Amid explosive demand, America is running out of power — from washingtonpost.com by Evan Halper
AI and the boom in clean-tech manufacturing are pushing America’s power grid to the brink. Utilities can’t keep up.

Vast swaths of the United States are at risk of running short of power as electricity-hungry data centers and clean-technology factories proliferate around the country, leaving utilities and regulators grasping for credible plans to expand the nation’s creaking power grid.

A major factor behind the skyrocketing demand is the rapid innovation in artificial intelligence, which is driving the construction of large warehouses of computing infrastructure that require exponentially more power than traditional data centers. AI is also part of a huge scale-up of cloud computing. Tech firms like Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta and Microsoft are scouring the nation for sites for new data centers, and many lesser-known firms are also on the hunt.


The Obscene Energy Demands of A.I. — from newyorker.com by Elizabeth Kolbert
How can the world reach net zero if it keeps inventing new ways to consume energy?

“There’s a fundamental mismatch between this technology and environmental sustainability,” de Vries said. Recently, the world’s most prominent A.I. cheerleader, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, voiced similar concerns, albeit with a different spin. “I think we still don’t appreciate the energy needs of this technology,” Altman said at a public appearance in Davos. He didn’t see how these needs could be met, he went on, “without a breakthrough.” He added, “We need fusion or we need, like, radically cheaper solar plus storage, or something, at massive scale—like, a scale that no one is really planning for.”


A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024 — from mckinsey.com by Eric Lamarre, Alex Singla, Alexander Sukharevsky, and Rodney Zemmel; via Philippa Hardman
The generative AI payoff may only come when companies do deeper organizational surgery on their business.

  • Figure out where gen AI copilots can give you a real competitive advantage
  • Upskill the talent you have but be clear about the gen-AI-specific skills you need
  • Form a centralized team to establish standards that enable responsible scaling
  • Set up the technology architecture to scale
  • Ensure data quality and focus on unstructured data to fuel your models
  • Build trust and reusability to drive adoption and scale

AI Prompt Engineering Is Dead Long live AI prompt engineering — from spectrum.ieee.org

Since ChatGPT dropped in the fall of 2022, everyone and their donkey has tried their hand at prompt engineering—finding a clever way to phrase your query to a large language model (LLM) or AI art or video generator to get the best results or sidestep protections. The Internet is replete with prompt-engineering guides, cheat sheets, and advice threads to help you get the most out of an LLM.

However, new research suggests that prompt engineering is best done by the model itself, and not by a human engineer. This has cast doubt on prompt engineering’s future—and increased suspicions that a fair portion of prompt-engineering jobs may be a passing fad, at least as the field is currently imagined.


What the birth of the spreadsheet teaches us about generative AI — from timharford.com by Tim Harford; via Sam DeBrule

There is one very clear parallel between the digital spreadsheet and generative AI: both are computer apps that collapse time. A task that might have taken hours or days can suddenly be completed in seconds. So accept for a moment the premise that the digital spreadsheet has something to teach us about generative AI. What lessons should we absorb?

It’s that pace of change that gives me pause. Ethan Mollick, author of the forthcoming book Co-Intelligence, tells me “if progress on generative AI stops now, the spreadsheet is not a bad analogy”. We’d get some dramatic shifts in the workplace, a technology that broadly empowers workers and creates good new jobs, and everything would be fine. But is it going to stop any time soon? Mollick doubts that, and so do I.


 

 

The biggest things that happened in AI this year — from superhuman.ai by Zain Kahn

January:

  • Microsoft raises eyebrows with a huge $10 Billion investment in OpenAI.

February:

  • Meta launches Llama 2, their open-source rival to OpenAI’s models.
  • OpenAI announces ChatGPT Plus, a paid version of their chatbot.
  • Microsoft announces a new AI-powered Bing Search.

March:

  • OpenAI announces the powerful GPT-4 model, still considered to be the gold standard.
  • Midjourney releases V5, which brings AI-powered image generation one step closer to reality.
  • Microsoft launches Copilot for Microsoft 365.
  • Google launches Bard, its rival to ChatGPT.

…and more


AI 2023: A Year in Review — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard
2023 developments in AI and a hint of what they are building toward

Some of the items that Stefan includes in his posting include:

  • ChatGPT and other language models that generate text.
  • Image generators.
  • Video generators.
  • AI models that that can read, hear, and speak.
  • AI models that can see.
  • Improving models.
  • “Multimodal” models.
  • Training on specific content.
  • Reasoning & planning.
  • …and several others

The Dictionary.com Word of the Year is “hallucinate.” — from content.dictionary.com by Nick Norlen and Grant Barrett; via The Rundown AI

hallucinate
[ huhloo-suh-neyt ]

verb
(of artificial intelligence) to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual. Example: When chatbots hallucinate, the result is often not just inaccurate but completely fabricated.


Soon, every employee will be both AI builder and AI consumer — from zdnet.com by Joe McKendrick, via Robert Gibson on LinkedIn
“Standardized tools and platforms as well as advanced low- or no-code tech may enable all employees to become low-level engineers,” suggests a recent report.

The time could be ripe for a blurring of the lines between developers and end-users, a recent report out of Deloitte suggests. It makes more business sense to focus on bringing in citizen developers for ground-level programming, versus seeking superstar software engineers, the report’s authors argue, or — as they put it — “instead of transforming from a 1x to a 10x engineer, employees outside the tech division could be going from zero to one.”

Along these lines, see:

  • TECH TRENDS 2024 — from deloitte.com
    Six emerging technology trends demonstrate that in an age of generative machines, it’s more important than ever for organizations to maintain an integrated business strategy, a solid technology foundation, and a creative workforce.

UK Supreme Court rules AI is not an inventor — from theverge.com by Emilia David

The ruling follows a similar decision denying patent registrations naming AI as creators.

The UK Supreme Court ruled that AI cannot get patents, declaring it cannot be named as an inventor of new products because the law considers only humans or companies to be creators.


The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work — from nytimes.com by Michael M. Grynbaum and Ryan Mac

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times.

On this same topic, also see:


Apple’s iPhone Design Chief Enlisted by Jony Ive, Sam Altman to Work on AI Devices — from bloomberg.com by Mark Gurman (behind paywall)

  • Design executive Tang Tan is set to leave Apple in February
  • Tan will join Ive’s LoveFrom design studio, work on AI project

AI 2023: Chatbots Spark New Tools — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Jeather Cooper

ChatGPT and Other Chatbots
The arrival of ChatGPT sparked tons of new AI tools and changed the way we thought about using a chatbot in our daily lives.

Chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Bing Chat can help content creators by quickly generating ideas, outlines, drafts, and full pieces of content, allowing creators to produce more high-quality content in less time.

These AI tools boost efficiency and creativity in content production across formats like blog posts, social captions, newsletters, and more.


Microsoft’s next Surface laptops will reportedly be its first true ‘AI PCs’ — from theverge.com by Emma Roth
Next year’s Surface Laptop 6 and Surface Pro 10 will feature Arm and Intel options, according to Windows Central.

Microsoft is getting ready to upgrade its Surface lineup with new AI-enabled features, according to a report from Windows Central. Unnamed sources told the outlet the upcoming Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 will come with a next-gen neural processing unit (NPU), along with Intel and Arm-based options.


How one of the world’s oldest newspapers is using AI to reinvent journalism — from theguardian.com by Alexandra Topping
Berrow’s Worcester Journal is one of several papers owned by the UK’s second biggest regional news publisher to hire ‘AI-assisted’ reporters

With the AI-assisted reporter churning out bread and butter content, other reporters in the newsroom are freed up to go to court, meet a councillor for a coffee or attend a village fete, says the Worcester News editor, Stephanie Preece.

“AI can’t be at the scene of a crash, in court, in a council meeting, it can’t visit a grieving family or look somebody in the eye and tell that they’re lying. All it does is free up the reporters to do more of that,” she says. “Instead of shying away from it, or being scared of it, we are saying AI is here to stay – so how can we harness it?”



What to Expect in AI in 2024 — from hai.stanford.edu by
Seven Stanford HAI faculty and fellows predict the biggest stories for next year in artificial intelligence.

Topics include:

  • White Collar Work Shifts
  • Deepfake Proliferation
  • GPUs Shortage
  • More Helpful Agents
  • Hopes for U.S. Regulation
  • Asking Big Questions, Applying New Policies
  • Companies Will Navigate Complicated Regulations

Addendum on 1/2/24:


 

The rise of AI fake news is creating a ‘misinformation superspreader’ — from washingtonpost.com by Pranshu Verma
AI is making it easy for anyone to create propaganda outlets, producing content that can be hard to differentiate from real news

Artificial intelligence is automating the creation of fake news, spurring an explosion of web content mimicking factual articles that instead disseminates false information about elections, wars and natural disasters.

Since May, websites hosting AI-created false articles have increased by more than 1,000 percent, ballooning from 49 sites to more than 600, according to NewsGuard, an organization that tracks misinformation.

Historically, propaganda operations have relied on armies of low-paid workers or highly coordinated intelligence organizations to build sites that appear to be legitimate. But AI is making it easy for nearly anyone — whether they are part of a spy agency or just a teenager in their basement — to create these outlets, producing content that is at times hard to differentiate from real news.


AI, and everything else — from pitch.com by Benedict Evans


Chevy Chatbots Go Rogue — from
How a customer service chatbot made a splash on social media; write your holiday cards with AI

Their AI chatbot, designed to assist customers in their vehicle search, became a social media sensation for all the wrong reasons. One user even convinced the chatbot to agree to sell a 2024 Chevy Tahoe for just one dollar!

This story is exactly why AI implementation needs to be approached strategically. Learning to use AI, also means learning to build thinking of the guardrails and boundaries.

Here’s our tips.


Rite Aid used facial recognition on shoppers, fueling harassment, FTC says — from washingtonpost.com by Drew Harwell
A landmark settlement over the pharmacy chain’s use of the surveillance technology could raise further doubts about facial recognition’s use in stores, airports and other venues

The pharmacy chain Rite Aid misused facial recognition technology in a way that subjected shoppers to unfair searches and humiliation, the Federal Trade Commission said Tuesday, part of a landmark settlement that could raise questions about the technology’s use in stores, airports and other venues nationwide.

But the chain’s “reckless” failure to adopt safeguards, coupled with the technology’s long history of inaccurate matches and racial biases, ultimately led store employees to falsely accuse shoppers of theft, leading to “embarrassment, harassment, and other harm” in front of their family members, co-workers and friends, the FTC said in a statement.


 

Prompt engineering — from platform.openai.com

This guide shares strategies and tactics for getting better results from large language models (sometimes referred to as GPT models) like GPT-4. The methods described here can sometimes be deployed in combination for greater effect. We encourage experimentation to find the methods that work best for you.

Some of the examples demonstrated here currently work only with our most capable model, gpt-4. In general, if you find that a model fails at a task and a more capable model is available, it’s often worth trying again with the more capable model.

You can also explore example prompts which showcase what our models are capable of…


Preparedness — from openai.com

The study of frontier AI risks has fallen far short of what is possible and where we need to be. To address this gap and systematize our safety thinking, we are adopting the initial version of our Preparedness Framework. It describes OpenAI’s processes to track, evaluate, forecast, and protect against catastrophic risks posed by increasingly powerful models.


Every Major Tech Development From 2023 — from newsletter.thedailybite.co
The yearly tech round-up, Meta’s smart glasses upgrade, and more…

Here’s every major innovation from the last 365 days:

  • Microsoft: Launched additional OpenAI-powered features, including Copilot for Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft 365, enhancing business functionalities like text summarization, tone adjustment in emails, data insights, and automatic presentation creation.
  • Google: Introduced Duet, akin to Microsoft’s Copilot, integrating Gen AI across Google Workspace for writing assistance and custom visual creation. Also debuted Generative AI Studio, enabling developers to craft AI apps, and unveiled Gemini & Bard, a new AI technology with impressive features.
  • Salesforce: …
  • Adobe: …
  • Amazon Web Services (AWS): …
  • IBM:  …
  • Nvidia:  …
  • OpenAI:  …
  • Meta (Facebook):
  • Tencent:
  • Baidu:

News in chatbots — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman & Pete Huang

Here’s what’s on the horizon:

  • Multimodal AI gets huge. Instead of just typing, more people will talk to AI, listen to it, create images, get visual feedback, create graphs, and more.
  • AI video gets really good. So far, AI videos have been cool-but-not-practical. They’re getting way better and we’re on the verge of seeing 100% AI-generated films, animations, and cartoons.
  • AI on our phones. Imagine Siri with the brains of ChatGPT-4 and the ambition of Alexa. TBD who pulls this off first!
  • GPT-5. ‘Nuff said.

20 Best AI Chatbots in 2024 — from eweek.com by Aminu Abdullahi
These leading AI chatbots use generative AI to offer a wide menu of functionality, from personalized customer service to improved information retrieval.

Top 20 Generative AI Chatbot Software: Comparison Chart
We compared the key features of the top generative AI chatbot software to help you determine the best option for your company…


What Google Gemini Teaches Us About Trust and The Future — from aiwithallie.beehiiv.com by Allie K. Miller
The AI demo may have been misleading, but it teaches us two huge lessons.

TL;DR (too long, didn’t read)

  1. We’re moving from ‘knowledge’ to ‘action’. 
    AI moving into proactive interventions.
  2. We’re getting more efficient. 
    Assume 2024 brings lower AI OpEx.
  3. It’s multi-modal from here on out. 
    Assume 2024 is multi-modal.
  4. There’s no one model to rule them all.
    Assume 2024 has more multi-model orchestration & delegation.

Stay curious, stay informed,
Allie


Chatbot Power Rankings — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman

Here’s our power rankings of the best chatbots for (non-technical) work:

1: ChatGPT-4Unquestionably the smartest, with the strongest writing, coding, and reasoning abilities.

T1: Gemini Ultra—In theory as powerful as GPT-4. We won’t know for sure until it’s released in 2024.

2: Claude 2Top choice for managing lengthy PDFs (handles ~75,000 words), and rarely hallucinates. Can be somewhat stiff.

3: PerplexityIdeal for real-time information. Upgrading to Pro grants access to both Claude-2 and GPT-4.

T4: PiThe most “human-like” chatbot, though integrating with business data can be challenging.

T4: Bing ChatDelivers GPT-4-esque responses, has internet access, and can generate images. Bad UX and doesn’t support PDFs.

T4: BardNow powered by Gemini Pro, offers internet access and answer verification. Tends to hallucinate more frequently.

and others…


Midjourney + ChatGPT = Amazing AI Art — from theaigirl.substack.com by Diana Dovgopol and the Pycoach
Turn ChatGPT into a powerful Midjourney prompt machine with basic and advanced formulas.


Make music with AI — from aitestkitchen.withgoogle.com re: Music FX


 

 

From DSC:
The recent drama over at OpenAI reminds me of how important a few individuals are in influencing the lives of millions of people.

The C-Suites (i.e., the Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Operating Officers, and the like) of companies like OpenAI, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Netflix, NVIDIA, Amazon, Apple, and a handful of others have enormous power. Why? Because of the enormous power and reach of the technologies that they create, market, and provide.

We need to be praying for the hearts of those in the C-Suites of these powerful vendors — as well as for their Boards.

LORD, grant them wisdom and help mold their hearts and perspectives so that they truly care about others. May their decisions not be based on making money alone…or doing something just because they can.

What happens in their hearts and minds DOES and WILL continue to impact the rest of us. And we’re talking about real ramifications here. This isn’t pie-in-the-sky thinking or ideas. This is for real. With real consequences. If you doubt that, go ask the families of those whose sons and daughters took their own lives due to what happened out on social media platforms. Disclosure: I use LinkedIn and Twitter quite a bit. I’m not bashing these platforms per se. But my point is that there are real impacts due to a variety of technologies. What goes on in the hearts and minds of the leaders of these tech companies matters.


Some relevant items:

Navigating Attention-Driving Algorithms, Capturing the Premium of Proximity for Virtual Teams, & New AI Devices — from implactions.com by Scott Belsky

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

No doubt, technology influences us in many ways we don’t fully understand. But one area where valid concerns run rampant is the attention-seeking algorithms powering the news and media we consume on modern platforms that efficiently polarize people. Perhaps we’ll call it The Law of Anger Expansion: When people are angry in the age of algorithms, they become MORE angry and LESS discriminate about who and what they are angry at.

Algorithms that optimize for grabbing attention, thanks to AI, ultimately drive polarization.

The AI learns quickly that a rational or “both sides” view is less likely to sustain your attention (so you won’t get many of those, which drives the sensation that more of the world agrees with you). But the rage-inducing stuff keeps us swiping.

Our feeds are being sourced in ways that dramatically change the content we’re exposed to.

And then these algorithms expand on these ultimately destructive emotions – “If you’re afraid of this, maybe you should also be afraid of this” or “If you hate those people, maybe you should also hate these people.”

How do we know when we’ve been polarized? This is the most important question of the day.

Whatever is inflaming you is likely an algorithm-driven expansion of anger and an imbalance of context.


 

 

41 states sue Meta, claiming Instagram, Facebook are addictive, harm kids — from washingtonpost.com by Cristiano Lima and Naomi Nix
The action marks the most sprawling state challenge to date over social media’s impact on children’s mental health

Forty-one states and the District of Columbia are suing Meta, alleging that the tech giant harms children by building addictive features into Instagram and Facebook. Tuesday’s legal actions represent the most significant effort by state enforcers to rein in the impact of social media on children’s mental health.

 

The Misunderstanding About Education That Cost Mark Zuckerberg $100 Million — from danmeyer.substack.com by Dan Meyer
Personalized learning can feel isolating. Whole class learning can feel personal. This is hard to understand.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Last week, Matt Barnum reported in Chalkbeat that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is laying off dozens of staff members and pivoting away from the personalized learning platform they have funded since 2015 with somewhere near $100M.

I have tried to illustrate as often as my subscribers will tolerate that students don’t particularly enjoy learning alone with laptops within social spaces like classrooms. That learning fails to answer their questions about their social identity. It contributes to their feelings of alienation and disbelonging. I find this case easy to make but hard to prove. Maybe we just haven’t done personalized learning right? Maybe Summit just needed to include generative AI chatbots in their platform?

What is far easier to prove, or rather to disprove, is the idea that “whole class instruction must feel impersonal to students,” that “whole class instruction must necessarily fail to meet the needs of individual students.”

From DSC:
I appreciate Dan’s comments here (as highlighted above) as they are helpful in my thoughts regarding the Learning from the Living [Class] Room vision. They seem to be echoed here by Jeppe Klitgaard Stricker when he says:

Personalized learning paths can be great, but they also entail a potential abolishment or unintended dissolution of learning communities and belonging.

Perhaps this powerful, global, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-backed, next-generation, lifelong learning platform of the future will be more focused on postsecondary students and experiences — but not so much for the K12 learning ecosystem.

But the school systems I’ve seen here in Michigan (USA) represent systems that address a majority of the class only. These one-size-fits-all systems don’t work for many students who need extra help and/or who are gifted students. The trains move fast. Good luck if you can’t keep up with the pace.

But if K-12’ers are involved in a future learning platform, the platform needs to address what Dan’s saying. It must address students questions about their social identity and not contribute to their feelings of alienation and disbelonging. It needs to support communities of practice and learning communities.

 

Chatbot hallucinations are poisoning web search — from link.wired.com by Will Knight

The age of generative AI threatens to sprinkle epistemological sand into the gears of web search by fooling algorithms designed for a time when the web was mostly written by humans.


Meta Is Paying Creators Millions for AI Chatbots — from bensbites.beehiiv.com

Meta is shelling out millions to get celebrities to license their likenesses for AI characters in a bid to draw users to its platforms.

Why should I care?
Meta is still all-in on its vision for the metaverse and AI, despite its recent struggles. Meta seems willing to pay top dollar to partner with big names who can draw their massive audiences to use the AI avatars. If the celebrity avatars take off, they could be a blueprint for how creators monetize their brands in virtual worlds. There’s also a chance Meta pulls the plug on funding if user traction is low, just as it did with Facebook Watch originals.


The Post-AI Workplace — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hartman
SAP SuccessFactors’ new product offers the most comprehensive insight yet into the post-AI workplace & workforce

Skills Maps
AI will be used to categorise, track and analyse employee skills and competencies. This will enable orgs to build a clear idea of pockets of talent and areas in need of focus, providing HR, L&D professionals & managers with the opportunity to take a data-driven approach to talent development and capability building.

Roles Impacted: HR Analysts, Managers, Learning & Development Professionals



More than 40% of labor force to be affected by AI in 3 years, Morgan Stanley forecasts — from cnbc.com by Samantha Subin

Analyst Brian Nowak estimates that the AI technology will have a $4.1 trillion economic effect on the labor force — or affect about 44% of labor — over the next few years by changing input costs, automating tasks and shifting the ways companies obtain, process and analyze information. Today, Morgan Stanley pegs the AI effect at $2.1 trillion, affecting 25% of labor.

“We see generative AI expanding the scope of business processes that can be automated,” he wrote in a Sunday note. “At the same time, the input costs supporting GenAI functionality are rapidly falling, enabling a strongly expansionary impact to software production. As a result, Generative AI is set to impact the labor markets, expand the enterprise software TAM, and drive incremental spend for Public Cloud services.”

Speaking of the changes in the workplace, also see:

 


ElevenLabs’ AI Voice Generator Can Now Fake Your Voice in 30 Languages — from gizmodo.com by Kyle Barr
ElevenLabs said its AI voice generator is out of beta, saying it would support video game and audiobook creators with cheap audio.

According to ElevenLabs, the new Multilingual v2 model promises it can produce “emotionally rich” audio in a total of 30 languages. The company offers two AI voice tools, one is a text-to-speech model and the other is the “VoiceLab” that lets paying users clone a voice by inputting fragments of theirs (or others) speech into the model to create a kind of voice cone. With the v2 model, users can get these generated voices to start speaking in Greek, Malay, or Turkish.

Since then, ElevenLabs claims its integrated new measures to ensure users can only clone their own voice. Users need to verify their speech with a text captcha prompt which is then compared to the original voice sample.

From DSC:
I don’t care what they say regarding safeguards/proof of identity/etc. This technology has been abused and will be abused in the future. We can count on it. The question now is, how do we deal with it?



Google, Amazon, Nvidia and other tech giants invest in AI startup Hugging Face, sending its valuation to $4.5 billion — from cnbc.com by Kif Leswing

But Hugging Face produces a platform where AI developers can share code, models, data sets, and use the company’s developer tools to get open-source artificial intelligence models running more easily. In particular, Hugging Face often hosts weights, or large files with lists of numbers, which are the heart of most modern AI models.

While Hugging Face has developed some models, like BLOOM, its primary product is its website platform, where users can upload models and their weights. It also develops a series of software tools called libraries that allow users to get models working quickly, to clean up large datasets, or to evaluate their performance. It also hosts some AI models in a web interface so end users can experiment with them.


The global semiconductor talent shortage — from www2.deloitte.com
How to solve semiconductor workforce challenges

Numerous skills are required to grow the semiconductor ecosystem over the next decade. Globally, we will need tens of thousands of skilled tradespeople to build new plants to increase and localize manufacturing capacity: electricians, pipefitters, welders; thousands more graduate electrical engineers to design chips and the tools that make the chips; more engineers of various kinds in the fabs themselves, but also operators and technicians. And if we grow the back end in Europe and the Americas, that equates to even more jobs.

Each of these job groups has distinct training and educational needs; however, the number of students in semiconductor-focused programs (for example, undergraduates in semiconductor design and fabrication) has dwindled. Skills are also evolving within these job groups, in part due to automation and increased digitization. Digital skills, such as cloud, AI, and analytics, are needed in design and manufacturing more than ever.

The chip industry has long partnered with universities and engineering schools. Going forward, they also need to work more with local tech schools, vocational schools, and community colleges; and other organizations, such as the National Science Foundation in the United States.


Our principles for partnering with the music industry on AI technology — from blog.youtube (Google) by Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube
AI is here, and we will embrace it responsibly together with our music partners.

  • Principle #1: AI is here, and we will embrace it responsibly together with our music partners.
  • Principle #2: AI is ushering in a new age of creative expression, but it must include appropriate protections and unlock opportunities for music partners who decide to participate.
  • Principle #3: We’ve built an industry-leading trust and safety organization and content policies. We will scale those to meet the challenges of AI.

Developers are now using AI for text-to-music apps — from techcrunch.com by Ivan Mehta

Brett Bauman, the developer of PlayListAI (previously LinupSupply), launched a new app called Songburst on the App Store this week. The app doesn’t have a steep learning curve. You just have to type in a prompt like “Calming piano music to listen to while studying” or “Funky beats for a podcast intro” to let the app generate a music clip.

If you can’t think of a prompt the app has prompts in different categories, including video, lo-fi, podcast, gaming, meditation and sample.


A Generative AI Primer — from er.educause.edu by Brian Basgen
Understanding the current state of technology requires understanding its origins. This reading list provides sources relevant to the form of generative AI that led to natural language processing (NLP) models such as ChatGPT.


Three big questions about AI and the future of work and learning — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Alex Swartsel
AI is set to transform education and work today and well into the future. We need to start asking tough questions right now, writes Alex Swartsel of JFF.

  1. How will AI reshape jobs, and how can we prepare all workers and learners with the skills they’ll need?
  2. How can education and workforce leaders equitably adopt AI platforms to accelerate their impact?
  3. How might we catalyze sustainable policy, practice, and investments in solutions that drive economic opportunity?

“As AI reshapes both the economy and society, we must collectively call for better data, increased accountability, and more flexible support for workers,” Swartsel writes.


The Current State of AI for Educators (August, 2023) — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
A podcast interview with the University of Toronto on where we’re at & where we’re going.

 

ChatGPT scams are the new crypto scams, Meta warns — from engadget.com by Karissa Bell
Meta plans to roll out new “Work Accounts” for businesses to guard against hacks.

Excerpt:

As the buzz around ChatGPT and other generative AI increases, so has scammers’ interest in the tech. In a new report published by Meta, the company says it’s seen a sharp uptick in malware disguised as ChatGPT and similar AI software.

In a statement, the company said that since March of 2023 alone, its researchers have discovered “ten malware families using ChatGPT and other similar themes to compromise accounts across the internet” and that it’s blocked more than 1,000 malicious links from its platform. According to Meta, the scams often involve mobile apps or browser extensions posing as ChatGPT tools. And while in some cases the tools do offer some ChatGPT functionality, their real purpose is to steal their users’ account credentials.

AI Is Reshaping the Battlefield and the Future of Warfare — from bloomberg.com by Jackie Davalos and Nate Lanxon
In this episode of AI IRL, Jackie Davalos and Nate Lanxon talk about one of the most dangerous applications of artificial intelligence: modern warfare

Excerpt:

Artificial intelligence has triggered an arms race with the potential to transform modern-day warfare. Countries are vying to develop cutting-edge technology at record speed, sparking concerns about whether we understand its power before it’s deployed.

From DSC:
I wish that humankind — especially those of us in the United States — would devote less money to warfare and more funding to education.

 

Radar Trends to Watch: May 2023 Developments in Programming, Security, Web, and More — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides

Excerpt:

Large language models continue to colonize the technology landscape. They’ve broken out of the AI category, and now are showing up in security, programming, and even the web. That’s a natural progression, and not something we should be afraid of: they’re not coming for our jobs. But they are remaking the technology industry.

One part of this remaking is the proliferation of “small” large language models. We’ve noted the appearance of llama.cpp, Alpaca, Vicuna, Dolly 2.0, Koala, and a few others. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Small LLMs are appearing every day, and some will even run in a web browser. This trend promises to be even more important than the rise of the “large” LLMs, like GPT-4. Only a few organizations can build, train, and run the large LLMs. But almost anyone can train a small LLM that will run on a well-equipped laptop or desktop.

 

Explore Breakthroughs in AI, Accelerated Computing, and Beyond at NVIDIA's GTC -- keynote was held on March 21 2023

Explore Breakthroughs in AI, Accelerated Computing, and Beyond at GTC — from nvidia.com
The Conference for the Era of AI and the Metaverse

 


Addendums on 3/22/23:

Generative AI for Enterprises — from nvidia.com
Custom-built for a new era of innovation and automation.

Excerpt:

Impacting virtually every industry, generative AI unlocks a new frontier of opportunities—for knowledge and creative workers—to solve today’s most important challenges. NVIDIA is powering generative AI through an impressive suite of cloud services, pre-trained foundation models, as well as cutting-edge frameworks, optimized inference engines, and APIs to bring intelligence to your enterprise applications.

NVIDIA AI Foundations is a set of cloud services that advance enterprise-level generative AI and enable customization across use cases in areas such as text (NVIDIA NeMo™), visual content (NVIDIA Picasso), and biology (NVIDIA BioNeMo™). Unleash the full potential with NeMo, Picasso, and BioNeMo cloud services, powered by NVIDIA DGX™ Cloud—the AI supercomputer.

 

On the plus side:


Automation & Higher Ed — from prawfsblawg.blogs.com by Orly Lobel

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

I was delighted to see this thoughtful review of my new book The Equality Machine in Inside Higher Ed focused on some of the questions nearest and dearest to prawfs’ hearts: the future of the professor and higher education as AI becomes more and more part of our learning and teaching. In The Equality Machine, I have a chapter that considers robots and automation in education but does not delve into universities and higher ed. Here’s [an excerpt from] the review:

If the dream of creating high-quality/low-cost scaled online programs is ever to be realized, artificial intelligence—AI—will likely be the key enabling technology. The job of the AI in a scaled (high-enrollment) online course will be to optimally connect the instructor to the learner. The AI will determine when the human instructor should coach, encourage and engage with the learner—and when to hold back. The professor and the AI will collaborate to scale the relational model of learning that is the secret sauce of effective instructional practices.

Integrating faculty and AI to scale quality online learning is, to my knowledge, today more an idea than a reality. After reading The Equality Machine, however, I’m more hopeful than ever that this vision will come to fruition. While not focusing on higher education, the book provides enough examples of the transformative powers of digital technology to enhance human flourishing that some level of academic techno-optimism may be warranted.

 

.


On the negative side:


A Roomba recorded a woman on the toilet. How did screenshots end up on Facebook? — from technologyreview.com
Robot vacuum companies say your images are safe, but a sprawling global supply chain for data from our devices creates risk.

We Haven’t Seen the Worst of Fake News — from theatlantic.com by Matteo Wong; behind paywall
Deepfakes still might be poised to corrupt the basic ways we process reality—or what’s left of it.

From DSC:
It seems to me one of the key potential values that journalism can provide us with is finding out and reporting on the truth. On curating items that are true.

The Spawn of ChatGPT Will Try to Sell You Things — from wired.com by Will Knight
Companies are exploring how to adapt powerful new chatbot technology to negotiate with customer service—and to persuade humans to buy stuff.

Excerpt:

ChatGPT, the recently viral and surprisingly articulate chatbot, has dazzled the internet with its ability to dutifully answer all sorts of knotty questions—albeit not always accurately. Some people are now trying to adapt the bot’s eloquence to play different roles. They hope to harness the AI like that behind ChatGPT to create programs that can persuade, cajole, and badger with super-human tenacity—in some cases to empower consumers but in others to win sales.

 

Radar Trends to Watch: December 2022 — from oreilly.com by Mike Loukides
Developments in Security, Cryptocurrency, Web, and More

Excerpt:

This month’s news has been overshadowed by the implosion of SBF’s TFX and the possible implosion of Elon Musk’s Twitter. All the noise doesn’t mean that important things aren’t happening. Many companies, organizations, and individuals are wrestling with the copyright implications of generative AI. Google is playing a long game: they believe that the goal isn’t to imitate art works, but to build better user interfaces for humans to collaborate with AI so they can create something new. Facebook’s AI for playing Diplomacy is an exciting new development. Diplomacy requires players to negotiate with other players, assess their mental state, and decide whether or not to honor their commitments. None of these are easy tasks for an AI. And IBM now has a 433 Qubit quantum chip–an important step towards making a useful quantum processor.

 

Artificial Intelligence in Video Production — from provideocoalition.com by Iain Anderson

Introduction

Artificial Intelligence has promised so much for so long, and in many ways, it’s been less than perfect. Siri doesn’t quite understand what you’re asking; Google Translate can’t yet seamlessly bridge the gap between languages, and navigation software still doesn’t always offer an accurate route. But it’s getting pretty good. While a variety of AI-based technologies have been improving steadily over the past several years, it’s the recent giant strides made in image generation that’s potentially groundbreaking for post production professionals. Here, I’ll take you through the ideas behind the tech, along with specific examples of how modern, smart technology will change your post workflow tomorrow, or could today.

Also relevant/see:

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian