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Submission + - Bill Gates Gives Governors $650K to 'Guide K-12 Education Policy Related to AI'

theodp writes: Among the latest round of grants from the [Bill] Gates Foundation is one for $650,000 to the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, the stated purpose of which is "to equip governors with knowledge and resources to guide K-12 education policy related to artificial intelligence."

The grant aligns nicely with the Gates Foundation's Monday announcement that it is betting big on AI to boost global health, agriculture and education, starting with a $1 billion "down payment", 40% of which is earmarked for education. It also comes amid a pushback against the use of AI in K-12 in schools, including moratoriums on K-12 generative AI use in the nation's two largest cities, New York City and Los Angeles.

If Gates' push for the nation's Governors to drive K-12 AI policy seems a bit familiar, it may be because Bill Gates was among the so-called CEOS for CS, a who's who of tech leaders whose Code.org-organized PR campaign led to the nation's Governors signing of a compact committing to expand K-12 CS education (including a CS graduation requirement) in their states at the NGA's Summer 2022 Meeting. Ironically, the massive post-COVID tech company layoffs soon followed and after that came the job-disrupting breakout of generative AI, which prompted the tech-backed nonprofit Code.org (who subsequently rebranded as CodeAI) to round up 250+ CEOs for another PR campaign in 2025, this time calling upon state education leaders and policymakers to pivot and further commit to making AI education available for every student as part of a push for 'policy solutions that ensure every student has access to the foundational skills needed to succeed in a world enabled by AI.'

As Yogi Berra might say, "It's déjà vu all over again!"

Comment Re:Goodbye (Score 4, Insightful) 48

Except not to you. You're confusing data minimization (the website doesn't get your name from the token) with unlinkability (nobody can connect your activity to your identity). The *token itself* doesn't reveal your identity, but it leaks data in a wide variety of ways.

Even if you browse via a proxy, if the authorization service gets a token directly from your phone, it has now correlated your phone with your proxy-browsed history. A very common means to do secure authentication these days is SIM-based wireless PKI, wheren it has now connected you to your phone number. To governments, it offers a broad range of brand new vectors to correlate you to an identity if you, say, mention you had an abortion or criticize your local strongman leader, since they control the backend infrastructure that establishes the connection between the token and the identity. And not just at signup time every real-world digital credential must be able to be revoked if the phone is lost or stolen, or credentials expire or are revoked. So how does how does the open-source app prove a credential is still valid without "phoning home"? If the app checks a revocation status list, then ISPs, CDNs, or state security services can correlate the exact millisecond of queries to the revocation server with the submission of a verification token to a platform - each time it's submitted. Assuming that they can't just get it with more direct means than timing attacks.

Also, you cannot just "read the code". The frontend is open source, but what is being done on the backend is not. You have no clue what logging polciies, database schemas, operational security, etc the "designated national issuers" or servers handling the credential revocation are using, and what government intrusion has been forced on them. I'd feel a more comfortable if it were all happening from Brussels but handing it over to individual states, some of which at any given point will be authoritarian, is just handing them an easy new vector to unmask people.

As for your "Such systems are implemented in many different ways by member states for other purposes already." - yes, for filing taxes, healthcare, online baking, etc - things that you intend to do and must do under your legal identity. Not for anonymous conversations on the internet. Your argument basically reverts to "But people already do things non-anoymously on the internet , which reinforces my point that yes, this taking something from the "anonymous" category and putting it into the "easily unmasked" category.

If you think this won't be abused, I cannot help you. Not even just abused from a criminal or extrajudicial perspective, but even from a civil one, because orders to unmask someone can be subpoenaed.

Comment Re:Have they heard of a PC? (Score 1) 49

It's standard here in Iceland. *Everything* verifies via the phone, using the same authorization mechanism (SIM-based wireless PKI). The service sends out a special-coded SMS, which gets intercepted and routed to a SIM that has cryptographic applet flashed into it, which triggers a system-level authorization popup for you to confirm (the popup displays a verification code which was included by the site, so you see the same code on both the site and your popup), and which you can then confirm (with your PIN) or reject.

Comment Re:Only bug left. (Score 1) 55

It absolutely happens "within hours of each other" when (A) some news comes up on the topic, and (B) all you have to do is type into a box, "Find a vulnerability in this software". This isn't a situation where bug-hunting is a weeks or months-long process that takes all your effort.

I'll repeat: LLMs don't just on their own decide to go off and look for bugs to report.

Comment Re:Only bug left. (Score 2) 55

LLMs have certainly made people get really into conspiracy theories. *eyeroll*

The LLMs didn't just off on their own decide to look for hypervisor bugs. Users told it to look for hypervisor bugs. The timing means that multiple users did so at roughly the same time - probably in response to some news of some sort.

Comment Re:Woke Reuters is just WOKE-Communist Propaganda (Score 1) 148

Your straw man arguments prove your intransigence. Your hyperbole just exposes your disingenuousness. The number of pro-lifers left that can have any kind of authentic discussion around this topic has dwindled to just about nil.

It’s ironic that the abortionists actually think they’re going to have a voice in the debate 50 years from now when 28% of GenZ isn’t speaking and never had a chance.

When all the conservative pro-life group has to do is nothing to birth an authentic discussion and breathe new life into the debate, you tell me who’s “winning” here. When the depressed hypergamist who can’t find Mr. Right because she’s still assuming her Insta-standards didn’t disqualify 99% of humanity has more of a relationship with her SSRI dealer and the door to door boxed whine salesman, it’s telling a story. With a predictable ending for an ideology marching its own ass down a dead-end road.

The reasonable middle-ground, will have a say again. Or there won’t be anything to abort except the future.

Comment Re:Woke Reuters is just WOKE-Communist Propaganda (Score 1) 148

Oh yeah. When a man who was looking forward to being a father finds out she decided to abuse her "right" to not inform him and abort his future away, it's JUST like jerking off.

Any man who gets a women pregnant without knowing if she WANTS to be a mother is just looking for pressure release.

Close your fucking legs until you’re ready to be one then. You don’t WANT the responsibility and accountability to act as an adult if it happens? Then stop acting like an adult and stop fucking like one. Plenty of men have learned to walk away because women cannot be accountable. They want EVERY abuse and excuse legalized to dismiss accountability.

Accountability hates to be reminded of the adult fact that adoption was and still is the natural alternative, long before abortions were invented.

"You're pregnant? Great! I always wanted be be a father.”

”Tough shit. I already aborted it. Without your consent. Because I can. Deal with it.”

Don’t try and pretend that men cannot be affected by this legalized arrogance.

Comment Re:Woke Reuters is just WOKE-Communist Propaganda (Score 1) 148

That's like sobbing about genocide every time you crank one out

Oh yeah. When a man who was looking forward to being a father finds out she decided to abuse her "right" to not inform him and abort his future away, it's JUST like jerking off. Sure.

Fifty million abortions on this planet. Every single year. Year after year. There hasn't been an insect, bacteria, disease, natural disaster, or even human conflict that has even come close to that death toll, and likely never will.

It's ironic the species that defined genocide, defines the fuck out of it.

Comment Re:They always blame the wrong thing(s) (Score 1) 75

It makes sense to teach them about AI, what it is good for and what not to use it for. Just like how we learned how to use a calculator in primary school, after we learned manual multiplication and long division. A lesson for AI could be to ask students to write an essay, and teach them how to use AI to do research, let it help to give structure to their text, how to check sources and accuracy, and so on. It would be used as a tool a few times, to teach them about the tool, after they learn how to go about such things without using AI.

Comment Re:They always blame the wrong thing(s) (Score 2) 75

Yes, I had a younger brother whose middle school math teacher just matter-of-factly taught the kids BASIC programming using a lab of Apple IIs in the early 80s together with the normal math concepts she taught. Why it took hundreds of millions of dollars from tech companies, tech-backed recruitment and 'training' of 100,000+ teachers, billions in Federal grant money (Dept. of Ed and NSF), billions in spending by school districts on hardware and software, and massive PR efforts, and constant lobbying of federal and state government officials to enact K-12 CS legislation from 2013-2026 to accomplish what seems to be less than what some math and science and social studies teachers were able to accomplish in an ad hoc fashion on a shoestring budget some 30-40+ years earlier is a rea head-scratcher.

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