Oh, of course! I am very aware of that, so no apologies needed. I was just sharing 2 issues affecting the activity specifically.

Yeah, I’ve been hearing about how the activity backfires. Part of it is that even AI companies say, if they get someone to try it, it immediately increases the chance to use in the future. The other part is students, who want to use AI, will see AI as being acceptable if another assignment used it.

It’s even harder for them to realize & care about it when they use AI for everything. They think task completion = succeeding on the task & its goals. Task completion feels easy, which tricks them into thinking they must understand the content better, too. In research/experience, that’s not true.

When I report students for using AI, the academic integrity office staff always have to ask why the students think we expect them to complete assignments on their own. They often flounder at the question. They don’t realize that it’s to help them rehearse and learn the material.

(You didn’t insult me if unclear (it was someone else), but I am already having AI ruin huge segments of my work, so random people jumping on with insults is beyond my bandwidth atm)

I think you are misunderstanding which specific Smart Features settings I’m specifically calling out here. I’m aware that long-time standard settings have had AI snuck in, but I’m not talking about those. We’re talking past each other, & I have already been randomly insulted, so I’m going head out

Or I know my settings sections pretty well as an educator who suffers from AI & advises on it. So, I turn AI-related stuff off regularly for everything. I’ve done so for Google multiple times. What I see wasn’t there a few months ago. Maybe let’s not assume ignorance in people you don’t know.

Yes, let’s destroy and leave the pretty, green, life-giving, fresh-water-having, breathable-air-having Earth to go to *checks notes* an inhospitable dust planet 🤨

Like… making Mars livable will be much harder than making a declining Earth livable. Stopping the decline would be much easier.

The GDPR isn’t perfect, but it sure does some nifty things sometimes for the EU & UK!

Nah, if you go into your Google apps, there’s a new “Smart Features” thing across the board. You can turn it off by app individually, but there is also an overall set of 2 settings for *all* your Google apps. I had turned everything AI Off, but this new setting was On for my entire account.

Does this mean a literal diss track can defeat an AI, or am I reading things wrong?

And you just know they put it in those spaces to get people to accidentally try it. As these companies say in their own reports, the AI habit is easy to form once they get people to try it 😬

In the Microsoft Online versions/apps I have, some search boxes/file name boxes have been replaced with the Copilot chat thing, so I keep accidentally clicking it when I’m doing normal stuff 🥲

I’ve missed getting Zeraora entirely because I missed the 2 times it was ever available, so I have definitely not been given a reason to have a positive or even neutral opinion on it haha

WAIT WHAT

The pumpkin muffins 🪦💔

And not getting rid of their good new menu items because they release new menu items in sets and usually only 1 or 2 are actually successful. I’ve had to eat different and decreasingly good variations of a caprese sandwich from them every 6 months. It’s nearby so it’s sucks how bad it’s been