostatic affects (hunger and thirst). 

We, unlike animals, are cognitive creatures, but he regrets the common disregard of emotions and our evolutionary heritage in understanding the foundations of learning and higher cognitive processes. Much of what is presented in traditional learning theory, whether rewards, punishments or reinforcements actually rely on the emotional responses of the brain. Yet emotions are a double-edged sword.

Some emotions, such as RAGE, FEAR and PANIC are not conducive to learning and may inhibit or hinder learning. On the other hand, learning may benefit from the SEEKING emotion, with its feeling of enthusiasm, as it is instinctive for survival, it promotes learning through purpose, anticipation and curiosity. Its absence diminished a disposition towards learning.

Damasio & Immordino‐Yang

Damasio & Immordino‐Yang see emotions and reason as entwined or enmeshed. They not only not only regulate our lives, they regulate learning. Emotion is therefore critical to learning and memories well as playing a powerful role in learning as motivators.

Conclusion

A complex area but we must be careful of being too shallow on our consideration of emotions. It may be that acts of learning or thinking induce emotions, not that emotions are always the well spring for learning. It is also clear that they may limit, cap or damage learning. We must keep a close eye of the detailed research in this area, rather than trite statements about the important and efficacy of learning. 

 

Do DEI programmes need a reality check?

You may feel uncomfortable reading this, as it is a contentious area. But contention must not be left to fester, sides becoming increasingly polarised. 

Companies and educational institutions are pouring billions into Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But do they work? DEI has to face up to the evidence, and there is a case for rethinking diversity training. Are we getting it all wrong with billions spent, but does DEI deliver? Mandatory training seems to have a backlash problem and unintended consequences. Turns out, the evidence does not support this spend. Could this training be hurting more than helping and do they need a reality check?

PAPER

This paper by the NCRI points out some serious flaws in some DEI approaches, and adds to the growing body of larger and wider studies that came to the same conclusion.

They mostly have no significant effect as they focus on the wrong thing – training not process. Indeed, some DEI programs stir up resentment and suspicion, making things worse rather than better. 

Mandatory training has led to a backlash, as Forcing people into diversity training can create discomfort and even hostility. Nobody likes feeling blamed and you donpt win people over by accusatory tactics.

‘Anti-oppression’ rhetoric tends to polarise people as it seems explicitly political. Materials (identified in the paper) that emphasise systemic oppression and victimhood often make participants view others through a hostile lens.

Another danger is that perception becomes reality, where DEI narratives lead people to see prejudice and unfairness in neutral situations. This exposure to anti-racism or anti-Islamophobia narratives can increase participants’ willingness to punish perceived ‘oppressors’ without clear proof of wrong-doing.

There is also an interesting  discussion in the paper surfacing DEI narratives to controlling tendencies. Some DEI content appears to foster controlling and punitive mindsets, authoritarian traits of authoritarianism This is interesting, and I true to a degree.

CONCLUSION

I’ve been writing about this for nearly 20 years and this is yet another paper that calls for an honest evaluation of this gargantuan spend and shines a much-needed light on the unintended consequences of many DEI approaches. It’s shocking that so much money is spent on DEI without robust evidence of effectiveness or harm mitigation. Evidence like this should be a wake-up call for organisations to rethink how they handle diversity training—but it won’t. Why not? We are in an evidence-free zone, where even discussion of the evidence cannot happen. That’s why The New York Times and Bloomberg shelved coverage 

EVIDENCE

There is a consistent theme here - mandatory, accusatory, or one-off DEI efforts can do more harm than good. The key is building trust, creating buy-in, and focusing on systemic change rather than short-term fixes. On that front I highly recommend Simon Fanshawe’s excellent book ‘The Power of Difference’. He was a founder of Stonewall and has fought for Gay rights all of his life.

An early study, Kidder et al. (2004), tackled the backlash that DEI programs can trigger when framed as affirmative action. Turns out, calling it affirmative action often sets off alarms about reverse discrimination, making people feel unfairly targeted. Instead of promoting diversity, it can lead to resentment, undermining the very goal of the programs. This research was one of the first to flag the danger of how DEI is framed.

Then along came a big one Kalev, Dobbin, & Kelly (2006), who found that mandatory diversity training doesn’t just fail—it can actually backfire. Employees often resist being told they have unconscious biases, which can foster defensiveness. The researchers suggested that voluntary training or pairing it with programs like mentorship schemes works far better, making employees feel part of the solution rather than the problem. Legault, Gutsell, & Inzlicht (2011) looked at anti-prejudice messaging and found something surprising: when people feel pressured or coerced into thinking a certain way, they dig their heels in. Instead of reducing bias, these messages can actually make it worse. Giving people more autonomy in how they engage with DEI efforts might be a smarter move. Fast forward a few years, to Moss-Racusin et al. (2016) who found that programs dangling carrots or sticks to enforce diversity goals often fail. People respond better when their motivation comes from within. The takeaway? If you want people to embrace DEI, make it about shared values, not external pressure.

Yes it’s Dobbin & Kalev (2016) again, showing why so many DEI programs flop. Surprise, surprise, forcing people to participate doesn’t help. In fact, mandatory sessions can spark resistance. Instead, they found that voluntary programs, mentorships, and leadership support yield better results by creating buy-in and trust. Leslie (2019) shines a light on unintended consequences. Leslie found that bias-focused training can backfire by reinforcing stereotypes and creating perceptions of unfairness. The lesson? A clumsy approach to diversity can end up dividing people rather than bringing them together.

More recently we have a meta-analysis is a big deal because it pulled together loads of research on DEI training by Moss-Racusin et al. (2016).  The verdict? There’s not enough evidence showing these programs work, especially the quick-fix ones like single seminars. Long-term, systemic change is what’s needed, not just ticking the “we did training” box. Iyer (2022) then dug into why people oppose DEI programs, especially those from so-called “advantaged” groups. The big issue? They often feel threatened or unfairly targeted. Ignoring their concerns only fuels resistance, so a more inclusive approach that engages everyone might be the way forward.

Burnett & Aguinis (2024) pointed out that DEI training aimed at specific groups can lead to discomfort and defensiveness, which defeats the purpose. They suggest reframing these programs to be less accusatory and more about shared goals to avoid making people feel unfairly singled out.

Bibiography

Kidder, D. L., Lankau, M. J., Chrobot‐Mason, D., Mollica, K. A., & Friedman, R. A. (2004). Backlash toward diversity initiatives: Examining the impact of diversity program justification, personal and group outcomes. International Journal of Conflict Management, 15(1), 77–102. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb022908

Kalev, A., Dobbin, F., & Kelly, E. (2006). Best practices or best guesses? Assessing the efficacy of corporate affirmative action and diversity policies. American Sociological Review, 71(4), 589–617. https://doi.org/10.1177/000312240607100404

Legault, L., Gutsell, J. N., & Inzlicht, M. (2011). Ironic effects of antiprejudice messages: How motivational interventions can reduce (but also increase) prejudice. Psychological Science, 22(12), 1472–1477. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797611427918

Moss-Racusin, C. A., van der Toorn, J., Dovidio, J. F., Brescoll, V. L., Graham, M. J., & Handelsman, J. (2016). A “scientific diversity” intervention to reduce gender bias in a sample of life scientists. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 22(3), 295–306. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000070

Dobbin, F., & Kalev, A. (2016). Why diversity programs fail. Harvard Business Review, 94(7-8), 52–60. https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail

Leslie, L. M. (2019). Diversity initiative effectiveness: A typological theory of unintended consequences. Academy of Management Review, 44(3), 538–563. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2017.0087

Paluck, E. L., Porat, R., Clark, C. S., & Green, D. P. (2021). Prejudice reduction: Progress and challenges. Annual Review of Psychology, 72, 533–560. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-071620-030619

Iyer, A. (2022). Understanding advantaged groups’ opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies: The role of perceived threat. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 16(4), e12666. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12666

Burnett, L., & Aguinis, H. (2024). How to prevent and minimize DEI backfire. Organizational Dynamics, 53(2), 100981. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2023.100981

Fanshawe, S. (2021). The power of difference: Where the complexities of diversity and inclusion meet practical solutions. Kogan Page Publishers.

Acronyms, alliteration and absurdity: the sad truth about Organisational 'Values'

I had an epiphany some years back. In a brief conversation with a young woman, in the queue for lunch at a corporate ‘values’ day (I was a Director), opened my eyes up to the whole values thing in organisations. 

“I have my values,” she said, “and they’re not going to be changed by a HR department.... I’ll be leaving in a couple of years and no doubt their HR will have a different set of values… which I’ll also ignore”. Wisest thing I heard all day.

You’ve probably had the ‘values’ treatment. Suddenly, parachuted out of HR, comes a few abstract nouns, or worse, an acronym, stating that the organisation now has some really important ‘values’. Even worse, an expensive external agency may have juiced them up. I genuinely like organisations that have a strategy, purpose, even a mission. But the obsession with organisational values I just don't buy.

Not long afterwards my fears were confirmed. I chaired a Skills Summit, where innumerable HR folk pompously paraded their company values in a series of talks. An endless stream of abstract nouns, all of which seemed like things any normal human being would want in any context, in or out of work - you know the words - integrity, innovation, honesty, customer-focus, community....  After a full day of this stuff I was impressed by the guy who ran a small, very successful software company, who stood at the podium, and claimed that his company didn't really have any stated values and felt that the whole 'values' thing could be replaced by one phrase 'Don't be a dick!". That became a meme some years back and touched a nerve because it cut through the hubris.

Why HR-driven values are out of touch with reality?

Having dealt with hundreds of large organisations for more almost 40 years, I have yet to find one whose values were anything more than platitudes. They are invariably a crude mixture of reactive PR, HR overreach even a marketing ploy. Usually a crude selection from a list of abstract nouns, often forced into an idiotic acronym, they bear no relation to reality. Even when masked by complex consultancy reports and training - it's almost always bullshit Bingo.

Why would we imagine that HR have any skills in this area? In what sense are they 'experts' in values? For me, it is a utopian view of work and organisations. I can remember the day when organisational 'value' lists never existed. People were more honest and realistic about expectations. They came in when HR suddenly decided that they had to look after our emotional and moral welfare - always a ridiculous idea.

Values-washing

The banks were full of this 'values' culture – that was before the financial crash. I worked with many of them. It was all puff and PR. People do not, and don't, buy into this stuff. They can barely recall what the values are. I have values and I'm not interested in what HR, or some external consultant, says my values should be. The even more ridiculous idea that people who don't adopt those values should be forced out is wrong and illegal.

They shove them on the website but few remember them and even fewer care.... The really interesting thing about 'values' is that those companies who feel most compelled to get them identified - banks, accountancies, consultancies, tech companies, pharma companies etc - are the very companies where they were most ignored. They are blatant attempts at value-washing, appearing to be value driven when you are not.

Try these authenticity tests to your company values. Sniff out the hubris and bullshit.

Test 1: Bad acronyms - values created to fit word

If your values set is an acronym, they’re almost certainly inauthentic. The net result of fuzzy HR thinking is so often the ‘bad acronym’. Chances are that someone has shoehorned some abstract nouns into a word that sounds vaguely positive, completely losing sight of the original intention. Are they telling you that their values ‘just happened’ to fall into that acronym? Actually, what happens is that at least some of the values emerge from the acronym. That's bullshit.

How about this from a Cheshire voluntary group: FLUID - Freedom 2 Love Ur Identity. Or another real example of a crap acronym: VALUE - this HR person actually went online as she could only think of Value Added….. and wanted others to fill the acronym out! They did, and she was delighted with, Value Added Local, User friendly Experience. What a load of puff. 

When values are created to fit a word you are engaging in an infantile exercise that treats employees like children. Even worse is the use of middle letters, rendering the acronym, as an aide memoire, completely useless. Here’s a real example. It’s a cracker. PEOPLE: Positive Spirit and Fun, HonEsty and Integrity, Opportunities Based on Merit, Putting the Team first, Lasting value for Clients and People, Excellence through Professionalism. One overlong, impossible to remember acronym with eleven nouns, and I love the way they have to use the ‘E’ in the middle of HonEsty to make it work. This, by the way, is from an HR consultancy.

It’s not that I hate acronyms. They’re great as memorable cues. For example, I rather like ABC (Airways, Breathing, Circulation) in first aid. I also have a soft spot for funny acronyms, such as ALITALIA (Airplane Lands In Turin And Luggage In Ancona), BAAPS (British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeon) unbelievably a real organisation, and DIMWIT (Don't Interrupt Me While I'm Talking).… it’s just that I’m a fully paid up member of the AAAA, the Association Against Acronym Abuse. And let's just quietly forget Microsoft's 'Critical Update Notification Tool'.

Test 2: Alliteration test

You hear alliterative value lists all the time  - 'Imagination, Integrity, Innovation' (two organisations I know have this one set, clearly having cribbed it from the internet, or lists of 'C' words such as creativity, curiosity and collaborative. These are far too conveniently alliterative for my liking. The world is not intrinsically alliterative and if your list of values all start with the same letter - it's forced nonsense. 

Test 3: Negative test

Lists of values are often so obvious that they are hardly worth mentioning. Sure, you can say we all need to be 'Customer friendly' and so on. But who would say that being Customer unfriendly was ever on the cards? The ‘negation’ test is a useful filter. Ask whether any normal human being would deny having the stated opposite or negative value. If the answer is invariably NO, as it’s not a value but a basic, common sense belief. Human nature is a complex thing and people are too different to be corralled into value sets. Beware of BIG words like integrity, imagination, creativity, innovation…… if your values are abstract platitudes – no one will care.

Test 4: Are they really values?

A value is something that determines a moral decision. Yet many organizational ‘values’ are not values at all. ‘Imagination’, for example, is not a moral value, neither I would argue is 'creativity'. I’m not sure that ‘Leadership’ is an intrinsic value, in the sense that Pol Pot was a leader. So, for this test, look at each value in turn and ask whether it really is a value or activity, competence or some other thing? 

Test 5: Diversity problem

There’s something odd about having diversity as a value within a non-diverse, fixed value set. Empirically, people have different sets of values. We know this from large-scale studies, such as the World Values' Survey, going since 1989, in over 100 countries. An organisation is likely to have a mix of nationalities and cultures; religious, secular, liberal, conservative, individualistic, communal. Imposing a single set of values from above may not fit with this diversity of cultures and values. If diversity of values matters, the imposition of a set of fixed values makes little sense. 

To practice diversity is to live with a diversity of values. At the Skill Summit, some companies seemed to imply that if you didn't fit in with their imposed values, they'd try to get you out. Really? When values become reasons to sack people, you've got to worry. Even the phrase 'Don't be a dick' worries me. Companies often have dicks in the workplace. So what? Lots of very competent and talented people are 'dicks'. Elon Musk is a dick. Steve Jobs was a dick. Gates was a dick. Get over it. We're all different.

Test 6: Sniff test

It is usually quite easy to expose the hypocrisy of corporate values, namely the

hypocrisy of an organisation that exhorts ‘values’ by looking at its a) tax affairs b) senior staff salaries, c) senior staff bonuses d) customer list e) behaviours. If the company plays the tax avoidance game using offshore tax arrangements, or transfer pricing – that’s almost every large tech company, Google, Apple, Amazon, Starbucks etc. etc. then add hypocrisy to their values. If the CEO earns a ridiculous amount of money but doesn’t pay a living wage to the people at the bottom, the value of their values is nil. To be more precise, if your company pays the CEO way more than x10 the salary of the lowest member of staff – question the values. If, as a bank or other organisation, you’ve mis-sold, ripped people off and generally fiddled the markets, ripped off suppliers, don’t pay on time - don’t even mention values. 

Read Nagel's Equality and Partiality. It doesn't take long to work out that stated public values are often different from personal values. The same with organisations. You get the idea. Subject your organisation to a sniff test. Take the values and really ask – of the people who have told you that they matter – whether they’re applied at the top of the organisation and in its financial dealings. 

Conclusion

In truth, everyone knows that values are actually marketing exercises, used by organisations as slogans. They have little to do with actual behaviour in organisations. They infantilise people, reduce them to ciphers. Ask the person in the street if large organisations have served society well in terms of values? Banks? Supermarket chains? Tax dodging tech companies? Tax dodging retailers? Football organisations like FIFA? Sports organisations? Political parties? Energy companies? No. 

We have a crisis of trust in institutions because people parrot values which they don’t then practice. The ‘values’ obsession is just another example of overreach by HR. It keeps them occupied and gives everyone the sense that moral purpose has been served. It may even mask the reality of controlling behaviour. When I hear people discuss values, or see ‘values’ training, I hear moralising. Lots of back-slapping and ‘aren’t we great’ type platitudes. We’re all different. It is the workplace not a moral crusade. 

Forget the buzzwords, the brutal truth about company values is that a select group at the top come up with 'values' and we all have to march in step to those values, even though, as most of us know, the further up an organisation you go, the more rarified values become.

Groucho Marx said "I have values and if you don't like them.... I have other values" and if asked whether I change my values if they are not the same as my employer, I have argued with many people for many years that employers and HR have no right to do this. The answer is NO. It's an excuse for one group to impose their personal views on another and is causing untold damage in organisations.

People have values, organisations don’t. 

20 ways to use NEW Google Video analysis

Google’s Gemini-Exp-1114 has launched and is getting rave reviews. It beats OpenAIs GPT-4o model hands down.

VIDEO

The BIG new feature is the analysis of video. You can upload video for analysis from your Google drive and off it goes.

Examples include analysis of:

STUDENT PERFORMANCE

Presentation performance

Eye tracking in teaching surgery etc

Coaching on sports performance

Feedback on musical performance

Teacher/lecturer/trainer performance

Compare present with past performance

STUDENT LEARNING

Lecture summarisation

Image, graph, diagram analysis into notes

Generate practical tutorials from tasks/procedures

Vocational tutorials

Pick out key clips

Create branched scenarios from video

TASK ANALYSIS

Behavioural tasks analysis from real world actions

Workflow efficiency - redundant steps in task execution

Performance analysis of meetings

Highlighting health & safety in real world environments

ASSESSMENTS

Assessments created from a lecture

Create video-based assessments

Assessment of student presentation of assignments

Identify specific errors made when doing something

You get the idea.

BREAKTHROUGH

It may lift us out of the current world of teaching and learning, incredibly limited by its focus on ‘text’. We are drowning in a sea of text, yet we know it does little in teaching an assessing actual skills and performance.

MODEL PERFORMANCE

Gemini-Exp-1114 has knocked OpenAI off the top of the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, the de facto goto place for benchmarking. It scored particularly well in Maths, Creative Writing, Longer Query, Instruction Following, Multi-turn and Hard Prompts. This will also help with the video analysis.

LONGER QUERY and Instruction following is a query, prompt or instruction that includes a detailed and extended description of what the user wants the AI to do or generate, allowing you to get the model to follows specific steps, formats, or guidelines in its response.

MULTI-TURN is dialogue with the AI that spans multiple exchanges (turns), where each response builds on the previous ones, remembering prior questions and answers to provide more coherent responses.

HARD PROMPTS are prompts that are intentionally complex, ambiguous, or challenging for the AI to interpret or execute correctly. It is here you expose the model's limitations, so useful in evaluating its boundaries.

CONCLUSION

The competitive race is producing faster better models but more importantly, a new layer of multimodal functionality is making AI far more usable. All of the above show that the new models are improving practical usefulness. AI is moving away from just a model release to something that gives better practical results, especially in education and learning.

Is AI generated video as GOOD as real video in learning?

There are many surprising things we can learn from research into video and learning. I have given many talks on the subject showing research on video and memory (the transience effect), does learning at x1.5 or x2 affect learning? Do segmentation, length, perspective, picture quality, audio and so on affect learning? Here are 15 THINGS that may shock you from the research… some will surprise you!

But is AI generated video as good as real video in learning?

Leiker et al (2023) in Generative AI for learning looked at this hypothesis.

The study took 83 adult learnersn randomly assigning them into 2 groups:
1.    Traditionally produced instructor video
2.    Video with realistic AI generated character
Pre and post learning assessment and survey data were used to determine what was learnt and how learners perceived the two types of video.

NO SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES
No significant differences were found in either learning or how the videos were perceived. They suggest that AI-generated synthetic, talking head learning videos (limited) are a viable substitute for videos.

This doesn't surprise me. I’ve been creating avatars of myself at increasing levels of fidelity in appearance, movement, lip-synch & voice, speaking many languages from Chinese to Zulu. This involved going into a studio for video capture and separate audio studio for voice capture. A range of services are available from Synthesia to Heygen. These avatars can be used as employees in management training, patients in healthcare training and customers in retail training.

SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCES
Any form of human interaction can use this technique for training; in instructional videos, trigger videos, branched scenario videos and videos with additional AI generated learning experiences and assessment. In fact, the use of AI can lead to significant UPLIFTS in learning outcomes. In one trial with a client, before GenAI appeared, in 2020, AI enhanced learning resulted in a 61% increase in assessed learning.

INTERACTIVE CHARACTERS
We now have avatars that one can converse with using AI chatbot technology taking it to another level through scenarios and simulations, using real dialogue. We can expect tons of these to appear in computer games (OpenAI have dealings with GTA). But it is in training that they have huge potential. It has been impossible to create high fidelity simulations for soft skills in the past. I created a lot using fixed video clips in interviewing skills, conflict, language training and so on. They took a lot of time to design write and produce. These are about to get a lot quicker and cheaper.

CONCLUSION
The use of AI generated video is already here and will continue to evolve. We are not yet at the level of full drama but the direction of travel is clear.

GenAI synthesises and does not copy – huge case won by OpenAI

This big news.

In what is seen as a critical test case, SDNY Judge Colleen McMahon has dismissed the idea that training a LLM is copying. The ruling, (without prejudice) did not provide judgements on what I'm about to say, merely stated the arguments and provides the explanatory detail, which I think is sound.

Generative AI ‘synthesises’, it does not copy. This is central. It’s a bit like our brains, we see, hear and read stuff but memory isn’t copying, it’s a process of synthesis and recall is reconstructive. If you believe in the computational theory of mind, as I do, this makes sense (many don't).

What is even more interesting is the conclusion that the datasets are so large than no one piece is likely to be plagiarised. That, I think is the correct conclusion. It would take 170,000 years for us to read the GPT4 dataset, reading 8 hours a day. Any one piece is quantifiably minuscule.

On the idea that regurgitated data has appeared. It would appear that this problem has been solved (almost), with provenance identified by some systems, such as GPT o1. In other words, don't worry, it was an early artefact of largely early systems.

I was always sure that these cases would result in this type of ruling, as the basic law of copyright depends on copying, and that is not what is happening here. All freshly minted content is based on past content to a degree and here it is not just a matter of degree (it’s minuscule) but also the methods used. Complex case but right rationale.

I think we're seeing many of the ethical objections to AI fade somewhat. There are still issues but we're moving past the rhetorical phase of straw men and outrage, into detailed analysis and examination. This is an important Rubicon to have crossed. Many so called 'ethical' issues are just issues that need to be worked through, rather than waved as flags of opposition. We are seeing the resolution of these issues. Time to move on.

AI school opens - learners are not good or bad but fast and slow

What was surprising about this initiative was the strong reaction of outrage and dismissal. It is only 20 people at GCSE level, in a fascinating experiment but you’d think it was Armageddon. We have seen a rise in home schooling and school absences post-Covid. Not all are happy with the current schooling for their children, especially those with special educational needs. Why wouldn’t we want some experimentation in this area and AI is an obvious area to look.

Learners are not good or bad but fast and slow

The pedagogy is sound for some, perhaps not all. Rather than a one-size-fits-all direct instruction, each learner goes at their own pace. Sitting in rows in a classroom, rows in a lecture - that's the model this challenges. The myth is that the traditional model did what many claim it does.

Bloom researched this 50 years ago. Not his famous 2 Sigma paper, which over-egged the effect, but the idea of time to competence. He is best known for his ‘taxonomy’, but he never did draw a pyramid and his taxonomy was radically altered by subsequent researchers, as it was too primitive, rigid and far from representative of how people learn. His more important work in self-paced learning, led him to believe, in ‘Human Characteristics and School Learning’ that learners could master knowledge and skills given enough time. It is not that learners are good or bad but fast and slow. This recognises that the pace of learning varies among individuals rather than being a measure of inherent ability

The artificial constraint of time in timed periods of learning, timetables and fixed-point final exams, is a destructive filter on most. The solution was to loosen up on time to democratise learning to suit the many not the few. Learning is a process not a timed event. Learning, free from the tyranny of time. allows learners to proceed at their own pace.

Bloom proposed three things could make mastery learning fulfil its potential:

1. Entry diagnosis and adaption (50%) - diagnose, predict and recommend

2. Address maturation (25%) - personalise and adapt

3. Instructional methods (25%) - match to different types of learning experiences and time

That is what they are doing here. Lesson plans focus on learners rather than the traditional teacher-centric model. Assessing prior strengths and weaknesses, personalising to focus more on weaknesses and less on things known or mastered. It’s adaptive, personalised learning. The idea that everyone should learn at the exactly same pace, within the same timescale is slightly ridiculous, ruled by the need for timetabling a one to many, classroom model.

Learning coaches

There are three learning coaches, that’s one per 7 pupils, quite a good staff/pupil ratio compared to almost all schools. They are trained to oversee and encourage, rather than teach directly. That’s fine, as the direct instruction is done online.

By outsourcing subject matter expertise to the technology – AI has a degree in every subject, speaks many languages, can be adjusted to any level. It is this access to any subject that is so compelling. I have written about the realisation of a Universal teacher before. It is getting ever nearer.

It is also available 24/7, anyplace, the advantages over a strictly timetabled school are obvious. Holidays can also be taken at any time. These are simply practical advantages.

On top of this are the opportunities to make learning e accessible through adjusting the level of the language and opportunities for T2S and S2T, along with help on dyslexia and other disabilities, at a level way above normal school environments. 

Criticisms

One criticism is that this will not developing emotional intelligence, as if single-age groups, sitting 30 or more in a small room encourages this more than smaller groups. They have learning coaches and are still speaking and interacting with each other. Do we say that working remotely from home has the same effect? Yet that has been normalised. At least these students are together in one place.

There is this idea that the only way to develop critical thinking is sitting in a row in a classroom or lecture theatre. Critical thinking is not some isolated skill taught on its own, it needs domain knowledge and this is what this approach encourages. AI can already critique a claim, debate with you and critique your own work. It will also unpack its own reasoning.

There is also plenty of opportunity for creating safe spaces for discussion and debate. Debate and discussion can be fostered formally and informally in this environment. There is even the possibility of debating online adversaries. The learning coaches deal with behaviour, public speaking and debate.

Costs

At an eye watering £27.000 a year, it’s a rich person’s game. With 20 start-up pupils, that’s over half a million revenue straight off the bat. But the cost to the state per pupil is £8500 in Scotland and £7200 elsewhere in the UK. One can see economies of scale emerge quickly if it works. But before spitting out the withering criticism, let’s see if it works.

Conclusion

For the first time in the history of our species we have technology that performs some of the tasks of teaching. We have reached a pivot point where this can be tried and tested. My feeling is that we’ll see a lot more of this, as parents and general teachers can delegate a lot of the exposition and teaching of the subject to the technology. We may just see a breakthrough that transforms education.

5 big surprises in Wharton report on GenAI

Enjoyed this report as it was so goddamn honest, contradicting everything the 'consultants' and 'ethics' folk were recommending for the last year and more!

1. Gen AI Strategy is led internally—NOT by consultants

This bucks the trend. The strategy work is not led by the usual suspects or suspect advisors, many of whom have no real experience of building anything in AI. The bandwagon got bogged down by the sheer weight of hucksters. This technology gives so much agency to individuals within organisations, from to anyone producing text of any kind to coders, that the sisters and brothers are doing it for themselves. You wonder whether consultancy itself is under real threat from AI?

2. NO stringent policies on use in organisations
Interesting. Seems like a contradiction – massive rise in use but little sign of policies being used. I suspect that people have seen through the platitudes that are so often seen in these documents and statements of the blinding obvious, over-egging and exaggerating the ethical dangers.

3. Most employees do NOT face heavy restrictions in accessing Gen AI at their companies
The scepticism, regulatory effort, fear-mongering, even doomsters last year seem to have given way to a more level-headed recognition that this is a technology with real promise, so let's allow folk to use it, as we know they already do! My guess is that this AI on the SLY stuff happened so quickly that organisations just couldn't and didn't know how to respond. Like a lot of tech - it just happens.

4. Companies are adapting by expanding teams and adding Chief AI Officer (CAIO) roles
I wasn’t sure about this, as the first I heard about was in this report! I suspect this is a US thing or exaggerated in the sense of just having someone in the organisation who has emerged as the knowledgeable project manager. Can see it happening though.

5. LESS negativity and scepticism
More decision-makers feel ‘pleased’, ‘excited’, and ‘optimistic’, and less ‘amazed’, ‘curious’ and ‘sceptical’. Negative perceptions are softening, as decision-makers see more promise in Gen AI's ability to enhance jobs without replacing employees. This makes sense. A neat study showed that the scepticism tended to come from those who hadn’t used GenAI in anger. Now that adoption has surged, nearly doubling across functional areas in one year, the practical experimentation has shifted sentiment.

We seem to be going through the usual motions of a technological shift, where we get a period of fierce fear and resistance that gives way to the acceptance that it is all right really. The nay-sayers needed get it out of their systems, before use surges and realism prevails.

https://ai.wharton.upenn.edu/focus-areas/human-technology-interaction/2024-ai-adoption-report/