Accenture announced today that it would acquire the learning platform Udacity as part of an effort to build a learning platform focused on the growing interest in AI. While the company didn’t specify how much it paid for Udacity, it also announced a $1 billion investment in building a technology learning platform it’s calling LearnVantage.
“The rise of generative AI represents one of the most transformative changes in how work gets done and is driving a growing need for enterprises to train and upskill people in cloud, data and AI as they build their digital core and reinvent their enterprises,” Kishore Durg, global lead of Accenture LearnVantage said in a statement.
The market continues to be a matter of Canvas and Brightspace winning new accounts, Anthology Bb Learn and Moodle losing accounts, with more variety for smaller institutions.
Canvas has further consolidated its position as the market leader in North America, with 41% of the market share. Blackboard fell from 18% of the market share to 17%. Moodle has plateaued at 16% while Brightspace increased to 16%. As a reminder, we have removed Open LMS from the Moodle market share.
Populi LMS (3%), Open LMS (3%), Sakai (2%), and Schoology (1%) round out the remainder of the market, with 1% of the market going to Other.
As always, market share is very much a story of size, type of institution (public or private), and control. The numbers above refer to the market take as a whole, but if we start to drill down to different sizes and types of institution, we get very different market dynamics.
The early vibrations of AI have already been shaking the newsroom. One downside of the new technology surfaced at CNET and Sports Illustrated, where editors let AI run amok with disastrous results. Elsewhere in news media, AI is already writing headlines, managing paywalls to increase subscriptions, performing transcriptions, turning stories in audio feeds, discovering emerging stories, fact checking, copy editing and more.
Felix M. Simon, a doctoral candidate at Oxford, recently published a white paper about AI’s journalistic future that eclipses many early studies. Swinging a bat from a crouch that is neither doomer nor Utopian, Simon heralds both the downsides and promise of AI’s introduction into the newsroom and the publisher’s suite.
Unlike earlier technological revolutions, AI is poised to change the business at every level. It will become — if it already isn’t — the beginning of most story assignments and will become, for some, the new assignment editor. Used effectively, it promises to make news more accurate and timely. Used frivolously, it will spawn an ocean of spam. Wherever the production and distribution of news can be automated or made “smarter,” AI will surely step up. But the future has not yet been written, Simon counsels. AI in the newsroom will be only as bad or good as its developers and users make it.
We proposed EMO, an expressive audio-driven portrait-video generation framework. Input a single reference image and the vocal audio, e.g. talking and singing, our method can generate vocal avatar videos with expressive facial expressions, and various head poses, meanwhile, we can generate videos with any duration depending on the length of input video.
New experimental work from Adobe Research is set to change how people create and edit custom audio and music. An early-stage generative AI music generation and editing tool, Project Music GenAI Control allows creators to generate music from text prompts, and then have fine-grained control to edit that audio for their precise needs.
“With Project Music GenAI Control, generative AI becomes your co-creator. It helps people craft music for their projects, whether they’re broadcasters, or podcasters, or anyone else who needs audio that’s just the right mood, tone, and length,” says Nicholas Bryan, Senior Research Scientist at Adobe Research and one of the creators of the technologies.
There’s a lot going on in the world of generative AI, but maybe the biggest is the increasing number of copyright lawsuits being filed against AI companies like OpenAI and Stability AI. So for this episode, we brought on Verge features editor Sarah Jeong, who’s a former lawyer just like me, and we’re going to talk about those cases and the main defense the AI companies are relying on in those copyright cases: an idea called fair use.
The FCC’s war on robocalls has gained a new weapon in its arsenal with the declaration of AI-generated voices as “artificial” and therefore definitely against the law when used in automated calling scams. It may not stop the flood of fake Joe Bidens that will almost certainly trouble our phones this election season, but it won’t hurt, either.
The new rule, contemplated for months and telegraphed last week, isn’t actually a new rule — the FCC can’t just invent them with no due process. Robocalls are just a new term for something largely already prohibited under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act: artificial and pre-recorded messages being sent out willy-nilly to every number in the phone book (something that still existed when they drafted the law).
EIEIO…Chips Ahoy!— from dashmedia.co by Michael Moe, Brent Peus, and Owen Ritz
Here Come the AI Worms — from wired.com by Matt Burgess Security researchers created an AI worm in a test environment that can automatically spread between generative AI agents—potentially stealing data and sending spam emails along the way.
Now, in a demonstration of the risks of connected, autonomous AI ecosystems, a group of researchers have created one of what they claim are the first generative AI worms—which can spread from one system to another, potentially stealing data or deploying malware in the process. “It basically means that now you have the ability to conduct or to perform a new kind of cyberattack that hasn’t been seen before,” says Ben Nassi, a Cornell Tech researcher behind the research.
Justice tech — legal tech that helps low-income folks with no or some ability to pay, that assists the lawyers who serve those folks, and that makes the courts more efficient and effective — must contend with a higher hurdle than wooing Silicon Valley VCs: the civil justice system itself.
A checkerboard of technology systems and data infrastructures across thousands of local court jurisdictions makes it nearly impossible to develop tools with the scale needed to be sustainable. Courts are themselves a key part of the access to justice problem: opaque, duplicative and confusing court forms and burdensome filing processes make accessing the civil justice system deeply inefficient for the sophisticated, and an impenetrable maze for the 70+% of civil litigants who don’t have a lawyer.
Noxtua, the first sovereign European legal AI with its proprietary Language Model, allows lawyers in corporations and law firms to benefit securely from the advantages of generative AI. The Berlin-based AI startup Xayn and the largest German business law firm CMS are developing Noxtua as a Legal AI with its own Legal Large Language Model and AI assistant. Lawyers from corporations and law firms can use the Noxtua chat to ask questions about legal documents, analyze them, check them for compliance with company guidelines, (re)formulate texts, and have summaries written. The Legal Copilot, which specializes in legal texts, stands out as an independent and secure alternative from Europe to the existing US offerings.
Gen AI is game-changing technology, directly impacting the way legal work is done and the current law firm-client business model; and while much remains unsettled, within 10 years, Gen AI is likely to change corporate legal departments and law firms in profound and unique ways
Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) isn’t a futuristic technology — it’s here now, and it’s already impacting the legal industry in many ways.
Feb 29 (Reuters) – A new venture by a legal technology entrepreneur and a former Kirkland & Ellis partner says it can use artificial intelligence to help lawyers understand how individual judges think, allowing them to tailor their arguments and improve their courtroom results.
The Toronto-based legal research startup, Bench IQ, was founded by Jimoh Ovbiagele, the co-founder of now-shuttered legal research company ROSS Intelligence, alongside former ROSS senior software engineer Maxim Isakov and former Kirkland bankruptcy partner Jeffrey Gettleman.
How Learning Happens — from edutopia.org In this series, we explore how educators can guide all students, regardless of their developmental starting points, to become productive and engaged learners.
These techniques have resonated with educators everywhere: They are focused on taking advantage of the incredible opportunity to help children reach their full potential by creating positive relationships, experiences, and environments in which every student can thrive. In fact, the science is beginning to hint at even more dramatic outcomes. Practices explicitly designed to integrate social, emotional, and cognitive skills in the classroom, the research suggests, can reverse the damages wrought by childhood trauma and stress—while serving the needs of all students and moving them onto a positive developmental and academic path.
Also from edutopia.org recently, see:
How to Introduce Journaling to Young Children— from edutopia.org by Connie Morris Students in preschool through second grade can benefit from drawing or writing to explore their thoughts and feelings.
The symbiotic relationship between reading and writing can help our youngest students grow their emergent literacy skills. The idea of teaching writing at an early age can seem daunting. However, meeting children where they are developmentally can make a journaling activity become a magical experience—and they don’t have to write words but can convey thoughts in pictures.
7 Digital Tools That Help Bring History to Life— from edutopia.org by Daniel Leonard Challenging games, fun projects, and a healthy dose of AI tools round out our top picks for breathing new life into history lessons.
We’ve compiled a list of seven teacher-tested tools, and we lay out how educators are using them both to enhance their lessons and to bring history closer to the present than ever.
New experimental work from Adobe Research is set to change how people create and edit custom audio and music. An early-stage generative AI music generation and editing tool, Project Music GenAI Control allows creators to generate music from text prompts, and then have fine-grained control to edit that audio for their precise needs.
Dave told me that he couldn’t have made Borrowing Time without AI—it’s an expensive project that traditional Hollywood studios would never bankroll. But after Dave’s short went viral, major production houses approached him to make it a full-length movie. I think this is an excellent example of how AI is changing the art of filmmaking, and I came out of this interview convinced that we are on the brink of a new creative age.
We dive deep into the world of AI tools for image and video generation, discussing how aspiring filmmakers can use them to validate their ideas, and potentially even secure funding if they get traction. Dave walks me through how he has integrated AI into his movie-making process, and as we talk, we make a short film featuring Nicolas Cage using a haunted roulette ball to resurrect his dead movie career, live on the show.
Last month, I discussed a GPT that I had created around enhancing prompts. Since then, I have been actively using my Prompt Enhancer GPT to much more effective outputs. Last week, I did a series of mini-talks on generative AI in different parts of higher education (faculty development, human resources, grants, executive leadership, etc) and structured it as “5 tips”. I included a final bonus tip in all of them—a tip that I heard from many afterwards was probably the most useful tip—especially because you can only access the Prompt Enhancer GPT if you are paying for ChatGPT.
Effectively integrating generative AI into higher education requires policy development, cross-functional engagement, ethical principles, risk assessments, collaboration with other institutions, and an exploration of diverse use cases.
Creating Guidelines for the Use of Gen AI Across Campus— from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly The University of Kentucky has taken a transdisciplinary approach to developing guidelines and recommendations around generative AI, incorporating input from stakeholders across all areas of the institution. Here, the director of UK’s Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching breaks down the structure and thinking behind that process.
That resulted in a set of instructional guidelines that we released in August of 2023 and updated in December of 2023. We’re also looking at guidelines for researchers at UK, and we’re currently in the process of working with our colleagues in the healthcare enterprise, UK Healthcare, to comb through the additional complexities of this technology in clinical care and to offer guidance and recommendations around those issues.
My experiences match with the results of the above studies. The second study cited above found that 83% of those students who haven’t used AI tools are “not interested in using them,” so it is no surprise that many students have little awareness of their nature. The third study cited above found that, “apart from 12% of students identifying as daily users,” most students’ use cases were “relatively unsophisticated” like summarizing or paraphrasing text.
For those of us in the AI-curious bubble, we need to continually work to stay current, but we also need to recognize that what we take to be “common knowledge” is far from common outside of the bubble.
Despite general familiarity, however, technical knowledge shouldn’t be assumed for district leaders or others in the school community. For instance, it’s critical that any materials related to AI not be written in “techy talk” so they can be clearly understood, said Ann McMullan, project director for the Consortium for School Networking’s EmpowerED Superintendents Initiative.
To that end, CoSN, a nonprofit that promotes technological innovation in K-12, has released an array of AI resources to help superintendents stay ahead of the curve, including a one-page explainer that details definitions and guidelines to keep in mind as schools work with the emerging technology.
Last month, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman finally admitted what researchers have been saying for years — that the artificial intelligence (AI) industry is heading for an energy crisis. It’s an unusual admission. At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Altman warned that the next wave of generative AI systems will consume vastly more power than expected, and that energy systems will struggle to cope. “There’s no way to get there without a breakthrough,” he said.
I’m glad he said it. I’ve seen consistent downplaying and denial about the AI industry’s environmental costs since I started publishing about them in 2018. Altman’s admission has got researchers, regulators and industry titans talking about the environmental impact of generative AI.
Yesterday, Nvidia reported $22.1 billion in revenue for its fourth fiscal quarter of fiscal 2024 (ending January 31, 2024), easily topping Wall Street’s expectations. The revenues grew 265% from a year ago, thanks to the explosive growth of generative AI.
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He also repeated a notion about “sovereign AI.” This means that countries are protecting the data of their users and companies are protecting data of employees through “sovereign AI,” where the large-language models are contained within the borders of the country or the company for safety purposes.
??BREAKING: Adobe has created a new 50-person AI research org called CAVA (Co-Creation for Audio, Video, & Animation).
I can’t help but wonder if OpenAI’s Sora has been a wake up call for Adobe to formalize and accelerate their video and multimodal creation efforts?
Nvidia is building a new type of data centre called AI factory. Every company—biotech, self-driving, manufacturing, etc will need an AI factory.
Jensen is looking forward to foundational robotics and state space models. According to him, foundational robotics could have a breakthrough next year.
The crunch for Nvidia GPUs is here to stay. It won’t be able to catch up on supply this year. Probably not next year too.
A new generation of GPUs called Blackwell is coming out, and the performance of Blackwell is off the charts.
Nvidia’s business is now roughly 70% inference and 30% training, meaning AI is getting into users’ hands.
From DSC: This first item is related to the legal field being able to deal with today’s issues:
The Best Online Law School Programs (2024) — from abovethelaw.com by Staci Zaretsky A tasty little rankings treat before the full Princeton Review best law schools ranking is released.
Several law schools now offer online JD programs that have become as rigorous as their on-campus counterparts. For many JD candidates, an online law degree might even be the smarter choice. Online programs offer flexibility, affordability, access to innovative technologies, students from a diversity of career backgrounds, and global opportunities.
Voila! Feast your eyes upon the Best Online JD Programs at Law School for 2024 (in alphabetical order):
Mitchell Hamline School of Law – Hybrid J.D.
Monterey College of Law – Hybrid Online J.D.
Purdue Global Law School – Online J.D.
Southwestern Law School – Online J.D.
Syracuse University – J.D. Interactive
University of Dayton School of Law – Online Hybrid J.D.
University of New Hampshire – Hybrid J.D.
DSC: FINALLY!!! Online learning hits law schools (at least in a limited fashion)!!! Maybe there’s hope yet for the American Bar Association and for America’s legal system to be able to deal with the emerging technologies — and the issues presented therein — in the 21st century!!! Because if we can’t even get caught up to where numerous institutions of higher education were back at the turn of this century, we don’t have as much hope in the legal field being able to address things like AI, XR, cryptocurrency, blockchain, and more.
Advocate, advise, and accompany— from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong These are the three essential roles lawyers will play in the post-AI era. We need to start preparing legal education, lawyer licensing, and law practices to adapt.
Consider this scenario:
Ten years from now, Generative AI has proven capable of a stunning range of legal activities. Not only can it accurately write legal documents and conduct legal research and apply law to facts, it can reliably oversee legal document production, handle contract negotiations, monitor regulatory compliance, render legal opinions, and much more. Lawyers are no longer needed to carry out these previously billable tasks or even to double-check the AI’s performance. Tasks that once occupied 80% of lawyers’ billable time have been automated.
What are the chances this scenario unfolds within the next ten years? You can decide that likelihood for yourself, but I think anything above 1% represents the potential for major disruption to the legal profession.
Also from Jordan, see:
Could Generative AI help solve the law’s access dilemma? Legal regulators have failed to strike the right balance between accessibility and quality in legal services. It’s just possible that Gen AI could open the door to an entirely new solution.
We have gathered, from Colin Levy’s insights, the top five strategies that legal professionals can implement to excel in this transformational era – bringing them together with technology.
Going further than just legal spend, analytics on volume of work and diversity metrics can help legal teams make the business case they need to drive important initiatives and decisions forward. And a key differentiator of top-performing companies is the ability to get all of this data in one place, which is why Mitratech was thrilled to unveil PlatoBI, an embedded analytics platform powered by Snowflake, earlier this year with several exciting AI and Analytic enhancements.
Also worrisome is that AI will be used as a crutch that short circuits learning. Some people look for shortcuts. What effect of AI on that learning process and the result, for students and when lawyers use AI to draft documents and research?
SAN JOSE, Calif. – [On 2/20/23], Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) introduced AI Assistant in beta, a new generative AI-powered conversational engine in Reader and Acrobat.
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Simply open Reader or Acrobat and start working with the new capabilities, including:
AI Assistant: AI Assistant recommends questions based on a PDF’s content and answers questions about what’s in the document – all through an intuitive conversational interface.
Generative summary: Get a quick understanding of the content inside long documents with short overviews in easy-to-read formats.
Intelligent citations: Adobe’s custom attribution engine and proprietary AI generate citations so customers can easily verify the source of AI Assistant’s answers.
Easy navigation:
Formatted output:
Respect for customer data:
Beyond PDF: Customers can use AI Assistant with all kinds of document formats (Word, PowerPoint, meeting transcripts, etc.)
Essential skills to thrive with Sora AI
The realm of video editing isn’t about cutting and splicing.
A Video Editor should learn a diverse set of skills to earn money, such as:
Prompt Writing
Software Mastery
Problem-solving skills
Collaboration and communication skills
Creative storytelling and visual aesthetics
Invest in those skills that give you a competitive edge.
The text file that runs the internet — from theverge.com by David Pierce For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart.
Four days of seminars, lectures and demonstrations at the 39th annual ABA Techshow boiled down to Saturday morning’s grand finale, where panelists rounded up their favorite tech tips and apps. The underlying theme: artificial intelligence.
“It’s an amazing tool, but it’s kind of scary, so watch out,” said Cynthia Thomas, the Techshow co-chair, and owner of PLMC & Associates, talking about the new tool from OpenAI, Sora, which takes text and turns it into video.
Other panelists during the traditional Techshow closer, “60 sites, 60 tips and gadgets and gizmos,” highlighted a wide of AI-enabled or augmented tools to help users perform a large range of tasks, including quickly sift through user reviews for products, generate content, or keep up-to-date on the latest AI tools. For those looking for a non-AI tips and tools, they also suggested several devices, websites, tips and apps that have helped them with their practice and with life in general.
ABA Techshow 2024 stressed the importance of ethics in legal technology adoption. Ethics lawyer Stuart I. Teicher warned of the potential data breaches and urged attorneys to be proactive in understanding and supervising new tools. Education and oversight are key to maintaining data protection and integrity.
Though it might be more accurate to call TECHSHOW an industry showcase because with each passing year it seems that more and more of the show involves other tech companies looking to scoop up enterprising new companies. A tone that’s set by the conference’s opening event: the annual Startup Alley pitch competition.
This year, 15 companies presented. If you were taking a shot every time someone mentioned “AI” then my condolences because you are now dead. If you included “machine learning” or “large language model” then you’ve died, come back as a zombie, and been killed again.
Text to video via OpenAI’s Sora. (I had taken this screenshot on the 15th, but am posting it now.)
We’re teaching AI to understand and simulate the physical world in motion, with the goal of training models that help people solve problems that require real-world interaction.
Introducing Sora, our text-to-video model. Sora can generate videos up to a minute long while maintaining visual quality and adherence to the user’s prompt.
At the University of Pennsylvania, undergraduate students in its school of engineering will soon be able to study for a bachelor of science degree in artificial intelligence.
What can one do with an AI degree? The University of Pennsylvania says students will be able to apply the skills they learn in school to build responsible AI tools, develop materials for emerging chips and hardware, and create AI-driven breakthroughs in healthcare through new antibiotics, among other things.
Google on Monday announced plans to help train people in Europe with skills in artificial intelligence, the latest tech giant to invest in preparing workers and economies amid the disruption brought on by technologies they are racing to develop.
The acceleration of AI deployments has gotten so absurdly out of hand that a draft post I started a week ago about a new development is now out of date.
… The Pace is Out of Control
A mere week since Ultra 1.0’s announcement, Google has now introduced us to Ultra 1.5, a model they are clearly positioning to be the leader in the field. Here is the full technical report for Gemini Ultra 1.5, and what it can do is stunning.
[St. Louis, MO, February 14, 2024] – In a bold move that counters the conventions of more traditional schools, Maryville University has unveiled a substantial $21 million multi-year investment in artificial intelligence (AI) and cutting-edge technologies. This groundbreaking initiative is set to transform the higher education experience to be powered by the latest technology to support student success and a five-star experience for thousands of students both on-campus and online.
“The world is adapting to seismic shifts from generative AI,” says Luben Pampoulov, Partner at GSV Ventures. “AI co-pilots, AI tutors, AI content generators—AI is ubiquitous, and differentiation is increasingly critical. This is an impressive group of EdTech companies that are leveraging AI and driving positive outcomes for learners and society.”
Workforce Learning comprises 34% of the list, K-12 29%, Higher Education 24%, Adult Consumer Learning 10%, and Early Childhood 3%. Additionally, 21% of the companies stretch across two or more “Pre-K to Gray” categories. A broader move towards profitability is also evident: the collective gross and EBITDA margin score of the 2024 cohort increased 5% compared to 2023.
Selected from 2,000+ companies around the world based on revenue scale, revenue growth, user reach, geographic diversification, and margin profile, this impressive group is reaching an estimated 3 billion people and generating an estimated $23 billion in revenue.
