content development, aggregation, repositories

“A bot that watched 70,000 hours of Minecraft could unlock AI’s next big thing” [Douglas Heaven] plus several other items re: AI

On 11/29/2022, in art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, assistive technologies, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, curriculum, disruption, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, experimentation, future, game-changing environment, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, languages and translation, Legal operations, legal technologies, tools, training / L&D, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A bot that watched 70,000 hours of Minecraft could unlock AI’s next big thing — from technologyreview.com by Will Douglas Heaven
Online videos are a vast and untapped source of training data—and OpenAI says it has a new way to use it.

Excerpt:

OpenAI has built the best Minecraft-playing bot yet by making it watch 70,000 hours of video of people playing the popular computer game. It showcases a powerful new technique that could be used to train machines to carry out a wide range of tasks by binging on sites like YouTube, a vast and untapped source of training data.

The Minecraft AI learned to perform complicated sequences of keyboard and mouse clicks to complete tasks in the game, such as chopping down trees and crafting tools. It’s the first bot that can craft so-called diamond tools, a task that typically takes good human players 20 minutes of high-speed clicking—or around 24,000 actions.

The result is a breakthrough for a technique known as imitation learning, in which neural networks are trained to perform tasks by watching humans do them.
…
The team’s approach, called Video Pre-Training (VPT), gets around the bottleneck in imitation learning by training another neural network to label videos automatically.

Speak lands investment from OpenAI to expand its language learning platform — from techcrunch.com by Kyle Wiggers

Excerpts:

“Most language learning software can help with the beginning part of learning basic vocabulary and grammar, but gaining any degree of fluency requires speaking out loud in an interactive environment,” Zwick told TechCrunch in an email interview. “To date, the only way people can get that sort of practice is through human tutors, which can also be expensive, difficult and intimidating.”

Speak’s solution is a collection of interactive speaking experiences that allow learners to practice conversing in English. Through the platform, users can hold open-ended conversations with an “AI tutor” on a range of topics while receiving feedback on their pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.

It’s one of the top education apps in Korea on the iOS App Store, with over 15 million lessons started annually, 100,000 active subscribers and “double-digit million” annual recurring revenue.

If you last checked in on AI image makers a month ago & thought “that is a fun toy, but is far from useful…” Well, in just the last week or so two of the major AI systems updated.

You can now generate a solid image in one try. For example, “otter on a plane using wifi” 1st try: pic.twitter.com/DhiYeVMEEV

— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) November 26, 2022

Is AI Generated Art Really Coming for Your Job? — from edugeekjournal.com by Matt Crosslin

Excerpt:

So, is this a cool development that will become a fun tool for many of us to play around with in the future? Sure. Will people use this in their work? Possibly. Will it disrupt artists across the board? Unlikely. There might be a few places where really generic artwork is the norm and the people that were paid very little to crank them out will be paid very little to input prompts. Look, PhotoShop and asset libraries made creating company logos very, very easy a long time ago. But people still don’t want to take the 30 minutes it takes to put one together, because thinking through all the options is not their thing. You still have to think through those options to enter an AI prompt. And people just want to leave that part to the artists. The same thing was true about the printing press. Hundreds of years of innovation has taught us that the hard part of the creation of art is the human coming up with the ideas, not the tools that create the art.

A quick comment from DSC:
Possibly, at least in some cases. But I’ve seen enough home-grown, poorly-designed graphics and logos to make me wonder if that will be the case.

How to Teach With Deep Fake Technology — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Despite the scary headlines, deep fake technology can be a powerful teaching tool

Excerpt:

The very concept of teaching with deep fake technology may be unsettling to some. After all, deep fake technology, which utilizes AI and machine learning and can alter videos and animate photographs in a manner that appears realistic, has frequently been covered in a negative light. The technology can be used to violate privacy and create fake videos of real people.

However, while these potential abuses of the technology are real and concerning that doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye to the technology’s potential when using it responsibly, says Jaime Donally, a well-known immersive learning expert.

From DSC:
I’m still not sure about this one…but I’ll try to be open to the possibilities here.

Educators Are Taking Action in AI Education to Make Future-Ready Communities — from edsurge.com by Annie Ning

Excerpt:

AI Explorations and Their Practical Use in School Environments is an ISTE initiative funded by General Motors. The program provides professional learning opportunities for educators, with the goal of preparing all students for careers with AI.

Recently, we spoke with three more participants of the AI Explorations program to learn about its ongoing impact in K-12 classrooms. Here, they share how the program is helping their districts implement AI curriculum with an eye toward equity in the classroom.

Stealth Legal AI Startup Harvey Raises $5M in Round Led By OpenAI — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A hitherto stealth legal AI startup emerged from the shadows today with news via TechCrunch that it has raised $5 million in funding led by the startup fund of OpenAI, the company that developed advanced neural network AI systems such as GPT-3 and DALL-E 2.

The startup, called Harvey, will build on the GPT-3 technology to enable lawyers to create legal documents or perform legal research by providing simple instructions using natural language.

The company was founded by Winston Weinberg, formerly an associate at law firm O’Melveny & Myers, and Gabriel Pereyra, formerly a research scientist at DeepMind and most recently a machine learning engineer at Meta AI.

This Copyright Lawsuit Could Shape the Future of Generative AI [Knight]

On 11/25/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, future, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, programming, tools, trends, United States, by Daniel Christian

This Copyright Lawsuit Could Shape the Future of Generative AI — from wired.com by Will Knight
Algorithms that create art, text, and code are spreading fast—but legal challenges could throw a wrench in the works.

Excerpts:

A class-action lawsuit filed in a federal court in California this month takes aim at GitHub Copilot, a powerful tool that automatically writes working code when a programmer starts typing. The coder behind the suit argues that GitHub is infringing copyright because it does not provide attribution when Copilot reproduces open-source code covered by a license requiring it.
…
Programmers have, of course, always studied, learned from, and copied each other’s code. But not everyone is sure it is fair for AI to do the same, especially if AI can then churn out tons of valuable code itself, without respecting the source material’s license requirements. “As a technologist, I’m a huge fan of AI ,” Butterick says. “I’m looking forward to all the possibilities of these tools. But they have to be fair to everybody.”

Whatever the outcome of the Copilot case, Villa says it could shape the destiny of other areas of generative AI. If the outcome of the Copilot case hinges on how similar AI-generated code is to its training material, there could be implications for systems that reproduce images or music that matches the style of material in their training data.

Also legal-related, see:

Columbia, Georgetown and Stanford Law Schools Quit ‘U.S. News’ — from insidehighered.com by Scott Jaschik

Also related to AI and art/creativity from Wired.com, see:

Picture Limitless Creativity at Your Fingertips — by Kevin Kelly
Artificial intelligence can now make better art than most humans. Soon, these engines of wow will transform how we design just about everything.
This Uncensored AI Art Tool Can Generate Fantasies—and Nightmares — by Will Knight
Open source project Stable Diffusion allows anyone to conjure images with algorithms, but some fear it will be used to create unethical horrors.
Who Will Own the Art of the Future? — by Jessica Rizzo
OpenAI has announced that it’s granting Dall-E users the right to commercialize their art. For now.

10 Ways to Give a Better Lecture — from cultofpedagogy.com by Jennifer Gonzalez

Excerpt:

It would be an understatement to say that lecturing is frowned upon in modern teaching. At this point it’s almost become a cliché: Don’t be the sage on the stage; be the guide on the side. Ideally, we should stick to supporting students through inquiry learning, cooperative learning, project-based learning, and so on. I have personally advocated for ALL of these approaches, over and over again. And I do believe that students need to be active in their learning.

But does that mean we dump lectures altogether? At a time when TED Talks and online courses are incredibly popular, when our students get at least some portion of their instruction through video-based, blended learning platforms, and when most people reading this have probably learned something useful or interesting in the last month from YouTube, aren’t we all learning from lectures all the time?

I’d argue that two factors have given lectures a bad name: overuse and poor execution. Let’s look at these issues one at a time.

The Impact of Storytelling on Learning — from campustechnology.com by Ruth Reynard
The benefits of storytelling in teaching and learning are well established — and digital tools can help make stories more interactive, boost engagement, and convey ideas more effectively. Here’s how to make the most of technology and sidestep common mistakes in the use of storytelling for learning.

Excerpts:

Research.com provides a lot of helpful information on digital storytelling, including a breakdown of the tools and media used to tell stories or present ideas: audio capture devices (e.g. microphones and voice recorders), image capture devices (such as digital cameras and scanners), computers (with multimedia capabilities and ample storage), and digital media software (for creating and editing image, video, and audio).
…
While digital tools evolve rapidly, there are several useful tools listed for teachers and students by Med Kharbach (2022). These include:

- StoryboardThat – this storyboard design tool helps to support good design and planning for effective storytelling.
- Canva – this provides already developed templates to use in any story design and development.
- Adobe Spark – useful if you are already familiar with Adobe products.

Hybrid (corporate) learning is becoming the norm and not the exception [Kranc]

On 11/15/2022, in content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, training / L&D, trends, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Hybrid learning is becoming the norm and not the exception — from benefitspro.com by Joel Kranc
“[Corporate] Learning and development needs to happen where work takes place and learning leaders must place a greater focus on creating blended learning experiences that mirror hybrid work models,” says Jeanne Meister, Executive Vice President, Executive Networks.

Excerpt:

A new survey by Executive Networks and NovoEd highlights the new model as 6 in 10 of the 515 learning leaders at large corporations say hybrid learning is becoming a major part of the learning landscape, and is not just a fad or temporary trend. “Learning leaders are preparing for profound changes as they redesign corporate learning with new delivery methods and rethink how to meet the needs of new audiences,” says Christina Yu, CMO, NovoEd. “The pivot to online learning and the availability of a greater range of technology and tools that can be integrated into learning initiatives, such as social and collaborative learning platforms, make it easier for real-time interaction between cohorts, experts, and mentors.”

Would you like to transition out of the classroom and into a corporate instructional design role? [Peck & Cappuccilli]

On 11/13/2022, in adult learning, Amazon, career development, change, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, corporate / business world, instructional design, K-12 related, teachers, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From Teaching to Tech – Q&A With Joanna Cappuccilli — from devlinpeck.com by Devlin Peck and Joanna Cappuccilli
Would you like to transition out of the classroom and into a corporate instructional design role?

Excerpt:

In this Q&A session, we talk with Joanna Cappuccilli about how she transitioned from full-time teacher to full-time curriculum developer at Amazon Web Services, as well as the steps she took to get there.

Joanna and I discuss how developing a portfolio, networking effectively, and preparing extensively for interviews led to her successfully landing a tech role.

Beyond Courses: Instructional Approaches in 2022 — from learningguild.com by Jane Bozarth

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

In researching “upskilling for L&D practitioners” earlier this year, Learning Guild members were asked what they feel has been the biggest shift in their work over time: While technology has driven much change, sometimes seemingly exponentially, nearly everyone talked about a different sort of shift. This was true even of those who landed on the younger end of the experience spectrum. According to respondents, the biggest change is the move away from the idea that the primary role of L&D is to create “courses.” Technology changed and became easier to use, enabling development of myriad digital solutions. As noted in that report, respondents viewed this change as welcome and positive.
…
When asked what other types of content respondents created to be delivered OUTSIDE of a traditional course, the most common responses were creating video and job aids/performance support materials. Microlearning and curated content were also frequently mentioned, and curated collections of existing material was popular with those engaged in traditional design.

Also relevant/see:

Games, Organizing, & Motivation: ID Links 10/25/22 — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker
Curated links on games built in Twine, storytelling, organization, useful tools, motivation, and transitioning from teaching to ID.

From DSC:
Under the Storytelling and CYOA books section, it was interesting to see the Random Plot Generator, where Christy wrote: “A writing prompt tool to generate two characters, a setting, situation, theme, and character action. This could be a fun way to start scenarios if you’re feeling stuck. h/t Jean Marrapodi.”

I thought this might be a good tool for developing writers, improv actors, and likely others as well! 🙂

Also from Christy Tucker, see:

Voice Over and Video in Branching Scenarios
When should you use voice over and video in branching scenarios? Use them for stable content and when multimedia improve skill transfer.

If the content is very stable and unlikely to change much over time, voice over might make sense in a branching scenario. Investing in creating video also makes more sense for more stable content and skills than for something that changes every 6 months.

How AI will change Education: Part I | Transcend Newsletter #59 [Arenaza]

On 11/05/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, assistive technologies, bots, change, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, creativity, education, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, languages and translation, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, platforms, reading, teachers, teaching & learning, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

How AI will change Education: Part I | Transcend Newsletter #59 — from transcend.substack.com by Alberto Arenaza; with thanks to GSV’s Big 10 for this resource

Excerpt:

You’ve likely been reading for the last few minutes my arguments for why AI is going to change education. You may agree with some points, disagree with others…

Only, those were not my words.

An AI has written every single word in this essay up until here.

The only thing I wrote myself was the first sentence: Artificial Intelligence is going to revolutionize education. The images too, everything was generated by AI.

It’s time to redesign organized learning [Albertini]

On 11/02/2022, in business, career development, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, culture, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, more voice more choice more control, skills, social learning / networks, training / L&D, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

It’s time to redesign organized learning — from chieflearningofficer.com by Eric Albertini

Excerpt:

Organizations will need to think about three layers of learning content and access methods:

Thoughtfully curated by the organization for business fit.
Semi-curated with the learner having some control of what they learn.
Open for all, where the learner makes all the choices of what and how they learn.

Employee-centric learning approach. There must be a match of learning to organizational objectives as well. Non-curated, open content on platforms is great for focused and deeply aware employees but may not work for everyone, especially in cultures where self-direction is not very strong. Moreover, too much open, non-curated content, driven by non-contextual algorithms, is as detrimental to choice-making for the learner as is too little quality content.

To enable effective learning, technology must be part of a more systemic learning eco-system that includes things such as rewards (the “what’s in it for me”), building blocks from one intervention to the next and post-learning support.

Also from chieflearningofficer.com, see:

Three steps every new L&D leader should take: A tactical guide — by Megan Dillon

Coursera is Evolving into a Third-Wave EdTech Company [Feldstein]

On 11/02/2022, in Alternatives, business, business side of he, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, education technology, global / globalization, higher education, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, lifelong learning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, new business models, online learning, pace of change, platforms, training / L&D, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Coursera is Evolving into a Third-Wave EdTech Company — from eliterate.us by Michael Feldstein

Excerpts:

This is the vision of Coursera’s three-sided platform at scale, connecting learners, educators and institutions in a global learning ecosystem designed to keep pace with our rapidly changing world.

Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda

Coursera's diversified model with 3 segments -- consumer, enterprise, and degrees

The point of this slide is to show the diversification of Coursera’s business. Degree programs may be down, but enterprise licenses and direct-to-consumer certificates are up. But it also indicates Coursera’s ability to diversify revenue streams for its university content providers. The enterprise business provides a distribution channel between universities and employers. From what I can tell, it’s a Guild competitor, even though the two companies look very different on the surface. The consumer segment started as the MOOC business and has expanded into the “tweener” space between courses and degrees: certificates, microdegrees, whatever.

“Get Ready to Relearn How to Use the Internet” + several other items re: AI

On 11/02/2022, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, change, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, data related items, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, languages and translation, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, Natural Language Processing (NLP), NVIDIA, platforms, programming, skills, social learning / networks, society, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Get Ready to Relearn How to Use the Internet — from bloomberg.com by Tyle Cowen; with thanks to Sam DeBrule for this resource
Everyone knows that an AI revolution is coming, but no one seems to realize how profoundly it will change their day-to-day life.

Excerpts:

This year has brought a lot of innovation in artificial intelligence, which I have tried to keep up with, but too many people still do not appreciate the import of what is to come. I commonly hear comments such as, “Those are cool images, graphic designers will work with that,” or, “GPT-3 is cool, it will be easier to cheat on term papers.” And then they end by saying: “But it won’t change my life.”

This view is likely to be proven wrong — and soon, as AI is about to revolutionize our entire information architecture. You will have to learn how to use the internet all over again.
…
Change is coming. Consider Twitter, which I use each morning to gather information about the world. Less than two years from now, maybe I will speak into my computer, outline my topics of interest, and somebody’s version of AI will spit back to me a kind of Twitter remix, in a readable format and tailored to my needs.

The AI also will be not only responsive but active. Maybe it will tell me, “Today you really do need to read about Russia and changes in the UK government.” Or I might say, “More serendipity today, please,” and that wish would be granted.

Of course all this is just one man’s opinion. If you disagree, in a few years you will be able to ask the new AI engines what they think.

Some other recent items from Sam DeBrule include:

Natural Language Assessment: A New Framework to Promote Education — from ai.googleblog.com by Kedem Snir and Gal Elidan

Excerpt:

In this blog, we introduce an important natural language understanding (NLU) capability called Natural Language Assessment (NLA), and discuss how it can be helpful in the context of education. While typical NLU tasks focus on the user’s intent, NLA allows for the assessment of an answer from multiple perspectives. In situations where a user wants to know how good their answer is, NLA can offer an analysis of how close the answer is to what is expected. In situations where there may not be a “correct” answer, NLA can offer subtle insights that include topicality, relevance, verbosity, and beyond. We formulate the scope of NLA, present a practical model for carrying out topicality NLA, and showcase how NLA has been used to help job seekers practice answering interview questions with Google’s new interview prep tool, Interview Warmup.

How AI could help translate extreme weather alerts — from axios.com by Ayurella Horn-Muller

Excerpt:

A startup that provides AI-powered translation is working with the National Weather Service to improve language translations of extreme weather alerts across the U.S.

Using GPT-3 to augment human intelligence — from escapingflatland.substack.com by Henrik Karlsson

Excerpt:

When I’ve been doing this with GPT-3, a 175 billion parameter language model, it has been uncanny how much it reminds me of blogging. When I’m writing this, from March through August 2022, large language models are not yet as good at responding to my prompts as the readers of my blog. But their capacity is improving fast and the prices are dropping.

Soon everyone can have an alien intelligence in their inbox.

With Google’s latest push, a blending of industry and higher ed — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Elyse Ashburn
Google’s new industry specializations were co-built by its experts and faculty at four top universities—part of a larger push to combine forces with higher education to drive economic mobility.

Excerpt:

Google is making a bigger push into higher education, partnering with name-brand universities to offer more advanced credentials that build on its signature Career Certificates program. The four new industry specializations—for fields like construction management and financial analysis—were co-designed by Google’s technical experts and university faculty with subject matter expertise.

The specializations are open to anybody on Coursera’s platform, and typically cost several hundred dollars to complete.

It’s a blending of industry and academic expertise—with an eye toward helping more Americans get high-demand jobs—that Gevelber calls a tipping point for higher education.

It’s time to modernize workplace development programs — from chieflearningofficer.com by Jason Mundy

Excerpts:

So, what exactly do employers need to do to improve L&D? Incorporate individualized microlearning into workforce development.
…
Microlearning-based L&D is used to solve key business objectives and is useful for many types of employee education, such as compliance training, on-the-job skills and administrative responsibilities. Microlearning programs can be tailored to individuals and administered in a way that is not disruptive to employees. Through modern microlearning solutions, it’s also possible to implement scenario-based learning and gamification, both of which increase employee engagement.

From DSC:
After reading this article, some questions come to my mind:

Who decides what’s next on the training regime for an employee?
Is it a team of people doing that for each position? The employee, the supervisor, two levels up supervisor(s), L&D, other?
And/or is it tapping into streams of content created by former people who have done that exact job?

For each position, is it possible to capture a knowledgebase containing which topics, learning modules/courses, blogs, websites, people to follow on social media, or other resources?
Is there a community of practice for each position?
How and who keeps these knowledgebases pruned and up-to-date?

Hmmm…thanks for letting me think out loud with you.

Updated Creative Cloud helps you create with precision and speed and collaborate seamlessly [Belsky]

On 10/19/2022, in Adobe, collaboration, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, design, digital audio, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, graphics, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Updated Creative Cloud helps you create with precision and speed and collaborate seamlessly — from blog.adobe.com by Scott Belsky

Excerpt:

Over the past few years, creative expression has become a widespread desire. From new social media platforms to our efforts to stand out in school, or at work through our ideas, creativity has become a vital skill for everyone. Our teams at Adobe are on a mission to outfit everyone to create.

The latest version of Adobe Creative Cloud, released [on 10/18/22] at Adobe MAX, includes innovations that support creativity for all.

Also relevant/see:

Opening Keynote of Adobe Max 2022 — from adobe.com by various

Student Preference for Online Learning Up 220% Since Pre-Pandemic — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

According to a recent Educause survey, the number of students expressing preferences for courses that are mostly or completely online has increased 220% since the onset of the pandemic, from 9% in 2020 (before March 11) to 29% in 2022. And while many students still prefer learning mostly or completely face-to-face, that share has dropped precipitously from 65% in 2020 to 41% this year.

“These data point to student demand for online instructional elements, even for fully face-to-face courses,” Educause stated.

Also relevant/see:

A Surge in Young Undergrads, Fully Online — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
Tens of thousands of 18- to 24-year-olds are now enrolling at Western Governors, Southern New Hampshire and other national online institutions. Does this represent a change in student behavior?

Learning Ecosystems

Hybrid (corporate) learning is becoming the norm and not the exception [Kranc]

Beyond Courses: Instructional Approaches in 2022 [Bozarth]

Coursera is Evolving into a Third-Wave EdTech Company [Feldstein]

With Google’s latest push, a blending of industry and higher ed [Ashburn]

Updated Creative Cloud helps you create with precision and speed and collaborate seamlessly [Belsky]

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