What if you could have a conversation with your notes?That question has consumed a corner of the internet recently, as companies like Dropbox, Box, Notion, and others have built generative AI tools that let you interact with and create new things from the data you already have in their systems.
Google’s version of this is called NotebookLM. It’s an AI-powered research tool that is meant to help you organize and interact with your own notes.
That got me to thinking…
What if the presenter/teacher/professor/trainer/preacher provided a set of notes for the AI to compare to the readers’ notes?
That way, the AI could see the discrepancies between what the presenter wanted their audience to learn/hear and what was actually being learned/heard. In a sort of digital Socratic Method, the AI could then generate some leading questions to get the audience member to check their thinking/understanding of the topic.
The end result would be that the main points were properly communicated/learned/received.
What if you could have a conversation with your notes?That question has consumed a corner of the internet recently, as companies like Dropbox, Box, Notion, and others have built generative AI tools that let you interact with and create new things from the data you already have in their systems.
Google’s version of this is called NotebookLM. It’s an AI-powered research tool that is meant to help you organize and interact with your own notes.
… Right now, it’s really just a prototype, but a small team inside the company has been trying to figure out what an AI notebook might look like.
Unsurprising move by the ABA. Just a reminder, the legal market is already embracing innovation whether the ABA, or lawyers, participate or not. https://t.co/MJNgqNNXVB
*** From DSC: Having come from various other areas of higher education back in 2017, I was *amazed* to see *how far behind* legal education was from the rest of higher ed. And this is directly tied to what the American Bar Association allows (or doesn’t allow). The ABA has done a terrible job of helping Americans deal with today’s pace of change.
Speaking of technology within the legal world, also relevant/see:
How in-house legal professionals can embrace technology — from legaldive.com by Lyle Moran Colin Levy says generative AI tools, as well as well-known legacy products, can help lawyers and other legal department staff enhance their work.
This is how the billable hour dies— from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong Let me tell you a story about the AI-driven evolution of pricing in the legal market. It might not happen for many years. It might happen much sooner. But when it does, I expect it’ll look like this.
So assemble some of your most creative, forward-thinking people, and ask them: “If the firm could no longer bill our work by the hour, how could we turn a profit?” Give them this article from 2012 to get them started. Show them the firm’s financials for the last 24 months, so that they know how you’re making money now. Have them speak with clients, technology experts, and pricing consultants for insights — might as well get them to ask ChatGPT, too. The answers you get will form the basis of your future strategic plans.
The Legal Innovators UK conference will take place on 8 + 9 November, and we are already assembling a fantastic group of speakers from across the legal innovation ecosystem.
The two-day event comes at a time of potentially massive change for the legal market and we will be bringing you engaging panels and presentations where leading experts really dig into the issues of the day, from generative AI, to the evolution of ALSPs, to law firm innovation teams in this new era for legal tech, to how empowered legal ops groups and pioneering GCs are taking inhouse teams in new directions.
Aug 1 (Reuters) – Virtual law firm Scale said [on 8/1/23] that it has brought on small Texas intellectual property firm Creedon in the first of what it hopes may be a series of acquisitions.
James Creedon and two other attorneys from his firm have joined Scale, a Silicon Valley-founded law firm where lawyers work entirely remotely.
Scale, which debuted in 2020, is among so-called “distributed” or virtual firms that use technology to operate without physical offices and embrace a non-traditional law firm business model.
The lawyers are leaning into AI— from alexofftherecord.com by Alex Su Despite all the gloom and doom, corporate legal and law firms are both embracing generative AI much more quickly than previous technologies
When I first heard law firms announcing that they were adopting AI, I was skeptical. Anyone can announce a partnership or selection/piloting of an AI vendor. It’s good PR, and doesn’t mean that the firm has truly embraced AI. But when they create their own GPT-powered tool—that feels different. Setting aside whether it’s a good idea to build your own vs. buy, it certainly feels like a real investment, especially since the firms are dedicating significant internal resources to it.
Today I’ll discuss why generative AI is diffusing across law firms much more quickly than expected.
Leading your law firm into the Gen AI Era — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong Lawyers are embracing its promise. Clients want to reap its rewards. Here are three ways your firm can respond to the immense disruption and extraordinary opportunity of Generative AI.
Move fast to implement project and client pricing.
Prepare to hire fewer associates and to rethink partnership.
Establish a fresh approach to developing future law firm leaders.
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Above resource via BrainyActs — who mentioned that the QR code takes you to this survey. Just 3 simple questions.
Q1: Agree/Disagree: Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t replace lawyers anytime soon. Lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who do not use AI.
Q2: Agree/Disagree: Non-lawyers should be allowed to have an ownership interest in a law firm.
Q3 Agree/Disagree: Trained non-lawyers should be allowed to advocate for parties in lower courts.
To get a sense of what the legal industry predicts, Above the Law and Wolters Kluwer fielded a survey of 275 professionals from March to mid-April 2023. We asked about AI’s potential effects in varied areas of the legal industry: Will it differentiate successful firms? Which practice areas could be affected the most? Could even high-level work be transformed?
The majority of survey participants report increased student demand for online and hybrid learning juxtaposed with decreased demand for face-to-face courses and programs. Most participants also say that their institutions are aligning or working to align their strategic priorities to meet this demand. Notable findings from the 50+-page report include:
Face-to-Face enrollment is stagnant or declining.
Online and hybrid enrollment is growing.
Institutions are quickly aligning their strategic priorities to meet online/hybrid student demand.
So, as educators, mentors, and guides to our future generations, we must ask ourselves three pivotal questions:
What value do we offer to our students?
What value will they need to offer to the world?
How are we preparing them to offer that value?
The answers to these questions are crucial, and they will redefine the trajectory of our education system.
We need to create an environment that encourages curiosity, embraces failure as a learning opportunity, and celebrates diversity. We need to teach our students how to learn, how to ask the right questions, and how to think for themselves.
Leveraging ChatGPT for learning is the most meaningful skill this year for lifelong learners. But it’s too hard to find resources to master it.
As a learning science nerd, I’ve explored hundreds of prompts over the past months. Most of the advice doesn’t go beyond text summaries and multiple-choice testing.
That’s why I’ve created this article — it merges learning science with prompt writing to help you learn anything faster.
Midjourney AI Art for Teachers (for any kind of teacher, not just Art Teachers) — from The AI Educator on YouTube by Dan Fitzpatrick
From DSC: This is a very nice, clearly illustrated, free video to get started with the Midjourney (text-to-image) app. Nice work Dan!
In the new-normal of generative AI, how does one articulate the value of academic integrity? This blog presents my current response in about 2,500 words; a complete answer could fill a sizable book.
Massive amounts of misinformation are disseminated about generative AI, so the first part of my discussion clarifies what large language models (Chat-GPT and its counterparts) can currently do and what they cannot accomplish at this point in time. The second part describes ways in which generative AI can be misused as a means of learning; unfortunately, many people are now advocating for these mistaken applications to education. The third part describes ways in which large language models (LLM), used well, may substantially improve learning and education. I close with a plea for a robust, informed public discussion about these topics and issues.
Many of the more than a dozen teachers TIME interviewed for this story argue that the way to get kids to care is to proactively use ChatGPT in the classroom.
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Some of those creative ideas are already in effect at Peninsula High School in Gig Harbor, about an hour from Seattle. In Erin Rossing’s precalculus class, a student got ChatGPT to generate a rap about vectors and trigonometry in the style of Kanye West, while geometry students used the program to write mathematical proofs in the style of raps, which they performed in a classroom competition. In Kara Beloate’s English-Language Arts class, she allowed students reading Shakespeare’s Othello to use ChatGPT to translate lines into modern English to help them understand the text, so that they could spend class time discussing the plot and themes.
I found that other developed countries share concerns about students cheating but are moving quickly to use AI to personalize education, enhance language lessons and help teachers with mundane tasks, such as grading. Some of these countries are in the early stages of training teachers to use AI and developing curriculum standards for what students should know and be able to do with the technology.
Several countries began positioning themselves several years ago to invest in AI in education in order to compete in the fourth industrial revolution.
AI in Education— from educationnext.org by John Bailey The leap into a new era of machine intelligence carries risks and challenges, but also plenty of promise
In the realm of education, this technology will influence how students learn, how teachers work, and ultimately how we structure our education system. Some educators and leaders look forward to these changes with great enthusiasm. Sal Kahn, founder of Khan Academy, went so far as to say in a TED talk that AI has the potential to effect “probably the biggest positive transformation that education has ever seen.” But others warn that AI will enable the spread of misinformation, facilitate cheating in school and college, kill whatever vestiges of individual privacy remain, and cause massive job loss. The challenge is to harness the positive potential while avoiding or mitigating the harm.
Generative AI and education futures — from ucl.ac.uk Video highlights from Professor Mike Sharples’ keynote address at the 2023 UCL Education Conference, which explored opportunities to prosper with AI as a part of education.
Bringing AI Literacy to High Schools— from by Nikki Goth Itoi Stanford education researchers collaborated with teachers to develop classroom-ready AI resources for high school instructors across subject areas.
To address these two imperatives, all high schools need access to basic AI tools and training. Yet the reality is that many underserved schools in low-income areas lack the bandwidth, skills, and confidence to guide their students through an AI-powered world. And if the pattern continues, AI will only worsen existing inequities. With this concern top of mind plus initial funding from the McCoy Ethics Center, Lee began recruiting some graduate students and high school teachers to explore how to give more people equal footing in the AI space.
For Wiese, it was all a big, expensive gamble — and, in one form or another, is one millions of people with criminal records take every year as they pursue education and workforce training on their way to jobs that require a license. Yet that effort might be wasted thanks to the nearly 14,000 laws and regulations that can restrict individuals with arrest and conviction histories from getting licensed in a given field.
Citing ‘political challenges’ within the ABA, its Center for Innovation cancelled an op-ed advocating for regulatory reform. I have the op-ed and full details of what happened. This comes as the ABA annual meeting convenes in Denver. @ABAesq#ABAAnnualhttps://t.co/xLFtTUIbqjpic.twitter.com/y1tqAaMvMj
@ABAesq is supposed to be the great facilitator of debate and discourse to steer the profession. To create an environment that facilitates the censorship of varying opinions is the opposite of what the organization is charged with by its members.
I was once part of the Center’s staff. I know many current ABA staff members personally. This is a situation that forces these servants of the profession to defend their existence and livelihoods because they are encouraging debate. I will defend my friends. Try me.
. A Center for Innovation that can’t honestly discuss innovation in a profession that desperately needs it. Disgusting. And the truth is innovation is good for attys. Protecting a 120yo biz model is not good for lawyers or the public.
This is equal parts disappointing and infuriating. The ABA is cutting the legs out from under its one truly forward-looking, people-focussed initiative. It’s a shameful sellout to the rising protectionist wave in the legal profession, and history will judge it accordingly.
The marriage of technology expertise with the license to practice law is in high demand and essential to the efficient handling of large-scale and complex antitrust and white-collar investigations and litigation. This is no longer a discretionary skill set designed to benefit those who respond to ESI requests, but rather a necessary proficiency needed to navigate the eDiscovery landscape.
July 28 (Reuters) – A week after The University of Michigan Law School banned the use of popular artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT on student applications, at least one school is going in the other direction.
The Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University said on Thursday that prospective students are explicitly allowed to use generative artificial intelligence tools to help draft their applications.
Are we on the frontier of unveiling an unseen revolution in education? The hypothesis is that this quiet upheaval’s importance is far more significant than we imagine. As our world adjusts, restructures, and emerges from a year which launched an era of mass AI, so too does a new academic year dawn for many – with hope and enthusiasm about new roles, titles, or simply just a new mindset. Concealed from sight, however, I believe a significant transformative wave has started and will begin to reshape our education systems and push us into a new stage of innovative teaching practice whether we desire it or not. The risk and hope is that the quiet revolution remains outside the regulator’s and ministries’ purview, which could risk a dangerous fragmentation of education policy and practice, divorced from the actualities of the world ‘in and outside school’.
“This goal can be achieved through continued support for introducing more new areas of study, such as ‘foresight and futures’, in the high school classroom.”
Four directions for assessment redesign in the age of generative AI— from timeshighereducation.com by Julia Chen The rise of generative AI has led universities to rethink how learning is quantified. Julia Chen offers four options for assessment redesign that can be applied across disciplines
Direction 1: From written description to multimodal explanation and application
Direction 2: From literature review alone to referencing lectures
Direction 3: From presentation of ideas to defence of views
Direction 4: From working alone to student-staff partnership
If you are just back from vacation and still not quite sure what to do about AI, let me assure you that you are not the only one. My advice for you today is this: fill your LinkedIn-feed and/or inbox with ideas, inspirational writing and commentary on AI. This will get you up to speed quickly and is a great way to stay informed on the newest movements you need to be aware of.
My personal recommendation for you is to check out these bright people who are all very active on LinkedIn and/or have a newsletter worth paying attention to. I have kept the list fairly short – only 15 people – in order to make it as easy as possible for you to begin exploring.
Understanding the nature of generative AI is crucial for educators to navigate the evolving landscape of teaching and learning. In a new report from the Next Level Lab, Lydia Cao and Chris Dede reflect on the role of generative AI in learning and how this pushes us to reconceptualize our visions of effective education. Though there are concerns of plagiarism and replacement of human jobs, Cao and Dede argue that a more productive way forward is for educators to focus on demystifying AI, emphasizing the learning process over the final product, honoring learner agency, orchestrating multiple sources of motivation, cultivating skills that AI cannot easily replicate, and fostering intelligence augmentation (IA) through building human-AI partnerships.
Have you used chatbots to save time this school year? ChatGPT and generative artificial intelligence (AI) have changed the way I think about instructional planning. Today on the blog, I have a selection of ChatGPT prompts for ELA teachers.
You can use chatbots to tackle tedious tasks, gather ideas, and even support your work to meet the needs of every student. In my recent quick reference guide published by ISTE and ASCD, Using AI Chatbots to Enhance Planning and Instruction, I explore this topic. You can also find 50 more prompts for educators in this free ebook.
Professors Craft Courses on ChatGPT With ChatGPT — from insidehighered.com by Lauren Coffey While some institutions are banning the use of the new AI tool, others are leaning into its use and offering courses dedicated solely to navigating the new technology.
Maynard, along with Jules White at Vanderbilt University, are among a small number of professors launching courses focused solely on teaching students across disciplines to better navigate AI and ChatGPT.
The offerings go beyond institutions flexing their innovation skills—the faculty behind these courses view them as imperative to ensure students are prepared for ever-changing workforce needs.
That’s a solid report card for a freshman in college, a respectable 3.57 GPA. I recently finished my freshman year at Harvard, but those grades aren’t mine — they’re GPT-4’s.
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Three weeks ago, I asked seven Harvard professors and teaching assistants to grade essays written by GPT-4 in response to a prompt assigned in their class. Most of these essays were major assignments which counted for about one-quarter to one-third of students’ grades in the class. (I’ve listed the professors or preceptors for all of these classes, but some of the essays were graded by TAs.)
Here are the prompts with links to the essays, the names of instructors, and the grades each essay received…
The impact that AI is having on liberal-arts homework is indicative of the AI threat to the career fields that liberal-arts majors tend to enter. So maybe what we should really be focused on isn’t, “How do we make liberal-arts homework better?” but rather, “What are jobs going to look like over the next 10–20 years, and how do we prepare students to succeed in that world?”
The great assessment rethink — from timeshighereducation.com by How to measure learning and protect academic integrity in the age of ChatGPT
Inspired by my recent Review: Shure MV7 dynamic hybrid studio microphone – near, far and beyond, Beaker Films of Fairfield, Connecticut, US has developed and deployed a first batch of 10 kits to capture remote conversations from different locations worldwide. Beaker Films is frequently contracted to record remote interviews or testimonials from medical professionals. For this project, Beaker Films’ clients wanted consistent, high quality audio and video, but with 3 additional challenges: they preferred to have no visible microphone in the shot, they needed a teleprompter function and the whole kit needed to be as simple as possible for non-technical guests.
West Suffolk College in the UK has opened its Extended Reality Lab (XR Lab), the facilities comprise of four distinct areas: an Immersion Lab, a Collaboration Theatre, a Green Room, and a Conference Room. The project was designed by architects WindsorPatania for Eastern Colleges Group.
Systems integrator CJP Broadcast Service Solutions, has won a tender to build a virtual production environment for Solent University in the UK.
The new facilities, converted from an existing studio space, will provide students on the film production courses with outstanding opportunities to develop their creative output.
