My Robot Teacher

myrobotteacher

What happens when AI crashes into the classroom? When ChatGPT rolled out across the California State University (CSU) system, it sparked a wide range of faculty responses - from panic to full adoption. In My Robot Teacher, CSU professors Taiyo Inoue and Sarah Senk explore how generative AI is disrupting higher education, and what resistance, habituation, and adaptation really look like in real classrooms. My Robot Teacher is a podcast about AI and higher education, hosted by public university professors, produced by editaudio, and sponsored by the California Learning Lab.

  1. APR 22

    Ep12 - Querying the Collective Mind - CrowdSmart Co-Founder Kim Polese on Collective Intelligence

    How can AI summon the wisdom of the crowd without the stupidity of the mob? In Episode 12 of My Robot Teacher, Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue talk with Kim Polese—co-founder of CrowdSmartAI and Common Good AI—about collective intelligence, deliberative tech, and a different vision of AI: not as a machine for generating answers, but as a facilitator that helps groups think better together. From enterprise strategy and citizen assemblies to seminar pedagogy, the conversation explores what happens when AI stops generating answers and becomes a facilitator for collective intelligence: surfacing tacit knowledge, preserving quieter voices, and helping institutions process forms of disagreement that usually disappear into noise. My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio. 📄 Full transcripts available on Substack: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/ 🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai 📨 Email us! myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher

    57 min

  2. MAR 20

    Ep11 - The Opposite of AI Slop: AI, Journalism, and Government Transparency

    What does AI have to do with democracy? More than most people realize. In this episode — recorded on My Robot Teacher's one-year anniversary — we're joined by Kim Bisheff (Journalism, Cal Poly SLO) and Emmy-award winning professor Foaad Khosmood (Computer Engineering, Cal Poly SLO), the team behind the Digital Democracy Project, an AI-powered tool that makes state legislative proceedings searchable, transparent, and accessible to journalists and ordinary citizens alike. In this episode: What the Digital Democracy Project is, how it works, and why it won an Emmy AI as a civic tool: using machine attention to shine light on the government proceedings nobody has time to read Why AI didn't start with ChatGPT — and why that history matters              How Kim uses AI in the journalism classroom to teach story-finding, accountability reporting, and the politics of summarization                    The hard lessons of the social media era — and how public-interest          technologists are trying not to repeat them                                    Jargon as an enemy of transparency — and AI as a potential democratizer of dense government language                                                    The difference between AI built for engagement and AI built for the public good                                                                         "AI is not a monster to be feared. It's a monster to befriend."                                                                                  My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio.                                                                                                   📄 Full transcripts available on Substack:                                      https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/ 🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai                  📨 Email us! We'd love to hear from you! myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher

    51 min

  3. FEB 19

    Ep10 - Teaching without a Script: Improv Pedagogy in the Probabilistic Classroom

    What does improv have to do with teaching in the age of AI? More than you might think. In this episode, we’re joined by Julie Simons (Applied Mathematics, UC Santa Cruz) and Pedro Morales (Mathematics, UC Santa Cruz) to talk about improv not as performance, but as pedagogy - and, more broadly, a philosophy of classroom life. In this episode: Why active learning may be a stronger response to AI than surveillance or detection tools The case for improv as a philosophy of teaching, and why being wrong out loud might be the most important skill we can model for students The difference between productive struggle and demoralizing struggle Equity concerns around AI access, opt-out students, and who shapes these systems The "broken bottom rung" problem: as AI absorbs entry-level jobs, how do students build the experience to eventually reach senior ones? The remediation crisis in California: what happened when the CSU and community college systems  My Robot Teacher is produced with support from the California Education Learning Lab. My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio.  📄 Full transcripts available on Substack: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/ 🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai 📨 Email us! We'd love to hear from you! myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher

    58 min

  4. JAN 22

    Ep09 - Resilience Over Right Answers: Rethinking Science Education in the Age of AI (with Biophysicist Jon Sack, UC Davis)

    Science education after ChatGPT: what happens when students can outsource the thinking, and still turn in something that looks right? In this episode of My Robot Teacher, CSU professors Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue talk with UC Davis biophysicist Jon Sack about AI literacy, scientific thinking, and how LLMs are reshaping both the classroom and the day-to-day reality of research. If the most available “mentor” in a student’s life is an LLM optimized to validate, what happens to the virtues science depends on: tolerating disconfirmation, staying curious through failure, and separating confidence from evidence? And if AI can generate the output, what exactly are we teaching - especially when the point is conceptual understanding, not polished answers? In this conversation, we explore: What AI literacy should mean in science classrooms (beyond “don’t cheat”) How to resist the reward of feeling right when LLMs produce fluent, plausible explanations on demand How to redesign assessment so students can’t simply outsource the thinking What “good” use looks like: prompting for falsification instead of praise, plus habits of verification and iteration What AlphaFold and protein design teach us about hypothesis overload, “hallucinations,” and selection under uncertainty The bigger meta-question: if we’re co-evolving with AI, how do we keep student agency intact? Ultimately, Jon argues that resilience isn’t a soft skill in science—it’s the method: reality-testing what sounds plausible (including AI-generated ideas) and iterating without outsourcing the thinking. Sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab. 💬 Drop your perspective in the comments. We may feature listener takes in a future episode. ✅ Subscribe for more “in the wild” classroom experiments and AI literacy for educators. CHAPTERS 00:00-6:27 - Chapter 1 - Introduction: Claude Code Built My Canvas Course (Winter Break Experiment)  6:28-10:14 - Chapter 2 - Jon Sack’s First ChatGPT Moment (and the “Too-Positive” AI problem) 10:15-12:44 - Chapter 3 - Resilience is the Core Skill in Science 12:45-16:08 - Chapter 4 - Scientific Method = Falsification: “Kill Your Darlings” and Reality Testing 16:09-19:26 - Chapter 5 - Conceptual Understanding vs. Outsourcing: When the Thinking is the Assignment 19:27-25:25 - Chapter 6 - AL Literacy for Students: Use Every Tool, Track Limits 25:26-28:22 - Chapter 7 - Inside Jon Sack’s Lab: Ion Channels and Stochastic Decisions 28:23-30:36 - Chapter 8 - Stochastic 101: Probability, Sampling, and Why LLMs Vary 30:37-38:55 - Chapter 9 - Are We Stochastic All the Way Down?  38:56-44:07 - Chapter 10 - AlphaFold & Protein Design: Cheap Hypotheses, Hallucinations, Verification 44:08-53:30 - Chapter 11 - Co-evolving with AI: are tools optimizing around us, and are we changing around them? 53:31-1:01:22 Chapter 12 - Education After ChatGPT: Epistemic Virtues, Judgment, and Student Agency

    1h 1m

  5. 12/11/2025

    Ep08 - How to Teach AI (Not Just Use It) - with UC Berkeley’s Eric Van Dusen

    What would it look like to teach AI literacy the way UC Berkeley teaches data science? hands-on, interdisciplinary, and open? In this episode of My Robot Teacher, Sarah and Taiyo talk with Eric Van Dusen from Berkeley’s College of Computing, Data Science, and Society about how the wildly successful Data 8: Foundations of Data Science course became a scalable model for modern computing education. Eric explains how connector courses and Jupyter notebooks help students from every major learn to code, work with real datasets, and think computationally. Then the conversation turns to small language models (SLMs) and what it means for students to actually “touch the model” - changing parameters, inspecting weights, and understanding tokens and temperature from the inside. Together, they sketch a vision for AI education in public universities: shared “AI sandbox” infrastructure, open tools, and a plan for teaching AI basics.  Chapters [0:00-4:05] Chapter 1 - Introduction: Is UC Berkeley's Data 8 the Blueprint for AI Education? [4:06-13:52] Chapter 2 - Inside Berkeley’s Data Science “Connector Course” Ecosystem [13:53-18:03] Chapter 3 - Jupyter Notebooks: Breaking the Textbook Paradigm with Live Code [18:04-26:12] Chapter 4 - SLMs vs. LLMs: Why Smaller is Better for Teaching [26:13-28:45] Chapter 5 - If AI Does the Work, What Skills Are Left? [28:46-34:04] Chapter 6 - Why Public Universities Need an AI Sandbox [34:05-37:44] Chapter 7 - on “Touching the Models” and Public Infrastructure [37:45-40:20] Chapter 8 - Hey Nvidia! We’re not just consumers.  [40:21-46:43] Chapter 9 - How AI Can Actually Make Teaching Better [46:44-50:37] Chapter 10 - A Model for AI Literacy Education: Applying the Berkeley Data Model to AI Studies [50:38-52:09] Chapter 11 - Join the Conversation on AI in Higher Ed My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio. Video Editing by Starline Hodge, Audio Editing by Megan Hayward, and our Production Manager is Kathleen Speckert. 📄 Full transcripts available on Substack: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/ 🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai 📨 Email us! We'd love to hear from you! myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher 🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-robot-teacher/id1818032413 Follow us on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrobotteacher/ YouTube: youtube.com/@myrobotteacher X: x.com/myrobotteacher Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myrobotteacher.bsky.social Facebook: facebook.com/myrobotteacher Tags/Keywords AI in Education, Higher Education, Data Science, UC Berkeley, Data 8, Eric Van Dusen, Small Language Models, Jupyter Notebooks, EdTech, Artificial Intelligence, Python, SLM vs LLM, Connector Courses, AI Literacy, Public Education, Computational Thinking, Cal State University, CSU, My Robot Teacher Podcast, Sarah Senk, Taiyo Inoue, California Education Learning Lab, AI Infrastructure, Open Source Education, editaudio

    52 min
  6. Ep07 - Shaping the AI Narrative in Higher Education | Sci-Fi, ChatGPT & the Stories in Our Heads

    11/13/2025

    Ep07 - Shaping the AI Narrative in Higher Education | Sci-Fi, ChatGPT & the Stories in Our Heads

    AI in higher education, ChatGPT on campus, and Hollywood sci-fi all collide in this conversation with Jason Goldman. When our students say they’re afraid to use their CSU-issued ChatGPT EDU account because it might be a sting operation, what stories about technology are already living in their heads? In this episode of My Robot Teacher, Sarah and Taiyo sit down with Jason Goldman – co-host of the film podcast Escape Hatch (formerly Dune Pod), early Twitter employee, and former Chief Digital Officer of the White House – to unpack how Hollywood has shaped the way we think (and panic) about AI and its impact on our classrooms. Together, they trace the path from Terminator, WarGames, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Her to ChatGPT EDU accounts in the CSU system to explore why Skynet-style apocalypse dominates faculty fears, what that narrative makes us miss (like quiet surveillance and parasocial attachment to chatbots), and where genuine educational benefits might actually lie. Along the way, they discuss: • Why Skynet is still a decent shorthand for the AI alignment problem • What the “Torment Nexus” paradox reveals about tech culture and Silicon Valley • How first-principles thinking can obscure slow, structural harms • Parasocial attachment to AI companions, “AI therapy,” and mental-health risks • Surveillance that doesn’t look like cameras, but like behavioral profiling and mood tracking • What “public interest AI” might mean for universities and higher ed governance For educators, this episode asks a core question: What narratives about AI are living in our heads – and how do they shape the stories we pass on to students? ⚠️ Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and self-harm in the context of AI safety and platform responsibility. #AIinEducation #ChatGPT #HigherEd #SciFi #JasonGoldman #MyRobotTeacher CHAPTER TIMESTAMPS 0:00 - 4:25 Chapter 1: AI Teddy Bears, Paperclip Nightmares, Faculty Fears 4:26 - 10:40 Chapter 2: Jason Goldman on Twitter, Google & Building the Social Web 10:41 - 20:27 Chapter 3: Apocalyptic AI: Terminator, WarGames, and Alignment Tropes 20:28 - 37:21 Chapter 4: Her, Parasocial Attachments, and Invisible Surveillance  37:22 - 51:18 Chapter 5: Post-Tax Tech Bros, Silicon Valley, and Public Interest Universities 51:19 - 57:52 Chapter 6: What Educators Can Do To Shape AI Narratives in Higher Ed My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio. Video Editing by Starline Hodge, Audio Editing by Megan Hayward, and our Production Manager is Kathleen Speckert. 📄 Full transcripts available on Substack: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/ 🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai 📨 Email us! We'd love to hear from you! myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher 🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-robot-teacher/id1818032413 Follow us on: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrobotteacher/ YouTube: youtube.com/@myrobotteacher X: x.com/myrobotteacher Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myrobotteacher.bsky.social Facebook: facebook.com/myrobotteacher Tags/Keywords: Jason Goldman, AI in education, Terminator, Her, War Games, 2001 Space Odyssey, Silicon Valley, tech culture, social media, surveillance, parasocial relationships, ChatGPT, California State University, CSU, alignment problem, public interest technology, Sarah Senk, Taiyo Inoue, California Education Learning Lab, My Robot Teacher, editaudio, Escape Hatch podcast

    58 min

  7. 10/23/2025

    Ep06 - Algorithms Aren’t Neutral: Safiya Noble on AI, Bias, and Building Public‑Interest Technology

    Generative AI is reshaping classrooms and campuses, but with whose values, and at what cost? In this episode, Safiya Umoja Noble, author of Algorithms of Oppression and founder of the UCLA Center on Resilience and Digital Justice, joins Sarah and Taiyo to unpack why “neutral” AI isn’t neutral, why interdisciplinarity is hard but essential, and what a public‑interest technology ecosystem in higher ed could look like. My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Education Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio. Video Editing by Starline Hodge, Audio Editing by Megan Hayward, and our Production Manager is Kathleen Speckert. 📄 Full transcripts available on Substack: https://calearninglab.org/myrobotteacher/  🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai 📨 Email us!  We’d love to hear from you!  myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher 🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-robot-teacher/id1818032413 Follow us on:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrobotteacher/ YouTube: youtube.com/@myrobotteacher X: x.com/myrobotteacher Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myrobotteacher.bsky.social Facebook: facebook.com/myrobotteacher Tags/ Keywords: Safiya Noble, Algorithms of Oppression, AI, ChatGPT, algorithmic bias, California State University, CSU, future of learning, public interest technology, human-centered AI, Sarah Senk, Taiyo Inoue, Cal Poly Maritime Academy, California Education Learning Lab, My Robot Teacher, editaudio

    56 min

  8. 10/09/2025

    Ep05 - Lost in Translation: Testing the Limits of AI Understanding

    In this episode, we talk with Madison Van Doren (AI Research & Strategy Manager at Appen) about the limits of AI translation, what AI safety practices like red-teaming reveal about model guardrails, and why humans in the loop remain essential. Madison explains adversarial prompting, how different large language models reflect the norms and incentives of their builders, and why common translation benchmarks reward surface accuracy while missing cultural nuance. At stake is a larger question: if AI mirrors our words but not our meanings, how can we trust it to serve as a safe partner in education and communication? We also explore big questions for educators and students: What skills should humans still master in an AI-saturated world? What tasks can responsibly be offloaded to machines? How should we redefine digital literacy for the age of generative AI? CHAPTERS 0:00-1:30 - Chapter 1 Cold Open: Testing AI’s Limits 1:31-6:54 - Chapter 2: The Trouble with Teaching Machines Language 6:55-15:26  - Chapter 3: Adversarial Prompting: Breaking Models on Purpose 15:27-16:37 - Chapter 4 [Bridge]: Norms in, Norms Out 16:38-28:05 - Chapter 5 - Translation vs Localization: How Benchmarks Can Mislead  28:06-35:19 - Chapter 6 - Humans in the Loop, New Literacies 35:20-39:04 - Chapter 7 - Closing Reflections: Endless Iteration, Evolving Language, and the Geopolitics of AI My Robot Teacher is hosted by Sarah Senk and Taiyo Inoue, sponsored by the California Learning Lab, and produced by editaudio. Video Editing by Starline Hodge, Audio Editing by Megan Hayward, and our Production Manager is Kathleen Speckert. 📄 Full transcript: https://calearninglab.substack.com/p/my-robot-teacher-episode-5-transcript 🌐 More about the show: https://www.myrobotteacher.ai 📨 Email us!  We’d love to hear from you!  myrobotteacherpod@gmail.com 🔔 Subscribe for Extras: https://www.youtube.com/@myrobotteacher 🎧 Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/my-robot-teacher/id1818032413 Follow us on:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrobotteacher/ YouTube: youtube.com/@myrobotteacher X: x.com/myrobotteacher Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/myrobotteacher.bsky.social Facebook: facebook.com/myrobotteacher Tags/ Keywords: Large Language Models (LLMs), AI translation, AI localization, AI safety, Red-teaming AI, Adversarial prompting, Digital Literacy, AI in the classroom, Humans in the loop, AI misbehavior and guardrails, AI and cultural nuance, Teaching with ChatGPT, AI literacy for students and educators, Madison Van Doren, Appen, Linguistics, future of learning, human-centered AI, Sarah Senk, Taiyo Inoue, Cal Poly Maritime Academy, California Education Learning Lab, My Robot Teacher, editaudio

    39 min
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5
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

What happens when AI crashes into the classroom? When ChatGPT rolled out across the California State University (CSU) system, it sparked a wide range of faculty responses - from panic to full adoption. In My Robot Teacher, CSU professors Taiyo Inoue and Sarah Senk explore how generative AI is disrupting higher education, and what resistance, habituation, and adaptation really look like in real classrooms. My Robot Teacher is a podcast about AI and higher education, hosted by public university professors, produced by editaudio, and sponsored by the California Learning Lab.

Information

  • Creator
    myrobotteacher
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    13
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © myrobotteacher
  • Show Website
    My Robot Teacher

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