Instructional Design Careers and Freelancing Presentations — from christytuckerlearning.com by Christy Tucker
A collection of my presentations and podcasts on instructional design careers and freelancing, including transitioning from teaching to ID.
How to Handle Unusual Questions Asked During a Job Interview — from hongkiat.com by Singyin Lee
Learn the art of answering unconventional questions in job interviews.
Have you ever been in a job interview where you were thrown off by an unexpected question? Questions like, “Why is a manhole cover round?” or “What’s the most crucial part of a sandwich?” or even “What three items would you want if you were stranded on a deserted island?“
Rest assured, it’s unlikely that your job will require you to survive on a deserted island. So, why do interviewers ask such perplexing questions? The truth is, these questions serve a purpose, and it’s not necessarily to hear your answer.
What recruiters are really interested in is what your responses reveal about your character and problem-solving abilities.
Also important and related to one’s career development, see:
Corporate America Promised to Hire a Lot More People of Color. — from bloomberg.com
It Actually Did.
The year after Black Lives Matter protests, the S&P 100 added more than 300,000 jobs — 94% went to people of color.
The overall job growth included 20,524 White workers. The other 302,570 jobs — or 94% of the headcount increase — went to people of color.
…
But the trend continued up the job ladder in top, high-paid jobs, too: Companies increased their racial diversity among executives, managers and professionals.
For another item relevant to career development, see:
Preparing Students for the AI-Enhanced Workforce — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
Our graduating and certificate-completing students need documented generative AI skills, and they need them now.
The common adage repeated again and again is that AI will not take your job; a person with AI skills will replace you. The learners we are teaching this fall who will be entering, re-entering or seeking advancement in the workforce at the end of the year or in the spring must become demonstrably skilled in using generative AI. The vast majority of white-collar jobs will demand the efficiencies and flexibilities defined by generative AI now and in the future. As higher education institutions, we will be called upon to document and validate generative AI skills.
AI image generators: 10 tools, 10 classroom uses — from ditchthattextbook.com by Matt Miller
A Majority of New Teachers Aren’t Prepared to Teach With Technology. What’s the Fix? — from edweek.org by Alyson Klein
Think all incoming teachers have a natural facility with technology just because most are digital natives? Think again.
Teacher preparation programs have a long way to go in preparing prospective educators to teach with technology, according to a report released September 12 by the International Society for Technology in Education, a nonprofit.
In fact, more than half of incoming teachers—56 percent—lack confidence in using learning technology prior to entering the classroom, according to survey data included with the report.
5 Actual Use Cases of AI in Education: Newsletter #68 — from transcend.substack.com by Alberto Arenaza
What areas has AI truly impacted educators, learners & workers?
AI-Powered Higher Ed — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
What a House of Commons round table discussion tells us about how AI will impact the purpose of higher education
In this week’s blog post I’ll summarise the discussion and share what we agreed would be the most likely new model of assessment in HE in the post-AI world.
But this in turn raises a bigger question: why do people go to university, and what is the role of higher education in the twenty first century? Is it to create the workforce of the future? Or an institution for developing deep and original domain expertise? Can and should it be both?
How To Develop Computational Thinkers — from iste.org by Jorge Valenzuela
In my previous position with Richmond Public Schools, we chose to dive in with computational thinking, programming and coding, in that order. I recommend building computational thinking (CT) competency first by helping students recognize and apply the four elements of CT to familiar problems/situations. Computational thinking should come first because it’s the highest order of problem-solving, is a cross-curricular skill and is understandable to both machines and humans. Here are the four components of CT and how to help students understand them.
Next, The Future of Work is… Intersections — from linkedin.com by Gary A. Bolles; via Roberto Ferraro
So much of the way that we think about education and work is organized into silos. Sure, that’s one way to ensure a depth of knowledge in a field and to encourage learners to develop mastery. But it also leads to domains with strict boundaries. Colleges are typically organized into school sub-domains, managed like fiefdoms, with strict rules for professors who can teach in different schools.
Yet it’s at the intersections of seemingly-disparate domains where breakthrough innovation can occur.
Maybe intersections bring a greater chance of future work opportunity, because that young person can increase their focus in one arena or another as they discover new options for work — and because this is what meaningful work in the future is going to look like.
From DSC:
This posting strikes me as an endorsement for interdisciplinary degrees. I agree with much of this. It’s just hard to find the right combination of disciplines. But I supposed that depends upon the individual student and what he/she is passionate or curious about.
Speaking of the future of work, also see:
Centaurs and Cyborgs on the Jagged Frontier — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
I think we have an answer on whether AIs will reshape work…
A lot of people have been asking if AI is really a big deal for the future of work. We have a new paper that strongly suggests the answer is YES.
.
Consultants using AI finished 12.2% more tasks on average, completed tasks 25.1% more quickly, and produced 40% higher quality results than those without. Those are some very big impacts. Now, let’s add in the nuance.
The Prompt #14: Your Guide to Custom Instructions — from noisemedia.ai by Alex Banks
Whilst we typically cover a single ‘prompt’ to use with ChatGPT, today we’re exploring a new feature now available to everyone: custom instructions.
You provide specific directions for ChatGPT leading to greater control of the output. It’s all about guiding the AI to get the responses you really want.
To get started:
Log into ChatGPT ? Click on your name/email bottom left corner ? select ‘Custom instructions’
Meet Zoom AI Companion, your new AI assistant! Unlock the benefits with a paid Zoom account — from blog.zoom.us by Smita Hashim
We’re excited to introduce you to AI Companion (formerly Zoom IQ), your new generative AI assistant across the Zoom platform. AI Companion empowers individuals by helping them be more productive, connect and collaborate with teammates, and improve their skills.
…
Envision being able to interact with AI Companion through a conversational interface and ask for help on a whole range of tasks, similarly to how you would with a real assistant. You’ll be able to ask it to help prepare for your upcoming meeting, get a consolidated summary of prior Zoom meetings and relevant chat threads, and even find relevant documents and tickets from connected third-party applications with your permission.
From DSC:
“You can ask AI Companion to catch you up on what you missed during a meeting in progress.”
And what if some key details were missed? Should you rely on this? I’d treat this with care/caution myself.
Via the Rundown
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) September 6, 2023
A.I.’s un-learning problem: Researchers say it’s virtually impossible to make an A.I. model ‘forget’ the things it learns from private user data — from fortune.com by Stephen Pastis (behind paywall)
That’s because, as it turns out, it’s nearly impossible to remove a user’s data from a trained A.I. model without resetting the model and forfeiting the extensive money and effort put into training it. To use a human analogy, once an A.I. has “seen” something, there is no easy way to tell the model to “forget” what it saw. And deleting the model entirely is also surprisingly difficult.
This represents one of the thorniest, unresolved, challenges of our incipient artificial intelligence era, alongside issues like A.I. “hallucinations” and the difficulties of explaining certain A.I. outputs.
More companies see ChatGPT training as a hot job perk for office workers — from cnbc.com by Mikaela Cohen
Key points:
OpenAI Plugs ChatGPT Into Canva to Sharpen Its Competitive Edge in AI — from decrypt.co by Jose Antonio Lanz
Now ChatGPT Plus users can “talk” to Canva directly from OpenAI’s bot, making their workflow easier.
This strategic move aims to make the process of creating visuals such as logos, banners, and more, even more simple for businesses and entrepreneurs.
This latest integration could improve the way users generate visuals by offering a streamlined and user-friendly approach to digital design.
From DSC:
This Tweet addresses a likely component of our future learning ecosystems:
Excited to introduce YouPro for Education—your AI study buddy.
Access unlimited AI chat + search, unlimited AI writing generations, unlimited AI art generations, supercharged with GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion XL at just $6.99/month for students and teachers. pic.twitter.com/0t8zf0AaLr
— Richard Socher (@RichardSocher) August 30, 2023
Large language models aren’t people. Let’s stop testing them as if they were. — from technologyreview.com by Will Douglas Heaven
With hopes and fears about this technology running wild, it’s time to agree on what it can and can’t do.
That’s why a growing number of researchers—computer scientists, cognitive scientists, neuroscientists, linguists—want to overhaul the way they are assessed, calling for more rigorous and exhaustive evaluation. Some think that the practice of scoring machines on human tests is wrongheaded, period, and should be ditched.
“There’s a lot of anthropomorphizing going on,” she says. “And that’s kind of coloring the way that we think about these systems and how we test them.”
“There is a long history of developing methods to test the human mind,” says Laura Weidinger, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind. “With large language models producing text that seems so human-like, it is tempting to assume that human psychology tests will be useful for evaluating them. But that’s not true: human psychology tests rely on many assumptions that may not hold for large language models.”
We Analyzed Millions of ChatGPT User Sessions: Visits are Down 29% since May, Programming Assistance is 30% of Use — from sparktoro.com by Rand Fishkin
In concert with the fine folks at Datos, whose opt-in, anonymized panel of 20M devices (desktop and mobile, covering 200+ countries) provides outstanding insight into what real people are doing on the web, we undertook a challenging project to answer at least some of the mystery surrounding ChatGPT.
“In terms of human capital development, for instance, AI can be the teacher that helps the national workforce upskill in both AI-related and other domains.”
Article via Robert Gibson on LinkedIn https://t.co/iYKkPavX1H
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) September 4, 2023
Crypto in ‘arms race’ against AI-powered scams — Quantstamp co-founder — from cointelegraph.com by Tom Mitchelhill
Quantstamp’s Richard Ma explained that the coming surge in sophisticated AI phishing scams could pose an existential threat to crypto organizations.
With the field of artificial intelligence evolving at near breakneck speed, scammers now have access to tools that can help them execute highly sophisticated attacks en masse, warns the co-founder of Web3 security firm Quantstamp.
Why Christians need to support diversity professionals, not demonize them — from religionnews.com by Michelle Loyd-Paige
Even among Christians, DEI leaders find themselves isolated and unsupported.
For nearly 39 years, I have taught about and advocated for diversity, equity, inclusion, anti-racism and social justice in Christian contexts. I have been sustained by the knowledge that diversity is a part of God’s good creation and is celebrated in the Bible.
And not just diversity, but love for our neighbors, care for the immigrant, and justice for the marginalized and oppressed. In fact, the Hebrew and Greek words for justice appear in Scripture more than 1,000 times.
It could be argued that Jesus’ ministry on earth exemplified the value of diversity, the importance of inclusion and the obligation of justice and restoration. Our ministry — in schools, churches, business, wherever we find ourselves — should reflect the same.
From DSC:
I was at Calvin (then College) when Michelle was there. I am very grateful for her work over my 10+ years there. I learned many things from her and had my “lenses” refined several times due to her presentations, questions, and the media that she showed. Thank you Michelle for all of your work and up-hill efforts! It’s made a difference! It impacted the culture at Calvin. It impacted me.
The other thing that hepled me in my background was when my family moved to a much more diverse area. And I’ve tried to continue that perspective in my own family. I don’t know half of the languages that are spoken in our neighborhood, but I love the diversity there! I believe our kids (now mostly grown) have benefited from it and are better prepared for what they will encounter in the real world.
Future of Work Report AI at Work — from economicgraph.linkedin.com; via Superhuman
The intersection of AI and the world of work: Not only are job postings increasing, but we’re seeing more LinkedIn members around the globe adding AI skills to their profiles than ever before. We’ve seen a 21x increase in the share of global English-language job postings that mention new AI technologies such as GPT or ChatGPT since November 2022. In June 2023, the number of AI-skilled members was 9x larger than in January 2016, globally.
The state of play of Generative AI (GAI) in the workforce: GAI technologies, including ChatGPT, are poised to start to change the way we work. In fact, 47% of US executives believe that using generative AI will increase productivity, and 92% agree that people skills are more important than ever. This means jobs won’t necessarily go away but they will change as will the skills necessary to do them.
Also relevant/see:
The Working Future: More Human, Not Less — from bain.com
It’s time to change how we think about work
Contents
Introductory comments from DSC:
Sometimes people and vendors write about AI’s capabilities in such a glowingly positive way. It seems like AI can do everything in the world. And while I appreciate the growing capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) and the like, there are some things I don’t want AI-driven apps to do.
For example, I get why AI can be helpful in correcting my misspellings, my grammatical errors, and the like. That said, I don’t want AI to write my emails for me. I want to write my own emails. I want to communicate what I want to communicate. I don’t want to outsource my communication.
And what if an AI tool summarizes an email series in a way that I miss some key pieces of information? Hmmm…not good.
Ok, enough soapboxing. I’ll continue with some resources.
ChatGPT Enterprise
Introducing ChatGPT Enterprise — from openai.com
Get enterprise-grade security & privacy and the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet.
We’re launching ChatGPT Enterprise, which offers enterprise-grade security and privacy, unlimited higher-speed GPT-4 access, longer context windows for processing longer inputs, advanced data analysis capabilities, customization options, and much more. We believe AI can assist and elevate every aspect of our working lives and make teams more creative and productive. Today marks another step towards an AI assistant for work that helps with any task, is customized for your organization, and that protects your company data.
Enterprise-grade security & privacy and the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet. — from openai.com
NVIDIA
Nvidia’s Q2 earnings prove it’s the big winner in the generative AI boom — from techcrunch.com by Kirsten Korosec
Nvidia Quarterly Earnings Report Q2 Smashes Expectations At $13.5B — from techbusinessnews.com.au
Nvidia’s quarterly earnings report (Q2) smashed expectations coming in at $13.5B more than doubling prior earnings of $6.7B. The chipmaker also projected October’s total revenue would peak at $16B
MISC
DC: And many business people in the early/mid-90’s thought electronic mail was only good for arranging a business lunch but it was never going to take off.
ChatGPT: Few Americans think it will impact their job in a major way| Pew Research Center https://t.co/dsUfoNOeVO
— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) August 30, 2023
OpenAI Passes $1 Billion Revenue Pace as Big Companies Boost AI Spending — from theinformation.com by Amir Efrati and Aaron Holmes
OpenAI is currently on pace to generate more than $1 billion in revenue over the next 12 months from the sale of artificial intelligence software and the computing capacity that powers it. That’s far ahead of revenue projections the company previously shared with its shareholders, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation.
OpenAI’s GPTBot blocked by major websites and publishers — from the-decoder.com by Matthias Bastian
An emerging chatbot ecosystem builds on existing web content and could displace traditional websites. At the same time, licensing and financing are largely unresolved.
OpenAI offers publishers and website operators an opt-out if they prefer not to make their content available to chatbots and AI models for free. This can be done by blocking OpenAI’s web crawler “GPTBot” via the robots.txt file. The bot collects content to improve future AI models, according to OpenAI.
Major media companies including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, Chicago Tribune, ABC, and Australian Community Media (ACM) are now blocking GPTBot. Other web-based content providers such as Amazon, Wikihow, and Quora are also blocking the OpenAI crawler.
Introducing Code Llama, a state-of-the-art large language model for coding — from ai.meta.com
Takeaways re: Code Llama:
Key Highlights of Google Cloud Next ‘23— from analyticsindiamag.com by Shritama Saha
Meta’s Llama 2, Anthropic’s Claude 2, and TII’s Falcon join Model Garden, expanding model variety.
AI finally beats humans at a real-life sport— drone racing — from nature.com by Dan Fox
The new system combines simulation with onboard sensing and computation.
From DSC:
This is scary — not at all comforting to me. Militaries around the world continue their jockeying to be the most dominant, powerful, and effective killers of humankind. That definitely includes the United States and China. But certainly others as well. And below is another alarming item, also pointing out the downsides of how we use technologies.
The Next Wave of Scams Will Be Deepfake Video Calls From Your Boss — from bloomberg.com by Margi Murphy; behind paywall
Cybercriminals are constantly searching for new ways to trick people. One of the more recent additions to their arsenal was voice simulation software.
10 Great Colleges For Studying Artificial Intelligence — from forbes.com by Sim Tumay
The debut of ChatGPT in November created angst for college admission officers and professors worried they would be flooded by student essays written with the undisclosed assistance of artificial intelligence. But the explosion of interest in AI has benefits for higher education, including a new generation of students interested in studying and working in the field. In response, universities are revising their curriculums to educate AI engineers.
A TV show with no ending — from joinsuperhuman.ai by Zain Kahn
ALSO: Turbocharged GPT is here
We’re standing on the cusp of artificially generated content that could theoretically never end. According to futurist Sinéad Bovell, “Generative artificial intelligence also means that say we don’t want a movie or a series to end. It doesn’t have to, you could use AI to continue to generate more episodes and other sequels and have this kind of ongoing storyline.”
If we take this logic further, we could also see hyper-personalized content that’s created just for us. Imagine getting an AI generated album from your favourite artist every week. Or a brand new movie starring actors who are no longer alive, like a new romcom with Marylin Monroe and Frank Sinatra.
While this sounds like a compelling proposition for consumers, it’s mostly bad news for actors, writers, and other professionals working in the media industry. Hollywood studios are already investing heavily in generative AI, and many professionals working in the industry are afraid to lose their jobs.
A Guide to Finding Housing For The Previously Incarcerated — from todayshomeowner.com by Alexis Bennett & Alexis Curls
For many individuals stepping back into society after incarceration, finding a stable place to call home can be complicated. The reality is that those who have been previously incarcerated are almost 10 times more likely to face homelessness compared to the general public. With over 725,000 people leaving state and federal prisons each year, the quest for housing becomes not only a personal challenge but a broader societal concern. Stable housing is crucial for successful reintegration, providing a foundation for building a new chapter in life. In this article, we’ll shed light on the challenges and offer empowering resources for those on their journey to find housing after prison.
Table of Contents
From DSC:
I’m posting this in the hopes that this information may help someone out there. Also, my dad used to donate some of his time in retirement to an agency that helped people find housing. He mentioned numerous times how important it was for someone to have a safe place to stay that they could call their own.
ElevenLabs’ AI Voice Generator Can Now Fake Your Voice in 30 Languages — from gizmodo.com by Kyle Barr
ElevenLabs said its AI voice generator is out of beta, saying it would support video game and audiobook creators with cheap audio.
According to ElevenLabs, the new Multilingual v2 model promises it can produce “emotionally rich” audio in a total of 30 languages. The company offers two AI voice tools, one is a text-to-speech model and the other is the “VoiceLab” that lets paying users clone a voice by inputting fragments of theirs (or others) speech into the model to create a kind of voice cone. With the v2 model, users can get these generated voices to start speaking in Greek, Malay, or Turkish.
…
Since then, ElevenLabs claims its integrated new measures to ensure users can only clone their own voice. Users need to verify their speech with a text captcha prompt which is then compared to the original voice sample.
From DSC:
I don’t care what they say regarding safeguards/proof of identity/etc. This technology has been abused and will be abused in the future. We can count on it. The question now is, how do we deal with it?
Introducing SeamlessM4T, the first all-in-one, multilingual multimodal translation model.
This single model can perform tasks across speech-to-text, speech-to-speech, text-to-text translation & speech recognition for up to 100 languages depending on the task.
Details ??
— Meta AI (@MetaAI) August 22, 2023
Google, Amazon, Nvidia and other tech giants invest in AI startup Hugging Face, sending its valuation to $4.5 billion — from cnbc.com by Kif Leswing
But Hugging Face produces a platform where AI developers can share code, models, data sets, and use the company’s developer tools to get open-source artificial intelligence models running more easily. In particular, Hugging Face often hosts weights, or large files with lists of numbers, which are the heart of most modern AI models.
While Hugging Face has developed some models, like BLOOM, its primary product is its website platform, where users can upload models and their weights. It also develops a series of software tools called libraries that allow users to get models working quickly, to clean up large datasets, or to evaluate their performance. It also hosts some AI models in a web interface so end users can experiment with them.
The global semiconductor talent shortage — from www2.deloitte.com
How to solve semiconductor workforce challenges
Numerous skills are required to grow the semiconductor ecosystem over the next decade. Globally, we will need tens of thousands of skilled tradespeople to build new plants to increase and localize manufacturing capacity: electricians, pipefitters, welders; thousands more graduate electrical engineers to design chips and the tools that make the chips; more engineers of various kinds in the fabs themselves, but also operators and technicians. And if we grow the back end in Europe and the Americas, that equates to even more jobs.
Each of these job groups has distinct training and educational needs; however, the number of students in semiconductor-focused programs (for example, undergraduates in semiconductor design and fabrication) has dwindled. Skills are also evolving within these job groups, in part due to automation and increased digitization. Digital skills, such as cloud, AI, and analytics, are needed in design and manufacturing more than ever.
The chip industry has long partnered with universities and engineering schools. Going forward, they also need to work more with local tech schools, vocational schools, and community colleges; and other organizations, such as the National Science Foundation in the United States.
Our principles for partnering with the music industry on AI technology — from blog.youtube (Google) by Neal Mohan, CEO, YouTube
AI is here, and we will embrace it responsibly together with our music partners.
Developers are now using AI for text-to-music apps — from techcrunch.com by Ivan Mehta
Brett Bauman, the developer of PlayListAI (previously LinupSupply), launched a new app called Songburst on the App Store this week. The app doesn’t have a steep learning curve. You just have to type in a prompt like “Calming piano music to listen to while studying” or “Funky beats for a podcast intro” to let the app generate a music clip.
If you can’t think of a prompt the app has prompts in different categories, including video, lo-fi, podcast, gaming, meditation and sample.
A Generative AI Primer — from er.educause.edu by Brian Basgen
Understanding the current state of technology requires understanding its origins. This reading list provides sources relevant to the form of generative AI that led to natural language processing (NLP) models such as ChatGPT.
Three big questions about AI and the future of work and learning — from workshift.opencampusmedia.org by Alex Swartsel
AI is set to transform education and work today and well into the future. We need to start asking tough questions right now, writes Alex Swartsel of JFF.
“As AI reshapes both the economy and society, we must collectively call for better data, increased accountability, and more flexible support for workers,” Swartsel writes.
The Current State of AI for Educators (August, 2023) — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
A podcast interview with the University of Toronto on where we’re at & where we’re going.
