We are current and former employees at frontier AI companies, and we believe in the potential of AI technology to deliver unprecedented benefits to humanity.
We also understand the serious risks posed by these technologies. These risks range from the further entrenchment of existing inequalities, to manipulation and misinformation, to the loss of control of autonomous AI systems potentially resulting in human extinction. AI companies themselves have acknowledged these risks [1, 2, 3], as have governments across the world [4, 5, 6] and other AI experts [7, 8, 9].
We are hopeful that these risks can be adequately mitigated with sufficient guidance from the scientific community, policymakers, and the public. However, AI companies have strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are sufficient to change this.
LearnLM is our new family of models fine-tuned for learning, and grounded in educational research to make teaching and learning experiences more active, personal and engaging.
We often talk about what Generative AI will do for coders, healthcare, science or even finance, but what about the benefits for the next generation? Permit me if you will, here I’m thinking about teachers and students.
It’s no secret that some of the most active users of ChatGPT in its heyday, were students. But how are other major tech firms thinking about this?
I actually think one of the best products with the highest ceiling from Google I/O 2024 is LearnLM. It has to be way more than a chatbot, it has to feel like a multimodal tutor. I can imagine frontier model agents (H) doing this fairly well.
What if everyone, everywhere could have their own personal AI tutor, on any topic?
ChatGPT4o Is the TikTok of AI Models — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by Nick Potkalitsky In Search of Better Tools for AI Access in K-12 Classrooms
Nick makes the case that we should pause on the use of OpenAI in the classrooms:
In light of these observations, it’s clear that we must pause and rethink the use of OpenAI products in our classrooms, except for rare cases where accessibility needs demand it. The rapid consumerization of AI, epitomized by GPT4o’s transformation into an AI salesperson, calls for caution.
A Guide to the GPT-4o ‘Omni’ Model — from aieducation.substack.com by Claire Zau The closest thing we have to “Her” and what it means for education / workforce
Today, OpenAI introduced its new flagship model, GPT-4o, that delivers more powerful capabilities and real-time voice interactions to its users. The letter “o” in GPT-4o stands for “Omni”, referring to its enhanced multimodal capabilities. While ChatGPT has long offered a voice mode, GPT-4o is a step change in allowing users to interact with an AI assistant that can reason across voice, text, and vision in real-time.
Facilitating interaction between humans and machines (with reduced latency) represents a “small step for machine, giant leap for machine-kind” moment.
Everyone gets access to GPT-4: “the special thing about GPT-4o is it brings GPT-4 level intelligence to everyone, including our free users”, said CTO Mira Murati. Free users will also get access to custom GPTs in the GPT store, Vision and Code Interpreter. ChatGPT Plus and Team users will be able to start using GPT-4o’s text and image capabilities now
ChatGPT launched a desktop macOS app: it’s designed to integrate seamlessly into anything a user is doing on their keyboard. A PC Windows version is also in the works (notable that a Mac version is being released first given the $10B Microsoft relationship)
In a surprise launch, OpenAI dropped GPT-4 Omni, their new leading model. They also made a bunch of paid features in ChatGPT free and announced a new desktop app. Pete breaks down what you should know and what this says about AI.
the internet eliminated time and place as barriers to education, and
generative AI eliminates access to expertise as a barrier to education.
Just as instructional designs had to be updated to account for all the changes in affordances of online learning, they will need to be dramatically updated again to account for the new affordances of generative AI.
The Curious Educator’s Guide to AI | Strategies and Exercises for Meaningful Use in Higher Ed — from ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub by Kyle Mackie and Erin Aspenlieder; via Stephen Downes
This guide is designed to help educators and researchers better understand the evolving role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education. This openly-licensed resource contains strategies and exercises to help foster an understanding of AI’s potential benefits and challenges. We start with a foundational approach, providing you with prompts on aligning AI with your curiosities and goals.
The middle section of this guide encourages you to explore AI tools and offers some insights into potential applications in teaching and research. Along with exposure to the tools, we’ll discuss when and how to effectively build AI into your practice.
The final section of this guide includes strategies for evaluating and reflecting on your use of AI. Throughout, we aim to promote use that is effective, responsible, and aligned with your educational objectives. We hope this resource will be a helpful guide in making informed and strategic decisions about using AI-powered tools to enhance teaching and learning and research.
Annual Provosts’ Survey Shows Need for AI Policies, Worries Over Campus Speech — from insidehighered.com by Ryan Quinn Many institutions are not yet prepared to help their faculty members and students navigate artificial intelligence. That’s just one of multiple findings from Inside Higher Ed’s annual survey of chief academic officers.
Only about one in seven provosts said their colleges or universities had reviewed the curriculum to ensure it will prepare students for AI in their careers. Thuswaldner said that number needs to rise. “AI is here to stay, and we cannot put our heads in the sand,” he said. “Our world will be completely dominated by AI and, at this point, we ain’t seen nothing yet.”
Is GenAI in education more of a Blackberry or iPhone? — from futureofbeinghuman.com by Andrew Maynard There’s been a rush to incorporate generative AI into every aspect of education, from K-12 to university courses. But is the technology mature enough to support the tools that rely on it?
In other words, it’s going to mean investing in concepts, not products.
This, to me, is at the heart of an “iPhone mindset” as opposed to a “Blackberry mindset” when it comes to AI in education — an approach that avoids hard wiring in constantly changing technologies, and that builds experimentation and innovation into the very DNA of learning.
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For all my concerns here though, maybe there is something to being inspired by the Blackberry/iPhone analogy — not as a playbook for developing and using AI in education, but as a mindset that embraces innovation while avoiding becoming locked in to apps that are detrimentally unreliable and that ultimately lead to dead ends.
Randomized-controlled experiments investigating novice and experienced teachers’ ability to identify AI-generated texts.
Generative AI can simulate student essay writing in a way that is undetectable for teachers.
Teachers are overconfident in their source identification.
AI-generated essays tend to be assessed more positively than student-written texts.
Can Using a Grammar Checker Set Off AI-Detection Software? — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young A college student says she was falsely accused of cheating, and her story has gone viral. Where is the line between acceptable help and cheating with AI?
ChatGPT shaming is a thing – and it shouldn’t be — from futureofbeinghuman.com by Andrew Maynard There’s a growing tension between early and creative adopters of text based generative AI and those who equate its use with cheating. And when this leads to shaming, it’s a problem.
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
This will sound familiar to anyone who’s incorporating generative AI into their professional workflows. But there are still many people who haven’t used apps like ChatGPT, are largely unaware of what they do, and are suspicious of them. And yet they’ve nevertheless developed strong opinions around how they should and should not be used.
From DSC: Yes…that sounds like how many faculty members viewed online learning, even though they had never taught online before.
OpenAI rolls out Memory feature for ChatGPT
OpenAI has introduced a cool update for ChatGPT (rolling out to paid and free users – but not in the EU or Korea), enabling the AI to remember user-specific details across sessions. This memory feature enhances personalization and efficiency, making your interactions with ChatGPT more relevant and engaging.
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Key Features
Automatic Memory Tracking
ChatGPT now automatically records information from your interactions such as preferences, interests, and plans. This allows the AI to refine its responses over time, making each conversation increasingly tailored to you.
Enhanced Personalization
The more you interact with ChatGPT, the better it understands your needs and adapts its responses accordingly. This personalization improves the relevance and efficiency of your interactions, whether you’re asking for daily tasks or discussing complex topics.
Memory Management Options
You have full control over this feature. You can view what information is stored, toggle the memory on or off, and delete specific data or all memory entries, ensuring your privacy and preferences are respected.
Memory is now available to all ChatGPT Plus users. Using Memory is easy: just start a new chat and tell ChatGPT anything you’d like it to remember.
Memory can be turned on or off in settings and is not currently available in Europe or Korea. Team, Enterprise, and GPTs to come. pic.twitter.com/mlt9vyYeMK
From DSC: The ability of AI-based applications to remember things about us will have major and positive ramifications for us when we think about learning-related applications of AI.
The theme of the day was Human Connection V Innovative Technology. I see this a lot at conferences, setting up the human connection (social) against the machine (AI). I think this is ALL wrong. It is, and has always been a dialectic, human connection (social) PLUS the machine. Everyone had a smartphone, most use it for work, comms and social media. The binary between human and tech has long disappeared.
I recently created an AI version of myself—REID AI—and recorded a Q&A to see how this digital twin might challenge me in new ways. The video avatar is generated by Hour One, its voice was created by Eleven Labs, and its persona—the way that REID AI formulates responses—is generated from a custom chatbot built on GPT-4 that was trained on my books, speeches, podcasts and other content that I’ve produced over the last few decades. I decided to interview it to test its capability and how closely its responses match—and test—my thinking. Then, REID AI asked me some questions on AI and technology. I thought I would hate this, but I’ve actually ended up finding the whole experience interesting and thought-provoking.
From DSC: This ability to ask questions of a digital twin is very interesting when you think about it in terms of “interviewing” a historical figure. I believe character.ai provides this kind of thing, but I haven’t used it much.
AI Resources and Teaching | Kent State University offers valuable resources for educators interested in incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into their teaching practices. The university recognizes that the rapid emergence of AI tools presents both challenges and opportunities in higher education.
The AI Resources and Teaching page provides educators with information and guidance on various AI tools and their responsible use within and beyond the classroom. The page covers different areas of AI application, including language generation, visuals, videos, music, information extraction, quantitative analysis, and AI syllabus language examples.
For all its jaw-dropping power, Watson the computer overlord was a weak teacher. It couldn’t engage or motivate kids, inspire them to reach new heights or even keep them focused on the material — all qualities of the best mentors.
It’s a finding with some resonance to our current moment of AI-inspired doomscrolling about the future of humanity in a world of ascendant machines. “There are some things AI is actually very good for,” Nitta said, “but it’s not great as a replacement for humans.”
His five-year journey to essentially a dead-end could also prove instructive as ChatGPT and other programs like it fuel a renewed, multimillion-dollar experiment to, in essence, prove him wrong.
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To be sure, AI can do sophisticated things such as generating quizzes from a class reading and editing student writing. But the idea that a machine or a chatbot can actually teach as a human can, he said, represents “a profound misunderstanding of what AI is actually capable of.”
Nitta, who still holds deep respect for the Watson lab, admits, “We missed something important. At the heart of education, at the heart of any learning, is engagement. And that’s kind of the Holy Grail.”
From DSC: This is why the vision that I’ve been tracking and working on has always said that HUMAN BEINGS will be necessary — they are key to realizing this vision. Along these lines, here’s a relevant quote:
Another crucial component of a new learning theory for the age of AI would be the cultivation of “blended intelligence.” This concept recognizes that the future of learning and work will involve the seamless integration of human and machine capabilities, and that learners must develop the skills and strategies needed to effectively collaborate with AI systems. Rather than viewing AI as a threat to human intelligence, a blended intelligence approach seeks to harness the complementary strengths of humans and machines, creating a symbiotic relationship that enhances the potential of both.
Per Alexander “Sasha” Sidorkin, Head of the National Institute on AI in Society at California State University Sacramento.
AWS, Educause partner on generative AI readiness tool — from edscoop.com by Skylar Rispens Amazon Web Services and the nonprofit Educause announced a new tool designed to help higher education institutions gauge their readiness to adopt generative artificial intelligence.
Amazon Web Services and the nonprofit Educause on Monday announced they’ve teamed up to develop a tool that assesses how ready higher education institutions are to adopt generative artificial intelligence.
Through a series of curated questions about institutional strategy, governance, capacity and expertise, AWS and Educause claim their assessment can point to ways that operations can be improved before generative AI is adopted to support students and staff.
“Generative AI will transform how educators engage students inside and outside the classroom, with personalized education and accessible experiences that provide increased student support and drive better learning outcomes,” Kim Majerus, vice president of global education and U.S. state and local government at AWS, said in a press release. “This assessment is a practical tool to help colleges and universities prepare their institutions to maximize this technology and support students throughout their higher ed journey.”
Speaking of AI and our learning ecosystems, also see:
At a moment when the value of higher education has come under increasing scrutiny, institutions around the world can be exactly what learners and employers both need. To meet the needs of a rapidly changing job market and equip learners with the technical and ethical direction needed to thrive, institutions should familiarize students with the use of AI and nurture the innately human skills needed to apply it ethically. Failing to do so can create enormous risk for higher education, business and society.
What is AI literacy?
To effectively utilize generative AI, learners will need to grasp the appropriate use cases for these tools, understand when their use presents significant downside risk, and learn to recognize abuse to separate fact from fiction. AI literacy is a deeply human capacity. The critical thinking and communication skills required are muscles that need repeated training to be developed and maintained.
I’ve spent months talking with founders, investors, and scientists, trying to understand what this technology is and who the players are. Today, I’m going to share my findings. I’ll cover:
What an AI agent is
The major players
The technical bets
The future
Agentic workflows are loops—they can run many times in a row without needing a human involved for each step in the task. A language model will make a plan based on your prompt, utilize tools like a web browser to execute on that plan, ask itself if that answer is right, and close the loop by getting back to you with that answer.
But agentic workflows are an architecture, not a product. It gets even more complicated when you incorporate agents into products that customers will buy.
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Early reports of GPT-5 are that it is “materially better” and is being explicitly prepared for the use case of AI agents.
Nvidia is No. 1 on Fast Company’s list of the World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies of 2024. Explore the full list of companies that are reshaping industries and culture.
Nvidia isn’t just in the business of providing ever-more-powerful computing hardware and letting everybody else figure out what to do with it. Across an array of industries, the company’s technologies, platforms, and partnerships are doing much of the heavy lifting of putting AI to work. In a single week in January 2024, for instance, Nvidia reported that it had begun beta testing its drug discovery platform, demoed software that lets video game characters speak unscripted dialogue, announced deals with four Chinese EV manufacturers that will incorporate Nvidia technology in their vehicles, and unveiled a retail-industry partnership aimed at foiling organized shoplifting.
AI — already used to connect, analyze and offer predictions based on operating room data — will be critical to the future of surgery, boosting operating room efficiency and clinical decision-making.
That’s why NVIDIA is working with Johnson & Johnson MedTech to test new AI capabilities for the company’s connected digital ecosystem for surgery. It aims to enable open innovation and accelerate the delivery of real-time insights at scale to support medical professionals before, during and after procedures.
J&J MedTech is in 80% of the world’s operating rooms and trains more than 140,000 healthcare professionals each year through its education programs.
At the GTC A.I. conference last week, Nvidia launched nearly two dozen new A.I. powered, health care focused tools and deals with companies Johnson & Johnson and GE Healthcare for surgery and medical imaging. The move into health care space for the A.I. company is an effort that’s been under development for a decade.
Nvidia is now powering AI nurses— from byMaxwell Zeff / Gizmodo;; via Claire Zau The cheap AI agents offer medical advice to patients over video calls in real-time
