SAIL: Many Webinars. GPT-Inside. Music.
Welcome to Sensemaking, AI, and Learning - a weekly look at how AI and technology are progressing and impacting learning.
The landscape is still murky in AI discussions, but there are some growing points of convergence emerging. This week, there is growing nuance in thinking about ChatGPT (we've moved from "best thing ever" to "it can't really do this well"). The focus is increasingly turning to ethics, data sources, cheating accusations with AI-detection software, and student concerns. In short, it's almost feeling like an edtech tool. It's important to note that AI is much broader than ChatGPT and some of the truly breath taking innovations don't get media coverage. ChatGPT is fun. But it's not the totality of the change. It's just the most accessible one currently for people eager to chase the next new thing.
Webinars and Events:
GRAILE is hosting numerous upcoming events:
ChatGPT and the future of education Feb 6 (or 7th depending on your location). Registration is free.
What university leaders need to know about AI Feb 16 (or 17th). Registration is free.
WCET is holding an upcoming event on AI and learning as well.
ChatGPT
I could add likely hundreds of links on this. ChatGPT is a constant buzz now and I've been on numerous panels, many media interviews, and many (many) conversations about what it means and its significance.
Here's a few developments:
Microsoft is adding GPT 3.5 functionality to Teams. For $7/month.
Google is building out its ChatGPT competitor.
OpenAI launches an "AI generated text" detector. It's not good (yet)
Meta's chief AI scientist doesn't think ChatGPT is very good.
China's Baidu is going to release their own ChatGPT-Style bot
Inside story of ChatGPT "I think the best case is so good that it’s hard to imagine … I think the good case is just so unbelievably good that you sound like a crazy person talking about it."
AI in Education
A few resources around AI in Education:
AI a Modern Approach (large pdf) I'm just linking it here for general reference. The first chapter is one of the best overviews of AI I've encountered.
General AI Tech
Google has launched the next set of innovations in AI (they promised many this year): MusicLM- "a model generating high-fidelity music from text descriptions such as "a calming violin melody backed by a distorted guitar riff"."
Interesting AMA from AI Researcher Toby Walsh "Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT have already surprised us. We didn’t expect them to write code. But they can."