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#ImaginingPossibilities for Music Learning & Teaching
Hello!
I’m Evan Tobias, Associate Professor of Music Learning & Teaching at Arizona State University. You’re receiving this email because you signed up for #ImaginingPossibilities an occasional newsletter on imagining possibilities for music learning and teaching and exploring academic workflows.
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Wonderments & Curiosities
How are we complicit in AI when using AI? (Part 2)
This is a continuation of Part 1 of my wonderment on how our use of AI may be contributing to the development of AI in ways that we are unaware.
Are you reading any of the fine print or privacy policies of the applications you use? Notice any language around the use of AI?
Knowing what we agree to when using technology is good practice in general, but now, when businesses are rapidly taking up AI with varying degrees of ethical guidance and oversight (or lack thereof), our awareness of what happens when we use technology is particularly important.
What are you doing?
What are you willingly contributing to the development of AI? Perhaps more than you realize?
Here’s a case in point:
In December, my PDF reader of choice, PDF Expert, launched an option for people to use an integrated AI tool within the PDF reader.
Similar to ChatGPT, you can prompt inquiries about a PDF you are reading.
Readdle, the company that makes PDF Expert announced the inclusion of AI chat with celebratory language.
How would you respond immediately?
I met the inclusion of AI in the PDF reader with curiosity and a raised eyebrow.
To test out the AI chat function, I submitted the following prompt within the PDF I was reading: “How does Feigenbaum define generative failure?”
PDF Expert’s AI chat returned an accurate answer, highlighting the section of the PDF where the AI seemed to pull the information.
But, where was PDF Expert sending my prompt and what exactly was it sending? And, what would happen with whatever I was sending?
I wasn’t the only one hesitant to embrace PDF Expert’s AI Chat without understanding the implications.
Here’s one of the first critical inquiries on the Readdle Twitter/X account (you can read the thread here):
Alt Image text: Screenshot from twitter account Maria Antoniak @maria_antoniak “Which Which Al company’s model are you using? How can you ensure the privacy of my documents? How do I turn this off and never ever let it have access to my files?” 8:20 PM • Dec 19, 2023 • 342 views Response from PDF Expert “Hello Maria! Thank you for your questions – your concern regarding privacy matters to us greatly. Please be assured that safeguarding your privacy is of utmost importance to our team. At Readdle, it’s crucial to emphasize that under no circumstances do we have access to any of… Show more” Response from Maria Antoniak “Yes, so that means that my data ends up at OpenAl. I use your tool for sensitive documents, and I don’t want random people reading them. This should be an opt-in feature that comes with prominent privacy warnings.”
I chimed in as well:
alt image text: “Screenshot from twitter account Evan Tobias @etobias_musiced Evan Tobias @etobias_musiced • Dec 22, 2023 “Just opened up a PDF & saw this option for the 1st time. Can you provide clarity on what exactly is being sent to OpenAl when someone uses each of the options? Also, is PDF Expert sending information only when someone clicks the send button?” This is followed by another post from Evan Tobias “Also, can @PDFExpert_& Readdle confirm that text sent to OpenAl will not be used by OpenAl for its own use or training? Are there possibilities that text sent from a PDF could end up available to others using OpenAl?” Response from PDF Expert “Hello Evan! We appreciate your concern about privacy, and we want to assure you that safeguarding your privacy is a top priority for us at Readdle. Regarding the use of Al Chat, we do process User Content, specifically the content you send and the resulting output generated…. Show more”
I wanted to know if PDF Expert would send text from my PDF to OpenAI and whether OpenAI would include this text in its training of AI.
To their credit, Readdle answered both of our queries – you can read the details of their responses in the thread.
Jeff Richardson, a lawyer who writes on mac mobile devices & productivity for lawyers, had similar questions and included the answers that Readdle provided (Jeff chats about this on this episode of Mac Power Users)
OK, so what does this all have to do with music education?
As AI moves into music programs, we need to think critically about the implications of working with AI and deepen our understanding of how AI functions in apps we use.
Answers to questions stated earlier and related questions across apps that leverage AI, have significant privacy implications, particularly for those of us who engage with PDFs that include unpublished text, internal or sensitive information, student data, etc.
In other words, if you use an AI tool to analyze text from a research project, recommendation letter, class schedule, assignments, or some other unpublished information, you might be sending that text to an entity that uses that text to train its AI, which in turn might end up in someone else’s document at some point.
Similarly, our use of AI to analyze published work might end up contributing additional training data to an entity (including corporate entities that are not guided by ethics) that might separate the information from the author where it ends up in someone’s document without attribution to the original author.
How would the original author feel about their work being shared as training data to an AI organization or corporation?
Is sharing work in public providing default permission for entities, including corporations, to mine and repurpose it with AI, possibly for commercial gain?
What are the ethics of engaging with AI?
My point to Readdle was that these implications should be made explicit in PDF Expert as part of the interface.
But, we can’t rely on institutions, corporations, or other people and places to be explicit about the processes they are engaging with AI or what happens with the data we share with AI.
We are responsible for encouraging and supporting students of all ages to understand and consider implications of AI use and related ethical issues.
Thoughts?
(Reply to this email and maybe I’ll share some of your perspectives in the next newsletter.)
Ideas & Inspirations
Learning and Building in Public!
I’m facilitating a brand new Music Learning & Teaching grad course at ASU this semester with the title “Developing Online Music Courses and Content” and the focus is on creating learning resources and opportunities in digital contexts, ranging from social media posts and tutorials to modules and courses.
If you are curious, you can learn more about the course here.
I’m learning along with everyone in the course.
For several weeks we read and discussed scholarship on relationships between educators sharing content, monetization and markets, and developing critical lenses to make decisions about content and resources that people share. Music ed is slowly starting to address these issues. Check out the great work of Emmet O’Leary in the ACT article Music Education on YouTube and the Challenges of Platformization for a taste.
We just pivoted to a “class as design studio” approach, experimenting, creating, iterating, and sharing feedback as we build content and learning experiences.
Based on our social media engagement and interests, we are focusing on the theme of “music literacy (& music literacies)” in music learning and teaching contexts.
Here’s what some of our ideas looked like during our last class:
alt image text: A white board. At the top right corner are 4 medium sized red boxes. Below the red boxes is an oval with three arrows below the oval pointed diagonally and straight down. Below the arrows are 3 red arrows stacked vertically. SLightly to the right of the arrows is a bit of scribble in red. To the right of the scribble is the outline of a green iceberg with the top portion above a wavy line for water and a large part of the iceberg below the water. One green arrow points to the top and 3 green arrows point to the bottom of the iceburg with one of the arrows near the surface of the water and the other two lower down successively on the bottom portion of the iceberg. To the left of the iceberg is a long vertical rectangle with multiple small circles inside of it. To the upper left of that is a pyramid in green divided into three horizontal lines with III in the top portion, II in the middle portion, and I in the lower portion. To the left of the pyramid moving lower on the board and taking up space around the left portion of the board is a set of small circles, some of which are connected by curvy lines that make a path. Three of the small circles are surrounded by a box.
We’re just getting started and I’m excited about the possibilities – and all the issues that will emerge from working through the project (as well as the related understanding that we’ll develop through it all).
I mention it here because we’re exploring “learning in public” and “building in public” ethics to the extent that students are willing to do so.
I’ll be doing the same.
Yet, learning in public and building in public are tension with having a safe and brave space in the “classroom” to explore ideas, speak freely, experiment, and fail without worrying about current or future ramifications.
It’s important that each individual have the right to choose if, when, how, what, and where to share their thinking, work, and process outside of the class.
We have ongoing conversations about these issues & tensions.
How do you negotiate your own decisions of when and what to share as you are learning and working on new things and when you keep things to yourself or a smaller group of people you trust?
How do learning in public or building in public factor in your own programs and learning communities?
If you want to follow along or contribute to our soon-to-be-renamed “Music Literacy Project,” watch here or on my TikTok or IG accounts for related posts and I’ll let you know what the class agrees to share.
I’ll share my thinking and process, experiments and explorations along the way.
Sparks & Springboards
Speaking of music literacies, our class conversations brought me back to one of my doctoral comp exam questions around the concept of literacies – so I posted this video on Instagram riffing on some related ideas.
As an aside, the literacies work from my comp exam ended up laying groundwork for my chapter Let’s Play: Video Games and Music Education in the Oxford Handbook of Music Education – go productive comp exams!
I still remember furiously editing that chapter in a hotel room in Evanston the evening before my dissertation defense because the due date was right about the same time – stress much?!
This interview with Mz Worthy in Magnetic Magazine on issues ranging from improving visibility and opportunities for trans and gender-diverse artists to the inclusivity of the House music scene could be a starting point for more extensive exploration of socio-cultural & historical contexts that are sometimes missing from engagement with music technology and popular music in music programs.
Have you heard about the Great Stalacpipe Organ? Thanks to Bobby Owsinski for this one. I’ve often thought about designing instruments but the idea of a natural environment as instrument was new for me. So many possible project ideas came to mind with questions like:How can we interact with our environment musically?
When is a place an instrument?
How do acoustics factor in how we create or experience music?
What does cave music sound like?
What are the ethics to consider when creating music with nature?
What are the natural environments around you that could prompt or invite generative musical projects?
(Reply to this email newsletter and I’ll share any ideas in the next newsletter.)
Don’t Miss
The NAfME Divisive Concepts Town Hall Wed. March 6 2024 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm (ET) with Karen Salvador and Ryan Shaw.
and just because . . .
One of my favorite things about living in Arizona around this time of year is the scent of citrus blossoms.
Most of the time, I move at a NY speed walk pace. But, almost anytime I catch a waft of those little white flowers, whether grapefruit, orange, lemon, or lime, I slow down for a moment.
What’s making you pause and linger?
