Google Devising Radical Search Changes to Beat Back A.I. Rivals — from nytimes.com by Nico Grant
The tech giant is sprinting to protect its core business with a flurry of projects, including updates to its search engine and plans for an all-new one.

Excerpt:

Google’s employees were shocked when they learned in March that the South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung was considering replacing Google with Microsoft’s Bing as the default search engine on its devices.

For years, Bing had been a search engine also-ran. But it became a lot more interesting to industry insiders when it recently added new artificial intelligence technology.

A.I. competitors like the new Bing are quickly becoming the most serious threat to Google’s search business in 25 years, and in response, Google is racing to build an all-new search engine powered by the technology. It is also upgrading the existing one with A.I. features, according to internal documents reviewed by The Times.

P.S. According to The Rundown’s take on this:

The bottom line: Google is replacing the old-school method of displaying 10 results per page with an intelligent chatbot that provides instant answers.


Also relevant/see:

Google planning new search engine while working on new search features under Project Magi — from searchengineland.com by Barry Schwartz
Project Magi will help searchers complete transactions while incorporating search ads on the page.


Also relevant/see:

 

ChatGPT is the hottest new job skill that can help you get hired, according to HR experts — from cnbc.com by Morgan Smith

Excerpt:

The hottest new job qualification could be how well you work with a chatbot.

ChatGPT is the latest in-demand job skill companies are hiring for, according to recent research from the career site Resume Builder.

Since its public unveiling in late 2022, ChatGPT has been quickly adopted by companies like Microsoft and Slack which are incorporating the chatbot into their products or using it to work more efficiently.

“Hiring managers care less about whether or not you use ChatGPT, what’s more important is what you can accomplish with it,” says Juan Pablo Gonzalez, a senior client partner at the global consulting firm Korn Ferry. 

 


Also relevant/see:


Learning Designers will have to adapt or die. 10 ways to UPSKILL to AI…. — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

Learning Designers need to upskill


From Ethan Mollick on LinkedIn:

Take a look at this simulated negotiation, with grading and feedback. Prompt: “I want to do deliberate practice about how to conduct negotiations. You will be my negotiation teacher. You will simulate a detailed scenario in which I have to engage in a negotiation. You will fill the role of one party, I will fill the role of the other. You will ask for my response to in each step of the scenario and wait until you receive it. After getting my response, you will give me details of what the other party does and says. You will grade my response and give me detailed feedback about what to do better using the science of negotiation. You will give me a harder scenario if I do well, and an easier one if I fail.”

Samples from Bing Creative mode and ChatGPT-4 (3.5, the free version, does not work as well)


I’m having a blast with ChatGPT – it’s testing ME! — from by Mark Mrohs
Using ChatGPT as an agent for asynchronous active learning

I have been experimenting with possible ways to incorporate interactions with ChatGPT into instruction. And I’m blown away. I want to show you some of what I’ve come up with.

 

How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide — from oneusefulthing.substack.com by Ethan Mollick
People often ask me how to use AI. Here’s an overview with lots of links.

Excerpts:

We live in an era of practical AI, but many people haven’t yet experienced it, or, if they have, they might have wondered what the big deal is. Thus, this guide. It is a modified version of one I put out for my students earlier in the year, but a lot has changed. It is an overview of ways to get AI to do practical things.

I want to try to show you some of why AI is powerful, in ways both exciting and anxiety-producing.

The Six Large Language Models


Also see Ethan’s posting:

Power and Weirdness: How to Use Bing AI
Bing AI is a huge leap over ChatGPT, but you have to learn its quirks


 

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot — your copilot for work

Copilot — A whole new way to work — from news.microsoft.com

  • Copilot in Word writes, edits, summarizes and creates right alongside people as they work.
  • Copilot in PowerPoint enables the creation process by turning ideas into a designed presentation through natural language commands.
  • Copilot in Excel helps unlock insights, identify trends or create professional-looking data visualizations in a fraction of the time.
  • Copilot in Outlook can help synthesize and manage the inbox to allow more time to be spent on actually communicating.
  • Copilot in Teams makes meetings more productive with real-time summaries and action items directly in the context of the conversation.
  • Copilot in Power Platform will help developers of all skill levels accelerate and streamline development with low-code tools with the introduction of two new capabilities within Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents.
  • Business Chat brings together data from across documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes and contacts to help summarize chats, write emails, find key dates or even write a plan based on other project files.

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot – your copilot for work — from blogs.microsoft.com by Jared Spataro

“Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft. “With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.”

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot — A whole new way to work — from microsoft.com by Colette Stallbaumer

Excerpt:

Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more—to unleash creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel skills. Today, we’re also announcing an entirely new experience: Business Chat. Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data—your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts—to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like “tell my team how we updated the product strategy” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads.


A new era for AI and Google Workspace — from workspace.google.com by Johanna Voolich Wright

Excerpt:

As we embark on this next journey, we will be bringing these new generative-AI experiences to trusted testers on a rolling basis throughout the year, before making them available publicly.

With these features, you’ll be able to:

  • draft, reply, summarize, and prioritize your Gmail
  • brainstorm, proofread, write, and rewrite in Docs
  • bring your creative vision to life with auto-generated images, audio, and video in Slides
  • go from raw data to insights and analysis via auto-completion, formula generation, and
  • contextual categorization in Sheets
  • generate new backgrounds and capture notes in Meet
  • enable workflows for getting things done in Chat

Here’s a look at the first set of AI-powered features, which make writing even easier.

 

‘ChatGPT Already Outperforms a lot of Junior Lawyers’: An Interview With Richard Susskind — from law.com by Laura Beveridge
For the last 20 years, the U.K. author and academic has been predicting that technology will revolutionise the legal industry. With the buzz around generative AI, will his hypothesis now be proven true?

Excerpts:

For this generation of lawyers, their mission and legacy ought to be to build the systems that replace our old ways of working, he said. Moreover, Susskind identified new work for lawyers, such as legal process analyst or legal data scientist, emerging from technological advancement.

“These are the people who will be building the systems that will be solving people’s legal problems in the future.

“The question I ask is: imagine when the underpinning large language model is GPT 8.5.”

Blue J Legal co-founder Benjamin Alarie on how AI is powering a new generation of legal tech — from canadianlawyermag.com by Tim Wilbur

Excerpts:

We founded Blue J with the idea that we should be able to bring absolute clarity to the law everywhere and on demand. The name that we give to this idea is the legal singularity. I have a book with assistant professor Abdi Aidid called The Legal Singularity coming out soon on this idea.

The book paints the picture of where we think the law will go in the next several decades. Our intuition was not widely shared when we started the book and Blue J.

Since last November, though, many lawyers and journalists have been able to play with ChatGPT and other large language models. They suddenly understand what we have been excited about for the last eight years.

Neat Trick/Tip to Add To Your Bag! — from iltanet.org by Brian Balistreri

Excerpt:

If you need instant transcription of a Audio File, Word Online now allows you to upload a file, and it will transcribe, mark speaker changes, and provide time marks. You can use video files, just make sure they are small or office will kick you out.

Generative AI Is Coming For the Lawyers — from wired.com by Chris Stoken-Walker
Large law firms are using a tool made by OpenAI to research and write legal documents. What could go wrong?

Excerpts:

The rise of AI and its potential to disrupt the legal industry has been forecast multiple times before. But the rise of the latest wave of generative AI tools, with ChatGPT at its forefront, has those within the industry more convinced than ever.

“I think it is the beginning of a paradigm shift,” says Wakeling. “I think this technology is very suitable for the legal industry.”

The technology, which uses large datasets to learn to generate pictures or text that appear natural, could be a good fit for the legal industry, which relies heavily on standardized documents and precedents.

“Legal applications such as contract, conveyancing, or license generation are actually a relatively safe area in which to employ ChatGPT and its cousins,” says Lilian Edwards, professor of law, innovation, and society at Newcastle University. “Automated legal document generation has been a growth area for decades, even in rule-based tech days, because law firms can draw on large amounts of highly standardized templates and precedent banks to scaffold document generation, making the results far more predictable than with most free text outputs.”

But the problems with current generations of generative AI have already started to show.

 

Digital credentials’ appeal is strong, while corporate upskilling moves at a ‘snail’s pace’ — from by Elyse Ashburn; with thanks to Paul Fain for this resource
Surveys out this week from IBM and LinkedIn take a closer look at the role of digital credentials and other forms upskilling in education and on the job.

Excerpt:

Interest in upskilling and short-term credentials, either as an alternative or an add-on to college, has grown steadily over the past few years. And a couple of surveys out this week take a closer look at the role digital credentials and other forms upskilling can play in bridging the gap between formal education and work.

A major IBM survey fielded in 13 countries, including the United States, found that almost half of students, job seekers, and career changers are interested in jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)—but more than 61% think they aren’t qualified because they lack the right degrees.

  • 75% of respondents thought that digital credentials were a good way to supplement traditional education, but only 47% were actually familiar with such credentialing programs.
  • Among those who’d earned a digital credential, 86% said that it helped them achieve their career goals.

Eight in 10 people surveyed said they planned to upgrade their skills in the next two years—but time, cost, or simply not knowing how to begin were major barriers. Among both students and job seekers, 40% said that they don’t know where to start in developing new professional or technical skills.

 

ChatGPT: 30 incredible ways to use the AI-powered chatbot — from interestingengineering.com by Christopher McFadden
You’ve heard of ChatGPT, but do you know how to use it? Or what to use it for? If not, then here are some ideas to get you started.

Excerpts:

  • It’s great at writing CVs and resumes
  • It can also read and improve the existing CV or resume
  • It can help you prepare for a job interview
  • ChatGPT can even do some translation work for you
  • Have it draft you an exam

Chatbots’ Time Has Come. Why Now? — from every.to by Nathan Baschez
Narratives have network effects

Excerpt:

There are obvious questions like “Are the AI’s algorithms good enough?” (probably not yet) and “What will happen to Google?” (nobody knows), but I’d like to take a step back and ask some more fundamental questions: why chat? And why now?

Most people don’t realize that the AI model powering ChatGPT is not all that new. It’s a tweaked version of a foundation model, GPT-3, that launched in June 2020. Many people have built chatbots using it before now. OpenAI even has a guide in its documentation showing exactly how you can use its APIs to make one.

So what happened? The simple narrative is that AI got exponentially more powerful recently, so now a lot of people want to use it. That’s true if you zoom out. But if you zoom in, you start to see that something much more complex and interesting is happening.

This leads me to a surprising hypothesis: perhaps the ChatGPT moment never would have happened without DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion happening earlier in the year!


The Most Important Job Skill of This Century — from theatlantic.com by Charlie Warzel
Your work future could depend on how well you can talk to AI.

Excerpt:

Like writing and coding before it, prompt engineering is an emergent form of thinking. It lies somewhere between conversation and query, between programming and prose. It is the one part of this fast-changing, uncertain future that feels distinctly human.


The ChatGPT AI hype cycle is peaking, but even tech skeptics don’t expect a bust — from cnbc.com by Eric Rosenbaum

Key Points:

  • OpenAI’s ChatGPT, with new funding from Microsoft, has grown to over one million users faster than many of dominant tech companies, apps and platforms of the past decade.
  • Unlike the metaverse concept, which had a hype cycle based on an idea still nebulous to many, generative AI as tech’s next big thing is being built on top of decades of existing machine learning already embedded in business processes.
  • We asked top technology officers, specifically reaching out to many at non-tech sector companies, to break down the potential and pitfalls of AI adoption.

ChatGPT and the college curriculum — out at youtube.com by Bryan Alexander with Maria Anderson


AI in EDU: Know the Risks– from linkedin.com by Angela Maiers

AI in EDU -- Know the Risks

 


 

 

Contracts Company Ironclad Taps Into GPT-3 For Instant Document Redlining Based On A Company’s Playbook — from lawnext.com by Robert Ambrogi

Excerpt:

The contract lifecycle management company Ironclad has tapped into the power of OpenAI’s GPT-3 to introduce AI Assist, a beta feature that instantly redlines contracts based on a company’s playbook of approved clauses and language.

The redlines, made using GPT-3’s generative artificial intelligence, appear as tracked changes in Microsoft Word, where a user can then scan the recommended changes and either accept or reject them.


Addendum:


 

Microsoft Plans to Build OpenAI, ChatGPT Features Into All Products — from wsj.com by Sam Schechner (behind paywall)
Offering for businesses and end users to be transformed by incorporating tools like ChatGPT, CEO Satya Nadella says

Excerpt:

DAVOS, Switzerland—Microsoft Corp. MSFT 2.86%increase; green up pointing triangle plans to incorporate artificial-intelligence tools like ChatGPT into all of its products and make them available as platforms for other businesses to build on, Chief Executive Satya Nadella said.

It’s a matter of time before the LMSs like Canvas and Anthology do the same. Really going to change the complexion of online learning.

Jared Stein; via Robert Gibson on LinkedIn

Also relevant/see:

Donald Clark’s thoughts out on LinkedIn re: Google and AI

Excerpt:

Microsoft are holding a lot of great cards in the AI game, especially ChatGPT-3, but Google also have a great hand, in fact they have a bird in the hand:

Sparrow, from Deepmind, is likely to launch soon. Their aim is to trump ChatGTP by having a chatbot that is more useful and reduces the risk of unsafe and inappropriate answers. In the released paper, they also indicate that it will have moral constraints. Smart move.

Hassabis has promised some sort of release in 2023. Their goal is to reduce wrong and invented information by linking it to Google Search and Scholar for citations.

Donald Clark’s thought re: Apple’s strategy for AI — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com

Wonder Tools:7 ways to Use ChatGPT — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan

Excerpt:

4 recommended ChatGPT resources

  • The Art of ChatGPT PromptingA Guide to Crafting Clear and Effective Prompts.
    This free e-book acts a useful guide for beginners.
  • Collection of ChatGPT Resources
    Use ChatGPT in Google Docs, WhatsApp, as a desktop app, with your voice, or in other ways with this running list of tools.
  • Awesome ChatGPT prompts
    Dozens of clever pre-written prompts you can use to initiate your own conversations with ChatGPT to get it to reply as a fallacy finder or a journal reviewer or whatever else.
  • Writing for Renegades – Co-writing with AI
    This free 17-page resource has writing exercises you can try with ChatGPT. It also includes interesting nuggets, like Wycliffe A. Hill’s 1936 attempt at writing automation, Plot Genie.

 


We often see the battle between technology and humans as a zero-sum game. And that’s how much of the discussion about ChatGPT is being framed now. Like many others who have been experimenting with ChatGPT in recent weeks, I find that a lot of the output depends on the input. In other words, the better the human question, the better the ChatGPT answer.

So instead of seeing ourselves competing with technology, we should find ways to complement it and view ChatGPT as a tool that assists us in collecting information and in writing drafts.

If we reframe the threat, think about how much time can be freed up to read, to think, to write?

As many have noted, including Michael Horn on the Class Disrupted podcast he co-hosts, ChatGPT is to writing what calculators were once to math and other STEM disciplines. 

Jeff Selingo: ‘The Calculator’ for a New Generation?

 


GPT in Higher Education — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
ChatGPT has caught our attention in higher education. What will it mean in 2023?

Excerpt:

Founder and CEO at Moodle Martin Dougiamas writes in Open Ed Tech that as educators, we must recognize that artificial general intelligence will become ubiquitous. “In short, we need to embrace that AI is going to be a huge part of our lives when creating anything. There is no gain in banning it or avoiding it. It’s actually easier (and better) to use this moment to restructure our education processes to be useful and appropriate in today’s environment (which is full of opportunities).”

Who, at your institution, is examining the impact of AI, and in particular GPT, upon the curriculum? Are instructional designers working with instructors in revising syllabi and embedding AI applications into the course offerings? What can you do to ensure that your university is preparing learners for the future rather than the past?

Ray Schroeder

ChatGPT Advice Academics Can Use Now — from insidehighered.com by Susan D’Agostino
To harness the potential and avert the risks of OpenAI’s new chat bot, academics should think a few years out, invite students into the conversation and—most of all—experiment, not panic. 

Alarmed by AI Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach — from The New York Times (out at Yahoo) by Kalley Huang

Excerpt:

At schools including George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, professors are phasing out take-home, open-book assignments — which became a dominant method of assessment in the pandemic but now seem vulnerable to chatbots. They are instead opting for in-class assignments, handwritten papers, group work and oral exams.

Gone are prompts like “write five pages about this or that.” Some professors are instead crafting questions that they hope will be too clever for chatbots and asking students to write about their own lives and current events.

With ChatGPT, Teachers Can Plan Lessons, Write Emails, and More. What’s the Catch? — from edweek.org by Madeline Will  (behind paywall)

Why Banning ChatGPT in Class Is a Mistake — from campustechnology.com by Thomas Mennella
Artificial intelligence can be a valuable learning tool, if used in the right context. Here are ways to embrace ChatGPT and encourage students to think critically about the content it produces.

.


Let the Lawsuits Against Generative AI Begin! — from legallydisrupted.com by Zach Abramowitz
Getty Sues Stability AI as Lawsuits Mount Against GenAI Companies

Excerpt:

Well, it was bound to happen. Anytime you have a phenomenon as disruptive as generative AI, you can expect lawsuits.

Case in point: the lawsuit recently filed by Getty Images against Stability AI, highlighting the ongoing legal challenges posed by the use of AI in the creative industries. But it’s not the only lawsuit recently filed, see e.g. Now artists sue AI image generation tools Stable Diffusion, Midjourney over copyright | Technology News, The Indian Express


.

 

ChatGPT Creator Is Talking to Investors About Selling Shares at $29 Billion Valuation — from wsj.com by Berber Jin and Miles Kruppa
Tender offer at that valuation would make OpenAI one of the most valuable U.S. startups

Here’s how Microsoft could use ChatGPT — from The Algorithm by Melissa Heikkilä

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

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.

And speaking of Microsoft and AI, also see:

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.

Donald Clark

The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI — from maggieappleton.com by
Proving you’re a human on a web flooded with generative AI content

Assumed audience:

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.

 

DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis Urges Caution on AI — from time.com by Billy Perrigo

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.

AI-assisted plagiarism? ChatGPT bot says it has an answer for that — from theguardian.com by Alex Hern
Silicon Valley firm insists its new text generator, which writes human-sounding essays, can overcome fears over cheating

Excerpt:

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.

Schools Shouldn’t Ban Access to ChatGPT — from time.com by Joanne Lipman and Rebecca Distler

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

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?

And see Joshua Kim’s A Friendly Attempt to Balance Steve Mintz’s Piece on Higher Ed Hard Truths out at nsidehighered.com | Comparing the health care and higher ed systems.

 



What Leaders Should Know About Emerging Technologies — from forbes.com by Benjamin Laker

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

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.”

I asked ChatGPT to write my cover letters. 2 hiring managers said they would have given me an interview but the letters lacked personality. — from businessinsider.com by Beatrice Nolan

Key points:

  • 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.

.



 

From DSC:
The following article made me again wonder about the place of technology in the access to justice realm.


Legal Tech Startup Lexion Tasks GPT-3 to Help Draft Contracts in Microsoft Word — from voicebot.ai by Eric Hal Schwartz

Excerpt:

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. 

 

ChatGPT, Chatbots and Artificial Intelligence in Education — from ditchthattextbook.com by Matt Miller
AI just stormed into the classroom with the emergence of ChatGPT. How do we teach now that it exists? How can we use it? Here are some ideas.

Excerpt:
Now, we’re wondering …

  • What is ChatGPT? And, more broadly, what are chatbots and AI?
  • How is this going to impact education?
  • How can I teach tomorrow knowing that this exists?
  • Can I use this as a tool for teaching and learning?
  • Should we block it through the school internet filter — or try to ban it?

Also relevant/see:

We gave ChatGPT a college-level microbiology quiz. It blew the quiz away. — from bigthink.com by Dr. Alex Berezow
ChatGPT’s capabilities are astonishing.

Key takeaways:

  • The tech world is abuzz over ChatGPT, a chat bot that is said to be the most advanced ever made.
  • It can create poems, songs, and even computer code. It convincingly constructed a passage of text on how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR, in the voice of the King James Bible.
  • As a PhD microbiologist, I devised a 10-question quiz that would be appropriate as a final exam for college-level microbiology students. ChatGPT blew it away.

ChatGPT Is Dumber Than You Think — from theatlantic.com by Ian Bogost
Treat it like a toy, not a tool.

Excerpt:

On the one hand, yes, ChatGPT is capable of producing prose that looks convincing. But on the other hand, what it means to be convincing depends on context. The kind of prose you might find engaging and even startling in the context of a generative encounter with an AI suddenly seems just terrible in the context of a professional essay published in a magazine such as The Atlantic. And, as Warner’s comments clarify, the writing you might find persuasive as a teacher (or marketing manager or lawyer or journalist or whatever else) might have been so by virtue of position rather than meaning: The essay was extant and competent; the report was in your inbox on time; the newspaper article communicated apparent facts that you were able to accept or reject.

I Would Have Cheated in College Using ChatGPT — from eliterate.us by Michael Feldstein

Excerpt:

These lines of demarcation—the lines between when a tool can do all of a job, some of it, or none of it—are both constantly moving and critical to watch. Because they define knowledge work and point to the future of work. We need to be teaching people how to do the kinds of knowledge work that computers can’t do well and are not likely to be able to do well in the near future. Much has been written about the economic implications to the AI revolution, some of which are problematic for the employment market. But we can put too much emphasis on that part. Learning about artificial intelligence can be a means for exploring, appreciating, and refining natural intelligence. These tools are fun. I learn from using them. Those two statements are connected.

Google to Rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT? New AI Bot for Chats in 2023, CEO Claims to Use it for Search — from techtimes.com by Isaiah Richard
Google to expand its Search engine with AI for 2023, but not in a creepy way.

Excerpt:

Google is planning to create a new AI feature for its Search engine, one that would rival the recently released and controversial ChatGPT from OpenAI. The company revealed this after a recent Google executive meeting that involved the likes of its CEO Sundar Pichai and AI head, Jeff Dean, that talked about the technology that the internet company already has, soon for development.

Employees from the Mountain View giant were concerned that it was behind the current AI trends to the likes of OpenAI despite already having a similar technology laying around.


And more focused on the business/vocational/corporate training worlds:

Sana raises $34M for its AI-based knowledge management and learning platform for workplaces — from techcrunch.com by Ingrid Lunden

There are a lot of knowledge management, enterprise learning and enterprise search products on the market today, but what Sana believes it has struck on uniquely is a platform that combines all three to work together: a knowledge management-meets-enterprise-search-meets-e-learning platform.

Exclusive: ChatGPT owner OpenAI projects $1 billion in revenue by 2024 — from reuters.com by Jeffrey Dastin, Krystal Hu, and Paresh Dave

Excerpt:

Three sources briefed on OpenAI’s recent pitch to investors said the organization expects $200 million in revenue next year and $1 billion by 2024.

The forecast, first reported by Reuters, represents how some in Silicon Valley are betting the underlying technology will go far beyond splashy and sometimes flawed public demos.

“We’re going to see advances in 2023 that people two years ago would have expected in 2033. It’s going to be extremely important not just for Microsoft’s future, but for everyone’s future,” he said in an interview this week.


Addendum on 12/21/22:

ChatGPT and higher education: last week and this week — from bryanalexander.org by Bryan Alexander

 

AI bot ChatGPT stuns academics with essay-writing skills and usability — from theguardian.com by Alex Hern
Latest chatbot from Elon Musk-founded OpenAI can identify incorrect premises and refuse to answer inappropriate requests

Excerpt:

Professors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years, after the latest chatbot from the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI foundation stunned onlookers with its writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks, and ease of use.

The system, called ChatGPT, is the latest evolution of the GPT family of text-generating AIs. Two years ago, the team’s previous AI, GPT3, was able to generate an opinion piece for the Guardian, and ChatGPT has significant further capabilities.

In the days since it was released, academics have generated responses to exam queries that they say would result in full marks if submitted by an undergraduate, and programmers have used the tool to solve coding challenges in obscure programming languages in a matter of seconds – before writing limericks explaining the functionality.

 


Also related/see:


AI and the future of undergraduate writing — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpts:

Is the college essay dead? Are hordes of students going to use artificial intelligence to cheat on their writing assignments? Has machine learning reached the point where auto-generated text looks like what a typical first-year student might produce?

And what does it mean for professors if the answer to those questions is “yes”?

Scholars of teaching, writing, and digital literacy say there’s no doubt that tools like ChatGPT will, in some shape or form, become part of everyday writing, the way calculators and computers have become integral to math and science. It is critical, they say, to begin conversations with students and colleagues about how to shape and harness these AI tools as an aide, rather than a substitute, for learning.

“Academia really has to look at itself in the mirror and decide what it’s going to be,” said Josh Eyler, director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi, who has criticized the “moral panic” he has seen in response to ChatGPT. “Is it going to be more concerned with compliance and policing behaviors and trying to get out in front of cheating, without any evidence to support whether or not that’s actually going to happen? Or does it want to think about trust in students as its first reaction and building that trust into its response and its pedagogy?”

 

 

 

ChatGPT Could Be AI’s iPhone Moment — from bloomberg.com by Vlad Savov; with thanks to Dany DeGrave for his Tweet on this

Excerpt:

The thing is, a good toy has a huge advantage: People love to play with it, and the more they do, the quicker its designers can make it into something more. People are documenting their experiences with ChatGPT on Twitter, looking like giddy kids experimenting with something they’re not even sure they should be allowed to have. There’s humor, discovery and a game of figuring out the limitations of the system.

 


And on the legal side of things:


 

The Top 10 Digital Health Stories Of 2022 — from medicalfuturist.com by Dr. Bertalan Mesko

Excerpt:

Edging towards the end of the year, it is time for a summary of how digital health progressed in 2022. It is easy to get lost in the noise – I myself shared well over a thousand articles, studies and news items between January and the end of November 2022. Thus, just like in 20212020 (and so on), I picked the 10 topics I believe will have the most significance in the future of healthcare.

9. Smart TVs Becoming A Remote Care Platform
The concept of turning one’s TV into a remote care hub isn’t new. Back in 2012, researchers designed a remote health assistance system for the elderly to use through a TV set. But we are exploring this idea now as a major tech company has recently pushed for telehealth through TVs. In early 2022, electronics giant LG announced that its smart TVs will be equipped with the remote health platform Independa. 

And in just a few months (late November) came a follow-up: a product called Carepoint TV Kit 200L, in beta testing now. Powered by Amwell’s Converge platform, the product is aimed at helping clinicians more easily engage with patients amid healthcare’s workforce shortage crisis.

Also relevant/see:

Asynchronous Telemedicine Is Coming And Here Is Why It’s The Future Of Remote Care — from medicalfuturist.com by Dr. Bertalan Mesko

Excerpt:

Asynchronous telemedicine is one of those terms we will need to get used to in the coming years. Although it may sound alien, chances are you have been using some form of it for a while.

With the progress of digital health, especially due to the pandemic’s impact, remote care has become a popular approach in the healthcare setting. It can come in two forms: synchronous telemedicine and asynchronous telemedicine.

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian