society

“AutoGPT might be the next big step in AI”; “software agents that use natural language to simulate human behavior” + other items re: AI

On 04/13/2023, in 21st century, architecture, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, design, education technology, emerging technologies, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, Natural Language Processing (NLP), simulations, skills, society, tools, training / L&D, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, by Daniel Christian

AutoGPT might be the next big step in AI.

Here’s why Karpathy recently said “AutoGPT is the next frontier of prompt engineering”

AutoGPT is the equivalent of giving GPT-based models a memory and a body. You can now give a task to an AI agent and have it autonomously come up… pic.twitter.com/mYIJm2IEZy

— Lior? (@AlphaSignalAI) April 11, 2023

AutoGPT, less noise more signal

This is where you should pay attention

Here is why ?

pic.twitter.com/2For7bPOID

— Linus (???) (@LinusEkenstam) April 11, 2023

AutoGPT is the next BIG thing in AI.

Seems like a new *groundbreaking* update comes out every hour.

Here are a few examples just from the past 24 hours: ?

— Barsee ? (@heyBarsee) April 12, 2023

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
Joon Sung Park, Joseph C. O’Brien, Carrie J. Cai, Meredith Ringel Morris, Percy Liang, Michael S. Bernstein
.

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.

AutoGPTs are improving at a blazingly fast speed and could soon transform the face of business.

Here's what you need to know:

— Nathan Lands (@NathanLands) April 12, 2023

Credentialed Learning For All [gettingsmart.com]

On 04/13/2023, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Blockchain, career development, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, education, education reform, experimentation, future, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, pathways, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, reinvent, skills, society, student-related, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, virtual K-12 schools, vision/possibilities, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Credentialed Learning For All — from gettingsmart.com

Vision

Learning happens throughout life and is not isolated to the K-12 or higher education sectors. Yet, often, validations of learning only happen in these specific areas. The system of evaluation based on courses, grades, and credit serves as a poor proxy for communicating skills given the variation in course content, grade inflation, and inclusion of participation and extra credit within course grades.

Credentialed learning provides a way to accurately document human capability for all learners throughout their life. A lifetime credentialed learning ecosystem provides better granularity around learning, better documentation of the learning, and more relevance for both the credential recipient and reviewer. This improves the match between higher education and/or employment with the individual, while also providing a more clear and accurate lifetime learning pathway.

With a fully-credentialed system, individuals can own well-documented evidence of a lifetime of learning and choose what and when to share this data. This technology enables every learner to have more opportunities for finding the best career match without today’s existing barriers around cost, access, and proxies.

Addendum on 4/28/23 — speaking of credentials:

First Rung — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
New research shows stacking credentials pays off for low-income learners.

Stacking credentials pays off for many low-income students, new research finds, but only if learners move up the education ladder. Also, Kansas is hoping a new grant program will attract more companies to participate in microinternships.

From DSC:
Regarding the core curricula of colleges and universities…

For decades now, faculty members have taught what they wanted to teach and what interested them. They taught what they wanted to research vs. what the wider marketplace/workplace needed. They were not responsive to the needs of the workplace — nor to the needs of their students!

And this situation has been all the more compounded by the increasing costs of obtaining a degree plus the exponential pace of change. We weren’t doing a good job before this exponential pace of change started taking place — and now it’s (almost?) impossible to keep up.

The bottom line on the article below: ***It’s sales.***

Therefore, it’s about what you are selling — and at what price. The story hasn’t changed much. The narrative (i.e., the curricula and more) is pretty much the same thing that’s been sold for years.

But the days of faculty members teaching whatever they wanted to are over, or significantly waning.

Faculty members, faculty senates, provosts, presidents, and accreditors are reaping what they’ve sown.

The questions are now:

Will new seeds be sown?
Will new crops arise in the future?
Will there be new narratives?
Will institutions be able to reinvent themselves (one potential example here)? Or will their cultures not allow such significant change to take place? Will alternatives to institutions of traditional higher education continue to pick up steam?

A Profession on the Edge — from chronicle.com by Eric Hoover
Why enrollment leaders are wearing down, burning out, and leaving jobs they once loved.

Excerpts:

Similar stories are echoing throughout the hallways of higher education. Vice presidents for enrollment, as well as admissions deans and directors, are wearing down, burning out, and leaving jobs they once loved. Though there’s no way to compile a chart quantifying the churn, industry insiders describe it as significant. “We’re at an inflection point,” says Rick Clark, executive director of undergraduate admission at Georgia Tech. “There have always been people leaving the field, but not in the numbers we’re seeing now.”

Some are being shoved out the door by presidents and boards. Some are resigning out of exhaustion, frustration, and disillusionment. And some who once sought top-level positions are rethinking their ambitions. “The pressures have ratcheted up tenfold,” says Angel B. Pérez, chief executive of the National Association for College Admission Counseling, known as NACAC. “I talk with someone each week who’s either leaving the field or considering leaving.”

From DSC:
This quote points to what I’m trying to address here:

Dahlstrom and other veterans of the field say they’ve experienced something especially disquieting: an erosion of faith in the transformational power of higher education. Though she sought a career in admissions to help students, her disillusionment grew after taking on a leadership role. She became less confident that she was equipped to effect positive changes, at her institution or beyond, especially when it came to the challenge of expanding college access in a nation of socioeconomic disparities: “I felt like a cog in a huge machine that’s not working, yet continues to grind while only small, temporary fixes are made.”

1 Peter 2:24

On 04/12/2023, in faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, relationships, religion, society, by Daniel Christian

1 Peter 2:24

“He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

“The biggest legal data corpus ever assembled” [Merken]

On 04/11/2023, in law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, platforms, podcasting, society, United States, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Fastcase, vLex merger accelerates investment into legal AI — from reuters.com by Sara Merken

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

(Reuters) – As artificial intelligence pushes deeper into the legal industry, Fastcase and vLex are merging in a deal the legal research companies said [on 4/4/23] will speed up the creation of AI tools for lawyers.
…
The merger creates a law library that is “the biggest legal data corpus ever assembled,” the companies said. The new company will have more than one billion legal documents from more than 100 countries, including judicial opinions, statutes, regulations, briefs, pleadings and legal news articles, they said.

Also see:

In Major Legal Tech Deal, vLex and Fastcase Merge, Creating A Global Legal Research Company, Backed By Oakley Capital and Bain Capital — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

Excerpt:

In a deal that will reshape the legal research and legal technology landscape on a global basis and threaten the longstanding “Wexis” legal research duopoly, the companies vLex and Fastcase today announced that they have merged into a single entity that they say will have the world’s largest subscriber base of lawyers and law firms and a legal research library of more than 1 billion documents from more than 100 countries.

Speaking about the legal realm and innovations, also see:

On LawNext: 15 Years, 15 Lessons: Clio Founder Jack Newton On What He’s Learned About Building a Successful Company — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi and Jack Newton

Excerpt:

As Clio marks its 15th anniversary in 2023, Newton sat down with me to share 15 lessons he has learned along the way regarding what makes a successful company and a successful leader. He also reminisces about the early days of starting Clio and his early successes and challenges. Notably, he and Gauvreau founded Clio in the middle of the Great Recession, and one of the lessons he shares in this episode is his belief that a recession is a great time to build a company.

For anyone who has founded or is thinking of founding a legal tech startup, this episode is a must-listen. Even for those who are not tech founders, but law firm founders, many of Newton’s lessons apply.

Stanford’s 2023 AI Index Report — from aiindex.stanford.edu

A museum without screens: The Media Museum of Sound and Vision in Hilversum [inavateonthenet.net]

On 04/11/2023, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, art, creativity, digital audio, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, Europe, multimedia, new media literacies, online media, platforms, presentations, society, streams of content, transmedia, vendors, by Daniel Christian

A museum without screens: The Media Museum of Sound and Vision in Hilversum — from inavateonthenet.net

Excerpt:

Re-opened to the public last month after five years of planning and two-and-a-half years of renovations, The Media Museum of Sound and Vision in Hilversum in the Netherlands, is an immersive experience exploring modern media. It’s become a museum that continuously adapts to the actions of its visitors in order to reflect the ever-changing face of media culture.

How we consume media is revealed in five zones in the building: Share, Inform, Sell, Tell and Play. The Media Museum includes more than 50 interactives, with hundreds of hours of AV material and objects from history. The experience uses facial recognition and the user’s own smartphone to make it a personalised museum journey for everyone.

A portion of the Media Museum in Hilversum, the Netherlands
Photo from Mike Bink

From DSC:
Wow! There is some serious AV work and creativity in the Media Museum of Sound and Vision!

Also relevant/see:

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

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.

Building a bridge to justice from the other side [Furlong]

On 03/31/2023, in Access to Justice (A2J), Canada, career development, Cost of legal services - including access, legal reform, legislatures / government / legal, society, sociology, United States, by Daniel Christian

Building a bridge to justice from the other side — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Our professional-centric approach to resolving unmet legal needs hasn’t worked. Maybe it’s time we empowered the people who are already there.

Excerpts:

Given all that, I think it’s time we tried a demand-side approach instead — one that doesn’t require us to licence and deploy more legal services professionals, but instead focuses on and empowers those who are already dealing with people’s unmet and unrecognized legal needs.
…
So if we’re not looking for legal professionals, who are we looking for? If we take a user-centred, needs-focused approach, we’ll find ourselves looking for someone who’s familiar to and trusted by the vulnerable people with unmet legal needs, who’s walked with them, earned their confidence over time — “someone who looks like them, understands their situation, and are trusted members of their community.”

These individuals are already present in the lives of people with unmet legal needs. They’re community activists, librarians, hospital employees, teachers, social workers, homeless advocates, therapists, food bank employees, members of a religious order, financial counsellors, mental health clinic staffers, juvenile case workers, and many others.

Some items re: the state of — and the future of — higher education

On 03/31/2023, in adjunct faculty, Alternatives, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, higher education, leadership, parents/guardians, reinvent, society, sociology, staying relevant, surviving, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

When It Comes to College Closures, the Sky Is Never Going to Fall — from chronicle.com by Lee Gardner
Are you tired of reading nearly annual predictions of a looming wave of colleges shutting down? Not nearly as tired as one Chronicle reporter.

Excerpts:

I’ve learned a lot of things about how colleges work in the last 10 years, including that they die hard. They make new appeals to students and alumni. They scrimp. They raise their tuition-discount rate yet again. They limp along with budget deficits, sometimes for years. They make withdrawals from their endowments. They sell off assets. They look for partnerships, mergers, and buyers, although sometimes when it’s far too late.

I could be wrong, of course, and there may be a giant wave of college closures rearing somewhere on the horizon. But I can guarantee you that there are dozens of institutions in danger of quietly slipping toward a gradual end as you read this.

Also highly relevant here/see:

Contingent faculty jobs are still the standard, AAUP report finds — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak

Dive Brief:

Colleges are continuing to increase their reliance on faculty positions that lack pathways to tenure, according to a new report from the American Association of University Professors. Over two-thirds of faculty members, 68%, held contingent positions in fall 2021, compared to about 47% in fall 1987.
Part-time work is also becoming more common. Almost half of faculty, 48%, taught part time in fall 2021, up from 33% in fall 1987. Less than 1% of all part-time faculty positions are tenured or tenure-track, according to AAUP.
Both of these factors are cutting into the number of available tenured positions, the report said. Fewer than 1 in 4 faculty members, 24%, held tenured full-time positions in fall 2021. That number fell from 39% in fall 1987.

Americans Are Losing Faith in College Education, WSJ-NORC Poll Finds — from wsj.com by Douglas Belkin (behind a firewall)
Confidence in value of a degree plummeted among women and senior citizens during pandemic

Excerpt:

A majority of Americans don’t think a college degree is worth the cost, according to a new Wall Street Journal-NORC poll, a new low in confidence in what has long been a hallmark of the American dream.

The survey, conducted with NORC at the University of Chicago, a nonpartisan research organization, found that 56% of Americans think earning a four-year degree is a bad bet compared with 42% who retain faith in the credential.

Skepticism is strongest among people ages 18-34, and people with college degrees are among those whose opinions have soured the most, portending a profound shift for higher education in the years ahead.

Isaiah 53:5-6

On 03/31/2023, in faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, relationships, religion, society, by Daniel Christian

Isaiah 53:5-6

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Also relevant/see:

“Godfather of artificial intelligence” weighs in on the past and potential of AI — from cbsnews.com
Sketching the Field of AI Tools for Local Newsrooms — from medium.com by Dalia Hashim
Adobe Firefly, Bing Image Creator, Canva’s AI, ChatGPT Plugins, Google Workspace AI, Microsoft Loop, Runway Gen2 – Volume 03 — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Another week of everything, everywhere, all at once in AI news – and get my free AI Visual toolkit!
It takes a few dollars and 8 minutes to create a deepfake. And that’s only the start — from npr.org by Shannon Bond; with thanks to Mr. Robert Gibson on LinkedIn for this resource
We’ve just gone from a simple teacher-learner model to a new world of AI teachers – a new pedAIgogy — from donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com by Donald Clark

ChatGPT is about to revolutionize the economy. We need to decide what that looks like. — from technologyreview.com by David Rotman
New large language models will transform many jobs. Whether they will lead to widespread prosperity or not is up to us.
Is GPT-4 Worth the Subscription? Here’s What You Should Know — from wired.com Reece Rogers
The new algorithm is exclusive to ChatGPT Plus, OpenAI’s subscriber-only service. We signed up and put it to the test.
Superhuman: What can AI do in 30 minutes? — from oneusefulthing.substack.com Ethan Mollick
AI multiplies your efforts. I found out by how much…

From DSC:
While I continue to try and review/pulse-check the K12 learning ecosystem, it struck me that we need new, DIRECT communication channels between educators, support staff, administrators, and legislators — and possibly others.

That is:

How can teachers, support staff, and administrators talk directly to legislators?
How can legislators communicate with teachers, support staff, and administrators?
Should we require relevant legislators (i.e., those individuals sponsoring bills or major changes to our k12 learning ecosystem) to go through training on how students learn?
What communication vehicles are present? Can they be anonymous?
Should there be an idea 1-800 hotline or an idea “mailbox” (digital and/or analog based)?

And what about the students themselves and/or their parents/guardians? Should they be involved as well?

Psalms 36:5-7 & reflections on Luke 5:31-32

On 03/27/2023, in Daniel S. Christian, faith, global / globalization, hearts -- matters of the heart, relationships, religion, society, by Daniel Christian

Psalms 36:5-7 NIV — from bible.com

Your love, LORD, reaches to the heavens, your faithfulness to the skies. Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, LORD, preserve both people and animals. How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

Luke 5:31-32 — from bible.com

“Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.””
Luke 5:31-32 NIV

From DSC:
LORD, thank you for your grace, patience, and love.

Law has a magic wand now — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Some people think Large Language Models will transform the practice of law. I think it’s bigger than that.

Excerpts:

ChatGPT4 can also do things that only lawyers (used to be able to) do. It can look up and summarize a court decision, analyze and apply sections of copyright law, and generate a statement of claim for breach of contract.
…
What happens when you introduce a magic wand into the legal market? On the buyer side, you reduce by a staggering degree the volume of tasks that you need to pay lawyers (whether in-house or outside counsel) to perform. It won’t happen overnight: Developing, testing, revising, approving, and installing these sorts of systems in corporations will take time. But once that’s done, the beauty of LLMs like ChatGPT4 is that they are not expert systems. Anyone can use them. Anyone will.

But I can’t shake the feeling that someday, we’ll divide the history of legal services into “Before GPT4” and “After GPT4.” I think it’s that big.

From DSC:
Jordan mentions: “Some people think Large Language Models will transform the practice of law. I think it’s bigger than that.”

I agree with Jordan. It most assuredly IS bigger than that. AI will profoundly impact many industries/disciplines. The legal sector is but one of them. Education is another. People’s expectations are now changing — and the “ramification wheels” are now in motion.

I take the position that many others have as well (at least as of this point in time) that take the position that AI will supplement humans’ capabilities and activities. But those who know AI-driven apps will outcompete those who don’t know about such apps.

Learning Ecosystems

1 Peter 2:24

“The biggest legal data corpus ever assembled” [Merken]

A museum without screens: The Media Museum of Sound and Vision in Hilversum [inavateonthenet.net]

Building a bridge to justice from the other side [Furlong]

Some items re: the state of — and the future of — higher education

Isaiah 53:5-6

Psalms 36:5-7 & reflections on Luke 5:31-32

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