From DSC: Let’s put together a nationwide campaign that would provide a website — or a series of websites if an agreement can’t be reached amongst the individual states — about learning how to learn. In business, there’s a “direct-to-consumer” approach. Well, we could provide a “direct-to-learner” approach — from cradle to grave. Seeing as how everyone is now required to be a lifelong learner, such a campaign would have enormous benefits to all of the United States. This campaign would be located in airports, subway stations, train stations, on billboards along major highways, in libraries, and in many more locations.
We could focus on things such as:
Quizzing yourself / retrieval practice
Spaced retrieval
Interleaving
Elaboration
Chunking
Cognitive load
Learning by doing (active learning)
Journaling
The growth mindset
Metacognition (thinking about one’s thinking)
Highlighting doesn’t equal learning
There is deeper learning in the struggle
…and more.
NOTE:
The URL I’m using above doesn’t exist, at least not at the time of this posting.
But I’m proposing that it should exist.
Closing the digital divide in Black America— from mckinsey.com Five steps could help to bring broadband and digital equity to every Black household in the United States—urban and rural—while bolstering efforts to create a more inclusive economy.
Excerpt:
But broadband access is only part of a much bigger picture. Ensuring all Americans can fully participate in civic life and the digital economy requires affordable subscriptions, internet-enabled devices, applications, digital skills, and high-quality technical support. For example, while smartphone and tablet penetration are approximately equal among White, Black, and Hispanic and Latino adults in the United States, only 69 percent of Black Americans and 67 percent of Hispanic Americans have desktop or laptop computers, compared with 80 percent of White Americans (Exhibit 1).5 A 2020 OECD survey found that roughly half of Black workers had the advanced or proficient digital skills needed to thrive in our increasingly tech-driven economy, compared with 77 percent of White workers.6
Here’s the list of sources: https://t.co/fJd4rh8kLy. The larger resource area at https://t.co/bN7CReGIEC has sample ChatGPT essays, strategies for mitigating harm, and questions for teachers to ask as well as a listserv.
— Anna Mills, amills@mastodon.oeru.org, she/her (@EnglishOER) January 11, 2023
Microsoft is reportedly eyeing a $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the startup that created the viral chatbot ChatGPT, and is planning to integrate it into Office products and Bing search.The tech giant has already invested at least $1 billion into OpenAI. Some of these features might be rolling out as early as March, according to The Information.
This is a big deal. If successful, it will bring powerful AI tools to the masses.So what would ChatGPT-powered Microsoft products look like? We asked Microsoft and OpenAI. Neither was willing to answer our questions on how they plan to integrate AI-powered products into Microsoft’s tools, even though work must be well underway to do so. However, we do know enough to make some informed, intelligent guesses. Hint: it’s probably good news if, like me, you find creating PowerPoint presentations and answering emails boring.
I have maintained for several years, including a book ‘AI for Learning’, that AI is the technology of the age and will change everything. This is unfolding as we speak but it is interesting to ask who the winners are likely to be.
People who have heard of GPT-3 / ChatGPT, and are vaguely following the advances in machine learning, large language models, and image generators. Also people who care about making the web a flourishing social and intellectual space.
That dark forest is about to expand. Large Language Models (LLMs) that can instantly generate coherent swaths of human-like text have just joined the party.
It is in this uncertain climate that Hassabis agrees to a rare interview, to issue a stark warning about his growing concerns. “I would advocate not moving fast and breaking things.”
…
“When it comes to very powerful technologies—and obviously AI is going to be one of the most powerful ever—we need to be careful,” he says. “Not everybody is thinking about those things. It’s like experimentalists, many of whom don’t realize they’re holding dangerous material.” Worse still, Hassabis points out, we are the guinea pigs.
Demis Hassabis
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Hassabis says these efforts are just the beginning. He and his colleagues have been working toward a much grander ambition: creating artificial general intelligence, or AGI, by building machines that can think, learn, and be set to solve humanity’s toughest problems.Today’s AI is narrow, brittle, and often not very intelligent at all. But AGI, Hassabis believes, will be an “epoch-defining” technology—like the harnessing of electricity—that will change the very fabric of human life. If he’s right, it could earn him a place in history that would relegate the namesakes of his meeting rooms to mere footnotes.
But with AI’s promise also comes peril.In recent months, researchers building an AI system to design new drugs revealed that their tool could be easily repurposed to make deadly new chemicals. A separate AI model trained to spew out toxic hate speech went viral, exemplifying the risk to vulnerable communities online. And inside AI labs around the world, policy experts were grappling with near-term questions like what to do when an AI has the potential to be commandeered by rogue states to mount widespread hacking campaigns or infer state-level nuclear secrets.
Headteachers and university lecturers have expressed concerns that ChatGPT, which can provide convincing human-sounding answers to exam questions, could spark a wave of cheating in homework and exam coursework.
Now, the bot’s makers, San Francisco-based OpenAI, are trying to counter the risk by “watermarking” the bot’s output and making plagiarism easier to spot.
Students need now, more than ever, to understand how to navigate a world in which artificial intelligence is increasingly woven into everyday life. It’s a world that they, ultimately, will shape.
We hail from two professional fields that have an outsize interest in this debate. Joanne is a veteran journalist and editor deeply concerned about the potential for plagiarism and misinformation. Rebecca is a public health expert focused on artificial intelligence, who champions equitable adoption of new technologies.
We are also mother and daughter. Our dinner-table conversations have become a microcosm of the argument around ChatGPT, weighing its very real dangers against its equally real promise. Yet we both firmly believe that a blanket ban is a missed opportunity.
ChatGPT: Threat or Menace? — from insidehighered.com by Steven Mintz Are fears about generative AI warranted?
The rapid pace of change is driven by a “perfect storm” of factors, including the falling cost of computing power, the rise of data-driven decision-making, and the increasing availability of new technologies. “The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent,”concluded Andrew Doxsey, co-founder of Libra Incentix, in an interview. “Unlike previous technological revolutions, the Fourth Industrial Revolution is evolving exponentially rather than linearly. Furthermore, it disrupts almost every industry worldwide.”
An updated version of the AI chatbot ChatGPT was recently released to the public.
I got the chatbot to write cover letters for real jobs and asked hiring managers what they thought.
The managers said they would’ve given me a call but that the letters lacked personality.
.
I mentor a young lad with poor literacy skills who is starting a landscaping business. He struggles to communicate with clients in a professional manner.
I created a GPT3-powered Gmail account to which he sends a message. It responds with the text to send to the client. pic.twitter.com/nlFX9Yx6wR
In the latter part of 2022 and continuing into the new year, multiple challenges have emerged to threaten law firm profitability, including falling demand and productivity, rising expenses, changing client preferences, and economic turmoil.
Indeed, one key metric — profits-per-equity partner (PPEP) — is down for the first time since 2009, which occurred during the last global financial crisis.
He said: “This is not simply a U.S. issue or a legal services issue. It is a global one.
“Any economic downturn will inevitably also hit the legal services sector. However many international law firms have practice areas that are both cyclical and counter-cyclical, so those differing components of the practice become busier to support that which is less so.
“We all hope that any downturn is short lived. Everyone has been through a lot these past few years, no business wants to have to restructure at this stage.”
Speaking of legal-related items, also see:
DoNotPay will pay any lawyer or person $1,000,000 with an upcoming case in front of the United States Supreme Court to wear AirPods and let our robot lawyer argue the case by repeating exactly what it says. (1/2)
For 2023, one trend is obvious: legal professionals prefer remote work. According to an ABA report on the future of the profession, 87% of lawyers say their workplaces allow them to work remotely. And in just a few years, the percentage of attorneys working exclusively in the office has dropped to less than 30%.
Law Firms And The Metaverse
Since the Metaverse is so new, it will continue to develop and change. Distinct kinds of legal issues and implications have not been uncovered yet. The Metaverse will likely create various legal challenges in the future. This creates a new legal landscape for law firms and lawyers.
Those who anticipate the questions and challenges that may arise will be able to take advantage of this new digital market. Here are some ways a law firm can capitalize on the virtual realities of the Metaverse:
From DSC: My point in posting this item about “The Metaverse” is not to say that it’s here…but to be sure that it’s on your legal radar. There will be enough legal ramifications of AI to last a while, but I would still recommend someone in your firm look at the place of emerging technologies — those techs not only to be leveraged by your firm but also as to what types of legal issues your lawyers will need to be up-to-speed on.
It’s fascinating to see what GPT-3 can do and the possibilities are in some cases nothing short of mind blowing. But before you plan your early 2023 implementation, you may want to exercise a bit of caution. When it comes to using AI in a production environment – i.e., serving real customers with real expectations – you need solutions that deliver reliable results that you can explain to your clients … and potentially to a lot of other stakeholders, including courts and regulatory authorities.
Maybe in 2023 you can also try this line: ‘Dear client / court / regulator, we know it’s hard to believe, but a lot of the time you can rely on what we tell you.’
NOTE: Artificial Lawyer and its Founder are now on sabbatical during 2023, returning in 2024.
From DSC: My guess is that they are pursuing some serious, new opportunities involving using AI within the legaltech realm. Time will tell.
On the education front, federal legislation serves as an umbrella for many state and local policies and programs. Education policy is further fragmented into K–12 and postsecondary silos.
An all-one-system approach to youth policy would support young people along the entire continuum of their journey from school to work. It would help them attain both postsecondary education and quality work experience to support their transitions from education to good jobs. In this modernized approach, preschools, elementary and secondary schools, community colleges, four-year universities, employers, and governments would all follow an integrated playbook, helping to smooth out young people’s path from pre-K–12 to college and work. To transform youth policy, systemic reforms should incorporate the following:
AI legal assistant will help defendant fight a speeding case in court — from newscientist.com by Matthew Sparkes (behind paywall) In February, an AI from DoNotPay is set to tell a defendant exactly what to say and when during an entire court case. It is likely to be the first ever case defended by an artificial intelligence
Also relevant/see:
Over Christmas, @DoNotPay managed to create an AI deepfake clone of my voice. Then, with GPT, we got the bot to phone up Wells Fargo and successfully overturn some wire fees.
This is the perfect use case for AI. Nobody has time to argue on the phone about $12!
Joshua Browder, founder and chief executive of “robot lawyer” app DoNotPay, revealed last week he had created a bot based on the large language model to help people save money on their internet bill.
From DSC:
Check out the items below. As with most technologies, there are likely going to be plusses & minuses regarding the use of AI in digital video, communications, arts, and music.
DC: What?!? Wow. I should have seen this coming. I can see positives & negatives here. Virtual meetings could become a bit more creative/fun. But apps could be a bit scarier in some instances, such as with #telelegal.
For people who have used virtual primary care, the vast majority of them (94%) are satisfied with their experience, and nearly four in five (79%) say it has allowed them to take charge of their health.The study included findings around familiarity and experience with virtual primary care, virtual primary care and chronic conditions, current health and practices, and more.
As digital health technology continues to advance and the healthcare industry evolves, many Americans want the ability to utilize more digital methods when it comes to managing their health, according to a study recently released by Elevance Health — formerly Anthem, Inc. Elevance Health commissioned to conduct an online study of over 5,000 US adults age 18+ around virtual primary care.
GPT Takes the Bar Exam — from papers.ssrn.com by Michael James Bommarito and Daniel Martin Katz; with thanks to Gabe Teninbaum for his tweet on this
Excerpt from the Abstract (emphasis DSC):
While our ability to interpret these results is limited by nascent scientific understanding of LLMs and the proprietary nature of GPT, we believe that these results strongly suggest that an LLM will pass the MBE component of the Bar Exam in the near future.
From DSC: For me, I wish politicians and legislators would stay out of the way and let public and private educators make the decisions. But if any politician is about to vote on significant education-related policies, laws, etc. — I would like to suggest that society require them to either:
teach a K12-based class for at least one month or
be in the classroom for the entire day to observe — and do this for at least one month
Perhaps we would have far less standardized testing. Perhaps we would have far more joy and wonder — for the teachers as well as for the students. Perhaps lifelong learning — and the love of learning — would get the wind in its sails that it so desperately needs. .
From DSC: Along these lines of enjoyment in everyday things, could this type of thing happen more within education?
Lawyers can ask GPT-3 to help write contracts in Microsoft Word thanks to legal tech startup Lexion’s new AI Contract Assist Word plugin. The new tool offers assistance in drafting and negotiating terms, as well as summarizing the contract for those not versed in legal language and marks the growing interest in applying generative AI within the legal profession.
Lexion’s AI Contract Assistant is designed to compose, adjust, and explain contracts with an eye toward streamlining their creation and approval. Lawyers with the Word plugin can write a prompt describing the goal of a contract clause, and the AI will generate one with appropriate language.
