[Report] Generative AI Top 150: The World’s Most Used AI Tools (Feb 2024) — from flexos.work by Daan van Rossum
FlexOS.work surveyed Generative AI platforms to reveal which get used most. While ChatGPT reigns supreme, countless AI platforms are used by millions.

As the FlexOS research study “Generative AI at Work” concluded based on a survey amongst knowledge workers, ChatGPT reigns supreme.

2. AI Tool Usage is Way Higher Than People Expect – Beating Netflix, Pinterest, Twitch.
As measured by data analysis platform Similarweb based on global web traffic tracking, the AI tools in this list generate over 3 billion monthly visits.

With 1.67 billion visits, ChatGPT represents over half of this traffic and is already bigger than Netflix, Microsoft, Pinterest, Twitch, and The New York Times.

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Artificial Intelligence Act: MEPs adopt landmark law — from europarl.europa.eu

  • Safeguards on general purpose artificial intelligence
  • Limits on the use of biometric identification systems by law enforcement
  • Bans on social scoring and AI used to manipulate or exploit user vulnerabilities
  • Right of consumers to launch complaints and receive meaningful explanations


The untargeted scraping of facial images from CCTV footage to create facial recognition databases will be banned © Alexander / Adobe Stock


A New Surge in Power Use Is Threatening U.S. Climate Goals — from nytimes.com by Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich
A boom in data centers and factories is straining electric grids and propping up fossil fuels.

Something unusual is happening in America. Demand for electricity, which has stayed largely flat for two decades, has begun to surge.

Over the past year, electric utilities have nearly doubled their forecasts of how much additional power they’ll need by 2028 as they confront an unexpected explosion in the number of data centers, an abrupt resurgence in manufacturing driven by new federal laws, and millions of electric vehicles being plugged in.


OpenAI and the Fierce AI Industry Debate Over Open Source — from bloomberg.com by Rachel Metz

The tumult could seem like a distraction from the startup’s seemingly unending march toward AI advancement. But the tension, and the latest debate with Musk, illuminates a central question for OpenAI, along with the tech world at large as it’s increasingly consumed by artificial intelligence: Just how open should an AI company be?

The meaning of the word “open” in “OpenAI” seems to be a particular sticking point for both sides — something that you might think sounds, on the surface, pretty clear. But actual definitions are both complex and controversial.


Researchers develop AI-driven tool for near real-time cancer surveillance — from medicalxpress.com by Mark Alewine; via The Rundown AI
Artificial intelligence has delivered a major win for pathologists and researchers in the fight for improved cancer treatments and diagnoses.

In partnership with the National Cancer Institute, or NCI, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Louisiana State University developed a long-sequenced AI transformer capable of processing millions of pathology reports to provide experts researching cancer diagnoses and management with exponentially more accurate information on cancer reporting.


 

State of Higher Ed LMS Market for US and Canada: Year-End 2023 Edition — from onedtech.philhillaa.com by Phil Hill

  • 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.

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Announcing the 2024 GSV 150: The Top Growth Companies in Digital Learning & Workforce Skills — from prnewswire.com with information provided by ASU+GSV Summit

“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.

See the list at https://www.asugsvsummit.com/gsv-150

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.

 
 

34 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2024 — from linkedin.com

34 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2024 -- from linkedin.com 

Excerpts:

6. ChatGPT’s hype will fade, as a new generation of tailor-made bots rises up
11. We’ll finally turn the corner on teacher pay in 2024
21. Employers will combat job applicants’ use of AI with…more AI
31. Universities will view the creator economy as a viable career path

 

The new apprenticeships — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Several American states are rewriting the rules of lawyer licensure and bringing the US into line with a key element of lawyer formation worldwide: supervised practice.

Change comes so gradually and fitfully to the legal sector that when something truly revolutionary happens — an actual turning point with an identifiable real-world impact — we have to mark the occasion. One such revolution broke out in the United States last week, opening up fantastic new possibilities for Americans who want to become lawyers.

The Oregon Supreme Court approved a new licensure program that does not require passage of a traditional written bar exam. After graduating from law school, aspiring Oregon lawyers can complete 675 hours of paid legal work under the supervision of an experienced attorney, assembling a portfolio of legal work to be assessed by bar admission officials. Candidates must submit eight samples of legal writing, take the lead in at least two initial client interviews or client counseling sessions, and oversee two negotiations, among other requirements.

Jordan mentions what’s going on in several other states including:

  • Utah
  • Washington
  • Minnesota
  • Nevada
  • California
  • Massachusetts
  • South Dakota

From DSC:
The Bar Exam doesn’t have a good reputation for actually helping get someone ready to practice law. So this is huge news indeed! The U.S. needs more people/specialists at the legal table moving forward. The items Jordan relays in this posting are a huge step forward in making that a reality.


For other innovations within the legal realm, see:

LawSchoolAi — from youtube.com

Picture this: A world where anyone can unlock the doors to legal expertise, no matter their background or resources. Introducing Law School AI – the game-changing platform turning this vision into reality. Our mission? To make legal education accessible, affordable, and tailored to every learner’s unique style, by leveraging the power of artificial intelligence.

As a trailblazing edtech company, Law School AI fuses cutting-edge AI technology with modern pedagogical techniques to craft a personalized, immersive, and transformative learning experience. Our platform shatters boundaries, opening up equal opportunities for individuals from all walks of life to master the intricacies of law.

Embrace a new era of legal education with Law School AI, where the age-old law school experience is reimagined as a thrilling, engaging, and interactive odyssey. Welcome to the future of legal learning.

 

 

 

Growing Enrollment, Shrinking Future — from insidehighered.com by Liam Knox
Undergraduate enrollment rose for the first time since 2020, stoking hopes for a long-awaited recovery. But surprising areas of decline may dampen that optimism.

There is good news and bad news in the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s latest enrollment report.

First, the good news: undergraduate enrollment climbed by 2.1 percent this fall, its first total increase since 2020. Enrollment increases for Black, Latino and Asian students—by 2.2 percent, 4.4 percent and 4 percent, respectively—were especially notable after last year’s declines.

The bad news is that freshman enrollment declined by 3.6 percent, nearly undoing last year’s gain of 4.6 percent and leaving first-year enrollment less than a percentage point higher than it was in fall 2021, during the thick of the pandemic. Those declines were most pronounced for white students—and, perhaps most surprisingly, at four-year institutions with lower acceptance rates, reversing years of growth trends for the most selective colleges and universities.


An Army of Temps: AFT Contingent Faculty Quality of Work/Life Report 2022 — from aft.org (American Federation of Teachers) by Randi Weingarten, Fedrick C. Ingram, and Evelyn DeJesus

An Army of Temps: AFT Contingent Faculty Quality of Work/Life Report 2022 -- from aft.org

This recent survey adds to our understanding of how contingency plays out in the lives of millions of college and university faculty.

  • More than one-quarter of respondents earn less than $26,500 annually. The percentage of faculty respondents earning below the federal poverty line has remained unchanged through all three reports, which is not surprising with real wages falling behind inflation throughout the academy.2
  • Only 22.5 percent of respondents report having a contract that provides them with continuing employment, even assuming adequate enrollment and satisfactory job performance.
  • For 3 out of 4 respondents, employment is only guaranteed for a term or semester at a time.
  • Two-thirds of part-time respondents want to work full time but are offered only part-time work.
  • Twenty-two percent of those responding report having anxiety about accessing adequate food, with another 6 percent reporting reduced food intake due to lack of resources.
  • Only 45 percent of respondents have access to employer-provided health insurance, and nearly 19 percent rely on Medicare/Medicaid.
  • Nearly half of faculty members surveyed have put off getting needed healthcare, including mental health services, and 68 percent have forgone dental care.
  • Fewer than half of faculty surveyed have received the training they need to help students in crisis.
  • Only 45 percent of respondents believe that their college administration guarantees academic freedom in the classroom at a time when right-wing legislators are passing laws removing control of the curriculum from educators.

From DSC:
A college or university’s adjunct faculty members — if they are out there practicing what they are teaching about — are some of the most valuable people within higher education. They have real-life, current experience. They know which skills are necessary to thrive in their fields. They know their sections of the marketplace.


Some parts of rural America are changing fast. Can higher education keep up? — from usatoday.com by Nick Fouriezos (Open Campus)
More states have started directly tying academic programming to in-demand careers.

Across rural America, both income inequality and a lack of affordable housing are on the rise. Remote communities like the Tetons are facing not just an economic challenge, but also an educational one, as changing workforce needs meet a critical skills and training gap.

Earlier this month, Montana announced that 12 of its colleges would establish more than a dozen “micro-pathways” – stackable credential programs that can be completed in less than a year – to put people on a path to either earning an associate degree or immediately getting hired in industries such as health, construction, manufacturing and agriculture.

“Despite unemployment hitting record lows in Montana, rural communities continue to struggle economically, and many low-income families lack the time and resources to invest in full-time education and training,” the Montana University System announced in a statement with its partner on the project, the national nonprofit Education Design Lab.


Colleges Must Respond to America’s Skill-Based Economy — from edsurge.com by Mordecai I. Brownlee (Columnist)

To address our children’s hunger and our communities’ poverty, our educational system must be redesigned to remove the boundaries between high school, college and careers so that more Americans can train for and secure employment that will sustain them.

In 2021, Jobs for the Future outlined a pathway toward realizing such a revolution in The Big Blur report, which argues for a radical restructuring of education for grades 11 through 14 by erasing the arbitrary dividing line between high school and college. Ideas for accomplishing this include courses and work experiences for students designed for career preparation.


The New Arms Race in Higher Ed — from jeffselingo.com by Jeff Selingo

Bottom line: Given all the discussion about the value of a college education, if you’re looking for “amenities” on campuses these days be sure to find out how faculty are engaging students (both in person and with tools like AR/VR), whether they’re teaching students about using AI, and ways institutions are certifying learning with credentials that have currency in the job market.

In that same newsletter, also see Jeff’s section entitled, “Where Canada leads the U.S. in higher ed.”


College Uncovered — from hechingerreport.org

Thinking of going to college? Sending your kid? You may already be caught up in the needless complexity of the admissions process, with its never-ending stress and that “you’ll-be-lucky-to-get-in” attitude from colleges that nonetheless pretend to have your interests at heart.

What aren’t they telling you? A lot, as it turns out — beginning with how much they actually cost, how long it will take to finish, the likelihood that graduates get jobs and the myriad advantages that wealthy applicants enjoy. They don’t want you to know that transfer credits often aren’t accepted, or that they pay testing companies for the names of prospects to recruit and sketchy advice websites for the contact information of unwitting students. And they don’t reveal tricks such as how to get admitted even if you’re turned down as a freshman.

But we will. In College Uncovered, from The Hechinger Report and GBH News, two experienced higher education journalists pull back the ivy on how colleges and universities really work, providing information students and their parents need to have before they make one of the most expensive decisions in their lives: whether and where to go to college. We expose the problems, pitfalls and risks, with inside information you won’t hear on other podcasts, including disconcerting facts that they’ve sometimes pried from unwilling universities.
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Fall 2023 enrollment trends in 5 charts — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
We’re breaking down some of the biggest developments this term, based on preliminary figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

Short-term credentials continued to prove popular among undergraduate and graduate students. In fall 2023, enrollment in undergraduate certificate programs shot up 9.9% compared to the year before, while graduate certificate enrollment rose 5.7%.

Degree programs didn’t fare as well. Master’s programs saw the smallest enrollment increase, of 0.2%, followed by bachelor’s degree programs, which saw headcounts rise 0.9%.


President Speaks: Colleges need an overhaul to meet the future head on — from highereddive.com by Beth Martin
Higher education faces an existential threat from forces like rapidly changing technology and generational shifts, one university leader argues.

Higher education must increasingly equip students with the skills and mindset to become lifelong learners — to learn how to learn, essentially — so that no matter what the future looks like, they will have the skills, mindset and wherewithal to learn whatever it is that they need and by whatever means. That spans from the commitment of a graduate program or something as quick as a microcredential.

Having survived the pandemic, university administrators, faculty, and staff no longer have their backs against the wall. Now is the time to take on these challenges and meet the future head on.

 

WHAT WAS GARY MARCUS THINKING, IN THAT INTERVIEW WITH GEOFF HINTON? — from linkedin.com by Stephen Downes

Background (emphasis DSC): 60 Minutes did an interview with ‘the Godfather of AI’, Geoffrey Hinton. In response, Gary Marcus wrote a column in which he inserted his own set of responses into the transcript, as though he were a panel participant. Neat idea. So, of course, I’m stealing it, and in what follows, I insert my own comments as I join the 60 Minutes panel with Geoffrey Hinton and Gary Marcus.

Usually I put everyone else’s text in italics, but for this post I’ll put it all in normal font, to keep the format consistent.

Godfather of Artificial Intelligence Geoffrey Hinton on the promise, risks of advanced AI


OpenAI’s Revenue Skyrockets to $1.3 Billion Annualized Rate — from maginative.com by Chris McKay
This means the company is generating over $100 million per month—a 30% increase from just this past summer.

OpenAI, the company behind the viral conversational AI ChatGPT, is experiencing explosive revenue growth. The Information reports that CEO Sam Altman told the staff this week that OpenAI’s revenue is now crossing $1.3 billion on an annualized basis. This means the company is generating over $100 million per month—a 30% increase from just this past summer.

Since the launch of a paid version of ChatGPT in February, OpenAI’s financial growth has been nothing short of meteoric. Additionally, in August, the company announced the launch of ChatGPT Enterprise, a commercial version of its popular conversational AI chatbot aimed at business users.

For comparison, OpenAI’s total revenue for all of 2022 was just $28 million. The launch of ChatGPT has turbocharged OpenAI’s business, positioning it as a bellwether for demand for generative AI.



From 10/13:


New ways to get inspired with generative AI in Search — from blog.google
We’re testing new ways to get more done right from Search, like the ability to generate imagery with AI or creating the first draft of something you need to write.

 

Legal Innovators Assemble! Great Speakers for London in November — from artificiallawyer.com

The Legal Innovators UK conference will take place on 8 + 9 November, and we are already assembling a fantastic group of speakers from across the legal innovation ecosystem.

The two-day event comes at a time of potentially massive change for the legal market and we will be bringing you engaging panels and presentations where leading experts really dig into the issues of the day, from generative AI, to the evolution of ALSPs, to law firm innovation teams in this new era for legal tech, to how empowered legal ops groups and pioneering GCs are taking inhouse teams in new directions.

Virtual law firm Scale absorbs Texas IP firm in first acquisition — from reuters.com by Sara Merken

Aug 1 (Reuters) – Virtual law firm Scale said [on 8/1/23] that it has brought on small Texas intellectual property firm Creedon in the first of what it hopes may be a series of acquisitions.

James Creedon and two other attorneys from his firm have joined Scale, a Silicon Valley-founded law firm where lawyers work entirely remotely.

Scale, which debuted in 2020, is among so-called “distributed” or virtual firms that use technology to operate without physical offices and embrace a non-traditional law firm business model.

The lawyers are leaning into AI — from alexofftherecord.com by Alex Su
Despite all the gloom and doom, corporate legal and law firms are both embracing generative AI much more quickly than previous technologies

When I first heard law firms announcing that they were adopting AI, I was skeptical. Anyone can announce a partnership or selection/piloting of an AI vendor. It’s good PR, and doesn’t mean that the firm has truly embraced AI. But when they create their own GPT-powered tool—that feels different. Setting aside whether it’s a good idea to build your own vs. buy, it certainly feels like a real investment, especially since the firms are dedicating significant internal resources to it.

Today I’ll discuss why generative AI is diffusing across law firms much more quickly than expected.

Leading your law firm into the Gen AI Era — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Lawyers are embracing its promise. Clients want to reap its rewards. Here are three ways your firm can respond to the immense disruption and extraordinary opportunity of Generative AI.

  1. Move fast to implement project and client pricing.
  2. Prepare to hire fewer associates and to rethink partnership.
  3. Establish a fresh approach to developing future law firm leaders.


Above resource via BrainyActs — who mentioned that the QR code takes you to this survey. Just 3 simple questions.

Q1: Agree/Disagree: Artificial Intelligence (AI) won’t replace lawyers anytime soon. Lawyers who use AI will replace lawyers who do not use AI.

Q2: Agree/Disagree: Non-lawyers should be allowed to have an ownership interest in a law firm.

Q3 Agree/Disagree: Trained non-lawyers should be allowed to advocate for parties in lower courts.


Generative AI In The Law: Where Could This All Be Headed? — from abovethelaw.com
Findings from a new Wolters Kluwer / Above the Law survey.

To get a sense of what the legal industry predicts, Above the Law and Wolters Kluwer fielded a survey of 275 professionals from March to mid-April 2023. We asked about AI’s potential effects in varied areas of the legal industry: Will it differentiate successful firms? Which practice areas could be affected the most? Could even high-level work be transformed?

 

From DSC:
I thought this was a really good idea from Dan Pontefact: “Why Experienced Employees Should Write Letters to New Team Members”

Excerpt:

Regardless of their age, an individual who is fresh to the team is given between five and ten pieces of advice from a more seasoned employee in the form of an email or letter. These tidbits of knowledge are what these seasoned professionals wish they had known when they first joined.

This is more than just a welcome; it’s a guide, a primer, offering an insider’s view of the organization and fostering a sense of camaraderie from the very beginning.

 

The Future of Law: Embracing AI in the Legal Profession — from ethicalailawinstitute.com by Trent Kubasiak

Excerpt:

Improving Access to Justice:
One significant advantage of AI in the legal profession is its potential to improve access to justice. The high costs associated with legal services have traditionally created barriers for individuals with limited financial means. However, AI-powered solutions can help bridge this gap by providing affordable and accessible legal information and guidance. Virtual legal assistants and chatbots can assist individuals with legal queries, empowering them to navigate legal processes more effectively and make informed decisions. By leveraging AI, the legal profession can become more inclusive and ensure that legal services are available to a broader segment of society.


Also relevant/see:

Law Unlimited: Welcome to the re-envisioned legal profession — from jordanfurlong.substack.com by Jordan Furlong
Will Generative AI destroy law firms? Only if lawyers are too fixed in their ways to see the possibilities that lie beyond who we’ve always been and what we’ve always done.

Excerpt:

The immediate impact of Gen AI on legal services will be to introduce unprecedented efficiency to the production of countless legal documents and processes. For most of the last century, lawyers have personally performed this work, spending and billing hours or parts of hours to accomplish each task. Law firms have used this production method to provide on-the-job training for inexperienced lawyers and have leveraged those hours to generate profits for their partners. But LLMs can now do the same work in seconds, as effectively as lawyers can today and much better in the near future. This is, among other things, a very serious problem for law firms’ business models and talent development practices, not to mention a real challenge to lawyer education and training and potentially a revolution in access to justice.

 

Presenting to the Association of University Architects — from darcynorman.net by D’Arcy Norman, PhD

Excerpt:

Recently, I had the absolute pleasure to be invited to co-present at the 67th Annual Association of University Architects Conference, conveniently hosted this year in Calgary, and even more conveniently having one day’s sessions housed within the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning. Our Vice Provost Teaching and Learning, Dr. Leslie Reid, was invited to share her experience in leading the Taylor Institute, and she brought in Dr. Natasha Kenny and myself to round out the session.

In planning for the session, we decided early on that we didn’t want to do A Presentation™. There would not be slides and slides of text, and no bullet points. We wanted to tell stories, and to learn from the ~100 expert university architects from across North America about how they approach the challenges we’ve faced in the last few years.

We broke the storytelling portion of the session into 3 parts:

  • Universality: Building for all or building for some (Leslie)
  • Planning: Tension between form and function (Natasha)
  • Flexibility: How to be flexible about flexibility (D’Arcy)

The TI Forum, during our session at the 2023 Association of University Architects conference. Photo by D'Arcy Norman

 

Coursera’s Global Skills Report for 2023 — from coursera.org
Benchmark talent and transform your workforce with skill development and career readiness insights drawn from 124M+ learners.

Excerpt:

Uncover global skill trends
See how millions of registered learners in 100 countries are strengthening critical business, technology, and data science skills.

 

Pilot projects using AI in legal world produce mixed results, but still promising: legal tech panel — from canadianlawyermag.com by Zena Olijnyk
Canadian Legal Tech Summit attendees hear of challenges, benefits of AI as ‘hype’ continues to grow

Excerpt:

A pilot project designed to test the potential of artificial intelligence tools at McCarthy Tétrault LLP showed that certain types of applications for the legal profession seemed to work better than others, panellists told attendees to the recent Canadian Lawyer Legal Tech Summit.

“I would say that the results were mixed,” David Cohen, senior director of client service delivery for the firm. During the panel, moderated by University of Calgary assistant professor Gideon Christian, Cohen spoke about a pilot of about 40 lawyers from different practices at the firm who used an AI platform with only public data.

The group [testing the platform] said it needs to get better before we start using this for research,” he said. However, he said, when it came to tasks like generating documents, reviewing 100-page cases “and summarizing and analyzing them,” the AI platforms did much better.


What are the top legal technology trends in 2023? — from legalitprofessionals.com

Excerpt:

To help with this, our Client Success Team have summarised the eight key legal technology trends in the market, as well as the themes discussed at recent legal technology events and conferences including the British Legal Technology Forum and iManage ConnectLive Virtual 2023, both of which we were proud to sponsor.


On a somewhat related note, also see:

Designing the Law Office of the Future — from workdesign.com by Deborah Nemeth
Deborah Nemeth of SmithGroup shares how inspiration from higher education and hospitality can help inform the next evolution of the law office.

 

101 creative ideas to use AI in education, A crowdsourced collection — from zenodo.org by Chrissi Nerantzi, Sandra Abegglen, Marianna Karatsiori, & Antonio Martínez-Arboleda (Eds.); with thanks to George Veletsianos for this resource

101 creative ideas to use AI in education, A crowdsourced collection

As an example, here’s one of the ideas from the crowdsourced collection:

Chat with anyone in the past

Chatting with Napoleon Bonaparte

 


On a somewhat related note, also see:

Merlyn Mind launches education-focused LLMs for classroom integration of generative AI — from venturebeat.com by Victor Dey

Excerpt:

Merlyn Mind, an AI-powered digital assistant platform, announced the launch of a suite of large language models (LLMs) specifically tailored for the education sector under an open-source license.

Designing courses in an age of AI — from teachinginhighered.com by Maria Andersen
Maria Andersen shares about designing courses in an age of artificial intelligence (AI) on episode 469 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast.

With generative AI, we have an incredible acceleration of change happening.

Maria Andersen

 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian