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Submission + - Amazon, CSTA Aim to Make Amazon the Career Counselor for Schoolkids Aged 5-18

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Last month, on the same day the Los Angeles Times was sounding the alarm on Amazon's self-serving philanthropy, the White House and National Science Foundation (NSF) held a White House-hosted event on K-12 AI+CS education, at which it was announced the nonprofit Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) had received a $1.5 million donation from Amazon. "Amazon’s donation will enable CSTA to develop, launch and advise on career exploration programming to help educators prepare students [in grades K-12] for future workforce demands," explained CSTA in a press release.

One month later, what that may look like in practice is hinted at in a new CSTA job listing for a Professional Learning Manager who will "collaborate directly with Amazon Future Engineer to build a collective career exploration vision (based on Amazon Future Engineer + Gallup’s Careers of the Future Research) that can be scaled across industries, organizations, and educational institutions." The job listing adds, "Amazon Future Engineer currently runs a virtual field trip program called Career Tours that aims to expose students to the diversity of careers and people working in technology. Over the next three years, CSTA and Amazon will partner to improve and scale Career Tours to reach millions of students around the globe. In this role, you will serve as the lead consultant for this partnership."

These efforts, CSTA explains, will further Amazon Future Engineer's aim "to develop products/programs that allow students to 'explore what professionals in the careers of the future do' and foster students' belief that 'these careers are for me.'" Once again, life imitates The Simpsons!

Submission + - MLK Day Brings Doodle, Not CBC's Requested EEOC Workforce Numbers, to Google.com

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Having unpleasantly learned that what Google says and does when it comes to hiring can be two different things, it wasn't too surprising to see the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) take a trust-but-verify approach to Google CEO Sundar Pichai's assurances of the company's commitments to racial equity in light of continuing widespread layoffs within the tech industry.

To evaluate if the massive tech layoffs have had a disparate impact, members of the CBC in December sent a letter to the Dept. of Labor and Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requesting "a current breakdown of current gender, racial, and ethnic demographics in the tech industry disaggregated by job category and leadership role," not unlike the 'raw' workforce numbers companies must provide to the EEOC in their EEO-1 reports. Back in the day, tech companies came under fire for hiding their EEO-1 data behind a claim of trade secrets, but increasing pressure eventually prompted them to disclose this data and promise greater transparency in the future. However, the tech giants have been guilty of foot-dragging on their promised EEO-1 workforce data disclosures, forcing the CBC to ask the EEOC for up-to-date data. Pichai, for example, points Google.com visitors to the company's 2023 Diversity Report, which only provides a URL with a broken link for its stale 2021 EEO-1 workforce numbers. Google encourages visitors to ignore the 'raw' EEO-1 numbers and instead rely on its own self-categorized metrics (which are only presented as percentages), as do Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft, who were similarly still pointing website visitors to 2021 EEO-1 workforce data in 2024.

While CBC members won't find the current workforce numbers they're seeking on Google.com, they will find a new Martin Luther King Jr. Day Doodle there today. So, is let-them-eat-doodles the new-let-them-eat-cake?

Submission + - Will Chatbots Teach Your Children? Khan Academy and Bill Gates Are Working on It

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Sal Khan, the founder and CEO of Khan Academy, predicted last year that AI tutoring bots would soon revolutionize education. His vision of tutoring bots tapped into a decades-old Silicon Valley dream: automated teaching platforms that instantly customize lessons for each student (NYT, alt. source). Proponents argue that developing such systems would help close achievement gaps in schools by delivering relevant, individualized instruction to children faster and more efficiently than human teachers ever could. But some education researchers say schools should be wary of the hype around AI-assisted instruction, warning that generative AI tools may turn out to have harmful or "degenerative" effects on student learning.

Khan is one of the most visible proponents of tutoring bots. His Khan Academy introduced a ChatGPT-powered AI chatbot named Khanmigo last year specifically for school use that's been touted by Bill Gates. Gates, who has predicted AI will be 'as good a tutor as any human', explained that his AI 'Aha!' moment came as GPT-4 was first unveiled at a dinner party at his house for 30 invitees, including CEO-led contingents from Gates-advised OpenAI and Microsoft. Trained by OpenAI on Khan Academy course materials in response to an earlier challenge from Gates, OpenAI was able to ace the AP Biology exam in what Gates called a 'mind blowing' demo (Khan recalled in August how OpenAI reached out to him to help them dazzle Gates, as well as efforts to improve ChatGPT's math proficiency, another Gates concern). Microsoft subsequently upped its bet on AI, including an additional $10B for OpenAI, which has been credited for helping boost Microsoft's market cap over Apple.

Gates is also one of Khan Academy's biggest backers — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has provided the nonprofit with nearly $40 million in grants since 2010. And in November, the Gates Foundation committed $4.5 million to Khan Academy Districts "to become the leading Math supplemental curriculum solution in the US to improve engagement, and persistence leading to enhanced Math outcomes for priority students." That grant — and another $1.1 million grant made in November to [Khan Academy TeachAI partner] Code.org "to establish a coalition that develops updated curriculum standards, courses, tools, and assessments to prepare students safely and equitably for an age of Artificial Intelligence" — jibes nicely with dozens of $100K grants the Gates Foundation made in the preceding months to K-12 organizations, including the New York City and Chicago public schools, "to leverage artificial intelligence in conducting research and development in support of math outcomes for students who are Black, Latino, and/or from low-income backgrounds."

Explaining his AI vision in November, Gates wrote, "If a tutoring agent knows that a kid likes [Microsoft] Minecraft and Taylor Swift, it will use Minecraft to teach them about calculating the volume and area of shapes, and Taylor’s lyrics to teach them about storytelling and rhyme schemes. The experience will be far richer—with graphics and sound, for example—and more personalized than today’s text-based tutors." The NY Times article notes that similar enthusiasm greeted automated teaching tools in the 1960s, but predictions that that the mechanical and electronic "teaching machines' — which were programmed to ask students questions on topics like spelling or math — would revolutionize education didn't pan out. So, is this time different?

Submission + - Communications of the ACM: Computing, You Have Blood on Your Hands! 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In the January 2024 Communications of the ACM, Rice University professor and former CACM Editor-in-Chief Moshe Y. Vardi minces no words in Computing, You Have Blood on Your Hands!, noting that the unintended consequences of the rise of social media and mobile computing include hate mongering on a global scale and a worldwide youth mental health crisis.

"How did the technology that we considered 'cool' just a decade ago become an assault weapon used to hurt, traumatize, and even kill vulnerable people?" Vardi asks. "Looking back at my past columns, one can see the forewarnings. Our obsession with efficiency came at the expense of resilience. In the name of efficiency, we aimed at eliminating all friction. In the name of efficiency, it became desirable to move fast and break things, and we allowed the technology industry to become dominated by a very small number of mega corporations. It is time for all computing professionals to accept responsibility for computing's current state. To use Star Wars metaphors, we once considered computing as the 'Rebels,' but it turns out that computing is the 'Empire.' Admitting we have a problem is a necessary first step toward addressing the problems computing has created."

So, how did academic and business readers of the prestigious flagship magazine of the ACM respond to Vardi's call-to-action? Crickets.

Submission + - Congressional Black Caucus Asks EEOC for Workforce Data Tech Promised to Provide

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: To assess any disparate impact of 2023's massive tech layoffs, members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) in December sent a letter to the Dept. of Labor and Equal Opportunity Commission (EEOC) requesting "a current breakdown of current gender, racial, and ethnic demographics in the tech industry disaggregated by job category and leadership role."

Interestingly, the plea for transparency around tech's workforce numbers came as Microsoft publicly celebrated "a decade of transparency," proclaiming itself "one of the most transparent companies of our size when it comes to the diversity and inclusion data we share." In its 2023 Proxy Statement it recently filed with the SEC, Microsoft boasted it's "continued to provide transparency in its progress...towards advancing diversity and inclusion across our workforce," referring readers to Microsoft's 2023 Diversity & Inclusion Report as evidence of its successful progress. While the D&I report is chock full of upbeat fuzzy percentage-based metrics spun from Microsoft's workforce data, Microsoft does not include the 'raw' workforce numbers they are required to report to the EEOC in EEO-1 filings. The most recent EEO-1 numbers Microsoft links to on its Reports Hub are for its Nov. 2021 workforce, which sheds no light on the effects of the reported 240,000 tech layoffs in 2023 that the CBC seeks to investigate. Amazon, Facebook/Meta, and Google all provide links to 'stale' EEO-1 data reflecting their pre-layoff 2021 workforce in their most recent Diversity Reports. While one might be tempted to give Apple kudos for linking to EEO-1 data that's a little less-stale (2022 workforce) than the others, consider that Apple paid a record $25M to the EEOC in 2023 to settle allegations of hiring and recruitment discrimination violations (besting Facebook's $9.5M EEOC settlement to settle similar allegations in 2021).

Back in the day, the tech giants came under fire for hiding their EEO-1 workforce numbers behind a claim of trade secrets until increasing pressure eventually led them to fess up and promise more transparency and timeliness in the future. "I think that this push to get our EEO-1 data out is a good one," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Rev. Jesse Jackson at Microsoft's Dec. 2014 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. "So I want us to take action. By end of this month, we will get it done. And so that's one that you can consider it done by the end of this month."

As last year drew to a close, CNBC and others reported that 2023 was a year of broken DEI promises in the tech industry.

Submission + - It's 2024. Why's Latest Available EEO-1 Workforce Data for Tech Firms From 2021?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Back in the day, the tech giants hid woeful EEO-1 workforce diversity numbers behind a claim of trade secrets until increasing pressure eventually led them to fess up and promise more transparency in the future, even if it proved embarrassing at times.

Thanks to COVID-19, tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft all enjoyed a multi-year reprieve from the EEOC for filing timely EEO-1 workforce diversity data starting with the 2019 workforce that continues to this day. While having a convenient excuse for not publicly disclosing EEO-1 numbers in a timely fashion may have helped some avoid uncomfortable discussions, especially during the height of Black Lives Matter protests, it seems the tech giants had this data available if they wanted to provide this level of transparency. After all, they continued to report upbeat fuzzy percentage-based metrics spun from their workforce data on their diversity websites during this time, it was just the government-mandated absolute numbers they chose not to reveal.

During 2023, as tech CEOs declared COVID workforce foolishness over and presumably poured over their up-to-date workforce numbers to see who they would cut and who they would call back to the office, tech giants Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft do not appear to have disclosed any new EEO-1 data at all, making 2021 the latest year for which absolute workforce numbers drawn from their EEO-1 reports have been made available publicly. Microsoft, which celebrated "a decade of transparency" in November and proclaimed itself "one of the most transparent companies of our size when it comes to the diversity and inclusion data we share" — has even eliminated any mention of the existence of EEO-1 data from its Diversity Report. Google just provides links to its stale EEO-1 workforce numbers in its 2023 Diversity Report (as does Amazon). Facebook/Meta didn't even bother to issue a 2023 Diversity Report, but refers people to its 2022 Diversity Report, which includes a link to stale data from its 2021 EEO-1 filing.

The lack of EEO-1 disclosures in 2023 came in a year that also saw the tech giants' workforces change due to massive downsizing, Apple pay a record $25M to the EEOC to settle allegations of hiring and recruitment discrimination violations (besting Facebook's $9.5M EEOC settlement to settle similar allegations in 2021), and Microsoft inform the SEC and investors in its 2023 Proxy Statement filing it's "continued to provide transparency in its progress towards important environmental and social commitments, including...our progress towards advancing diversity and inclusion across our workforce," referring them to Microsoft's EEO-1 data-free 2023 Diversity & Inclusion Report as evidence of its successful efforts. As the year drew to a close, CNBC and others reported that 2023 was a year of broken DEI promises in the tech industry.

Comment But wait, there's more! (Score 1) 38

Word problem time: Q. If students are required to have 5.5 hours of daily instruction for 180 days in a school year and it costs $37,000-a-year to educate a student, what's an estimated cost of enrolling 3,450 students in a middle school CS course that requires 108 hours? A. 3,450 students X $37,000 per student X 108 hours per CS course / (5.5 hours per day * 180 days per year) = $13.9 million

Submission + - US Dept. of Education Spending $4M to Teach 3,450 Kids CS Using Minecraft

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Among the 45 winners of this year's Education Innovation and Research (EIR) program competitions is Creative Coders: Middle School CS Pathways Through Game Design. The U.S. Dept. of Education is providing the national nonprofit Urban Arts with $3,999,988 to "use materials and learning from its School of Interactive Arts program to create an engaging, game-based, middle school CS course using [Microsoft] Minecraft tools" for 3,450 middle schoolers (6th-8th grades) in New York and California with the help of "our industry partner Microsoft with the utilization of Minecraft Education."

From Urban Arts' winning proposal: "Because a large majority of children play video games regularly, teaching CS through video game design exemplifies CRT [Culturally Responsive Teaching], which has been linked to 'academic achievement, improved attendance, [and] greater interest in school.' The video game Minecraft has over 173 million users worldwide and is extremely popular with students at the middle school level; the Minecraft Education workspace we utilize in the Creative Coders curriculum is a familiar platform to any player of the original game. By leveraging students’ personal interests and their existing 'funds of knowledge', we believe Creative Coders is likely to increase student participation and engagement."

Speaking of UA's EIR grant partner Microsoft, Urban Arts' Board of Directors includes Josh Reynolds, the Director of Modern Workplace for Microsoft Education, whose Urban Arts bio notes "has led some of the largest game-based learning activations worldwide with Minecraft." Urban Arts' Gaming Pathways Educational Advisory Board includes Reynolds and Microsoft Sr. Account Executive Amy Brandt. And in his 2019 book Tools and Weapons, Microsoft President Brad Smith cited $50M K-12 CS pledges made to Ivanka Trump by Microsoft and other Tech Giants as the key to getting Donald Trump to sign a $1 billion, five-year presidential order "to ensure that federal funding from the Department of Education helps advance [K-12] computer science", including via EIR program grants.

Submission + - New York Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft for Copyright Infringement

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "The New York Times," reports The Verge, "is suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, claiming the two companies built their AI models by 'copying and using millions' of the publication’s articles and now 'directly compete' with its content as a result."

From the 69-page Court filing: "Using the valuable intellectual property of others in these ways without paying for it has been extremely lucrative for Defendants. Microsoft's deployment of Times-trained LLMs throughout its product line helped boost its market capitalization by a trillion dollars in the past year alone. And OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT has driven its valuation to as high as $90 billion. Defendants’ GenAI business interests are deeply intertwined, with Microsoft recently highlighting that its use of OpenAI’s 'best-in-class frontier models' has generated customers — including 'leading AI startups' — for Microsoft's Azure AI product."

Describing the Defendants' GenAI Products as "A Business Model Based on Mass Copyright Infringement," the Times' filing provides a number of examples to help make its case.

Comment FSF: Free software, free society, free education! (Score 2) 8

by theodp (#64106795) Attached to: Code.org Sues WhiteHat Jr. For $3 Million

The lawsuit launched by Code.org - the CS education-promoting Big Tech-backed nonprofit whose Board of Directors includes execs from Microsoft (Kevin Scott, CTO), Amazon (David Treadwell, VP eCommerce Services), and Google (Maggie Johnson, VP of Education) - against Bjyu's - the Edtech company that was backed and directed by Mark Zuckerberg's education-democratizing Chan-Zuckerberg initiative - certainly drives home the point of the Free Software Foundation's Free software, free society, free education! fundraising campaign, which stresses that "We can only learn in freedom if the software we use is free."

Submission + - Code.org Sues WhiteHat Jr. for $3M Over Commercial Use of Open-Source Curriculum

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Back in May 2021, tech-backed nonprofit Code.org touted the signing of a licensing agreement with WhiteHat Jr., allowing the Edtech company with a controversial past (Whitehat Jr. was bought for $300M in 2020 by Byju's, an Edtech firm that received a $50M investment from Mark Zuckerberg) to integrate Code.org’s free-to-educators-and-organizations content and tools into their online tutoring service. Code.org did not reveal what it was charging Byju's to use its "free curriculum and open source technology" for commercial purposes, but Code.org's 2021 IRS 990 filing reported $1M in royalties from an unspecified source after earlier years reported $0. Coincidentally, Whitehat Jr. is represented by Aaron Kornblum, who once worked at Microsoft for now-President Brad Smith, who left Code.org's Board just before the lawsuit was filed.

Fast forward to 2023 and the bloom is off the rose, as Court records show that Code.org earlier this month sued Whitehat Education Technology, LLC (Exhibits A and B) in what is called "a civil action for breach of contract arising from Whitehat’s failure to pay Code.org the agreed-upon charges for its use of Code.org’s platform and licensed content and its ongoing, unauthorized use of that platform and content." According to the filing, "Whitehat agreed [in April 2022] to pay to Code.org licensing fees totaling $4,000,000 pursuant to a four-year schedule" and "made its first four scheduled payments, totaling $1,000,000," but "about a year after the Agreement was signed, Whitehat informed Code.org that it would be unable to make the remaining scheduled license payments." While the original agreement was amended to backload Whitehat’s license fee payment obligations, "Whitehat has not paid anything at all beyond the $1,000,000 that it paid pursuant to the 2022 invoices before the Agreement was amended" and "has continued to access Code.org’s platform and content."

That Byju's Whitehat Jr. stiffed Code.org is hardly shocking. In June 2023, Reuters reported that Byju's auditor Deloitte cut ties with the troubled Indian Edtech startup that was once an investor darling and valued at $22 billion, adding that a Byju's Board member representing the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative had resigned with two other Board members. The BBC reported in July that Byju's was guilty of overexpanding during the pandemic (not unlike Zuck's Facebook). Ironically, the lawsuit Exhibits include screenshots showing Mark Zuckerberg teaching Code.org lessons. Zuckerberg and Facebook were once among the biggest backers of Code.org, although it's unclear whether that relationship soured after court documents were released that revealed Code.org's co-founders talking smack about Zuck and Facebook's business practices to lawyers for Six4Three, which was suing Facebook.

Code.org's curriculum is also used by the Amazon Future Engineer (AFE) initiative, but it is unclear what royalties — if any — Amazon pays to Code.org for the use of Code.org curriculum. While the AFE site boldly says, "we provide free computer science curriculum," the AFE fine print further explains that "our partners at Code.org and ProjectSTEM offer a wide array of introductory and advance curriculum options and teacher training." It's unclear what kind of organization Amazon's AFE ("Computer Science Learning Childhood to Career") exactly is — an IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search failed to find any hits for "Amazon Future Engineer" — making it hard to guess whether Code.org might consider AFE's use of Code.org software 'commercial use.' Would providing a California school district with free K-12 CS curriculum that Amazon boasts of cultivating into its "vocal champion" count as "commercial use"? How about providing free K-12 CS curriculum to children who live where Amazon is seeking incentives? Or if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos testifies Amazon "funds computer science coursework" for schools as he attempts to counter a Congressional antitrust inquiry? These seem to be some of the kinds of distinctions Richard Stallman anticipated more than a decade ago as he argued against a restriction against commercial use of otherwise free software.

Submission + - Microsoft President Brad Smith Quietly Leaves Board of Nonprofit Code.org

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Way back in September 2012, Microsoft President Brad Smith discussed the idea of "producing a crisis" to advance Microsoft's "two-pronged" National Talent Strategy to increase K-12 CS education and the number of H-1B visas. Not long thereafter, the tech-backed nonprofit Code.org (which promotes and provides K-12 CS education and is led by Smith's next-door neighbor) and Mark Zuckerberg's FWD.us PAC (which lobbied for H-1B reform) were born, with Smith on board both. Over the past 10+ years, Smith has played a key role in establishing Code.org's influence in the new K-12 CS education "grassroots" movement, including getting buy-in from three Presidential administrations — Obama, Trump, and Biden — as well as the U.S. Dept. of Education and the nation's Governors.

But after recent updates, Code.org's Leadership page now indicates that Smith has quietly left Code.org's Board of Directors and thanks him for his past help and advice. Since November (when archive.org indicates Smith's photo was yanked from Code.org's Leadership page), Smith has been in the news in conjunction with Microsoft's relationship with another Microsoft-bankrolled nonprofit, OpenAI, which has come under scrutiny by the Feds and in the UK. Smith, who noted he and Microsoft helped OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman craft messaging ahead of a White House meeting, announced in a Dec. 8th tweet that Microsoft will be getting a non-voting OpenAI Board seat in connection with Altman's return to power (who that non-voting Microsoft OpenAI board member will be has not been announced).

OpenAI, Microsoft, and Code.org teamed up in December to provide K-12 CS+AI tutorials for this December's AI-themed Hour of Code (the trio has also partnered with Amazon and Google on the Code.org-led TeachAI initiative) . And while Smith has left Code.org's Board, Microsoft's influence there will live on as Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott — credited for forging Microsoft's OpenAI partnership — remains a Code.org Board member together with execs from other Code.org Platinum Supporters ($3+ million in past 2 years) Google and Amazon.

Submission + - Colorado Supreme Court declares Donald Trump is ineligible for the White House 19

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: The AP reports: "A divided Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday declared former President Donald Trump ineligible for the White House under the U.S. Constitution’s insurrection clause and removed him from the state’s presidential primary ballot, setting up a likely showdown in the nation’s highest court to decide whether the front-runner for the GOP nomination can remain in the race."

"Colorado’s highest court overturned a ruling from a district court judge who found that Trump incited an insurrection for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but said he could not be barred from the ballot because it was unclear that the provision was intended to cover the presidency."

"The court stayed its decision until Jan. 4, or until the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the case. Colorado officials say the issue must be settled by Jan. 5, the deadline for the state to print its presidential primary ballots."

Submission + - Google Education VP envisions world where AI generates code, humans proofread it

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Blockly," Google explains in an updated web page, "is a visual programming editor by Google that uses drag-and-drop blocks. It's the engine that powers the most popular [K-12] coding education programs world wide [incl. tech-backed Code.org, Microsoft MakeCode, Google CS First, Scratch, MIT App Inventor]." So, it was interesting that in a featured talk called The Future of Computational Thinking at this year's Blockly Summit, Google VP of Education Maggie Johnson suggested that low-level coding in the future will be done by AI, although humans who understand code will still be needed in the short term to proofread the AI-generated code.

"One can imagine a future where these generative coding systems become so reliable, so capable, and so secure that the amount of time doing low-level coding really decreases for both students and for professionals," argued Johnson. "So, we see a shift with students to focus more on reading and understanding and assessing generated code and less about actually writing it. [...] I don't anticipate that the need for understanding code is going to go away entirely right away [...] I think there will still be at least in the near term a need to understand read and understand code so that you can assess the reliabilities, the correctness of generated code. So, I think in the near term there's still going to be a need for that."

Johnson, who is also a founding Board member of Google-backed nonprofit Code.org (Code.org gets any of the $90M that goes unclaimed by developers in the Google Play Store lawsuit settlement), added: "I think about the way that in K-12 right now that computer science is taught. It obviously is very focused on advanced placement and computer science principles and the approach has been sort of easing the path to undergraduate computer science and that pathway towards a career in computer science or in software engineering at the end. And that whole pathway is, I think, it's going to shift and it's going to change, and I think it is all going to go up a layer of abstraction where there's less of the low-level coding, more about design. And I think that if you think about K-12 education and the current way it's taught — which is very coding specific — how that can start to change to be more computational thinking specific."

In light of the above, should lawmakers perhaps rethink Code.org's advice to "require that all students take computer science to earn a high school diploma" and to "require computer science within all teacher certifications"?

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