Introducing Teach AI — Empowering educators to teach w/ AI & about AI [ISTE & many others]


Teach AI -- Empowering educators to teach with AI and about AI


Also relevant/see:

 

Work Shift: How AI Might Upend Pay — from bloomberg.com by Jo Constantz

Excerpt:

This all means that a time may be coming when companies need to compensate star employees for their input to AI tools rather than their just their output, which may not ultimately look much different from their AI-assisted colleagues.

“It wouldn’t be far-fetched for them to put even more of a premium on those people because now that kind of skill gets amplified and multiplied throughout the organization,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford professor and one of the study’s authors. “Now that top worker could change the whole organization.”

Of course, there’s a risk that companies won’t heed that advice. If AI levels performance, some executives may flatten the pay scale accordingly. Businesses would then potentially save on costs — but they would also risk losing their top performers, who wouldn’t be properly compensated for the true value of their contributions under this system.


US Supreme Court rejects computer scientist’s lawsuit over AI-generated inventions — from reuters.com by Blake Brittain

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON, April 24 – The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by computer scientist Stephen Thaler to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s refusal to issue patents for inventions his artificial intelligence system created.

The justices turned away Thaler’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling that patents can be issued only to human inventors and that his AI system could not be considered the legal creator of two inventions that he has said it generated.


Deep learning pioneer Geoffrey Hinton has quit Google — from technologyreview.com by Will Douglas Heaven
Hinton will be speaking at EmTech Digital on Wednesday.

Excerpt:

Geoffrey Hinton, a VP and engineering fellow at Google and a pioneer of deep learning who developed some of the most important techniques at the heart of modern AI, is leaving the company after 10 years, the New York Times reported today.

According to the Times, Hinton says he has new fears about the technology he helped usher in and wants to speak openly about them, and that a part of him now regrets his life’s work.

***


What Is Agent Assist? — from blogs.nvidia.com
Agent assist technology uses AI and machine learning to provide facts and make real-time suggestions that help human agents across retail, telecom and other industries conduct conversations with customers.

Excerpt:

Agent assist technology uses AI and machine learning to provide facts and make real-time suggestions that help human agents across telecom, retail and other industries conduct conversations with customers.

It can integrate with contact centers’ existing applications, provide faster onboarding for agents, improve the accuracy and efficiency of their responses, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

From DSC:
Is this type of thing going to provide a learning assistant/agent as well?


A chatbot that asks questions could help you spot when it makes no sense — from technologyreview.com by Melissa Heikkilä
Engaging our critical thinking is one way to stop getting fooled by lying AI.

Excerpt:

AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Bing, and Bard are excellent at crafting sentences that sound like human writing. But they often present falsehoods as facts and have inconsistent logic, and that can be hard to spot.

One way around this problem, a new study suggests, is to change the way the AI presents information. Getting users to engage more actively with the chatbot’s statements might help them think more critically about that content.


Stability AI releases DeepFloyd IF, a powerful text-to-image model that can smartly integrate text into images — from stability.ai

Stability AI releases DeepFloyd IF, a powerful text-to-image model that can smartly integrate text into images


New AI Powered Denoise in PhotoShop — from jeadigitalmedia.org

In the most recent update, Adobe is now using AI to Denoise, Enhance and create Super Resolution or 2x the file size of the original photo. Click here to read Adobe’s post and below are photos of how I used the new AI Denoise on a photo. The big trick is that photos have to be shot in RAW.


 

 
  1. The GPT-4 Browser That Will Change Your Search Game — from noise.beehiiv.com by Alex Banks
    Why Microsoft Has The ‘Edge’ On Google

Excerpts:

Microsoft has launched a GPT-4 enhanced Edge browser.

By integrating OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology with Microsoft Edge, you can now use ChatGPT as a copilot in your Bing browser. This delivers superior search results, generates content, and can even transform your copywriting skills (read on to find out how).

Benefits mentioned include: Better Search, Complete Answers, and Creative Spark.

The new interactive chat feature means you can get the complete answer you are looking for by refining your search by asking for more details, clarity, and ideas.

From DSC:
I have to say that since the late 90’s, I haven’t been a big fan of web browsers from Microsoft. (I don’t like how Microsoft unfairly buried Netscape Navigator and the folks who had out-innovated them during that time.) As such, I don’t use Edge so I can’t fully comment on the above article.

But I do have to say that this is the type of thing that may make me reevaluate my stance regarding Microsoft’s browsers. Integrating GPT-4 into their search/chat functionalities seems like it would be a very solid, strategic move — at least as of late April 2023.


Speaking of new items coming from Microsoft, also see:

Microsoft makes its AI-powered Designer tool available in preview — from techcrunch.com by Kyle Wiggers

Excerpts:

[On 4/27/23], Microsoft Designer, Microsoft’s AI-powered design tool, launched in public preview with an expanded set of features.

Announced in October, Designer is a Canva-like web app that can generate designs for presentations, posters, digital postcards, invitations, graphics and more to share on social media and other channels. It leverages user-created content and DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s text-to-image AI, to ideate designs, with drop-downs and text boxes for further customization and personalization.

Designer will remain free during the preview period, Microsoft says — it’s available via the Designer website and in Microsoft’s Edge browser through the sidebar. Once the Designer app is generally available, it’ll be included in Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscriptions and have “some” functionality free to use for non-subscribers, though Microsoft didn’t elaborate.

 
 




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 -- a paper from Stanford from April 2023


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.


 

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.


 

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


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.

An AI-generated image from an #aicinema still series called Vinyl Vengeance by Julie Wieland, created using Midjourney.


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.

 

How to Create Compelling Writing Assignments in a ChatGPT Age — from chronicle.com by James M. Lang
A recent book offers a road map to new kinds of assignments to inspire your students to write.

Excerpt:

A few days after I returned from the conference, I received a book in the mail that affirmed my newfound sense that 2023 has the potential to usher in an age of creative thinking about teaching and writing: Jessica Singer Early’s Next Generation Genres: Teaching Writing for Civic and Academic Engagement. Although her book doesn’t directly address ChatGPT, it offers exactly the kind of innovative ideas we need as we wrestle — or dance — with the implications of artificial intelligence for college teaching.

Clearly Jessica Singer Early has joined the leaning-into camp, seeing artificial intelligence as another invitation to reinvent ourselves in the classroom — just as she encourages readers to do in Next Generation Genres, and as this teacher plans to do in the fall.

 

A Spotify model of personalised higher education — from timeshighereducation.com by Michael Rosemann and Martin Betts
With technology offering greater potential for a personalised approach to higher education, Michael Rosemann and Martin Betts look at what universities can learn from the ubiquitous music platform Spotify

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Selection, or the P(upil)-route as educationalist Dan Buckley calls it, means personalisation driven by the learner. This is the fastest-moving form of personalised learning. Not only do students benefit from true omnichannel education – choosing between face to face and online – they also independently navigate the internet’s resources and online databases in search of the knowledge that will help them to achieve their learning targets.

Automation,  or the A-route, is the new enabler of personalised learning. As with personalised medicine, finance or entertainment, education is starting to use digital technologies to unlock new models of tailored engagement. While for most universities, AI-driven, personalised education is not an option as the required capabilities are missing and significant investments would be necessary, there is a range of alternative forms of automated personalised learning. For this, we look to providers outside the sector for inspiration.

Here are Spotify-inspired ideas that universities ambitious enough to provide personalised learning could explore.

From DSC:
Rosemann & Betts use the term “omnichannel education” — I like that term. Very nice.

 

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 K-12 side of things:

6 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Save Time — from edutopia.org by Todd Finley
Teachers can use the artificial intelligence tool to effectively automate some routine tasks.

Excerpt:

In the paragraphs that follow, I’ve divided these tasks into the following categories: planning instruction, handouts and materials, differentiation, correspondence, assessment, and writing instruction and feedback. Welcome to the revolution.

Lesson plans: Ask ChatGPT to write a lesson plan on, say, Westward Expansion. The tool composes assessments, activities, scaffolding, and objectives. Want that in the form of problem-based learning or revised for a flipped classroom? ChatGPT can adjust the lesson plan according to your instructions. 

I’m a high school math and science teacher who uses ChatGPT, and it’s made my job much easier — from businessinsider-com.cdn.ampproject.org by Aaron Mok; with thanks to Robert Gibson on LinkedIn for this resource

Shannon Ahern teaching her class with the help of a ChatGPT-generated slide. Photo courtesy of Shannon Ahern

Excerpt:

  • Shannon Ahern, a high school math and science teacher, was afraid that ChatGPT would take her job.
  • But her mind changed after she started using the AI for class prep, which saved her hours of time.
  • Here’s how Ahern is using ChatGPT to make her job easier, as told to Insider’s Aaron Mok.

On the higher education side of things:

Using AI to make teaching easier & more impactful — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Ethan Mollick
Here are five strategies and prompts that work for GPT-3.5 & GPT-4

Excerpt:

But one thing that is not changing is the best way for people to learn. We have made large advances in recent years in understanding pedagogy – the science of learning. We know some of the most effective techniques for making sure material sticks and that it can be retrieved and used when needed most.

Unfortunately, many of these advanced pedagogical techniques are time-consuming to prepare, and many instructors are often overworked and do not have the resources and time to add them to their teaching repertoire. But AI can help. In the rush to deliver AI benefits directly to students, the role of teachers is often overlooked.

Teaching: What You Need to Know About ChatGPT — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpt:

Digital literacy is more important than ever. Artificial-intelligence tools, and generative AI in particular, raise a host of ethical, political, economic, and social questions. Plus, this tech is soon going to be everywhere, including students’ future professions. (The technology behind ChatGPT, in fact, just got an upgrade this week.) Colleges need to figure out how to graduate digitally savvy students in all disciplines.

“The integration of technology into our lives is so pervasive that the restriction of education about AI to the computer scientists and the computer engineers makes no more sense than the restriction of taking English classes by English majors,” said Weber.

 

HOW DUOLINGO’S AI LEARNS WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN — from spectrum.ieee.org by Klinton Bicknell, Claire Brust, and Burr Settles
The AI that powers the language-learning app today could disrupt education tomorrow

Excerpt:

It’s lunchtime when your phone pings you with a green owl who cheerily reminds you to “Keep Duo Happy!” It’s a nudge from Duolingo, the popular language-learning app, whose algorithms know you’re most likely to do your 5 minutes of Spanish practice at this time of day. The app chooses its notification words based on what has worked for you in the past and the specifics of your recent achievements, adding a dash of attention-catching novelty. When you open the app, the lesson that’s queued up is calibrated for your skill level, and it includes a review of some words and concepts you flubbed during your last session.

The AI systems we continue to refine are necessary to scale the learning experience beyond the more than 50 million active learners who currently complete about 1 billion exercises per day on the platform.

Although Duolingo is known as a language-learning app, the company’s ambitions go further. We recently launched apps covering childhood literacy and third-grade mathematics, and these expansions are just the beginning. We hope that anyone who wants help with academic learning will one day be able to turn to the friendly green owl in their pocket who hoots at them, “Ready for your daily lesson?”


Also relevant/see:

GPT-4 deepens the conversation on Duolingo

Duolingo turned to OpenAI’s GPT-4 to advance the product with two new features: Role Play, an AI conversation partner, and Explain my Answer, which breaks down the rules when you make a mistake, in a new subscription tier called Duolingo Max. 

“We wanted AI-powered features that were deeply integrated into the app and leveraged the gamified aspect of Duolingo that our learners love,” says Bodge.


Also relevant/see:

The following is a quote from Donald Clark’s posting on LinkedIn.com today:

The whole idea of AI as a useful teacher is here. Honestly it’s astounding. They have provided a Socratic approach to an algebra problem that is totally on point. Most people learn in the absence of a teacher or lecturer. They need constant scaffolding, someone to help them move forward, with feedback. This changes our whole relationship with what we need to know, and how we get to know it. Its reasoning ability is also off the scale.

We now have human teachers, human learners but also AI teachers and AI that learns. It used to be a diad, it is now a tetrad – that is the basis of the new pedAIgogy.

Personalised, tutor-led learning, in any subject, anywhere, at any time for anyone. That has suddenly become real.

Also relevant/see:

Introducing Duolingo Max, a learning experience powered by GPT-4 — from blog.duolingo.com

Excerpts:

We believe that AI and education make a great duo, and we’ve leveraged AI to help us deliver highly-personalized language lessons, affordable and accessible English proficiency testing, and more. Our mission to make high-quality education available to everyone in the world is made possible by advanced AI technology.

Explain My Answer offers learners the chance to learn more about their response in a lesson (whether their answer was correct or incorrect!)

Roleplay allows learners to practice real-world conversation skills with world characters in the app.

 

Six Important Disciplines for Using AI in Learning & Development — from linkedin.com by Josh Cavalier

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

In practice, L&D professionals must responsibly use AI-based tools. AI outputs that introduce bias or falsehoods may adversely affect the learning process of individual associates as well as the company’s overall efficiency. A human must review all content before being implemented in a learning solution.

AI will revolutionize corporate learning and development because of the ability to analyze and process large amounts of data. These capabilities will enable learners to acquire knowledge and skills more efficiently while providing personalized learning pathways customized to their current skill levels and goals.

For example, AI-powered chatbots can provide immediate feedback to front-line sales looking for specific client solutions or trying to learn about new products. By fine-tuning models, AI can ingest vendor opportunities and dynamically priced products at scale, allowing a sales team to focus on data-driven solutions for their customers.

The creation of educational media will be automated through generative AI, including training videos, podcasts, and, eventually, eLearning courses. This new reality will level the playing field for instructional designers needing more media creation skills, ultimately allowing Learning & Development to create personalized, immersive learning experiences representing the entire learning journey. 


Also relevant/see:

How artificial intelligence can support knowledge management in organizations — from realkm.com by Bruce Boyes

Examples of use cases:

  • Forecast sales probabilities
  • Discover organization inefficiencies by analyzing CRM records
  • Organize and summarize legal precedents relevant to a new case
  • Retrieve dispersed nuggets of information related to a troubleshooting situation
  • Facilitate feedback and peer review on communication systems (e.g., Slack)
  • Facilitate real-time smart sharing between marketing channels and sales pipelines
  • Find and apply question-answer pairs in online manuals to manage service knowledge
  • Provide more human-centered and accessible applications of knowledge through chatbots

 

ChatGPT as a teaching tool, not a cheating tool — from timeshighereducation.com by Jennifer Rose
How to use ChatGPT as a tool to spur students’ inner feedback and thus aid their learning and skills development

Excerpt:

Use ChatGPT to spur student’s inner feedback
One way that ChatGPT answers can be used in class is by asking students to compare what they have written with a ChatGPT answer. This draws on David Nicol’s work on making inner feedback explicit and using comparative judgement. His work demonstrates that in writing down answers to comparative questions students can produce high-quality feedback for themselves which is instant and actionable. Applying this to a ChatGPT answer, the following questions could be used:

  • Which is better, the ChatGPT response or yours? Why?
  • What two points can you learn from the ChatGPT response that will help you improve your work?
  • What can you add from your answer to improve the ChatGPT answer?
  • How could the assignment question set be improved to allow the student to demonstrate higher-order skills such as critical thinking?
  • How can you use what you have learned to stay ahead of AI and produce higher-quality work than ChatGPT?
 
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