Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related

Student Use Cases for AI: Start by Sharing These Guidelines with Your Class — from hbsp.harvard.edu by Ethan Mollick and Lilach Mollick

To help you explore some of the ways students can use this disruptive new technology to improve their learning—while making your job easier and more effective—we’ve written a series of articles that examine the following student use cases:

Recap: Teaching in the Age of AI (What’s Working, What’s Not) — from celt.olemiss.edu by Derek Bruff, visiting associate director

Earlier this week, CETL and AIG hosted a discussion among UM faculty and other instructors about teaching and AI this fall semester. We wanted to know what was working when it came to policies and assignments that responded to generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, DALL-E, and more. We were also interested in hearing what wasn’t working, as well as questions and concerns that the university community had about teaching and AI.

Teaching: Want your students to be skeptical of ChatGPT? Try this. — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Then, in class he put them into groups where they worked together to generate a 500-word essay on “Why I Write” entirely through ChatGPT. Each group had complete freedom in how they chose to use the tool. The key: They were asked to evaluate their essay on how well it offered a personal perspective and demonstrated a critical reading of the piece. Weiss also graded each ChatGPT-written essay and included an explanation of why he came up with that particular grade.

After that, the students were asked to record their observations on the experiment on the discussion board. Then they came together again as a class to discuss the experiment.

Weiss shared some of his students’ comments with me (with their approval). Here are a few:

2023 EDUCAUSE Horizon Action Plan: Generative AI — from library.educause.edu by Jenay Robert and Nicole Muscanell

Asked to describe the state of generative AI that they would like to see in higher education 10 years from now, panelists collaboratively constructed their preferred future.
.

Will Teachers Listen to Feedback From AI? Researchers Are Betting on It — from edsurge.com by Olina Banerji

Julie York, a computer science and media teacher at South Portland High School in Maine, was scouring the internet for discussion tools for her class when she found TeachFX. An AI tool that takes recorded audio from a classroom and turns it into data about who talked and for how long, it seemed like a cool way for York to discuss issues of data privacy, consent and bias with her students. But York soon realized that TeachFX was meant for much more.

York found that TeachFX listened to her very carefully, and generated a detailed feedback report on her specific teaching style. York was hooked, in part because she says her school administration simply doesn’t have the time to observe teachers while tending to several other pressing concerns.

“I rarely ever get feedback on my teaching style. This was giving me 100 percent quantifiable data on how many questions I asked and how often I asked them in a 90-minute class,” York says. “It’s not a rubric. It’s a reflection.”

TeachFX is easy to use, York says. It’s as simple as switching on a recording device.
…
But TeachFX, she adds, is focused not on her students’ achievements, but instead on her performance as a teacher.

ChatGPT Is Landing Kids in the Principal’s Office, Survey Finds — from the74million.org by Mark Keierleber
While educators worry that students are using generative AI to cheat, a new report finds students are turning to the tool more for personal problems.

Indeed, 58% of students, and 72% of those in special education, said they’ve used generative AI during the 2022-23 academic year, just not primarily for the reasons that teachers fear most. Among youth who completed the nationally representative survey, just 23% said they used it for academic purposes and 19% said they’ve used the tools to help them write and submit a paper. Instead, 29% reported having used it to deal with anxiety or mental health issues, 22% for issues with friends and 16% for family conflicts.

Part of the disconnect dividing teachers and students, researchers found, may come down to gray areas. Just 40% of parents said they or their child were given guidance on ways they can use generative AI without running afoul of school rules. Only 24% of teachers say they’ve been trained on how to respond if they suspect a student used generative AI to cheat.

Embracing weirdness: What it means to use AI as a (writing) tool — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
AI is strange. We need to learn to use it.

But LLMs are not Google replacements, or thesauruses or grammar checkers. Instead, they are capable of so much more weird and useful help.

Diving Deep into AI: Navigating the L&D Landscape — from learningguild.com by Markus Bernhardt

The prospect of AI-powered, tailored, on-demand learning and performance support is exhilarating: It starts with traditional digital learning made into fully adaptive learning experiences, which would adjust to strengths and weaknesses for each individual learner. The possibilities extend all the way through to simulations and augmented reality, an environment to put into practice knowledge and skills, whether as individuals or working in a team simulation. The possibilities are immense.

Thanks to generative AI, such visions are transitioning from fiction to reality.

Video: Unleashing the Power of AI in L&D — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
An exclusive video walkthrough of my keynote at Sweden’s national L&D conference this week

Highlights

The wicked problem of L&D: last year, $371 billion was spent on workplace training globally, but only 12% of employees apply what they learn in the workplace
An innovative approach to L&D: when Mastery Learning is used to design & deliver workplace training, the rate of “transfer” (i.e. behaviour change & application) is 67%
AI 101: quick summary of classification, generative and interactive AI and its uses in L&D
The impact of AI: my initial research shows that AI has the potential to scale Mastery Learning and, in the process:
- reduce the “time to training design” by 94% > faster
- reduce the cost of training design by 92% > cheaper
- increase the quality of learning design & delivery by 96% > better
Research also shows that the vast majority of workplaces are using AI only to “oil the machine” rather than innovate and improve our processes & practices
Practical tips: how to get started on your AI journey in your company, and a glimpse of what L&D roles might look like in a post-AI world

ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak — from openai.com
We are beginning to roll out new voice and image capabilities in ChatGPT. They offer a new, more intuitive type of interface by allowing you to have a voice conversation or show ChatGPT what you’re talking about.

Voice and image give you more ways to use ChatGPT in your life. Snap a picture of a landmark while traveling and have a live conversation about what’s interesting about it. When you’re home, snap pictures of your fridge and pantry to figure out what’s for dinner (and ask follow up questions for a step by step recipe). After dinner, help your child with a math problem by taking a photo, circling the problem set, and having it share hints with both of you.

We’re rolling out voice and images in ChatGPT to Plus and Enterprise users over the next two weeks. Voice is coming on iOS and Android (opt-in in your settings) and images will be available on all platforms.

Use your voice to engage in a back-and-forth conversation with ChatGPT. Speak with it on the go, request a bedtime story, or settle a dinner table debate.

Sound on ? pic.twitter.com/3tuWzX0wtS

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 25, 2023

Speak in your voice in the listener’s language, not your own, using the latest @OpenAI voice synthesis technology. Great use-case by Spotify: https://t.co/GhDlNrZVqZ https://t.co/s6MLFGx7aR

— Greg Brockman (@gdb) September 25, 2023

ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources. It is no longer limited to data before September 2021. pic.twitter.com/pyj8a9HWkB

— OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 27, 2023

OpenAI Seeks New Valuation of Up to $90 Billion in Sale of Existing Shares — from wsj.com (behind paywall)
Potential sale would value startup at roughly triple where it was set earlier this year

The World’s First AI Cinema Experience Starring YOU Is Open In NZ And Buzzy Doesn’t Cover It — from theedge.co.nz by Seth Gupwell
Allow me to manage your expectations.

Because it’s the first-ever on Earth, it’s hard to label what kind of entertainment Hypercinema is. While it’s marketed as a “live AI experience” that blends “theatre, film and digital technology”, Dr. Gregory made it clear that it’s not here to make movies and TV extinct.

Your face and personality are how HyperCinema sets itself apart from the art forms of old. You get 15 photos of your face taken from different angles, then answer a questionnaire – mine started by asking what my fave vegetable was and ended by demanding to know what I thought the biggest threat to humanity was. Deep stuff, but the questions are always changing, cos that’s how AI rolls.

All of this information is stored on your cube – a green, glowing accessory that you carry around for the whole experience and insert into different sockets to transfer your info onto whatever screen is in front of you. Upon inserting your cube, the “live AI experience” starts.

The AI has taken your photos and superimposed your face on a variety of made-up characters in different situations.

Announcing Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion — from blogs.microsoft.com by Yusuf Mehdi

We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing how we relate to and benefit from technology. With the convergence of chat interfaces and large language models you can now ask for what you want in natural language and the technology is smart enough to answer, create it or take action. At Microsoft, we think about this as having a copilot to help navigate any task. We have been building AI-powered copilots into our most used and loved products – making coding more efficient with GitHub, transforming productivity at work with Microsoft 365, redefining search with Bing and Edge and delivering contextual value that works across your apps and PC with Windows.

Today we take the next step to unify these capabilities into a single experience we call Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion. Copilot will uniquely incorporate the context and intelligence of the web, your work data and what you are doing in the moment on your PC to provide better assistance – with your privacy and security at the forefront.

DALL·E 3 understands significantly more nuance and detail than our previous systems, allowing you to easily translate your ideas into exceptionally accurate images.
DALL·E 3 is now in research preview, and will be available to ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise customers in October, via the API and in Labs later this fall.

The next wave of AI will be interactive [Kahn & Suleyman]

On 09/20/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, technologies for your home, technology (general), trends, by Daniel Christian

The next wave of AI will be interactive — from joinsuperhuman.ai by Zain Kahn
ALSO: AI startups raise over $500 million

Google DeepMind cofounder Mustafa Suleyman thinks that generative is a passing phase, and that interactive AI is the next big thing in AI. Suleyman called the transformation “a profound moment” in the history of technology.

Suleyman divided AI’s evolution into 3 waves:

Classification: Training computers to classify various types of data like images and text.
Generative: The current wave, which takes input data to generate new data. ChatGPT is the best example of this.
Interactive: The next wave, where an AI will be capable of communicating and operating autonomously.

“Think of it as autonomous software that can talk to other apps to get things done.”

From DSC:
Though I find this a generally positive thing, the above sentence makes me exclaim, “No, nothing could possibly go wrong there.”

How new AI chatbots could help teachers with their toughest problems [Toppo] + other AI in education related items

On 09/19/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, content development, aggregation, repositories, digital audio, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, human-computer interaction (HCI), instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, skills, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

How new AI chatbots could help teachers with their toughest problems — from fastcompany.com by Greg Toppo
At least two groups are working on bots that would make peer-reviewed research, buried in expensive academic journals, accessible for everyday use.

But this fall, a few educators are quietly charting a different course they believe could change everything: At least two groups are pushing to create new AI chatbots that would offer teachers unlimited access to sometimes confusing and often paywalled peer-reviewed research on the topics that most bedevil them.

Their aspiration is to offer new tools that are more focused and helpful than wide-ranging ones like ChatGPT, which tends to stumble over research questions with competing findings. Like many juveniles faced with questions they can’t answer, it has a frustrating tendency to make things up.

Using ChatGPT Custom Instructions for Fun and Profit — from every.to by Dan Shipper
How to 10x ChatGPT with personalized answers

Then, I turned Custom Instructions on and gave it the same starting prompt. Here are a few of the responses (emphases are mine):

“Purpose: What’s the primary goal of the course? Is it to augment your existing offerings at Every, serve as a standalone product, or something else?”

“Content Depth: Given your love for detailed, intellectual writing, how in-depth will you go on each topic?”

“Guest Contributions: Do you plan to involve guest experts, perhaps even some of your writing heroes or team members like Kate Lee and Evan Armstrong?”

“Time Investment: Given that you’re already grappling with being too opportunistic and dutiful, how will you allocate time for this without sidelining your creative work or burdening yourself?”

AI for comics — from aiandacademia.substack.com by Bryan Alexander
Exploring an entertaining new Hugging Face application

As generative AI grows, more uses appear. Beyond text and images, other domains for creation pop up as companies, groups, and individuals try out new functions.

Today’s case in point is AI Comic Factory from Hugging Face.* This service will generate a couple of comic book pages based on your text input. It gives you choices of comic style and page layout as well.

Items from Tom Barrett’ Promptcraft: AI for a better learning ecosystem

This new AI video tool clones your voice in 7 languages — and it’s blowing up — from sg.news.yahoo.com by Christoph Schwaiger

How many languages do you speak? Thanks to AI, that number could be as many as seven. Los Angeles-based AI video platform HeyGen has launched a new tool that clones your voice from a video and translates what you’re saying into seven different languages. If that wasn’t enough, it also syncs your lips to your new voice so the final clip looks (and sounds) as realistic as possible.

Microsoft and Project Gutenberg release over 5,000 free audiobooks — from the-decoder.com by Matthias Bastian

Microsoft and Project Gutenberg have used AI technologies to create more than 5,000 free audiobooks with high-quality synthetic voices.

For the project, the researchers combined advances in machine learning, automatic text selection (which texts are read aloud, which are not), and natural-sounding speech synthesis systems.

Preparing Students for the AI-Enhanced Workforce — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
Our graduating and certificate-completing students need documented generative AI skills, and they need them now.

The common adage repeated again and again is that AI will not take your job; a person with AI skills will replace you. The learners we are teaching this fall who will be entering, re-entering or seeking advancement in the workforce at the end of the year or in the spring must become demonstrably skilled in using generative AI. The vast majority of white-collar jobs will demand the efficiencies and flexibilities defined by generative AI now and in the future. As higher education institutions, we will be called upon to document and validate generative AI skills.

AI image generators: 10 tools, 10 classroom uses — from ditchthattextbook.com by Matt Miller

A Majority of New Teachers Aren’t Prepared to Teach With Technology. What’s the Fix? — from edweek.org by Alyson Klein

Think all incoming teachers have a natural facility with technology just because most are digital natives? Think again.

Teacher preparation programs have a long way to go in preparing prospective educators to teach with technology, according to a report released September 12 by the International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit.

In fact, more than half of incoming teachers—56 percent—lack confidence in using learning technology prior to entering the classroom, according to survey data included with the report.

5 Actual Use Cases of AI in Education: Newsletter #68 — from transcend.substack.com by Alberto Arenaza
What areas has AI truly impacted educators, learners & workers?

AI Copilot for educators, managers and leaders
Flipped ~~Classrooms~~ Chatbots
AI to assess complex answers
AI as a language learning tool
AI to brainstorm ideas

AI-Powered Higher Ed — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
What a House of Commons round table discussion tells us about how AI will impact the purpose of higher education

In this week’s blog post I’ll summarise the discussion and share what we agreed would be the most likely new model of assessment in HE in the post-AI world.

But this in turn raises a bigger question: why do people go to university, and what is the role of higher education in the twenty first century? Is it to create the workforce of the future? Or an institution for developing deep and original domain expertise? Can and should it be both?

How To Develop Computational Thinkers — from iste.org by Jorge Valenzuela

In my previous position with Richmond Public Schools, we chose to dive in with computational thinking, programming and coding, in that order. I recommend building computational thinking (CT) competency first by helping students recognize and apply the four elements of CT to familiar problems/situations. Computational thinking should come first because it’s the highest order of problem-solving, is a cross-curricular skill and is understandable to both machines and humans. Here are the four components of CT and how to help students understand them.

“Will Generative AI Improve Digital Accessibility?” + other items re: accessibility from boia.org

On 09/18/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), instructional design, productivity / tips and tricks, programming, society, tools, vendors, vision/possibilities, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

Will Generative AI Improve Digital Accessibility? — from boia.org

Generative A.I. could reduce the busywork of accessibility
Most digital accessibility issues can be addressed easily with clean code and thoughtful content creation. However, many “easy” fixes still take time to implement, particularly when humans need to be involved.

The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) function as the international standards of digital accessibility. WCAG includes a number of requirements that require a subjective approach, which can create busywork for developers, designers, and writers.

For example:

WCAG requires text alternatives (alt text) for images and other non-text content. Writing alt text takes a few seconds, but if you’re operating a large eCommerce site with thousands of images, you may need to spend days or weeks adding alt text.
WCAG requires captions and transcripts for video content. If you don’t plan for those features when drafting your videos, you’ll need to write them after-the-fact — and on a lengthy video, that’s a time-consuming process.
WCAG requires content to maintain an appropriate color contrast ratio. Adjusting your website’s CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) isn’t especially difficult, but on a complex website, designers may need to spend hours adjusting each element.

Generative A.I. may be able to address these challenges.

Also relevant/see:

How Accessibility Can Help You Grow Your Web Design Business — from boia.org
Worried About Web Accessibility Lawsuits? Start Here. — from boia.org
Semantics and Screen Readers: Creating Better Content — from boia.org

Generative A.I. + Law – Background, Applications and Use Cases Including GPT-4 Passes the Bar Exam – Speaker Deck — from speakerdeck.com by Professor Daniel Martin Katz

Also relevant/see:

AI-Powered Virtual Legal Assistants Transform Client Services — from abovethelaw.com by Olga V. Mack
They can respond more succinctly than ever to answer client questions, triage incoming requests, provide details, and trigger automated workflows that ensure lawyers handle legal issues efficiently and effectively.

Artificial Intelligence in Law: How AI Can Reshape the Legal Industry — from jdsupra.com

Next, The Future of Work is… Intersections — from linkedin.com by Gary A. Bolles; via Roberto Ferraro

So much of the way that we think about education and work is organized into silos. Sure, that’s one way to ensure a depth of knowledge in a field and to encourage learners to develop mastery. But it also leads to domains with strict boundaries. Colleges are typically organized into school sub-domains, managed like fiefdoms, with strict rules for professors who can teach in different schools.

Yet it’s at the intersections of seemingly-disparate domains where breakthrough innovation can occur.

Maybe intersections bring a greater chance of future work opportunity, because that young person can increase their focus in one arena or another as they discover new options for work — and because this is what meaningful work in the future is going to look like.

From DSC:
This posting strikes me as an endorsement for interdisciplinary degrees. I agree with much of this. It’s just hard to find the right combination of disciplines. But I supposed that depends upon the individual student and what he/she is passionate or curious about.

Speaking of the future of work, also see:

Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work…

A lot of people have been asking if AI is really a big deal for the future of work. We have a new paper that strongly suggests the answer is YES.
.

Consultants using AI finished 12.2% more tasks on average, completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, and produced 40% higher quality results than those without. Those are some very big impacts. Now, let’s add in the nuance.

What Will Determine AI’s Impact on College Teaching? 5 Signs to Watch. — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie (behind a paywall)

One of the biggest challenges to navigate now is the fact that more digital tools will come with generative AI already embedded in them, says Annette Vee, director of composition and an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “It’s everywhere in professional writing.”

“We need to be fundamentally rethinking ways we teach writing, so we are thinking about integrating tools mindfully,” says Vee, who helped develop a new resource, TextGenEd, that provides guidance in this area. “The real challenge is how do we teach courses that are preparing students and that are smart about generative AI? We have very few teachers currently equipped to do that work.”

“It’s best if there are real stakes attached to the work, for example, an authentic audience the student is writing to,” he writes. “A subject on which students have both sufficient interest and knowledge in order to feel as though they can write convincingly to this audience also matters a lot.”

Also relevant/see — via Robert Gibson on LinkedIn:

Learnt.ai — Built for Learning Specialists — from learnt.ai
Harness the power of artificial intelligence to enhance your learning and development efforts with our easy-to-use platform – no technical expertise required!

Introducing Learnt.ai – a revolutionary collection of AI-powered content generation tools and AI chatbots that are specifically designed to support the common writing tasks of educationalists and learning and development professionals. Imagine being able to generate learning objectives on any topic of your choice, create engaging icebreakers and activities, write assessment questions with ease, and so much more.

Also relevant/see:

An AI and higher education panel — from aiandacademia.substack.com by Bryan Alexander
Live notes

Today I took in a webinar on AI and higher education. The American Association of Colleges and Universities hosted “The AI Revolution: Transforming Higher Education for the Workforce of Tomorrow” and I’d like to share my running notes.

Also relevant/see:

Students’ Perspectives on Using AI — from er.educause.edu by Sarah J. Buszka, Jeremy Cortez, and Isabella Meltzer

Students are using artificial intelligence tools to assist them in their academic careers. Three students share their viewpoints on the tools they use and how using these tools helps them in their coursework and prepares them for the professional world.

Also relevant/see:

Why Professors Are Polarized on AI — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
Academics who perceive threats to education from AI band together as a survival mechanism. The resulting alliances echo divisions formed during online learning’s emergence.

10 Free AI Tools for Graphic Designing — from medium.com by Qz Ruslan

With the advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), designers now have access to a wide array of free AI-powered tools that streamline their creative process, enhance productivity, and add a touch of uniqueness to their designs. In this article, we will explore ten such free AI tools websites for graphic designing that have revolutionized the way designers approach their craft.

Generative Art in Motion — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Animation and video tools create an explosion of creative expression

World’s first AI cinema opening in Auckland to make all your Matrix fantasies come true — from stuff.co.nz by Jonny Mahon-Heap
Review: My HyperCinema experience was futuristic, sleek – and slightly insane as I became the star of my own show.

AI That Alters Voice and Imagery in Political Ads Will Require Disclosure on Google and YouTube — from usnews.com by Associated Press
Political ads using artificial intelligence on Google and YouTube must soon be accompanied by a prominent disclosure if imagery or sounds have been synthetically altered

Google will soon require that political ads using artificial intelligence be accompanied by a prominent disclosure if imagery or sounds have been synthetically altered.

AI-generated election ads on YouTube and other Google platforms that alter people or events must include a clear disclaimer located somewhere that users are likely to notice, the company said in an update this week to its political content policy.

AI Can Teach Students a Powerful Lesson About the Truth — from edweek.org by Rachna Nath
How I’m harnessing ChatGPT in the classroom

What we teachers desperately need, though, is an ocean of examples and training. We need to see and share examples of generative AI—any type of artificial intelligence that can be used to create new text, images, video, audio, code, or data—being used across the curriculum. We need catalogs of new lesson plans and new curriculum.

And we need training on theoretical and practical levels: training to understand what artificial intelligence actually is and where it stands in the development timeline and training about how to integrate it into our classes.

So, my advice to teachers is to use any and all the generative AI you can get your hands on. Then experience—for yourself—verification of the information. Track it back to the source because in doing so, you’ll land on the adjustments you need to make in your classes next year.

From DSC:
Interesting.

Learners can now seamlessly transition between AI-powered assistance (AI Tutor) and Live Expert support to get access to instant support, whether through AI-guided learning or real-time interactions with a human expert.

From Brainly Enrolls New AI-Powered Tools for More
Personalized and Accessible Learning (businesswire.com)

ASSIGNMENT MAKEOVERS IN THE AI AGE WITH DEREK BRUFF — from teachinginhighered.com by Bonni Stachowiak
Derek Bruff shares about assignment makeovers in the AI age on episode 481 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

Comment on this per Derek Bruff:

Why not ask ChatGPT to write what King or X would say about a current debate and then have the students critique the ChatGPT output? That would meet the same learning goals while also teaching AI literacy.

(Be sure to read Asim’s contribution for a useful take.)

Generative AI in Schools: A Closer Look and Future Predictions — from thejournal.com by Ted Mo Chen (emphasis DSC)

Here’s a closer look at the concurrent AI landscape in schools — and a prediction of what the future holds.

So far, high-profile ventures in the instruction realm, such as Kyron Learning, have fused teacher-produced, recorded content with LLM-powered conversational UX. The micro-learning tool Nolej references internet material when generating tasks and tests, but always holds the language model closely to the ground truth provided by teachers. Both are intriguing takes on re-imagining how to deliver core instruction and avoid hallucinations (generated content that is nonsensical).

Also see this posting on LinkedIn about that article, where Ted Mo Chen mentions the following companies:

Companies to watch:

New report: Trends in Learning 2023 — from open.ac.uk by Professor Agnes Kukulska-Hulme

So, what six trends have we chosen for this year’s report? They are: advances in AI, the metaverse and learning, challenge-based learning, entrepreneurial learning, seeing yourself in the curriculum and multimodal learning. In the report, we discuss each of the trends in turn, why we think they are important and the impact they are already having or will have on workplace learning. We have also interviewed six people, experts in their field, to find out their opinions and experiences of the trends, sharing their insights in the report.

Unity executive shares her thoughts on the future of education and technology with the rise in popularity of A.I. and real-time 3D content — from fortune.com by Preston Fore

As a result, real-time 3D jobs are among the most in demand within the tech industry. According to Unity’s vice president of Education and Social Impact, Jessica Lindl, demand is 50% higher than traditional IT jobs—adding that salaries for real-time 3D jobs are 60% greater.

“We want to provide really simple on ramps and pathways that will lead you into entry level jobs so that at any point in your career, you can decide to transfer into the industry,” Lindl says.

How universities worldwide are responding to generative AI — from linkedin.com by University World News

University World News continues its exploration of generative AI in our new special report on ‘AI and Higher Education’. In commentaries and features, academics and our journalists around the world investigate issues and developments around AI that are impacting on universities. Generative AI tools are challenging and changing higher education systems and institutions — how they are run as well as ways of teaching and learning and conducting research.

We’ve collated the lead articles below for you to read and the full report is available here.

What’s the future of generative AI? An early view in 15 charts — from mckinsey.com
Generative AI has hit the ground running—so fast that it can feel hard to keep up. Here’s a quick take pulled from our top articles and reports on the subject.

Teaching in the Age of AI — from cft.vanderbilt.edu by Michael Coley, Stacey M. Johnson, Paige Snay, Joe Bandy, John Bradley, and Ole Molvig

This guide will explore:

What is generative AI, and where can it be found?
How can I harness generative AI tools in my teaching to improve student learning?
How can I craft assignments that deter unauthorized use of generative AI?
How does academic integrity relate to generative AI tools?
What resources are there for instructors who want to engage with generative AI tools?

15 Inspirational Voices in the Space Between AI and Education — from jeppestricker.substack.com by Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker
Get Inspired for AI and The Future of Education.

My advice for you today is this: fill your LinkedIn-feed and/or inbox with ideas, inspirational writing and commentary on AI.

This will get you up to speed quickly and is a great way to stay informed on the newest movements you need to be aware of.

My personal recommendation for you is to check out these bright people who are all very active on LinkedIn and/or have a newsletter worth paying attention to.

I have kept the list fairly short – only 15 people – in order to make it as easy as possible for you to begin exploring.

It is crucial to recognize that the intrinsic value of higher education isn’t purely in its ability to adapt to market fluctuations or technological innovations. Its core strength lies in promoting critical thinking, nurturing creativity, and instilling a sense of purpose and belonging. As AI progresses, these traits will likely become even more crucial. The question then becomes if higher education institutions as we know them today are the ony ones, or indeed the best ones, equipped to convey those core strengths to students.

Higher education clearly finds itself caught in a whirlwind of transformation, both in its essence and execution. The juxtaposition of legacy structures and the evolving technological landscape paints a complex picture.

For institutional leaders, the dual challenge lies in proactively seeking and initiating change (not merely adapting to it) without losing sight of their foundational principles. Simultaneously, they must equip students with skills and perspectives that AI cannot replicate.

— from Is Higher Education Nearing the Tipping Point?
by Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker

EdTech Companies Are Racing to Build a Github Copilot for Teachers. This Will Not Be Easy. — from danmeyer.substack.com by Dan Meyer; via Matthew Tower
Generative AI has produced an extremely useful tool for software developers. Can it do the same for teachers?

Also, Matthew Tower, pulled this quote from The big problem with grades. / via Washington Post

“They begged, bargained with, and berated their instructor in pursuit of better grades — not “because they like points,” but rather, “because the education system has told them that these points are the currency with which they can buy a successful future.””

“A.I.’s un-learning problem” [Pastis] + numerous other items re: AI

On 09/06/2023, in 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, corporate / business world, education technology, emerging technologies, future, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, the downsides of how people use tech, training / L&D, United States, vendors, videoconferencing, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The Prompt #14: Your Guide to Custom Instructions — from noisemedia.ai by Alex Banks

Whilst we typically cover a single ‘prompt’ to use with ChatGPT, today we’re exploring a new feature now available to everyone: custom instructions.

You provide specific directions for ChatGPT leading to greater control of the output. It’s all about guiding the AI to get the responses you really want.

To get started:
Log into ChatGPT ? Click on your name/email bottom left corner ? select ‘Custom instructions’

Meet Zoom AI Companion, your new AI assistant! Unlock the benefits with a paid Zoom account — from blog.zoom.us by Smita Hashim

We’re excited to introduce you to AI Companion (formerly Zoom IQ), your new generative AI assistant across the Zoom platform. AI Companion empowers individuals by helping them be more productive, connect and collaborate with teammates, and improve their skills.
…
Envision being able to interact with AI Companion through a conversational interface and ask for help on a whole range of tasks, similarly to how you would with a real assistant. You’ll be able to ask it to help prepare for your upcoming meeting, get a consolidated summary of prior Zoom meetings and relevant chat threads, and even find relevant documents and tickets from connected third-party applications with your permission.

From DSC:
“You can ask AI Companion to catch you up on what you missed during a meeting in progress.”

And what if some key details were missed? Should you rely on this? I’d treat this with care/caution myself.

https://t.co/9kHpYjAngV

Via the Rundown

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) September 6, 2023

A.I.’s un-learning problem: Researchers say it’s virtually impossible to make an A.I. model ‘forget’ the things it learns from private user data — from fortune.com by Stephen Pastis (behind paywall)

That’s because, as it turns out, it’s nearly impossible to remove a user’s data from a trained A.I. model without resetting the model and forfeiting the extensive money and effort put into training it. To use a human analogy, once an A.I. has “seen” something, there is no easy way to tell the model to “forget” what it saw. And deleting the model entirely is also surprisingly difficult.

This represents one of the thorniest, unresolved, challenges of our incipient artificial intelligence era, alongside issues like A.I. “hallucinations” and the difficulties of explaining certain A.I. outputs.

More companies see ChatGPT training as a hot job perk for office workers — from cnbc.com by Mikaela Cohen

Key points:

Workplaces filled with artificial intelligence are closer to becoming a reality, making it essential that workers know how to use generative AI.
Offering specific AI chatbot training to current employees could be your next best talent retention tactic.
90% of business leaders see ChatGPT as a beneficial skill in job applicants, according to a report from career site Resume Builder.

OpenAI Plugs ChatGPT Into Canva to Sharpen Its Competitive Edge in AI — from decrypt.co by Jose Antonio Lanz
Now ChatGPT Plus users can “talk” to Canva directly from OpenAI’s bot, making their workflow easier.

This strategic move aims to make the process of creating visuals such as logos, banners, and more, even more simple for businesses and entrepreneurs.

This latest integration could improve the way users generate visuals by offering a streamlined and user-friendly approach to digital design.

From DSC:
This Tweet addresses a likely component of our future learning ecosystems:

Excited to introduce YouPro for Education—your AI study buddy.

Access unlimited AI chat + search, unlimited AI writing generations, unlimited AI art generations, supercharged with GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion XL at just $6.99/month for students and teachers. pic.twitter.com/0t8zf0AaLr

— Richard Socher (@RichardSocher) August 30, 2023

Large language models aren’t people. Let’s stop testing them as if they were. — from technologyreview.com by Will Douglas Heaven
With hopes and fears about this technology running wild, it’s time to agree on what it can and can’t do.

That’s why a growing number of researchers—computer scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, linguists—want to overhaul the way they are assessed, calling for more rigorous and exhaustive evaluation. Some think that the practice of scoring machines on human tests is wrongheaded, period, and should be ditched.

“There’s a lot of anthropomorphizing going on,” she says. “And that’s kind of coloring the way that we think about these systems and how we test them.”

“There is a long history of developing methods to test the human mind,” says Laura Weidinger, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. “With large language models producing text that seems so human-like, it is tempting to assume that human psychology tests will be useful for evaluating them. But that’s not true: human psychology tests rely on many assumptions that may not hold for large language models.”

We Analyzed Millions of ChatGPT User Sessions: Visits are Down 29% since May, Programming Assistance is 30% of Use — from sparktoro.com by Rand Fishkin

In concert with the fine folks at Datos, whose opt-in, anonymized panel of 20M devices (desktop and mobile, covering 200+ countries) provides outstanding insight into what real people are doing on the web, we undertook a challenging project to answer at least some of the mystery surrounding ChatGPT.

“In terms of human capital development, for instance, AI can be the teacher that helps the national workforce upskill in both AI-related and other domains.”

Article via Robert Gibson on LinkedIn https://t.co/iYKkPavX1H

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) September 4, 2023

Crypto in ‘arms race’ against AI-powered scams — Quantstamp co-founder — from cointelegraph.com by Tom Mitchelhill
Quantstamp’s Richard Ma explained that the coming surge in sophisticated AI phishing scams could pose an existential threat to crypto organizations.

With the field of artificial intelligence evolving at near breakneck speed, scammers now have access to tools that can help them execute highly sophisticated attacks en masse, warns the co-founder of Web3 security firm Quantstamp.

Future of Work Report AI at Work [LinkedIn]

On 09/02/2023, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Future of Work Report AI at Work — from economicgraph.linkedin.com; via Superhuman

The intersection of AI and the world of work: Not only are job postings increasing, but we’re seeing more LinkedIn members around the globe adding AI skills to their profiles than ever before. We’ve seen a 21x increase in the share of global English-language job postings that mention new AI technologies such as GPT or ChatGPT since November 2022. In June 2023, the number of AI-skilled members was 9x larger than in January 2016, globally.

The state of play of Generative AI (GAI) in the workforce: GAI technologies, including ChatGPT, are poised to start to change the way we work. In fact, 47% of US executives believe that using generative AI will increase productivity, and 92% agree that people skills are more important than ever. This means jobs won’t necessarily go away but they will change as will the skills necessary to do them.

Also relevant/see:

The Working Future: More Human, Not Less — from bain.com
It’s time to change how we think about work

Contents

Introduction
Motivations for Work Are Changing.
Beliefs about What Makes a “Good Job” Are Diverging
Automation Is Helping to Rehumanize Work
Technological Change Is Blurring the Boundaries of the Firm
Young Workers Are Increasingly Overwhelmed
Rehumanizing Work: The Journey Ahead

“Nearly Half of Legal Professionals and Consumers Believe Generative AI Will Transform Law Practice” + other items re: AI within the legal realm

On 09/02/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, change, changing business models, emerging technologies, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, new business models, by Daniel Christian

Nearly Half of Legal Professionals and Consumers Believe Generative AI Will Transform Law Practice, LexisNexis Survey Finds — from lawnext.com

A new international survey of lawyers, law students and consumers finds that nearly half believe generative AI will have a significant or transformative impact on the practice of law.

Conducted by LexisNexis and released this morning at ILTACON, the annual conference of the International Legal Technology Association, the survey polled 7,950 lawyers, law students and consumers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and France about their overall awareness of generative AI and their perspectives on its potential impact on the practice of law.

Also relevant/see:

Thomson Reuters Releases Report on Impact of AI of Future of Legal Professionals. — from deweybstrategic.com by Jean O’Grady

Thomson Reuters has released its Future of Professionals Report. The research was conducted during the months of May and June 2023 via an online survey. More than 1,200 professionals from the legal, tax and accounting, and risk professions employed by corporations, firms, and government agencies completed the survey.

Art generated by AI can’t be copyrighted, DC court says — from abajournal.com by Amanda Robert

Art created by artificial intelligence cannot receive copyright protection under U.S. law, a federal judge ruled last week in a case that could influence the outcomes of future disputes over authorship and intellectual property.

Introductory comments from DSC:

Sometimes people and vendors write about AI’s capabilities in such a glowingly positive way. It seems like AI can do everything in the world. And while I appreciate the growing capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the like, there are some things I don’t want AI-driven apps to do.

For example, I get why AI can be helpful in correcting my misspellings, my grammatical errors, and the like. That said, I don’t want AI to write my emails for me. I want to write my own emails. I want to communicate what I want to communicate. I don’t want to outsource my communication.

And what if an AI tool summarizes an email series in a way that I miss some key pieces of information? Hmmm…not good.

Ok, enough soapboxing. I’ll continue with some resources.

ChatGPT Enterprise

Introducing ChatGPT Enterprise — from openai.com
Get enterprise-grade security & privacy and the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet.

We’re launching ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customization options, and much more. We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive. Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data.

Enterprise-grade security & privacy and the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet. — from openai.com

NVIDIA

Nvidia’s Q2 earnings prove it’s the big winner in the generative AI boom — from techcrunch.com by Kirsten Korosec

Nvidia Quarterly Earnings Report Q2 Smashes Expectations At $13.5B — from techbusinessnews.com.au
Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report (Q2) smashed expectations coming in at $13.5B more than doubling prior earnings of $6.7B. The chipmaker also projected October’s total revenue would peak at $16B

MISC

DC: And many business people in the early/mid-90’s thought electronic mail was only good for arranging a business lunch but it was never going to take off.

ChatGPT: Few Americans think it will impact their job in a major way| Pew Research Center https://t.co/dsUfoNOeVO

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) August 30, 2023

OpenAI Passes $1 Billion Revenue Pace as Big Companies Boost AI Spending — from theinformation.com by Amir Efrati and Aaron Holmes

OpenAI is currently on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue over the next 12 months from the sale of artificial intelligence software and the computing capacity that powers it. That’s far ahead of revenue projections the company previously shared with its shareholders, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

OpenAI’s GPTBot blocked by major websites and publishers — from the-decoder.com by Matthias Bastian
An emerging chatbot ecosystem builds on existing web content and could displace traditional websites. At the same time, licensing and financing are largely unresolved.

OpenAI offers publishers and website operators an opt-out if they prefer not to make their content available to chatbots and AI models for free. This can be done by blocking OpenAI’s web crawler “GPTBot” via the robots.txt file. The bot collects content to improve future AI models, according to OpenAI.

Major media companies including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, ABC, and Australian Community Media (ACM) are now blocking GPTBot. Other web-based content providers such as Amazon, Wikihow, and Quora are also blocking the OpenAI crawler.

Introducing Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding — from ai.meta.com

Takeaways re: Code Llama:

Is a state-of-the-art LLM capable of generating code, and natural language about code, from both code and natural language prompts.
Is free for research and commercial use.
Is built on top of Llama 2 and is available in three models…
In our own benchmark testing, Code Llama outperformed state-of-the-art publicly available LLMs on code tasks

Key Highlights of Google Cloud Next ‘23— from analyticsindiamag.com by Shritama Saha
Meta’s Llama 2, Anthropic’s Claude 2, and TII’s Falcon join Model Garden, expanding model variety.

AI finally beats humans at a real-life sport— drone racing — from nature.com by Dan Fox
The new system combines simulation with onboard sensing and computation.

From DSC:
This is scary — not at all comforting to me. Militaries around the world continue their jockeying to be the most dominant, powerful, and effective killers of humankind. That definitely includes the United States and China. But certainly others as well. And below is another alarming item, also pointing out the downsides of how we use technologies.

The Next Wave of Scams Will Be Deepfake Video Calls From Your Boss — from bloomberg.com by Margi Murphy; behind paywall

Cybercriminals are constantly searching for new ways to trick people. One of the more recent additions to their arsenal was voice simulation software.

10 Great Colleges For Studying Artificial Intelligence — from forbes.com by Sim Tumay

The debut of ChatGPT in November created angst for college admission officers and professors worried they would be flooded by student essays written with the undisclosed assistance of artificial intelligence. But the explosion of interest in AI has benefits for higher education, including a new generation of students interested in studying and working in the field. In response, universities are revising their curriculums to educate AI engineers.

Categories

Tags