SAIL: SNHU, AI Ed Conference, State of AI
Welcome to Sensemaking, AI, and Learning (SAIL). This is a regular newsletter that tracks AI trends through the lens of education.
I have a quasi-announcement to make. I have been advocating for a big response, on the part of universities, to prepare for the systemic changes that AI will bring to education. I've spoken with many university and big tech leaders on this over the last few years. ChatGPT accelerated the sense of urgency. Earlier this year, I had a few meetings with university presidents (and provosts) about why this change needs to happen, presented under the banner of an "AI-first university". I met with Paul LeBlanc, President of SNHU, during one of these conversations. He was already well down this path in his planning. After some back and forth, he presented an opportunity that was too good to overlook. We'll share more about this project over the next few months. Essentially, we are pursuing a coordinated and (I think) visionary response to the role of AI in education and learning, critically assessing where opportunities are to be found, where avenues for new ways of learning exist, determining how humans as learning entities are situated within future education institutions, and the systems-level impacts of AI on universities. For me, this is exciting and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. As part of this change, I have left University of Texas Arlington. Maarten de Laat and Shane Dawson have taken over directorship of the Centre for Change and Complexity in Learning (C3L) at UniSA - a centre that we'll be working with closely in this new venture.
Education and AI:
What is the point of education? What should our students be learning? We're all grappling with this, especially as the effects of AI on learning start to emerge from the hype fog of the last six months. This excellent interview presents an interesting argument, at the 41 min mark, that will appeal to anyone with young children: The purpose of education is to learn how to prevent our attention from being hijacked by addictive technologies.
Empowering Learners for the Age of AI. This is now our 4th annual conference. We are holding a fully online version in October and will be meeting in-person at ASU December 5-7. More information and registration for both can be found here. If your organization is interested in sponsoring, please see here.
AI Trends
Is the AI Boom Already over? Of course it's not and clickbait shouldn't be rewarded. In this case, I reference it because it provides a solid state of AI adoption.
Voice cloning is a controversial, but promising, technology. It might completely eviscerate voice talent for audio books. But the prospect your voice cloned and then using that to speak in over 30 languages seems rather novel. I could offer a 30 language audio narration of this newsletter...
Power and Prediction. This lecture, based on a book by the same title from late 2022, gets at an important concept around point-based/application responses to AI or systems-level responses to AI. At about the 28 minute mark, an important point is made regarding when leaders need to take systems change seriously. How soon should we hit the panic button in education regarding AI? Now? Or in a decade? The lecture takes an interesting stance: think about what you do on a daily basis as an organization and think about how many of those actions are about serving the customer (student) well and how many are about the possibility that you might fail to serve your customer well? It's a somewhat nuanced argument, but if more in the latter, then systems disruption through AI is a strong prospect.
ChatGPT Enterprise. Worried about data security or uploading documents your organization might not want in the public sphere? Here's your answer from OpenAI: "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."
All the cool kids hang out at Hugging Face ("on a mission to democratize good machine learning). They have just secured a significant funding round.
Overall, AI funding in Q2 dropped. But Canada increased significantly. I personally don't trust the Canadians.
Meta is a strong player in the AI space, taking a somewhat open stance (Llama 2, Code Llama). Llama 3 is expected (hoped) to be at the GPT-4 level.
Nvidia continues as the AI lead market performer.
YouTube and AI. "our partnership is building on that foundation with a shared commitment to lead responsibly, as outlined in YouTube’s AI principles, where Artificial Intelligence is built to empower human creativity, and not the other way around. AI will never replace human creativity because it will always lack the essential spark that drives the most talented artists to do their best work, which is intention. From Mozart to The Beatles to Taylor Swift, genius is never random."
AI and Work
AI skills are exploding: "AI was the fastest growing category on the work platform in the first half of 2023, with generative AI job posts up more than 1,000% in Q2 2023 compared to the end of last year. Related searches increased more than 1,500% in the same time period"
Soon, every organization will have an AI agents/helper/bot for employees. Meet McKinsey's Lilli.
AI and Security
Y'all need a safe key/word with family, friends, and co-workers. Here's why.