Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related

The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI [Luccioni]

On 04/17/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, geography / geology, society, the downsides of how people use tech, by Daniel Christian

The mounting human and environmental costs of generative AI — from by Sasha Luccioni
Op-ed: Planetary impacts, escalating financial costs, and labor exploitation all factor.

Excerpt:

Over the past few months, the field of artificial intelligence has seen rapid growth, with wave after wave of new models like Dall-E and GPT-4 emerging one after another. Every week brings the promise of new and exciting models, products, and tools. It’s easy to get swept up in the waves of hype, but these shiny capabilities come at a real cost to society and the planet.

Downsides include the environmental toll of mining rare minerals, the human costs of the labor-intensive process of data annotation, and the escalating financial investment required to train AI models as they incorporate more parameters.

Let’s look at the innovations that have fueled recent generations of these models—and raised their associated costs.

Also relevant/see:

ChatGPT is Thirsty: a mini exec briefing — from BrainyActs #040 | ChatGPT’s Thirst Problem
Between the growing number of data centers + the exponential growth in consumer-grade Generative AI tools, water is becoming a scarce resource.

Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back A.I. Rivals [Grant]

On 04/17/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, Google, Microsoft, platforms, tools, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back A.I. Rivals — from nytimes.com by Nico Grant
The tech giant is sprinting to protect its core business with a flurry of projects, including updates to its search engine and plans for an all-new one.

Excerpt:

Google’s employees were shocked when they learned in March that the South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung was considering replacing Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

For years, Bing had been a search engine also-ran. But it became a lot more interesting to industry insiders when it recently added new artificial intelligence technology.
…
A.I. competitors like the new Bing are quickly becoming the most serious threat to Google’s search business in 25 years, and in response, Google is racing to build an all-new search engine powered by the technology. It is also upgrading the existing one with A.I. features, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times.

P.S. According to The Rundown’s take on this:

The bottom line: Google is replacing the old-school method of displaying 10 results per page with an intelligent chatbot that provides instant answers.

Also relevant/see:

Google planning new search engine while working on new search features under Project Magi — from searchengineland.com by Barry Schwartz
Project Magi will help searchers complete transactions while incorporating search ads on the page.

Also relevant/see:

A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again [Lohr]

On 04/17/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Access to Justice (A2J), Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, economics, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, tools, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A.I. Is Coming for Lawyers, Again — from nytimes.com by Steve Lohr (behind paywall)
Previous advances in A.I. inspired predictions that the law was the lucrative profession most likely to suffer job losses. It didn’t happen. Is this time different?

Excerpt:

But unless the past isn’t a guide, the impact of the new technology is more likely to be a steadily rising tide than a sudden tidal wave. New A.I. technology will change the practice of law, and some jobs will be eliminated, but it also promises to make lawyers and paralegals more productive, and to create new roles. That is what happened after the introduction of other work-altering technologies like the personal computer and the internet.

One new study, by researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and New York University, concluded that the industry most exposed to the new A.I. was “legal services.” Another research report, by economists at Goldman Sachs, estimated that 44 percent of legal work could be automated. Only the work of office and administrative support jobs, at 46 percent, was higher.

Lawyers are only one occupation in the path of A.I. progress. A study by researchers at OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, and the University of Pennsylvania found that about 80 percent of American workers would have at least 10 percent of their tasks affected by the latest A.I. software.

Also relevant/see:

039 | Micro-legal & AI Legal Help — from thebrainyacts.beehiiv.com

AI Tools for Lawyers: A Practical Guide [Schwarcz and Choi]

On 04/17/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, Legal operations, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, by Daniel Christian

AI Tools for Lawyers: A Practical Guide is now “highly recommended” by @lsolum. It provides practical, & specific advice about how to use tools like ChatGPT to improve efficiency & effectiveness of various legal tasks. Download it now! https://t.co/gtbzB7Xvfg

— Daniel Schwarcz (@Dschwarcz) April 12, 2023

“AutoGPT might be the next big step in AI”; “software agents that use natural language to simulate human behavior” + other items re: AI

On 04/13/2023, in 21st century, architecture, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, design, education technology, emerging technologies, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, Natural Language Processing (NLP), simulations, skills, society, tools, training / L&D, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

AutoGPT might be the next big step in AI.

Here’s why Karpathy recently said “AutoGPT is the next frontier of prompt engineering”

AutoGPT is the equivalent of giving GPT-based models a memory and a body. You can now give a task to an AI agent and have it autonomously come up… pic.twitter.com/mYIJm2IEZy

— Lior? (@AlphaSignalAI) April 11, 2023

AutoGPT, less noise more signal

This is where you should pay attention

Here is why ?

pic.twitter.com/2For7bPOID

— Linus (???) (@LinusEkenstam) April 11, 2023

AutoGPT is the next BIG thing in AI.

Seems like a new *groundbreaking* update comes out every hour.

Here are a few examples just from the past 24 hours: ?

— Barsee ? (@heyBarsee) April 12, 2023

AutoGPT is the next big thing in AI— from therundown.ai by Rowan Cheung

Excerpt:

AutoGPT has been making waves on the internet recently, trending on both GitHub and Twitter. If you thought ChatGPT was crazy, AutoGPT is about to blow your mind.

AutoGPT creates AI “agents” that operate automatically on their own and complete tasks for you. In case you’ve missed our previous issues covering it, here’s a quick rundown:

- It’s open-sourced [code]
- It works by chaining together LLM “thoughts”
- It has internet access, long-term and short-term memory, access to popular websites, and file storage

.

From DSC:
I want to highlight that paper from Stanford, as I’ve seen it cited several times recently:.

Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior
Joon Sung Park, Joseph C. O’Brien, Carrie J. Cai, Meredith Ringel Morris, Percy Liang, Michael S. Bernstein
.

From DSC:
And for a rather fun idea/application of these emerging technologies, see:

Quick Prompt: Kitchen Design — from linusekenstam.substack.com by Linus Ekenstam
Midjourney Prompt. Create elegant kitchen photos using this starting prompt. Make it your own, experiment, add, remove and tinker to create new ideas.

…which made me wonder how we might use these techs in the development of new learning spaces (or in renovating current learning spaces).

From DSC:
On a much different — but still potential — note, also see:

A.I. could lead to a ‘nuclear-level catastrophe’ according to a third of researchers, a new Stanford report finds — from fortune.com by Tristan Bove

Excerpt:

Many experts in A.I. and computer science say the technology is likely a watershed moment for human society. But 36% don’t mean that as a positive, warning that decisions made by A.I. could lead to “nuclear-level catastrophe,” according to researchers surveyed in an annual report on the technology by Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered A.I., published earlier this month.

AutoGPTs are improving at a blazingly fast speed and could soon transform the face of business.

Here's what you need to know:

— Nathan Lands (@NathanLands) April 12, 2023

Credentialed Learning For All [gettingsmart.com]

On 04/13/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, career development, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, education, education reform, experimentation, future, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, pathways, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, reinvent, skills, society, student-related, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, virtual K-12 schools, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Credentialed Learning For All — from gettingsmart.com

Vision

Learning happens throughout life and is not isolated to the K-12 or higher education sectors. Yet, often, validations of learning only happen in these specific areas. The system of evaluation based on courses, grades, and credit serves as a poor proxy for communicating skills given the variation in course content, grade inflation, and inclusion of participation and extra credit within course grades.

Credentialed learning provides a way to accurately document human capability for all learners throughout their life. A lifetime credentialed learning ecosystem provides better granularity around learning, better documentation of the learning, and more relevance for both the credential recipient and reviewer. This improves the match between higher education and/or employment with the individual, while also providing a more clear and accurate lifetime learning pathway.

With a fully-credentialed system, individuals can own well-documented evidence of a lifetime of learning and choose what and when to share this data. This technology enables every learner to have more opportunities for finding the best career match without today’s existing barriers around cost, access, and proxies.

Addendum on 4/28/23 — speaking of credentials:

First Rung — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
New research shows stacking credentials pays off for low-income learners.

Stacking credentials pays off for many low-income students, new research finds, but only if learners move up the education ladder. Also, Kansas is hoping a new grant program will attract more companies to participate in microinternships.

The future of education in a world of AI — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
A positive vision for the transformation to come

Excerpt:

Imagine introducing high-quality AI tutors into the flipped classroom model. These AI-powered systems have the potential to significantly enhance the learning experience for students and make flipped classrooms even more effective. They provide personalized learning, where AI tutors can tailor instruction to each student’s unique needs while continually adjusting content based on performance. This means that students can engage with the content at home more effectively, ensuring they come to class better prepared and ready to dive into hands-on activities or discussions.

With AI tutors taking care of some of the content delivery outside of class, teachers can devote more time to fostering meaningful interactions with their students during class. They can also use insights from the AI tutors to identify areas where students might need extra support or guidance, enabling them to provide more personalized and effective instruction. And with AI assistance, they can design better active learning opportunities in class to make sure learnings stick.

Also relevant/see:

ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it — from technologyreview.com by Will Douglas Heaven
The narrative around cheating students doesn’t tell the whole story. Meet the teachers who think generative AI could actually make learning better.

Advanced chatbots could be used as powerful classroom aids that make lessons more interactive, teach students media literacy, generate personalized lesson plans, save teachers time on admin, and more.

Will ChatGPT Change How Professors Assess Learning? — from chronicle.com by Becky Supiano
It won’t be easy without their colleges’ support.

What the Past Can Teach Us About the Future of AI and Education — from campustechnology.com by Dr. David Wiley
Current attitudes toward generative AI hearken back to early skepticism about the impact of the internet on education. Both then and now, technology has created challenges but also opportunities that can’t be ignored.

How Easy Is It/Will It Be to Use AI to Design a Course? [Boston]

On 04/12/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, CMS/LMS, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, elearning, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, higher education, ideas, innovation, instructional design, interaction design, interactivity, IT in HE, law schools, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, microlearning, multimedia, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, teaching & learning, tools, traditional / tradition, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

How Easy Is It/Will It Be to Use AI to Design a Course? — from wallyboston.com by Wally Boston

Excerpt:

Last week I received a text message from a friend to check out a March 29^th Campus Technology article about French AI startup, Nolej. Nolej (pronounced “Knowledge”) has developed an OpenAI-based instructional content generator for educators called NolejAI.

Access to NolejAI is through a browser. Users can upload video, audio, text documents, or a website url. NolejAI will generate an interactive micro-learning package which is a standalone digital lesson including content transcript, summaries, a glossary of terms, flashcards, and quizzes. All the lesson materials generated is based upon the uploaded materials.

From DSC:
I wonder if this will turn out to be the case:

I am sure it’s only a matter of time before NolejAI or another product becomes capable of generating a standard three credit hour college course. Whether that is six months or two years, it’s likely sooner than we think.

Also relevant/see:

The Ultimate 100 AI Tools

Our World Shaken, Not Stirred: Synthetic entertainment, hybrid social experiences, syncing ourselves with apps, and more. [Belsky]

On 04/12/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, digital audio, digital storytelling, digital video, disruption, drama/theater, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, legislatures / government / legal, liberal arts, media/film, multimedia, new business models, online media, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, story, storytelling, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, webinars, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Before we get to Scott Belsky’s article, here’s an interesting/related item from Tobi Lutke:

I just clued in how insane text2vid will get soon. As crazy as this sounds, we will be able to generate movies from just minor prompts and the path there is pretty clear.

— tobi lutke (@tobi) March 29, 2023

Our World Shaken, Not Stirred: Synthetic entertainment, hybrid social experiences, syncing ourselves with apps, and more. — from implications.com by Scott Belsky
Things will get weird. And exciting.

Excerpts:

Recent advances in technology will ~~stir~~ shake the pot of culture and our day-to-day experiences. Examples? A new era of synthetic entertainment will emerge, online social dynamics will become “hybrid experiences” where AI personas are equal players, and we will sync ourselves with applications as opposed to using applications.

A new era of synthetic entertainment will emerge as the world’s video archives – as well as actors’ bodies and voices – will be used to train models. Expect sequels made without actor participation, a new era of ai-outfitted creative economy participants, a deluge of imaginative media that would have been cost prohibitive, and copyright wars and legislation.

Unauthorized sequels, spin-offs, some amazing stuff, and a legal dumpster fire: Now lets shift beyond Hollywood to the fast-growing long tail of prosumer-made entertainment. This is where entirely new genres of entertainment will emerge including the unauthorized sequels and spinoffs that I expect we will start seeing.

Also relevant/see:

Digital storytelling with generative AI: notes on the appearance of #AICinema — from bryanalexander.org by Bryan Alexander

Excerpt:

This is how I viewed a fascinating article about the so-called #AICinema movement. Benj Edwards describes this nascent current and interviews one of its practitioners, Julie Wieland. It’s a great example of people creating small stories using tech – in this case, generative AI, specifically the image creator Midjourney.

Bryan links to:

Artists astound with AI-generated film stills from a parallel universe — from arstechnica.com by Benj Edwards
A Q&A with “synthographer” Julie Wieland on the #aicinema movement.

From DSC:
How will text-to-video impact the Learning and Development world? Teaching and learning? Those people communicating within communities of practice? Those creating presentations and/or offering webinars?

Hmmm…should be interesting!

The Future of Teaching is Here — from samchaltain.substack.com by Sam Chaltain

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

It’s not sexy, but I feel like Sal Khan’s recent video introducing his Academy’s GPT-fueled AI tutor augurs the future of the teaching profession — and not just at Khan Academy.
…
The tutor is already fully capable of offering personalized feedback, hints and suggestions for just about any topic for which there are already clearly established answers — from solving math equations with parentheses to digesting John Locke’s political philosophy.
…
But now we’ve entered a new chapter — dare I say, a Technological Singularity (20 years early) — one in which Chat-GPT in particular, and the daily flood of AI tools more generally, has changed the nature of the teacher/student relationship even more irrevocably than before.

As a result, from this day forward, the job of a teacher REALLY needs to stop being about transmission.

So what should it start being instead?
…
In which case, the future of teaching is not about transmission, but it is about the other trans- words: transmedia exploration, transdisciplinary weaving, transcultural understanding, and, yes, personal and societal transformation.

ChatGPT is the hottest new job skill that can help you get hired, according to HR experts [Smith]

On 04/11/2023, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, Microsoft, skills, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

ChatGPT is the hottest new job skill that can help you get hired, according to HR experts — from cnbc.com by Morgan Smith

Excerpt:

The hottest new job qualification could be how well you work with a chatbot.

ChatGPT is the latest in-demand job skill companies are hiring for, according to recent research from the career site Resume Builder.

Since its public unveiling in late 2022, ChatGPT has been quickly adopted by companies like Microsoft and Slack which are incorporating the chatbot into their products or using it to work more efficiently.

“Hiring managers care less about whether or not you use ChatGPT, what’s more important is what you can accomplish with it,” says Juan Pablo Gonzalez, a senior client partner at the global consulting firm Korn Ferry.

Who Will Be the Academic Prompt Engineering Experts? [Boston]

On 04/11/2023, in 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, MBA, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Who Will Be the Academic Prompt Engineering Experts? — from wallyboston.com by Wally Boston

Excerpts:

As I mentioned in a post a month ago, prompt engineering is the term of art for prompting a generative AI tool like ChatGPT-4 to produce an answer to a question, analysis of a problem, or an essay about a particular topic.
…
It’s ironic that the “experts” providing prompt engineering courses are not academics. I happen to believe that there are academics mastering prompt engineering as I write this.
…
Last week, I wrote about generative AI tools that could be used to decrease the instructional design time required to build a college course. I also wrote an article about Villanova University professor Noah Barsky’s opinion piece suggesting that all MBA curriculums should be rewritten to teach their students how to utilize AI tools in their professions. Business schools with outdated curriculums will not prepare their graduates for businesses expecting them to be able to master state of the art AI tools.

Also relevant/see:

From DSC:
Read that again…

“In June, when students are finishing up their classes, they may be punished by their instructors for using AI as a writing tool. But in July, when they’re out on the job market, they can be punished by their employers or potential employers for not knowing how to use AI as a writing tool.”

Also relevant/see:

11 Tips to Take Your ChatGPT Prompts to the Next Level — from wired.com by David Nield
Sure, anyone can use OpenAI’s chatbot. But with smart engineering, you can get way more interesting results.

Excerpts:

You don’t have to do all the typing yourself when it comes to ChatGPT. Copy and paste is your friend, and there’s no problem with pasting in text from other sources.
…
Another way to improve the responses you get from ChatGPT is to give it some data to work with before you ask your question.
…
Your answers can be seriously improved if you give ChatGPT some ingredients to work with before asking for a response.

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