DEV Community: Austin

The Double-Edged Sword of AI in Education

Austin — Fri, 29 Mar 2024 04:12:13 +0000

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a transformative force, promising to revolutionize the way we teach and learn. With its ability to personalize learning experiences, automate administrative tasks, and provide real time feedback, AI holds immense potential to enhance educational outcomes. However, as with any powerful tool, there exists a fine line between leveraging AI to its fullest potential and allowing it to overshadow essential aspects of learning.

Despite its benefits, excessive reliance on AI in education can have detrimental effects on students' development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills. When AI systems provide instant answers and solutions, students may become dependent on technology to solve problems without fully engaging in the learning process. This dependency can stifle creativity and innovation, undermining the development of essential cognitive skills.

The widespread adoption of AI in education also raises significant privacy and ethical considerations. AI systems collect vast amounts of data on students' behavior, preferences, and academic performance, raising concerns about data security, consent, and potential misuse of sensitive information. Moreover, the use of AI-powered surveillance tools in educational settings can infringe upon students' privacy rights and contribute to a culture of constant monitoring and surveillance.

"Why don't quantum computers ever get lost? Because they always know their state!"

Austin — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 19:32:05 +0000

When broken down to it's most basic of operations, our everyday, run of the mill computing devices operate of a binary system. Binary meaning a set of two pairs, those to pairs are 0 and 1.

0 equals 0, 1 equals 1.

How do we make any number higher than 1?

Well each set of 0 or 1 is considered a bit (i like to think of it as a bit of something bigger) and we can pair them together. So 2 in binary weirdly is 10.

To explain that i need to let you know that if we have 8 bits together we call that a byte (the puns write themselves).

In a byte we can have all a minimum of 0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0 and a maximum of 1|1|1|1|1|1|1|1 but again that doesn't translate to 11,111,111.

In the binary system, each bit represents an increasing power of 2, with the rightmost bit representing 2^0, the next representing 2^1, then 2^2, and so on.

Another way to think about it would be 128|64|32|16|8|4|2|1 ; if there's anyone 1 in the binary that's the number it'll represent you simply add them together to find out what number is being shown. all 0's mean...well 0 and all 1's you add them so 255

But let's try something not the absolute max or min, let's do: 0|1|0|1|0|0|0|1 we can translate that to mean 1 + 16 + 64 = 81. Another one? Sure! 0|1|0|0|1|0|1|1 let's add them up 1 + 2 + 8 + 64 = 77.

Binary isn't only just for regular numbers, it can represent alphabets, decimals, fractions and even negative numbers. They still operate like a light switch so to speak; either one or off, no middle ground, no dimmer switch...but what if there was?

Imagine for a second we have a cat in a box (i know super weird left turn we just made, but trust me), in that box we also have a vial of poison that's 100% guaranteed to kill the fluff ball, we also have a timer attached to the vial, and 50% of the time it'll break the vial and 50% of the time does nothing. We seal the box and we wait...we hear the timer go off. Is Whiskers dead (0), is he alive(1)? Could he be both?

That thought experiment is know as Schrodinger's Cat paradox.

An snippet from Wikipedia:

"The EPR article highlighted the counterintuitive nature of quantum superpositions, in which a quantum system such as an atom or photon can exist as a combination of multiple states corresponding to different possible outcomes.

The prevailing theory, called the Copenhagen interpretation, says that a quantum system remains in superposition until it interacts with, or is observed by, the external world. When this happens, the superposition collapses into one or another of the possible definite states."

-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schr%C3%B6dinger%27s_cat

You may be thinking how does this have any relation to binary and computing.

Quantum Computers!!!!

IBM is developing a computer that doesn't run of a bits like 0's and 1s. But it's quantum counterpart the Qubit. No longer being held down by a simple binary system of on's or off's but instead a superposition of both. Is it a 1 is it a 0? Yes!

"No cat was hurt making this blog"

Phase 2

Austin — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 19:40:43 +0000

Phase 2 is in the books...kinda waiting for grades to come in, I should be fine.

React was the focus of our learning. In the the beginning it felt like everything we learn in the first phase got flipped on it's head.

We first learned about components (what even is that?) turns out to be a really cool way to write my JSX (Reacts version of HTML). What started of as a complicated concept turned out to be my favorite part of the phase, writing one set of code for a header or footer and being able to reuse it and avoid retyping the same code over and over is such a time saver.

Functions became easier to write for me as well; i struggled heard last phase to write them, they irked me to know end.

Props was easy for me to get conceptually but not technically. I understood how they worked but for the life of me, passing a prop through components eluded me until recently when my cohort member Kirstyn (Hi Kirstyn, thanks for the help) helped me finish the code challenge that required it.

State was a middle ground area, again i understand how it's suppose to be use and set up but i forget how to apply sometimes.

Effect was fairly simple, we surround a fetch in it to be able to access an external source without causing re-renders or infinite loops.

Forms i will need to continue to work on, getting it on the page is fine but in tandem with with a POST is still a struggle to me. I will however continue to practice React when we move on the phase 3 so i can keep up on the language and add more projects to my portfolio as well.

Overall all I like react a lot and I'm glad to have learned it. Glad to have had Sakib as my instructor, hopefully i can keep the enthusiasm up in Phase 3.

Coding Journey WEEK 1

Austin — Sat, 13 Jan 2024 23:23:25 +0000

I've just started my Flatiron Journey instructed by Sakib and a apart of an amazing cohort.

I came into the bootcamp with prior knowledge in HTML & CSS; my JavaScript knowledge was super limited only up to arrays and I hated them. The prep work for JS was daunting on my own DOM almost made me want to give up.

By around day 2 or 3 (it's been a long week) Sakib has helped me take my understanding from barely existing to a decent grasp. When he informed me that a Node was what JS calls a he blew my mind and made sense of what i learned during the prep work.

Overall we've established our fundamentals: HTML, (spent around 10 seconds on css) and delved into a deeper understanding of JS. We now know how to manipulate the DOM and fill even a bareboned HTML file only using only JS's .querySelector and .append; we can even add readable text with .textContent.

Most recently we learned about DB.json and how we can set up a local database, and use that DB to then manipulate the DOM with that information as well and we use GET and POST methods to achieve that.

It's fun to see the stuff we're working on and then realizing how much we use it on a daily bases and don't even think about it. I've now been viewing everything I do online through the lenses of my new found knowledge.

*This blog post is being created and added to a database and I understand how it works!!!