Transcript

Bleeding Edge Technology- Class in Session

Busted Pencils · Wed Aug 20, 2025

Yeah, busted pencils fully. Let it education talk educated educators talking education me. Yeah, Dr. Tim

Slecker and Jacob chairman of the board looks like any YouTubers out there might maybe Jacob

was fighting with the board. And yeah, where's Dr. Johnny Lupinachi? Hey, he is, you know, right

now it's got things happening. So Jacob being, you know, we've got this and class classes in session

Jacob, but I got to ask, what's that white thing kind of plug it, plug it up your nose there.

Well, Dr. Tim, I'm glad you asked. It's a thing called a nose bleed. I don't know if you've

ever heard of this in your time in the Hollywood business, but sometimes people, when they do a lot

of stunts like I do, you end up having accidents and then your nose starts bleeding. And that old

maximum, I think it's something I prescribed to myself is the show must go on. Yeah, I believe

that hard to believe to subscribe. I'm prescribing to you because you need to adapt that attitude

like I already subscribed to. Well, I was just thinking about the whole idea of nosebleeds and

no, not a classes in session on nosebleeds. Everybody out there. But knowing that for the teachers

out there listening who have been in the classroom for years, we have seen lots of nosebleeds

over the years, Jacob. Oh, you know, and there's, you know, lots of teacher responses to nosebleeds

that are out there. The one is quick, get a Kleenex and ball it up and shove it up that

nostril because you're taking a spelling test right now. Oh, I like that one. That's the hard

nose attitude we need. You know, or you get the, oh, my God, go get somebody because I can't

look at that. I'm going to, you know, the squeamish squeamish teacher, right? I'm looking at

one of those right now, too. I know you can see it. Or my favorite nosebleed teacher, the

paramedic. Oh, okay. All right, everybody walk away back out. All right, Jacob head back. All right,

somebody go in their office, I need to get a back of ice. We're going to get this back of ice

on their back. Jacob, I want you to pinch between your nose and your eyes as hard as you can't

count to 10. All right, we got this undercover. All right, I've heard this. Okay, you know that,

right? I've had multiple experiences with all three of these people that are describing as

somebody who's had nosebleeds basically all my life. You know, some of us, there's a lot of

different people out there, Tim. And some of us, our heads just start bleeding every now and then.

I know it's not what you want to be, but it's something that happens. It is a question I've always

pondered. I have not had a nosebleed issue ever. I have enough you. I had some friends who had

that. And it did always make me ask, you know, internally, the question of going like,

what is actually bleeding? Well, internally, there's something very wrong with

I don't know what it is, but it just simply cannot be a good thing that my head starts bleeding

every once in a while. Yeah, it's like, you know, and again, having been a teacher all the years

and witnessing it in classrooms on nephews, friends, you know, I'm always amazed at the the

amount of blood that just begins pouring out of one's nostril for no reason other than right now

seems like a good time for the nose to bleed. Well, the lesson that it teaches me is that apparently

we all have way more blood than we need. So please go out and donate, find a blood drive because

if your nose starts going, that's wasted. Unless you can quickly grab a good bucket and head down

to the hospital to help people. I wonder if that I feel bad for the people who are grossed out by

this conversation. By the way, I like blood. I actually thinking about this again, being a

classes in session, come on, hey, you're getting two lessons today. We know how to deal with nosebleeds,

but I'm wow. Yeah, maybe I'm just thinking that the potential that what's actually happening

then is for you nosebleeders like you Jacob and the listeners out there, the nosebleeders,

that, you know, maybe what's actually going on is a evolutionary adaption adaptation as they

would call it because you nosebleeders have excess blood that the body says, you know what,

we're going to get rid of it through the nose. This sounds like exactly what Socrates would think

about this with no really real scientific backing. I reckon it ought to be that you have too

much blood because the fumes within your body are out of bags. I mean, you can see how I can

easily come up with this. You know, I mean, during COVID, during COVID, I, you know, did engage in

you know, potential. No, I didn't. I wasn't one of those people. Tim, you've heard of a bleeding

heart liver. I'm a bleeding nose bleeding nose. Well, Jacob, I am so glad to see that you were

able to take care of that quickly by by using again, the the method that I seem to have seen for

some of my more hardcore teachers, which is shove something up there and get back to work,

darn it. I'm a hardworking guy, Tim. I love this show more than I love keeping enough blood in my head.

And I've tried all the methods. I've talked to the paramedic. I was like, no, you don't want to

stop the blood. You just want to pinch in the right. But for me, in the course of my 36 years on

this planet, shoving a thing up there is what really helps. So, you know, we've all got our own

methods. Well, because I'm looking at you, though, too, if you if you need to, you know,

replace with the new one, I'll let you know that I'm starting to see that, you know, the white

clean acts or tissue as my mother-in-law calls them. If it changes from white to red, I'll be the

first to let you know, just in case. Thank you very much. And again, if people weren't already

grossed out by the blood thing now, imagine the oozing blood out of my head,

solely corrupting the pure white tissue hanging out of the nostril. That's a good image.

All right. Moving on, though. The show is about it, right? We're going to move on.

No, no, no. I, you know what, we got a little bit, you know, there just again. So for anybody who's

like, how do you treat nosebleeds if you're a teacher? Well, there are three different ways. And

we just gave them to you on bus and pencils. But Jacob classes in session. School is pretty much

back, depending on where you're at. I know a lot of kids. Kids will be going back to K-12

from what I'm hearing in my area around here in, in Western Pennsylvania next week. Monday,

Tuesday, kids start school. But with kids starting school, quote, Monday or Tuesday of next week,

which typically means then that this week is back to school for those educators. There's usually

some form of professional development. Welcome back. Why are you going to be grumpy this year?

You know, those exchanges. Well, there's no difference actually. If you're an educator on a college

campus. And I know Dr. Johnny Lupinacci would be actually saying that he's fully engaged in

welcome back. And what is it? You know, hey, that professional development that K-12 teachers are

for the longest time forever that no one ever listens to them saying, why do you make me sit

through this professional development when I could be working on my classroom instead of listening

to this high paid PhD? Talk to me about things that they really don't understand.

This is funny to me, Tim, because it's a microcosm for then what they go due to the students.

Now you feel exactly the same way that the little versions of you do, or I don't want to hear this,

I have things I want to do. Yeah. In other words, classroom teaching is really just some form of

hazing that is a continuation of saying that it was done to me. I get to do it to you. There you go.

But no, back to school professional development, what are those things that are the topics of,

hey, welcome back. Here's what we should do. Here's something to know. And hey, guess what?

We've talked about this topic quite a bit on busted pencils. And for John and Gordy,

who I know have the most incredible morning show or listening, A1, as we talk about it on Thursday,

when I'm on their show. Delicious AI. AI. And teachers are asking questions. How do we use it?

What should we do? Educators? Well, I got to witness a professional development session

on artificial intelligence and what to do about it. Oh, okay. Yeah. What to do about it? Was it framed

in that specifically negative tone of what to do about AI? Well, so this is before you became a

producer, but we've had some AI. We want to say detractors, critics on the show who have,

you know, come on. And we've been wonderful to them in support of. And in fact, you know,

learned quite a bit. But this term that was brought out to me about a year ago, a year ago,

was that this is not artificial intelligence, Jacob. This is merely a computer program that

predicts text. It's not intelligent. It's nothing artificial about it. It is a computer program

that is sent that all it does is predicts the next word in a sentence. And so it's a text

generating machine, not artificial intelligence. I see. Does that make sense to you? That does make

sense to me, Tim. I can see what they're trying to say. And at a deep philosophical level,

there might be a difference, but also Tim, uh, practically speaking, what, what's the big

diff between, between, if they, if this machine can generate text that is helpful to me in a way

that I can't distinguish from SkyNet, then what is the big difference? Wow. You went in a totally

different direction off right away. I know it's okay, but actually, but you asked a question,

what, what, what is, what is behind that? And, um, you know, I've come to, um, understand now

over the years that what we call things actually, um, allows us to then have a vision of what it

means they do. And it could then elevate and or diminish what's actually happening. So

if we stop calling artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence, and we now call it text

generating machines, it takes away any type of potential sophistication that might be going

into predicting the next word. And so really, look, there's nothing intelligent going on,

there's nothing complex. We've just got a new computer algorithm that simply says,

this is the next best word, uh, therefore go forward. And it is actually a political term,

our, um, text generating machines, not pointing out and, in fact, the validity of artificial

intelligence itself is also a name, a construction that has meaning and political ramifications.

But so does text generating? And what I've now figured out over a year is that the use of

text generation as opposed to artificial intelligence is actually a power move that

puts the person using that term in a position that says, and this is why we should guard against this

because it's really just a cheating machine. Okay. Okay. That's where I've got this is a,

this is specifically framing it in a way that makes it all about cheating. So we're generating

fake answers or generating essays, trying to make you think of that when you talk about this

technology. Right. You know, okay, so do it. And, and, and so with that then comes the, like,

so why? Well, um, a lot of people are still kind of thinking. And, and, and again, this is my

point of view, my vision, my understanding, thinking that there is a battle worth fighting

about stopping. And now let's expand this K 12 college all the way through stopping

students from using artificial intelligence because, well, darn it, it's the end of true learning,

it's the end of true writing. And if we don't make a stand and forbid it and know how to detect it

and know how to scrutinize for it, the world will in some way potentially, I don't know,

implode become some form of a black hole creating some kind of a wormhole, um, you name it, but

fighting against text generation machines is a battle that must be won. Okay. Okay. That's your

stance. That's actually, no, that's not my stance. And, and, and, and, and, and it just kind of

reminded me of, of going like, how, how many of these types of professional development for educators

are going on across the country, where we are still engaging in some form of, to me, denial

that this technology exists, um, some sense of, uh, uh, inflated belief in the ability to

persevere and triumph over over this, this newfangled gadgetry that is going to corrupt the world.

It's a flash in the pan, Tim. And, and, and then to also kind of understanding that

if there is still a referral to it as a text generating machine that really, to me, what this

points out is is that there is a real lack still of understanding what really is happening

when you're working with generative AI and, and, and how it's actually, yes, generating text,

because I will agree and give that the end result of prompting, of messing with, of talking to AI

generates a text-based response. Absolutely. Tim, when I'm speaking to you right now, are these words

not simply the result of my observations of my parents talking to each other and to talking to

other people and learning what words are properly used in what sequence in response to other words,

at the end of the day, Tim, are we that different from your AI twin? Oh my god, Jacob, I'm bringing

you on a campus tour. Uh, let's go. Well, and, and, but you just pointed out, yeah, the kind of

reality of going, okay, you know, in, in that sense, it very much oversimplifies the complexity of

what it took to generate that text, to generate those words, because it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it,

it told us it's killing the whole planet. So yeah, apparently it's taking a lot of work.

It's, it's killing the whole planet. That's a whole other show because I also did a deep dive

into the ecological impacts. And again, like it, like anything, we have to contextualize it with

real world of what do you mean? Anyway, not, not today's classes in session, but it's not a text

general rating machine. It generates text as an output of a behavior that we interact with.

And so how does it generate text? Is the question that I assumed everybody had kind of figured out

that it's pretty complex how it does that. Yeah. It's a, it's a ton of evidence training input,

you know, essentially, like somebody says, you know, it learns the entire existence of the internet,

which, as people will rightfully point out, is full of garbage and BS. True. And it's also trained

with every encyclopedia Britannica that was ever written, every Harvard doctoral dissertation

that's been put together. In other world, it has been exposed to every form of humans, as you pointed

out, Jacob, ability to speak in either intelligent ways or non intelligent ways of citing bad evidence,

of using evidence in the correct way. And that when you quote prompt it, you are not just generating

text, you're sending it onto a journey out to an incredible complexity, what we're calling neural

networks, that are actually, yes, making algorithmic predictions, but those algorithmic predictions

are contextually embedded. And so that the next word isn't just the next predicted word,

it's a predicted word based on Jacob, the way you just said it, a whole bunch of background

knowledge and experience that says, this is the next best word. Can I make this very simple for

people? Yes, Jacob. Basically, when we're talking about generative AI, you take a computer,

you'll let it watch 400,000 conversations between two people. And then afterwards, if you say,

hey, computer, I'm said, it says, well, in these 400,000 conversations I watched, how did people react

to somebody saying, I'm said, oh, okay, they reacted like this. And then I'll do that in this

conversation. Is that basically the very simplest form of what is happening when an AI generates

an answer? Thank you. That's that's very simple and explanatory. But I can also hear somebody go

and see it's there's nothing intelligent about that. It's like, well, I'll get into philosophy.

I know. And that says, and to me, though, okay, so all of this is is we're up on the

typically what we like to record for classes and session time is though to point out that if

we're engaging in still talking about stopping students from using AI, we have incredibly missed

the boat. We have very much proclaimed and are going to put in front of our next students,

how out of touch we are in that setting. And how much we have in my understanding and the way

I see this, how much we're not teaching our students about the current reality of the world that

they exist in and how artificial intelligence needs to be understood, work with, complex,

understand, dig deep. Why does it do this? Do these things? How is it being used when you are going

to write? If you want to generate, you know, the whole idea of stopping, catching, yeah,

it's no, no, I agree. It's, yeah, it's in so because

and I had to actually kind of push this on on a colleague today, kind of like my frustration.

And Jacob, I will say I sat in this professional development and just observed. I did not

animate or say anything, you know, that would point out that I was kind of like on what the heck

is going on here. But I did talk to another colleague and you know, he made a point that said,

you know, well, it's not like we have the resources of university acts that is fully engaging

their students in how to use AI. Why do you use AI? Here's the best new techniques.

And that made me think of going, you're right. But I don't know that that's a defense of saying,

therefore we should then teach students to fear it, to not use it too potentially because

I hear that if Purdue's, if Harvard's, if university of Chicago is, and actually some pretty big

institutions, the Ohio State system now is fully engaging, that we've got an issue of equity

going on there then that says those students then are that much more privileged than students at

low, you know, community colleges, state regionals, you know, places like that. And so we can never

quote, afford to be able to give our students the world. That comes to me is not really a defense

as much as if it's an indictment of saying, well, we more than ever us serving largely first

generation low income, you know, students who are just getting their exposure should be giving

even more than Harvard and all of those other institutions because not doing that creates

an equity gap that expands exponentially when Ohio State is all in and all those students are

getting everything. And small regional of university in state X is only saying, no, we're not going

to do it. That is where I fear. And so as we're going into and kind of winding this down,

I'm not sure we taught a whole lot going on here, Jacob. A lot about knows, please. We've taught

the controversy, Tim. Yeah, but I put this out as a challenge to say, okay, where and when are we

going to recognize that actually a good healthy criticism of AI is needed. Students need to

feel it, need to understand it, need to get deep into it, but a deep critical thinking criticism of

AI, you're not getting that by teaching kids to fear it and how you're going to spend the entire

academic year pursuing them for using it. You know, that's kind of it. So let's leave it at that

you know what they say now it's time for your moment of sin.

It's inevitable that we've got to bring out the question of the tragic mix up in priorities.

We are spending all of this money for death and destruction and not nearly enough money for life

and constructive development when the guns of war become a national obsession, social needs inevitably

suffer. Thank you everybody for joining us for busted pencils classes in session. Yeah, you know,

and through Jacob's nose bleed too. Hey, check us out on Friday four. Hey, there is Jacob,

producer's choice where Jacob will interview the hosts of busted pencils, Dr. Tim and Dr.

Johnny Saturday, one full hour of busted pencils. Oh yeah, make sure. And then yeah, Monday,

home room, you know, again, home room experiences. What are they like? Check us out there,

download all the podcasts, go to civic media, download the civic media app that way you can always

catch busted pencils in all of civic media. And if you want even deeper dives into busted pencils,

go to busted pencils.com where you can get a whole lot more. And you know what the two Jacob

for blue collar scholars and producers with no nosebleeds, if we tell everybody, keep bustling pencils.