ChangED
ChangED is an educator based podcast for Pennsylvania teachers to learn more about the PA STEELS Standards and science in general. It is hosted by Andrew Kuhn and Patrice Semicek.
ChangED
Bridging Humanity and Technology: AI and Empathy
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Brian and Joni Stamford take center stage as they bring their contrasting yet complementary perspectives on the interplay between AI and human experience. Brian, a Program Director with a penchant for innovative tech, shares his humorous escapades with smart assistants, while Joni, a thoughtful mental health counselor, raises important questions about technology's impact on our emotional well-being. This lively exchange beautifully illustrates the fine line between technological enthusiasm and the essential need to preserve our humanity. Together, they explore how we can enjoy the benefits of AI while staying grounded in our personal connections.
About our guests:
With over 20 years of experience, Joni Staaf Stamford (formerly Sturgill) is a licensed professional counselor, speaker, and author with expertise in emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and positive psychology. As a long-time student and teacher of Eastern philosophy and Western psychology, Joni offers secular, integrative mental and emotional insights to participants of her programs so they can heal themselves through breathwork, movement, awareness, perspective-shifting acceptance, and skilled action toward a life they want. In all avenues of her work, she empowers individuals to live with purpose and perspective. She is also an Amazon best-selling author. Learn more at www.insightwithjoni.com.
Dr. Brian Stamford is a Program Director at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit (AIU), an organization providing professional development to districts across Western Pennsylvania. Dr. Stamford also serves as state co-lead for the Classroom Diagnostic Tools, leading professional development efforts statewide, as well as co-lead for the statewide PA Association of Intermediate Units (PAIU) Curriculum Directors group. He is a Code.org regional manager, and a certified Apple Education Trainer, offering high-quality professional development on innovative teaching practices, including integrating AI tools into planning and instruction. Prior to this, Dr. Stamford worked in public education as a science and computer teacher, instructional coach and administrator.
Want to send us a show idea or just say hi? Email us at: thechangedpodcast@gmail.com!
welcome back to change ed changed change it everyone is dialing into this podcast to hear all of the awesome conversations that we're having. Just trying to change up the intro does sound good, you like that. Okay, very well done I am your host, andrew coon, education consultant from montgomery county intermediate unit, and here with me is patrice zemecek, also from the. I am your host, andrew Kuhn, education consultant from Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, and here with me is Patrice Semecek, also from the Montgomery County Intermediate Unit, and I am an EC.
Speaker 3And Tony Marabito from Carbon Lehigh Intermediate Unit staff development facilitator.
Speaker 1Well, we don't have one guest on the show. We have two guests on this show with a wealth of thought processes that go into the world of AI. It's going to be a really great show. This tag team we have Brian and Joni Stanford from the Pittsburgh Allegheny area. Is that where you're handling from?
Speaker 4Yes.
Speaker 1Great Welcome both. If you wouldn't mind just introducing yourselves and telling the ChangeEd Nation a little bit about yourselves, as we kind of get this background as we jump into this episode.
Speaker 4Well, I'm Brian Stanford. I'm a Program Director for Accountability and Innovative Practices at the Allegheny Intermediate Unit.
Speaker 5And I'm Joni Staff-Stanford and I am a mental health counselor, mindfulness and yoga teacher am a mental health counselor, mindfulness and yoga teacher.
Speaker 4I spend my days running professional development associated with integrating AI tools into planning and instruction.
Speaker 5And I also lead professional development, but I lead professional development on emotional intelligence, mindfulness and mental wellness.
Speaker 4I want all the AI.
Speaker 5And I am a little bit concerned about how AI is impacting our humanity and our overall culture.
Speaker 4I am proud of the fact that I was the first person I believe I was the first person in my county to own a Tesla, and I could talk to you for hours about the artificial intelligence that goes into the self-driving.
Speaker 5Brian, you can't even drive a regular car. I actually have to turn the windshield wipers on for Brian when he's driving my car.
Speaker 4It's too much to do at once.
Speaker 3I already love where this is going because I can see both aspects. I love the tech side, but I also love the human part, and this is going to be really good.
Speaker 1And I feel like we're completely not needed. I'm just enjoying watching this unfold.
Speaker 3Let's just have dinner and just let them go.
Speaker 1Seriously, this is the Stanford podcast. Thank you for having us on your show. So I imagine that you have very interesting conversations then when it comes to this. But my curiosity before we dive into ai is that have you had these perspectives? Obviously it sounds like before ai so are there. Is this usually where it comes up with a lot of these different topics and technology and the use of technology in your house?
Speaker 5Absolutely. Brian has always been someone who, as long as I've known him, any new technology that arises, he knows all about it. He wants to be the first one to own it, to use it, and I am very much a naturalist, I am a humanist. I think that we spend too much time on our devices, and in my therapy practice I see the effects of people being so hooked into technology. So I kind of always have a gasp every time Brian tells me about something else, because I think about the impact that it could potentially have on us socially and emotionally and psychologically.
Speaker 4But, yes, I have always been an early adopter of technology. As a matter of fact, a story I like to share is that, through a pilot program with Amazon, I was one of the first people in the world to pilot a prototype smart assistant, and the story that I like to tell associated with that is when I did receive it. Just a few important things that I might have glossed over as an early adopter. One is it was not very good at interpreting human words at times, and two, it did not have an obscenity filter led to a horrifying situation in which I walked into my living room to find the smart assistant teaching my kids about the birds and the bees. Oh no, so I like to say, my children might have been the first in the world to learn about the birds and bees from a smart assistant.
Speaker 2That's the first.
Speaker 1That is an amazing story jenny, I love to hear your perspective from the uh emotional intelligence well, that was.
Speaker 5That was actually before brian and I were together oh okay, have you worked with his kids? I was messing my own kids up messing his own kids up, messing his own children up.
Speaker 2We can see the value of you in his life, Joni. Oh, that's great.
Speaker 5He needed me.
Speaker 2I think his kids needed you too. Oh, that's, true too that's awesome. My kids definitely mine aren't the first, but mine are definitely asking alexis some stuff. If you go back into that search history of the questions, I'm a little shocked at what my 10 year old is asking her. That leads to some good conversations, right like there's a history of your questions somewhere and now we can have some conversations about it. Maybe talk to mommy a little.
Speaker 1You know. Also with that, though, it's interesting trying to understand where kids get to where they get to, and what I mean by that is, youtube has its algorithms, and it will queue up the next video queue up the next video queue up the next video.
Speaker 1So there are times where my son will come and say to me hey dad, did you know this? I'm like, how did you get that Right? And he'll like track it for him. I'm like, okay, it's terrifying, but that makes sense. But with the use of AI, how they can you know? It's a different process to like. You know you could maybe still get there that way, but it's actually like you're part of that conversation of like okay, well, that's interesting. You told me that. Now tell me this, right? Or let me ask my question differently. So one, I see that you're a passenger and the other one I see you as possibly being the driver, but I guess number one. Brian, I'm looking for you to validate how smart I am and tell me that that sounds really good. And then, joni, I'm wondering what do you see those? Do you see a difference in the impact on adolescents, like in our development, if they're part of the conversation versus just kind of absorbing all of this?
Speaker 2and taking it all in.
Speaker 1So, brian, you can go first. Say all the great things about me.
Speaker 2Go ahead or don't.
Speaker 4Well, I think AI gives us a tremendous opportunity to personalize and customize learning experiences for all students. When you think about the various tech platforms that are supported by AI in the background that we use as adults, we don't want to go back Our Amazon shopping experiences, our Netflix and Prime and Hulu experiences.
Speaker 4they're all powered and customized by the AI in the background, and imagine if we could take that and apply that into the classroom. If I could elaborate on that even even further is so I have identical twin boys and they're very similar in so many ways. However, growing up, um knowing them as their father, I knew there were subtle but important differences. So one of them one of them was highly competitive and liked to play on teams. The other was not as competitive. One of them was was always motivated by philosophical conversations. The other was always motivated by logical and scientific conversations. But in the classroom they received the same lessons, the same content, the same. They were given the same assessment opportunities. But if a teacher or a system truly knew my kids, they would have had a different learning experience.
Speaker 5And so that leads me actually right into thoughts I have about the over-dependence on AI, because so many people feel that it's the solution to everything and it makes our life so much easier, whether it's a teacher using it for lesson plans or a teacher using it to grade papers. If a teacher is just using AI and using all the AI tools, they're not going to have the opportunity to offer individualized instruction, because they're not going to know their kids If they're not reading their assignments. They're not having that one-on-one personal interaction with the child so that they can get to know what motivates this child and how can I differentiate that instruction. It's one of the problems that I see with technology. There are so many useful tools out there and so many wonderful ways that you can utilize AI and other technologies.
Speaker 5However, there is an addictive quality to a lot of AI tools, and we know the AI that runs in the background of social media creates an addictive tendency for any of us who use it. I mean, how often do you pick up your phone If you're on social media? You pick up your phone If you're on social media. You pick up your phone just to check your Instagram or just to check your Facebook or whatever it is. Well, our children are growing up with that as well, and that's causing a lot of the problems that we're seeing with anxiety and a lack of true social connection and social support. And again, we know that not just kids but everyone these days are more stressed, depressed and anxious than we ever were before, and I really think that technology hasn't caused it, but it has contributed to it.
Speaker 2I can easily say I have been caught in a TikTok hole multiple times. Like I'll sit there because it's funny and my algorithm is definitely targeted to my humor. Like I will be. Like I'm going to spend five minutes here and then an hour goes by. I'm like, oh shoot.
Speaker 2I have other things I have to do, but you don't even realize it. And the other thing that I'm noticing with my kids specifically is the attention span that they have. It's impacting me a little bit too, but because they don't even watch YouTube videos, they watch YouTube shorts and they watch, it's just like a constant. My kids will put it on the TV and I kind of get a little nauseous because they're just nope, this one's done, this one's done, this one's done. And I'll say to them okay, you get half hour and then we're done, because this they have no regulation.
Speaker 5Well, that's the thing. There's an increase in the psychological diagnosis of ADHD, but a lot of people believe in my field that it's not actually ADHD, it's not the chemical imbalance in the brain, but it's a technology induced ADHD. Because if, especially if a child grew up with the scrolling you know you see toddlers on phones scrolling it wires their brain in such a way that they don't have an attention span, because they don't grow up having to have an attention span.
Speaker 3Right grow up having to have an attention span Right Ooh.
Speaker 2If I could go back.
Speaker 3Yeah, you two seem like like the perfect balance, and I know probably a lot of other households don't have that perfect balance, so I wish I could like share you everywhere, but have you had the opportunity to go places and share your story, because I feel like everyone needs to hear you? I mean, everyone already listens to Change Ed podcast, but I mean now you're we need. We need everybody to hear this, you're welcome.
Speaker 5Well, we are presenting I mean, we have presented at several conferences and I think we'll continue to do that. Because it is important? Well, I think because the two of us come from kind of opposite perspectives but we both have a tremendous respect for each other and our perspectives that we do strike a balance in the middle, which is really important, because I feel like in some cases people are either all into technology and they don't want to think about any potential consequences, or they're all against technology and they say I'm never using that, I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist, when in reality we have to address both. Like brian said to me when chat gpt first came out oh, brian was telling me about it and I well, do you want to go ahead and start this story?
Speaker 4Okay, sure so. It was December 2022. The PA SAS conference. I ran a presentation titled Ready or Not, ai is Coming, and that was in about two days after that chat, gpt was released to the public.
Speaker 2Oh, so you were like a little prophet.
Speaker 4So well, I'm just more of an early adopter. I've done some work with some AI leadership groups, but I was so excited and I kept telling Joni just wait until you see what this tool can do.
Speaker 5So just a few weeks later, and so as soon as Brian told me about it, I had this sick feeling in my stomach and I said this is going to cause a lot of psychological, emotional and relationship problems. And he's like what are you talking about? This is great, it's just a technology. It's just a technology. And like you can't do anything about it, it's here and I said I know that someone that I'm going to have a couple show up in my practice and the guy probably is going to be using chat, gpt, to communicate with his wife. I just know that that's going to happen. I said in a few years from now.
Speaker 4To which I responded. Stop being so dramatic about this.
Speaker 5Literally, was it the next day or the next week, it was the next day. It was the next day. It was the next day. I had a couple come into my counseling practice and they had been struggling in their relationship and they seemed to be doing so much better and he travels a lot for his work. Well, she got up to leave the room to go to the ladies room and he said hey, joni, guess what? You want to know why things are going so well. Because I told my wife that if she has a complaint she should text it to me. So I have time to think about it and I just plug it into chat GPT and whatever chat GPT says, I just send it right back to her. She's been so happy.
Speaker 2And. I was my husband cannot listen to this podcast.
Speaker 5Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And I said you can't do that. He's like, why not? It's working, she's happy, I'm like, because she's in love with chat.
Speaker 2GPT like not you, and you're avoiding all of it.
Speaker 5You just avoided all of the confrontation.
AI vs. Human Emotion Debate
Speaker 5But literally this was, and this was a couple years ago, so you know this sort of thing is happening. So, and there are. I'm actually mortified that in my profession there are therapists who are using or suggesting that their clients use chat bots to help them process their emotions in between sessions. I'm seeing them everywhere and my problem with that is there is no way that AI can replicate human emotion or understand it. I don't care how much data you plug into it, Human emotion is much more complex than a set of facts.
Speaker 5Anyone who has tried to have a logical and reasonable conversation with someone who's in an emotional state knows that. You know, emotion is complex and also I find that the most valuable therapy is often my clients just want someone, a human, to sit in front of them and listen and really understand what they're saying, and AI is never going to be able to do that because it doesn't have the ability to express empathy or warmth or any of those things. And in fact, a lot of humans are losing that ability to express those kinds of emotional intelligence capabilities because we're so focused on facts and data and we're losing our emotional intelligence little by little. Go ahead, Brian. I know you want to say something about that.
Speaker 4So to that I respond. I've been thinking about what you said and it's clear you had the right perspective all along. I didn't see it at first, but now I really understand how your approach made sense. I'm lucky to have someone who can see things so clearly I wish.
Speaker 2I wish people could see you holding up your phone reading that I wish we had a video now.
Speaker 4Now, I regret not having video that was amazing, oh my gosh so that was the first, but it was not the last time oh, I'm sure she said I have a serious concern about ai and humanity, to which I dismissed it, only to find out later like that I would share a story of things like that that have happened wow so what I'm hearing is that you know that the impacts of this right they.
Speaker 1It has this amazing ability to be something that's super personalized to each of us, that we can really hone in on who we are, but also, joni, acknowledging what you said, that we're very complicated beings so it might not be able to hone in on all aspects of what makes me who I am. Well, we've hit that point in the podcast where we need to hit the pause button and come back, but we definitely need to hear more from this power couple and hear the conclusion of their perspective and experiences, individually and collectively, on AI. Make sure that you subscribe. Nope, like, follow, follow.
Speaker 2There, it is your favorite podcast app. Well, because you subscribe to social media but you follow.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's confusing.
Speaker 2It's only been two episodes and it's confusing. Two episodes.
Speaker 1Two seasons of changing.
Speaker 2You said two episodes.
Speaker 1I did, yeah, you did Wow.
Speaker 2The record will show because it's being recorded.
Speaker 1I agree to disagree. I think we need that automatic playback.
Speaker 2I will 100% pause it and rewind it. I wish I had the football thing where I could and show you exactly.
Speaker 1I sound like a turkey.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's my football noise.
Speaker 1The turkey noise is your football noise. Yeah, can we hear it again please? No, no one time thing, well, we're gonna play that. No, there's no replay, we're playing it we have no replay. We've established there's no replay oh, now there's no replay because, remember, I said I wish there was a gobble gobble, gobble gobble replay.
Speaker 2There was no gobble coming out of my mouth.
Turkey Sound Identification Banter
Speaker 1Can I hear it again then, please? I suck with the gobble, no because the judginess is just ridiculous. I think if we played that sound for AI, which this whole episode was about AI.
Speaker 2There was no gobble.
Speaker 1AI would be like. I can identify the type of turkey that was.
Speaker 2It was a North American white-breasted turkey, which is almost our mascot. But we went with the what instead. I forget what our mascot is, Andrew.
Speaker 1The bald eagle.
Speaker 2Of our podcast.
Speaker 1Oh no, I was saying we're the country, did you?
Speaker 2say it was almost the mascot of our podcast.
Speaker 1Of our country.
Speaker 2Did you say country? I don't know.
Speaker 1Why don't you do that noise? And we'll go back.
Speaker 2None of this is usable.
Speaker 1It's all usable. Make sure that you follow your favorite podcast that talks about turkeys.
Speaker 2Be kind and rewind the sounds.
Speaker 1Blockbuster we're going to Blockbuster.
Speaker 2No, I tried to make a dad joke, a pop-up joke, but I'm not good at it because I am hip.
Speaker 1Last word.
Speaker 2You forget. I edited it so I can take your last word out and make my last word the last word.
Speaker 1Lala Gobble, gobble.
Speaker 2Gobble, gobble. No, there was no gobbling.