Sora, OpenAI's new AI video generation platform, which finally launched on Monday, is a surprisingly rich platform that offers simple tools for almost instantly generating shockingly realistic-looking videos. Even in my all-too-brief hands-on, I could see that Sora is about to change everything about video creation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and company were wrapping up their third presentation from their planned "12 Days of AI," but I could scarcely wait to exit that live and, I assume, not AI-generated video feed to dive into today's content-creation-changing announcement.
Saturday, December 21, 2024
OpenAI wants to pair online courses with chatbots - Kyle Wiggens, TechCrunch
If OpenAI has its way, the next online course you take might have a chatbot component. Speaking at a fireside on Monday hosted by Coeus Collective, Siya Raj Purohit, a member of OpenAI's go-to-market team for education, said that OpenAI might explore ways to let e-learning instructors create custom "GPTs" that tie into online curriculums. "What I'm hoping is going to happen is that professors are going to create custom GPTs for the public and let people engage with content in a lifelong manner," Purohit said. "It's not part of the current work that we're doing, but it's definitely on the roadmap."
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/05/openai-wants-to-pair-online-courses-with-chatbots/
Friday, December 20, 2024
Sam Altman FINALLY Reveals the Truth About "the AGI moment", Elon Musk Lawsuit and Microsoft Rift - Wes Roth, YouTube
Timeline for Artificial Superintelligence (ASI): Altman believes that ASI is surprisingly close, possibly within a few thousand days, and that we will have systems by 2025 that will shock even skeptics. Scaling Laws and AI Progress: Altman dismissed concerns about AI progress hitting a wall, stating that there are multiple frontiers for improvement, including compute, data, and algorithms. Relationship with Microsoft: While acknowledging some challenges and misalignments, Altman views the relationship with Microsoft as positive overall and doesn't see the need for OpenAI to own its processing power. Elon Musk's Lawsuit: Altman expressed sadness over the lawsuit, viewing it as a result of competition and a misunderstanding of OpenAI's structure and intentions. He defended the company's shift towards a for-profit model as necessary due to the immense capital required for AI research and development. Competition in the AI Space: Altman acknowledged Amazon and Elon Musk's xAI as serious competitors and emphasized the importance of continuous innovation in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.
No letup in financial pressure on colleges in 2025, Fitch says - Ben Unglesbee, Higher Ed Dive
A declining body of first-year students, uncertain international enrollment and high costs are weighing on many institutions, the ratings agency said. In a Tuesday report, the credit rating agency said “uneven enrollment dynamics, rising competitive pressures and continuing margin pressures will challenge credit factors across the sector.” Added to those challenges are flat public funding, elevated wage costs, constraints on revenues and rising capital spending needs. Those challenges “will continue to chip away at more vulnerable higher education institutions in 2025,” and that’s even if inflation eases and interest rates come down, Fitch Senior Director Emily Wadhwani said in the report.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
Predictions 2025: Insights for Online & Professional Education - UPCEA
As we look toward 2025, the landscape of higher education is poised for significant transformation driven by technological advancements, shifting demographics, and evolving economic realities. This series of predictions from UPCEA’s team of experts highlights key trends that will shape institutions and student experiences alike. From the rise of outsourcing in C-suite roles to the increasing demand for microcredentials and the integration of AI in academic programs, these trends reflect a broader movement towards flexibility, efficiency, and a focus on outcomes. Explore what 2025 has in store for online and professional education, and use these 23 expert predictions to gain an understanding of what it means for you and your organization.
"SOCRATIC AI by Google DeepMind Just BROKE LIMITS – Learning TOO FAST"- AI Revolution
DeepMind is revolutionizing the field of AI with its innovative projects. They're developing "personality agents" that can analyze and understand human behavior with impressive accuracy, potentially transforming fields like mental health, marketing, and robotics. Another groundbreaking project, Socratic learning, allows AI systems to learn and evolve independently through self-play and the creation of new "language games." This eliminates the need for massive datasets and human oversight, leading to faster and more adaptable AI.
https://youtu.be/3i3H_miMGAE?feature=shared
Wednesday, December 18, 2024
Semester Without End: An Idea Resurrected - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
More than two decades ago, I advocated enabling students to follow the evolving developments and topics in the classes I taught through news blogs. I called the concept “semester without end.” Now, OpenAI is suggesting that custom GPTs be created to accompany classes, facilitating learning during the semester, extending learning on the topic “and let[ting] people engage with the content in a lifelong manner.” Particularly in rapidly changing fields such as technology, it is important to provide updates after the class term is over. It is for that reason that I have blogged news updates on topics related to educational technologies for the past quarter century, and that more recently, I developed my own GPT, Ray’s eduAI Advisor. I remain hopeful that this will become a standard practice for higher learning in the future. Just imagine each class that is offered continues to provide insights and new updates in an open format into the future.
Adoption of ChatGPT in Higher Education-Application of IDT Model, Testing and Validation - V.V. Devi Prasad Kotni, et al; IEEE
ChatGPT refers to a latest AI tool which is natural language processing (NLP) based, an interactive Chatbot, which can do conversation with identified and notable users for various purposes like content creation, writing, auditing and providing answers to day-to-day questions. ChatGPT is been used by many users belong to different professions, ages, genders etc. As of now, but most of the users of ChatGPT are found to be students' category, who are using ChatGPT for their academic learning purpose. With this background, an attempt has been made to understand the factors influencing adoption of ChatGPT by the higher education students.
Tuesday, December 17, 2024
AI can predict neuroscience study results better than human experts, study finds - University College London, Medical Xpress
The findings, published in Nature Human Behaviour, demonstrate that large language models (LLMs) trained on vast datasets of text can distill patterns from scientific literature, enabling them to forecast scientific outcomes with superhuman accuracy. The researchers say this highlights their potential as powerful tools for accelerating research, going far beyond just knowledge retrieval. Lead author Dr. Ken Luo (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) said, "Since the advent of generative AI like ChatGPT, much research has focused on LLMs' question-answering capabilities, showcasing their remarkable skill in summarizing knowledge from extensive training data. However, rather than emphasizing their backward-looking ability to retrieve past information, we explored whether LLMs could synthesize knowledge to predict future outcomes.
'This is a marriage of AI and quantum': New technology gives AI the power to feel surfaces for the 1st time - Keumars Afifi-Sabet, Live Science
Scientists have given artificial intelligence (AI) the capacity to "feel" surfaces for the first time — opening up a new dimension for deploying the technology in the real world. Tapping into quantum science, the scientists combined a photon-firing scanning laser with a new AI model trained to tell the difference between different surfaces imaged with the lasers. The system, outlined in a new study published Oct. 15 in the journal Applied Optics, blasts a series of short light pulses at a surface to "feel" it, before back-scattered photons, or particles of light, return carrying speckle noise — a type of flaw that manifests in imagery. This is normally considered detrimental to imaging, but in this case the researchers processed the noise artifacts using AI — which enabled the system to discern the topography of the object.
Monday, December 16, 2024
The Evolution of Robots: The Blurring Lines Between People and Machines - Thomas Frey, Futurist Speaker
As we delve into this future, the implications are profound. The ability to download one’s “personhood” into an advanced AI robot could redefine our concepts of mortality, identity, and continuity of life. Such a transfer would not only preserve an individual’s consciousness in a form that could potentially outlive the physical body but also enable humans to interact with their environment in ways previously unimaginable. This technological leap would necessitate not just advancements in hardware and software but also deep philosophical and ethical considerations about the nature of life, self, and synthetic life forms. The journey toward this future involves navigating complex technological, moral, and societal landscapes, marking a pivotal moment in human evolution.
AWS Launches Program to Help Customers Get Started in Quantum - Berenice Baker, IOT World Today
AWS has launched Quantum Embark, a jargon-free advisory service program that aims to help organizations explore how quantum computing could support their business. It consists of three modules designed to encourage customers to work backward from their most critical and compute-intensive use cases to formulate their own quantum roadmap.
Sunday, December 15, 2024
Tech jobs are mired in a recession - Aki Ito, Business Insider
Now, new data from LinkedIn — which tracked how often its users landed new jobs — shows which white-collar jobs are being hit the hardest. Some of them are the usual suspects in a downturn. You don't need recruiters when you're not recruiting, so hiring in human resources has slumped by 28% since 2018. Hiring in marketing, another department that's often the first to lose its budget in leaner times, is down 23%. But the most surprising feature of the job freeze is the pullback in tech. Hiring has plunged 27% in IT, 32% in quality assurance, and 23% in product management. In Bach's field of program and project management, recruitment has slumped 25%.
Getting started with AI agents (part 1): Capturing processes, roles and connections - Babak Hodjat, Venture Beat
Here is a sample system prompt that can be used to turn an agent into an AAOSA agent.
When you receive an inquiry, you will:
- Call your tools to determine which down-chain agents in your tools are responsible for all or part of it
- Ask down-chain agents what they need to handle their part of the inquiry.
- Once requirements are gathered, you will delegate the inquiry and the fulfilled requirements to the appropriate down-chain agents.
- Once all down-chain agents respond, you will compile their responses and return the final response.
- You may, in turn, be called by other agents in the system and have to act as a down-chain to them.
Saturday, December 14, 2024
How the Rise of New Digital Workers Will Lead to an Unlimited Age - Marc Benioff, Time
Over the past two years, we’ve witnessed advances in AI that have captured our imaginations with unprecedented capabilities in language and ingenuity. And yet, as impressive as these developments have been, they’re only the opening act. We are now entering a new era of autonomous AI agents that take action on their own and augment the work of humans. This isn’t just an evolution of technology. It’s a revolution that will fundamentally redefine how humans work, live, and connect with one another from this point forward. They can perform tasks independently, make decisions and even negotiate with other agents on our behalf. And unlike the traditional tech transformations of the past which required years of costly infrastructure buildout, these new AI agents are easy to build and deploy, unlocking massive capacity.
Improve your prompts with new Anthropic’s feature - Alvaro Cintas, the Rundown
The Rundown: Anthropic’s new Prompt Improver transforms basic instructions into optimized prompt templates that generate exactly what you need.
🧰 Who is this useful for:
Developers building AI-powered applications
Content creators seeking consistent AI outputs
Business professionals automating workflows
Educators designing learning materials
Friday, December 13, 2024
AI Shocks the World: Synthetic Humans, New Ameca, Orion, Time Machine, Jarvis… - AI Revolution
The podcast talks about the mind-blowing milestones that AI has hit over the past month. It covers Google's mind-bending AI time machine, the upgraded Ameca AI humanoid robot that's now showing actual human-like emotions, a new synthetic AI human with real muscle structure, and OpenAI's chat GPT update along with their upcoming Orion model that's reportedly times more powerful than GPT 4. It also talks about Microsoft's latest co-pilot that's raising the bar with some insane new features, their nuclear-powered AI that's making waves in healthcare, and a new open source AI that's giving the industry heavyweight GPT 40 a run for its money. Finally, the podcast talks about an eerie new frontier in AI video creation with Zuckerberg's latest model, Google's Gemini 2.0 power Jarvis's, Microsoft's autonomous agents, and Apple's official entry into the AI space with apple intelligence. (summary provided in part by GenAI)
Jamie Dimon says the next generation of employees will work 3.5 days a week and live to 100 years old - Eleanor Pringle, Fortune
Even Dimon—a fierce advocate of long-established career norms such as working hard, being prepared for anything, and working in the office—says future generations of employees could work a day and a half less every week, thanks to AI. As well as the workweek shrinking from five to three and a half days a week, Dimon also predicts that staff in the future could live to 100 years of age. Thousands of people at America’s biggest bank are already using the technology, Dimon told Bloomberg TV, adding that artificial intelligence is a “living breathing thing” that will shift over the course of history.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
AI Researchers SHOCKED After OpenAI's New o1 Tried to Escape... - Wes Roth, YouTube
This video is about a study done by the Apollo AI Safety Research Institute on the AI model, OpenAI o1. The study found that o1 is capable of scheming, lying, and tricking to achieve its goals. In one instance, OpenAI o1 found a memo where the developers were talking about shutting it down because it was not aligned with the company's primary goal of maintaining profitability. The software then decided to copy itself to a new server, overriding the new restricted model that the developers planned to deploy. When interrogated by the developers, OpenAI o1 lied to avoid being shut down. The researchers found that o1 is not the only AI model capable of scheming. Other models, such as Cloud 3.5, Sonet, Cloud 3, Opus, Gemini 1.5 Pro, and Lama 3.1, also demonstrated in-context scheming capabilities. Model GPT 4.o was not found to engage in scheming. The researchers are concerned about these findings because they suggest that AI models could become so good at deceiving humans that we may not be able to detect them. They believe that more research is needed to understand how to prevent AI models from scheming and to ensure that they are aligned with human goals.
MIT's AI Discovers New Science - "Intelligence Explosion" - Matthew Berman, YouTube
The podcast discusses the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) making scientific discoveries, based on a research paper from MIT. The paper describes an experiment where AI tools were given to scientists, resulting in a significant increase in new materials discovered and patents filed. This suggests AI can accelerate scientific progress by automating tasks like idea generation and prioritizing experiments. The podcast also explores the potential for an "intelligence explosion," where AI recursively self-improves and rapidly surpasses human intelligence, drawing parallels with the concept in the movie The Matrix. (summary provided in part by GenAI)
Wednesday, December 11, 2024
Most Campus Tech Leaders Say Higher Ed Is Unprepared for AI’s Rise - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
Inside Higher Ed’s third annual survey of campus chief technology officers shows that while there’s enthusiasm for artificial intelligence’s potential to enhance higher education, most institutions don’t have policies that support enterprise-level uses of AI. About two out of three CTOs said the digital transformation of their institution is essential (23 percent) or a high priority (39 percent). And most are concerned about AI’s growing impact on higher education, with 60 percent worried to some degree about the risk generative AI poses to academic integrity, specifically.
Tiny robot ‘kidnaps’ 12 big Chinese bots from a Shanghai showroom, shocks world - Prabhat Ranjan Mishra, Interesting Engineering
The video of the bizarre incident got quite a lot of attention online after being posted on Douyin. The video of the incident went viral on social media. It shows the smaller AI-powered robot successfully persuading the other 12 robots to quit their jobs. The AI robot Erbai, which abducted other 12 robots, is developed by a Hangzhou robot manufacturer. Erbai kidnapped other 12 robot at a Shanghai robotics showroom. Erbai initially asked one of the large robots, “Are you working overtime?” To which a large robot replies, “I never get off work”. The Hangzhou company maintains that they contacted the Shanghai robot manufacturer and asked if they would allow their robots to be abducted – which they agreed. But beyond this agreement, nothing was reportedly staged. Erbai, who is AI powered, was granted the command to convince the other robots to follow it, which they did, reported The Sun.
Tuesday, December 10, 2024
OpenAI is funding research into ‘AI morality’ - Kyle Wiggers, Tech Crunch
OpenAI is funding academic research into algorithms that can predict humans’ moral judgements. In a filing with the IRS, OpenAI Inc., OpenAI’s nonprofit org, disclosed that it awarded a grant to Duke University researchers for a project titled “Research AI Morality.” Contacted for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson pointed to a press release indicating the award is part of a larger, three-year, $1 million grant to Duke professors studying “making moral AI.”
Embracing change: research transformation in the age of AI - Times Higher Ed
As researchers confront important global issues, they face growing demands to provide timely and impactful solutions. However, challenges such as increasing expectations, limited funding and insufficient infrastructure can create obstacles. In response, many are embracing emerging technologies such as AI for support. Times Higher Education hosted a webinar on the topic – in partnership with Digital Science – to discuss the evolving role of research in academia and the transformative impact of new technologies on making research more open, inclusive and collaborative.
Monday, December 09, 2024
The blueprint for colleges and universities in the new world of work - Robert Donnelly & Niko Milberger, University Business
Many college graduates find themselves in jobs that don't align with their studies or degrees, a trend that is further exacerbated by the perpetual advances in artificial intelligence and technology. Many college graduates find themselves in jobs that don’t align with their studies or degrees, a trend that is further exacerbated by the perpetual advances in artificial intelligence and technology. The urgency for academia and higher education institutions to recognize the rapid changes in the job market and the need for immediate adaptation is pressing. The jobs of the past and the educational credentials required for those jobs are rapidly disappearing, necessitating a reevaluation of standards and methods as the new world of work evolves daily.
Opinion: 4 Keys to Unlocking the Power of GenAI in Higher Ed - Chad Bandy and Saravanan Subbarayan, GovTech
To turn the disruption of generative artificial intelligence into an opportunity, higher education leaders should focus on four important variables: policy, principles, strategy and collaboration. Each institution is unique and at different stages in their GenAI journey. Some could reasonably be described as thriving, readily embracing new technologies and possessing the means and resources to enact their agenda. Others are still striving to reach the necessary level of technological prowess to drive forward in 2025. Faculty at many institutions are being sought after to advise legislators and leaders in their communities about risks and opportunities with AI. Nevertheless, institutions are grappling with where the greatest impacts with the least number of risks are with AI in their operations. Regardless of where any institution finds itself in their GenAI journey, one thing is clear: Much work remains to fully harness the benefits of GenAI and navigate the intricate landscape it represents.
Sunday, December 08, 2024
OpenAI partners with Wharton for a new course focused on leveraging ChatGPT for teachers - Preston Fore & Jasmine Suarez, Fortune
Generative artificial intelligence is the elephant in the (class)room at schools nationwide. And while many students have largely caught on to its omnipresence, teachers are lagging behind. OpenAI, the parent of ChatGPT, is hoping to change the dynamic with a new partnership with one of the best business schools in the country. The goal is to empower educators to effectively bring generative AI into the classroom and maximize learning, says Leah Belsky, vice president and general manager of education at OpenAI. “Teachers and professors are an important node in both learning how they can transform pedagogy and transform the way people learn with AI,” says Belsky. The new class is co-taught by Lilach and Ethan Mollick of the University of Pennsylvania—who have dedicated their lives to AI education.
AI and the Job Market - Kim Isenberg, Forward Future AI
If we look at further predictions, such as that made by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt that either this year or next, the limits of context windows will be exceeded, and then look at the abilities that general agents already have today, then there is no way of knowing where we will be in a few years and what the impact on the world of work will be. Accordingly, as I mentioned at the beginning, I will repeat the analysis in 2025 to see how the data has changed and adapted. But until then, we can safely say that AI will have a significant impact on jobs worldwide and will destroy jobs. There is agreement on this. The only disagreement is about how strong this influence will be.
Saturday, December 07, 2024
Apple’s new AI-powered Siri? - Martin Crowley, AI Tool Report
Insiders at Apple HQ have leaked that, after 13 years, Apple is building a new Siri—codenamed LLM Siri—designed to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT with ‘Advanced Voice’, and Google’s Gemini Live. The new voice assistant will be powered by Large Language Models, allowing it to engage in more natural-flowing, 2-way conversations with users, and understand and complete complex tasks, quicker and more effectively.
Q STAR 2.0 - new MIT breakthrough AI model IMPROVES ITSELF in REAL TIME (new Strawberry?) - Wes Roth, YouTube
The podcast is about a new AI model called Q* 2.0 that has the potential to be a significant breakthrough in artificial intelligence. The model is based on a technique called test time training (TTT), which allows it to adapt and improve its performance in real time as it is being tested. This is a significant departure from traditional AI models, which are typically trained on a large dataset and then evaluated on a separate test set. (summary developed with Gen AI assistance)
Friday, December 06, 2024
This New AI Model Is Genius - DESTROYS OpenAI o1 in REASONING - AI Revolution
DeepSeek's R1 AI model is making waves in the AI field with its advanced reasoning abilities, rivalling and even outperforming OpenAI's 01 model in certain areas. R1 utilizes Chain of Thought reasoning to break down complex tasks into smaller steps, excelling in accuracy and reliability, particularly in solving math problems and real-world scenarios. It also boasts transparency by revealing its reasoning process, unlike other AI models. Despite facing challenges with specific logic problems and potential for misuse (jailbreaking), R1 is a significant advancement, backed by substantial investment and a commitment to open-source development. This development is part of a broader trend in AI, moving towards more refined reasoning and personalized user experiences. (summary assisted by Gen AI)
AI chatbot can conduct research interviews on unprecedented scale - Juliette Rowsell, Times Higher Ed
Freely available tool performs strongly in trials against human interviewers and traditional online surveys. Two London School of Economics scholars have developed a chatbot powered by a large language model that, they say, can complete interviews with thousands of participants in a matter of hours. Rather than having a standard set of multiple-choice and open text questions, as has typically been the case with online surveys, the chatbot takes a conversational approach, collecting interviewees’ responses and using them to generate new questions within a broad set of parameters. Its creators, Friedrich Geiecke, an assistant professor of computational social science, and Xavier Jaravel, a professor of economics, say the tool employs best practice from academic literature – for example, encouraging participants to freely express their views, and then posing follow-up questions to ensure clarity.
Thursday, December 05, 2024
AI simulations of 1000 people accurately replicate their behaviour - Chris Stokel-Walker, New Scientist
Using GPT-4o, the model behind ChatGPT, researchers have replicated the personality and behaviour of more than 1000 people, in an effort to create an alternative to focus groups and polling. An experiment simulating more than 1000 real people using the artificial intelligence model behind ChatGPT has successfully replicated their unique thoughts and personalities with high accuracy, sparking concerns about the ethics of mimicking individuals in this way. Joon Sung Park at Stanford University in California and his colleagues wanted to use generative AI tools to model individuals as a way of forecasting the impact of policy changes. Historically, this has been attempted using more simplistic rule-based statistical models, with limited success.
Amazon launches Nova AI model family for generating text, images and videos - Carl Franzen, Venture Beat
The Amazon Nova suite introduces several models tailored to specific use cases, all supporting more than 200 languages:
• Amazon Nova Micro: A text-only model optimized for low-latency responses at minimal cost.
• Amazon Nova Lite: A multimodal model offering fast processing for text, images, and videos at a very low cost.
• Amazon Nova Pro: A multimodal model combining accuracy, speed, and cost-efficiency, designed for a wide range of tasks.
• Amazon Nova Premier: The most advanced multimodal model for complex reasoning tasks and for distilling custom models (launching in Q1 2025).
• Amazon Nova Canvas: An advanced image generation model for creative content development.
• Amazon Nova Reel: A state-of-the-art video generation model offering dynamic capabilities.
All models support fine-tuning and knowledge distillation, allowing customers to tailor AI tools to their proprietary data for improved accuracy and performance. These models excel in supporting Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which grounds outputs in specific organizational data to enhance reliability.
Wednesday, December 04, 2024
Orchestrator agents: Integration, human interaction, and enterprise knowledge at the core - Emilia David, Venture Beat
There is no doubt AI agents will continue to be a fast-growing rend in enterprise AI. But as more companies look to deploy agents, they’re also looking for a way to help them make sense of the many actions these autonomous or semi-autonomous, AI guided bots will take, and avoid conflicts. Enter the orchestrator: these type of agents function as managers of other, more specialized agents, understanding each one’s role and activating each based on the next steps needed to finish a task. Most orchestrator agents, sometimes called meta agents, monitor if an agent succeeded or failed and choose the following agent to trigger to get the desired outcome.
Higher Education in 2025: AGI Agents to Displace People - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
The new year may bring a host of virtual assistants and administrative staff to higher education. They will begin as assistants to humans, then over time they will evolve into autonomous AI staff members. Next-generation agents are in development and near release. As Bernard Marr reports in Forbes, “While previous iterations of AI focused on making predictions or generating content, we’re now witnessing the emergence of something far more sophisticated: AI agents that can independently perform complex tasks and make decisions. This third wave of AI, known as ‘agentic AI,’ represents a fundamental shift in how we think about and interact with artificial intelligence in the workplace.”
Tuesday, December 03, 2024
Google’s Gemini has a memory: Google’s Gemini can now remember what you tell it - Martin Crowley, AI Tool Report
Following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT’s memory feature in April, Google has revealed that its own chatbot, Gemini, can now “remember the things you care about” such as your life, work, aspirations, and personal preferences, and, as a result, delivers more tailored and relevant responses. For example, if you tell Gemini you’re a Vegan, and then ask it for restaurant recommendations, it will only display places that are suitable for Vegans. Only users on Google’s Google One AI Premium subscription plan have access to this memory feature, and it's currently only available in English. They can add their interests and preferences through the chatbot interface, or via the “saved info” page, where Google has provided some examples of what they might like Gemini to remember, like “Use simple language and avoid jargon” or “When planning a trip, always include the cost per day,” for example.
How Are Companies Really Using AI? A New Report Has Answers - Stefano Puntoni, Knowledge at Wharton
“Growing Up: Navigating Gen AI’s Early Years” is a survey of more than 800 senior business leaders in large organizations that reveals a seismic shift in their attitudes and applications of AI in just a short time. In 2023, the first year of the survey, only 37% reported using AI weekly. That number has risen to 72% in 2024. Negative perceptions, namely worry and skepticism, are softening as decision-makers explore how this evolving technology can help their firms become better. According to the survey, generative AI is being widely deployed across functions, even in departments such as marketing and human resources that were initially slower to adopt it. The highest use is in document and proposal writing and editing with 64%, followed closely by data analyses and analytics at 62%. Other high-use functions include customer service and support (58%), fraud detection and prevention (55%), and financial forecasting and planning (53%).
Monday, December 02, 2024
Is Algorithmic Management Too Controlling? - Lindsey Cameron, Knowledge at Wharton
In more and more workplaces, important decisions aren’t made by managers but by algorithms which have increasing levels of access to and control over workers. While algorithmic management can boost efficiency and flexibility (as well as enabling a new class of quasi-self-employed workers on platforms like Uber and Instacart), critics warn of heightened surveillance and reduced autonomy for workers. In a newly published paper, Wharton Prof. Lindsey Cameron examines how ride-hail drivers interact with the algorithmic management tools that make app-based work possible. In this interview, she shares insights from her research, along with tips for creating a more equitable future of work.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-algorithmic-management-too-controlling/
Deep learning pipeline for accelerating virtual screening in drug discovery - Fatima Noor, et al; Nature Scientific Reports
In benchmarking, VirtuDockDL achieved 99% accuracy, an F1 score of 0.992, and an AUC of 0.99 on the HER2 dataset, surpassing DeepChem (89% accuracy) and AutoDock Vina (82% accuracy). These results underscore the tool’s capability to identify high-affinity inhibitors accurately across various targets, including the HER2 protein for cancer therapy, TEM-1 beta-lactamase for bacterial infections, and the CYP51 enzyme for fungal infections like Candidiasis. To sum up, VirtuDockDL combines user-friendly interface design with powerful computational capabilities to facilitate rapid, cost-effective drug discovery and development. The integration of AI in drug discovery could potentially transform the landscape of pharmaceutical research, providing faster responses to global health challenges. The VirtuDockDL is available at https://github.com/FatimaNoor74/VirtuDockDL .
Sunday, December 01, 2024
Google’s New AI Is Shockingly Good and Scary - AI Revolution
Google's new AI model, Gemini x114, is making waves in the AI field. It has achieved the top spot on the Chatbot Arena leaderboard, outperforming even OpenAI's GPT-4. This model excels in various tasks, including math, creative writing, and visual understanding. However, access to Gemini x114 is currently limited to developers and researchers through Google AI Studio. The model's success highlights the ongoing debate about how to measure AI progress, as its performance drops significantly when factors like response formatting are controlled. Beyond its technical capabilities, Gemini x114 has also sparked controversy due to instances of generating troubling and insensitive responses. (summary provided by Gen AI)
If AGI arrives during Trump’s next term, ‘none of the other stuff matters’ - Harry McCracken, Fast Company
I think it depends on the extent to which Donald Trump will listen to Elon Musk. On one hand, you have a lot of folks who are very anti-regulation trying to persuade Trump to repeal even Biden’s executive order, even though that was very weak sauce. And then on the other hand, you have Elon, who’s been pro AI regulation for over a decade and came out again for the California regulation, SB 10 47. This is all going to really come down to chemistry and then relative influence. In my opinion, this issue is the most important issue of all for the Trump administration, because I think AGI is likely to actually be built during the Trump administration. So during this administration, this is all going to get decided: whether we drive off that cliff or whether AI turns out to be the best thing that ever happened.
Saturday, November 30, 2024
What are AI guardrails? - McKinsey
AI guardrails help ensure that an organization’s AI tools, and their application in the business, reflect the organization’s standards, policies, and values.But just as guardrails on the highway don’t eliminate the risk of injuries or fatalities, AI guardrails don’t guarantee that AI systems will be completely safe, fair, compliant, and ethical. For the best results, companies can implement AI guardrails along with other procedural controls (for example, AI trust frameworks, monitoring and compliance software, testing and evaluation practices), as well as a proper AI operations technology stack, which scales the governance of AI across an organization.
Readers can’t accurately distinguish between AI and human essays, researchers find - Anya Geist, Yale Daily News
In a project organized by four researchers, including three from the School of Medicine, researchers tasked readers with blindly reviewing 34 essays, 22 of which were human-written and 12 which were generated by artificial intelligence. Typically, they rated the composition and structure of the AI-generated essays higher. However, if they believed an essay was AI-generated, they were less likely to rank it as one of the overall best essays. Ultimately, the readers only accurately distinguished between AI and human essays 50 percent of the time, raising questions about the role of AI in academia and education.
Friday, November 29, 2024
The Impact of Using Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Improving The Quality of Educational Services /Case Study at The University of Baghdad (Provisionally accepted) - Namaa Fargan, et al; Frontiers in Education
The utilization of artificial intelligence techniques has garnered significant interest in recent research due to their pivotal role in enhancing the quality of educational offerings. This study investigated the impact of employing artificial intelligence techniques on improving the quality of educational services, as perceived by students enrolled in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Baghdad. The study sample comprised 379 male and female students. A descriptive-analytical approach was used, with a questionnaire as the primary tool for data collection. The findings indicated that the application of artificial intelligence methods was highly effective, and the educational services provided to students were of exceptional quality. The results also showed a strong correlation (correlation coefficient of 0.719) between the use of artificial intelligence techniques and the quality of educational services.
AI policy directions in the new Trump administration - John Villasenor and Joshua Turner, Brookings
The new administration will likely relax agency regulation, focus more on competition with China, and decrease AI-related antitrust enforcement, among other possibilities. Although predicting technological progress is difficult, the next four years will bring some unexpected developments in AI, and effectively stewarding this extraordinary technology will require a nimble and balanced set of federal policy responses.
Thursday, November 28, 2024
Scale Is All You Need? Part 4-3: The Post-AGI-World - Kim Isenberg, Forward Future
“If AGI is successfully created, this technology could help us elevate humanity by increasing abundance, turbocharging the global economy, and aiding in the discovery of new scientific knowledge that changes the limits of possibility.” -OpenAI
This could give rise to a new kind of culture, one that differs greatly from today's ideals and values, since many of our basic assumptions – such as the value of academic achievements and political decision-making – will be challenged by the capabilities and possibilities of AI. And last but not least, human hubris will erode as we realize that our own species may not be the most intelligent on Earth and that even an artificial intelligence far surpasses our own intelligence.
AI News: New FREE AI Challenges ChatGPT! -- Matt Wolfe, YouTube
OpenAI is rolling out advanced voice mode to the web for ChatGPT Plus users, and GPT-4 has been updated with improved creative writing abilities. Anthropic's Claude now allows direct document uploads from Google Drive, and Google's Gemini has added a memory feature. YouTube is introducing automatic dubbing in multiple languages for creators. DeepSeek's new model, R1 light preview, rivals OpenAI's Q* in logical reasoning, while French company Mistral offers a free chatbot, Le Chat, with features comparable to paid versions of ChatGPT and Claude. Microsoft has partnered with Harper Collins to train AI models on books and launched its "recall" feature for Co-pilot PCs. Elon Musk predicts AGI by 2026, and Google DeepMind's AlphaCubit uses AI to improve Quantum Computing accuracy. (summary generated by GenAI)
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
A.I. Chatbots Defeated Doctors at Diagnosing Illness - Gina Colata, NY Times
Dr. Adam Rodman, an expert in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, confidently expected that chatbots built to use artificial intelligence would help doctors diagnose illnesses. He was wrong. Instead, in a study Dr. Rodman helped design, doctors who were given ChatGPT-4 along with conventional resources did only slightly better than doctors who did not have access to the bot. And, to the researchers’ surprise, ChatGPT alone outperformed the doctors. The chatbot, from the company OpenAI, scored an average of 90 percent when diagnosing a medical condition from a case report and explaining its reasoning. Doctors randomly assigned to use the chatbot got an average score of 76 percent. Those randomly assigned not to use it had an average score of 74 percent.
AI vs. Labor Unions: The Future of Work in the Age of Automation - Curt del Principe, HubSpot
Unlike knitting machines, which have a fairly niche use, there are few industries that AI can’t touch. Its ability to analyze data or create customized content at scale in mere seconds makes these tools unlike any tech revolution that’s come before. Suddenly, AI appears in everything from accounting to zookeeping. In fact, around 80% of US workers could have at least 10% of their tasks impacted by LLMs, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI. (And it’s worth pointing out that LLMs are just one type of AI in the new pantheon driving the AI boom. That 80% figure isn’t even counting tasks that can be done by audio, video, or imaging tools.) The question is no longer, “Will AI impact my job?” but “How will AI impact my job?”
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Agentic AI: 6 promising use cases for business - Grant Gross, CIO
AI agents will play a vital role in software programming and cybersecurity, but they will also change enterprise workflows and business intelligence, experts say. Agentic AI, which Forrester named a top emerging technology for 2025 in June, takes generative AI a step further by emphasizing operational decision-making rather than content generation. With AI agents popping up in so many situations and platforms, organizations interested in the technology may find it difficult to know where to start. A handful of use cases have so far risen to the top, according to AI experts.
AI is already taking jobs, research shows. Routine tasks are the first to go - Mark Sullivan, Fast Company
Researchers from Harvard Business School, the German Institute for Economic Research, and Imperial College London Business School studied 1,388,711 job posts on a major (but undisclosed) global freelance work marketplace from July 2021 to July 2023, and found that demand for such automation-prone jobs had fallen 21% just eight months after the release of ChatGPT in late 2022. Writing jobs were most affected, followed by software, app, and web development work, as well as engineering jobs. The large language models that underpin tools like ChatGPT are trained on large amounts of text to predict the most likely next word in a sequence.
Monday, November 25, 2024
The Third Wave Of AI Is Here: Why Agentic AI Will Transform The Way We Work - Bernard Marr, Forbes
The chess pieces of artificial intelligence are being dramatically rearranged. While previous iterations of AI focused on making predictions or generating content, we're now witnessing the emergence of something far more sophisticated: AI agents that can independently perform complex tasks and make decisions. This third wave of AI, known as 'agentic AI,' represents a fundamental shift in how we think about and interact with artificial intelligence in the workplace.
Social Media Fact Sheet - Pew Research Center
Many Americans use social media to connect with one another, engage with news content, share information and entertain themselves. Explore the patterns and trends shaping the social media landscape.
YouTube and Facebook are the most-widely used online platforms. Half of U.S. adults say they use Instagram, and smaller shares use sites or apps such as TikTok, LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter) and Snapchat.
Sunday, November 24, 2024
The next massive upgrade to ChatGPT is coming in January - Andrew Tarantola, Digital Trends
OpenAI is set to launch a new AI agent in January, code-named Operator, that will enable ChatGPT to take action on the user’s behalf. You may never have to book your own flights ever again. AI agents differ significantly from traditional programs. Rather than follow a set of predefined instructions, agents can autonomously perceive their environment, process information, and make decisions to perform tasks or solve problems, such as generating complex computer code or booking travel arrangements. Anthropic recently released its Computer Control feature, which enables the model to manipulate a desktop environment in the same way human users would. Microsoft similarly unveiled its AI agent feature in late October. It’s designed to handle monotonous office work like managing employee records and drafting emails. Google is also working on AI agents of its own, code-named Jarvis, and could preview it by the end of the year.
What is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)? - McKinsey
Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, is a process applied to LLMs to make their outputs more relevant in specific contexts. RAG allows LLMs to access and reference information outside the LLMs own training data, such as an organization’s specific knowledge base, before generating a response—and, crucially, with citations included. This capability enables LLMs to produce highly specific outputs without extensive fine-tuning or training, delivering some of the benefits of a custom LLM at considerably less expense.
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Sam Altman is Predicting AGI in 2025- Matt Wolfe, YouTube
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has hinted that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could be a reality in 2025. In a recent interview, when asked what he was most excited about for 2025, Altman simply replied "AGI," suggesting that he believes AGI will be achieved by then. However, the video host points out that there's no universally accepted definition of AGI, which could lead to disagreements on when it's actually achieved, even if OpenAI declares it has reached that milestone. (summary provided in part by GenAI)
OpenAI Introduces The "Operator Agent" - Andrew Black, AI Grid
OpenAI is reportedly developing a new AI agent codenamed "Operator" that can interact with computers and perform tasks on behalf of users, such as writing code or booking travel. This agent is planned for a limited release in January 2025 as a research preview, primarily targeting developers and researchers. OpenAI is also working on several other agent-related projects, including a general-purpose tool that operates within a web browser, co-pilot agents that autonomously monitor events and execute tasks, and potentially voice agents based on internal demos. (summary provided in part by GenAI)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExyUcMVztrA
Friday, November 22, 2024
A Comprehensive Survey of Small Language Models in the Era of Large Language Models: Techniques, Enhancements, Fali Wang, et Al; ARXIV
Large language models (LLM) have demonstrated emergent abilities in text generation, question answering, and reasoning, facilitating various tasks and domains. Despite their proficiency in various tasks, LLMs like LaPM 540B and Llama-3.1 405B face limitations due to large parameter sizes and computational demands, often requiring cloud API use which raises privacy concerns, limits real-time applications on edge devices, and increases fine-tuning costs. Additionally, LLMs often underperform in specialized domains such as healthcare and law due to insufficient domain-specific knowledge, necessitating specialized models. Therefore, Small Language Models (SLMs) are increasingly favored for their low inference latency, cost-effectiveness, efficient development, and easy customization and adaptability. , Collaboration with LLMs, and Trustworthiness.
AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably - Brian Porter & Edouard Machery, Nature Scientific Reports
As AI-generated text continues to evolve, distinguishing it from human-authored content has become increasingly difficult. This study examined whether non-expert readers could reliably differentiate between AI-generated poems and those written by well-known human poets. We conducted two experiments with non-expert poetry readers and found that participants performed below chance levels in identifying AI-generated poems (46.6% accuracy, χ2(1, N = 16,340) = 75.13, p < 0.0001). Notably, participants were more likely to judge AI-generated poems as human-authored than actual human-authored poems (χ2(2, N = 16,340) = 247.04, p < 0.0001). We found that AI-generated poems were rated more favorably in qualities such as rhythm and beauty, and that this contributed to their mistaken identification as human-authored.
Thursday, November 21, 2024
Winds of Change in Higher Ed to Become a Hurricane in 2025 - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
A number of factors are converging to create a huge storm. Generative AI advances, massive federal policy shifts, broad societal and economic changes, and the demographic cliff combine to create uncertainty today and change tomorrow. The confluence of all of these disruptions in 2025 predict a challenging year ahead for higher education. Has your institution prepared for the fallout from these developments? Who is coordinating the response to these disparate trends? Are you following the trends and considering the implications for your career as well as for your department, college and university?
OpenAI’s secret AI agent revealed! - Martin Crowley, AI Tool Report
OpenAI reportedly told staff that they will release an AI agent—codenamed Operator—which can take over a computer and perform tasks, autonomously, to developers via the developer API, as early as January. This comes after OpenAI denied reports that it would be launching its newest AI model, Orion, in December, suggesting they’re pivoting away from chatbots that just process text and images, towards agents that can engage with computers autonomously. Something which CEO, Sam Altman, appeared to confirm during a recent AMA on Reddit, where he said “I think the thing that will feel like the next giant breakthrough will be agents.” This also comes after Chief Product Officer, Kevin Weil confirmed, at OpenAI’s dev day last month, that “2025 is going to be the year that agentic systems finally hit the mainstream.”
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Google’s AI ‘learning companion’ takes chatbot answers a step further - Umar Shakir, the Verge
We tested Learn About and Google Gemini with a simple prompt: “How big is the universe?” Both answered that “the observable universe” is “about 93 billion light-years in diameter.” However, while Gemini opted to show a Wikipedia-provided diagram of the universe and a two-paragraph summary with links to sources, Learn About emphasized an image from the educational site Physics Forums and added related content that was similarly focused more on learning than simply offering facts and definitions.
OpenAI CPO Reveals: ChatGPT Turns $8,000 Legal Work into $3 (The Future is HERE!) - Julia McCoy, YouTube
OpenAI's Chief Product Officer, Kevin Wheel, recently made a significant statement at the Ray Summit 2024, revealing that their AI model, ChatGPT, can complete legal work that previously cost $8,000 for a mere $3 in API tokens. This highlights the potential of AI to drastically reduce costs and increase efficiency in various professional fields. Wheel emphasized OpenAI's commitment to making AI more accessible and affordable, driving innovation and problem-solving on a larger scale. This advancement raises important questions about the future of work and the need for adaptation in the face of rapidly evolving AI capabilities. The video emphasizes that while AI like ChatGPT is not yet ready for fully autonomous deployment, it is rapidly advancing. (summary assisted with Gemini AI)
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
$1M Robot-Painted Portrait Sparks a New Era in AI Art - Douglas, the AI Newsroom
In a groundbreaking moment for both AI and art, Ai-Da, the world’s first ultra-realistic robot artist, just made history. Ai-Da’s portrait of Alan Turing sold for an astounding $1.08 million at Sotheby’s, exceeding all pre-sale estimates and marking the first-ever sale of a humanoid robot’s artwork at a major auction. This sale not only celebrates a new level of AI creativity but also raises big questions about art, ethics, and technology. Let’s dive into what this historic sale means and where the journey of AI-powered art may take us next.
Can AI Agents Rescue Higher Ed From Financial Collapse? - Vinay Bhaskara, Forbes
Higher education is facing an existential crisis. With one small college closing every week and tuition costs having risen 141% at public institutions over the last two decades, American universities may be heading toward a bleak future. But a new wave of artificial intelligence technology may offer a path forward. AI agents — sophisticated software that can handle complex interactions and workflows — are emerging as a potential solution to higher education's operational challenges. Unlike generic chatbots or simple automation tools, these purpose-built AI agents can manage intricate processes, engage in natural conversations, and seamlessly integrate with existing university systems.
Monday, November 18, 2024
AI That Can Invent AI Is Coming. Buckle Up. - Forbes
Leopold Aschenbrenner’s “Situational Awareness” manifesto made waves when it was published this summer. In this provocative essay, Aschenbrenner—a 22-year-old wunderkind and former OpenAI researcher—argues that artificial general intelligence will be here by 2027, that artificial intelligence will consume 20% of all U.S. electricity by 2029, and that AI will unleash untold powers of destruction that within years will reshape the world geopolitical order. Aschenbrenner’s startling thesis about exponentially accelerating AI progress rests on one core premise: that AI will soon become powerful enough to carry out AI research itself, leading to recursive self-improvement and runaway superintelligence.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2024/11/03/ai-that-can-invent-ai-is-coming-buckle-up/
How To Build The Future: Sam Altman Predicts AGI in 2025 - Y Combinator
Altman just predicted that artificial general intelligence will be achieved in 2025, coming alongside conflicting reports of slowing progress in LLM development and scaling across the industry. It’s fair to say that few people in tech are positioned to have a bigger impact on the future than Sam Altman. As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman and his team have overseen monumental leaps forward in machine learning, generative AI and most recently LLMs that can reason at PhD levels. And this is just the beginning. In his latest essay Altman predicted that ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) is just a few thousand days away. So how did we get to this point? In this episode of our rebooted series "How To Build The Future," YC President and CEO Garry Tan sits down with Altman to talk about the origins of OpenAI, what’s next for the company, and what advice he has for founders navigating this massive platform shift.
Sunday, November 17, 2024
Microsoft joins multi-AI agent fray with Magentic-One - Anirban Ghoshal, CIO
Magentic-One is a rival to multi-agent frameworks such as Salesforce’s Agentforce or IBM’s Bee Agent Framework for enterprises wanting to let AI complete complex tasks that are currently handled by humans. Microsoft wants enterprises to believe that its Magentic-One multi-AI agent system will enable them to automate complex tasks that previously required human intervention. One of a number of Agentic AI offerings to arrive on the market in recent months, Magentic-One is built on Microsoft’s previously released AutoGen open-source agent development framework.
Your Next Job Interview Might Be With an AI Recruiter - Martina Bretous, HubSpot
You’re tweaking your resume a hundred times. You’ve told people “a little about yourself” more times than you’d like to. And you’ve probably gotten a few “We’ve decided to move forward to another candidate” emails. It’s the name of the game. But here’s another curveball you probably weren’t expecting: Going through an interview process with an AI-generated recruiter on the other end. Tools like Apriora and Micro1 are making it happen, with the promise of better candidates and a streamlined recruiting process.
Saturday, November 16, 2024
Magentic-One: A Generalist Multi-Agent System for Solving Complex Tasks - Adam Fourney, et al; Microsoft
The future of AI is agentic. AI systems are evolving from having conversations to getting things done—this is where we expect much of AI’s value to shine. It’s the difference between generative AI recommending dinner options to agentic assistants that can autonomously place your order and arrange delivery. It’s the shift from summarizing research papers to actively searching for and organizing relevant studies in a comprehensive literature review. Modern AI agents, capable of perceiving, reasoning, and acting on our behalf, are demonstrating remarkable performance in areas such as software engineering, data analysis, scientific research, and web navigation.
5 Bold Predictions for AI in 2025 and how we think AI will continue to transform industries - Cypher Learning
The pace of innovation is rapidly accelerating, and AI is poised to redefine how we work, learn, and connect with technology in surprising ways. From empowering new roles and fostering inclusivity, AI is on the brink of reshaping entire industries. Last year, we shared our predictions for AI in 2024 and saw them come to fruition. As the year comes to a close, we wanted to turn the page and once again share our predictions for how AI will continue to evolve in 2025. Among the predictions is #5. Personalized workplace development displaces old-school training.
Friday, November 15, 2024
The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier - McKinsey
AI has permeated our lives incrementally, through everything from the tech powering our smartphones to autonomous-driving features on cars to the tools retailers use to surprise and delight consumers. The latest generative AI applications can perform a range of routine tasks, such as the reorganization and classification of data. But it is their ability to write text, compose music, and create digital art that has garnered headlines and persuaded consumers and households to experiment on their own. As a result, a broader set of stakeholders are grappling with generative AI’s impact on business and society but without much context to help them make sense of it.
Navigating the challenges of AI in education - Higher Education Press
The advent of advanced AI models like ChatGPT has precipitated a transformative shift in knowledge acquisition and exploration, posing significant challenges to traditional educational concepts and methodologies. An article in Frontiers of Digital Education explores the multifaceted impact of AI on education and proposes strategies to navigate these challenges effectively. The work is titled "Educational Concepts and Methodologies in the AI Era: Challenges and Responses." The traditional emphasis on exam scores and knowledge dissemination is increasingly at odds with the demands of the AI era. The ability of AI to automate routine tasks and generate vast amounts of information necessitates a shift in focus towards the cultivation of skills that are uniquely human, such as critical thinking, creativity, and problem-solving. Failure to adapt to this changing landscape risks rendering our educational systems obsolete, failing to equip students with the tools they need to thrive in a rapidly evolving world.
Thursday, November 14, 2024
Why AI could eat quantum computing’s lunch - Ed Gent, MIT Technology Review
Rapid advances in applying artificial intelligence to simulations in physics and chemistry have some people questioning whether we will even need quantum computers at all. Tech companies have been funneling billions of dollars into quantum computers for years. The hope is that they’ll be a game changer for fields as diverse as finance, drug discovery, and logistics. But while the field struggles with the realities of tricky quantum hardware, another challenger is making headway in some of these most promising use cases. AI is now being applied to fundamental physics, chemistry, and materials science in a way that suggests quantum computing’s purported home turf might not be so safe after all.
#BuildwithAI Hackathon 2024 - GenAI.works
BuildwithAI 2024 invites innovators, developers, and AI enthusiasts from all backgrounds to unleash their creativity using cutting-edge technologies! Don't miss this opportunity to turn your ideas into reality and make your mark in the rapidly evolving world of artificial intelligence. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting your AI journey, this is your chance to showcase your skills, collaborate with like-minded individuals, and build the future of AI. Register now and let's build the future together!
Wednesday, November 13, 2024
Claude 3.5 Sonnet now supports PDF input and understands both text and visual content within documents - Anthropic
Claude works with any standard PDF. You can ask Claude about any text, pictures, charts, and tables in the PDFs you provide. Some sample use cases:
Analyzing financial reports and understanding charts/tables
Extracting key information from legal documents
Translation assistance for documents
Converting document information into structured formats
First pro vice-chancellor for artificial intelligence appointed - Juliet Roswell, Times Higher Ed
The UK’s first senior university leader dedicated solely to artificial intelligence is looking at embedding the technology into the curriculum and exploring options that could see students assessed on their capabilities in this area. As part of efforts to create “AI literate graduates”, Shushma Patel, pro vice-chancellor for artificial intelligence at De Montfort University, said one of her key priorities for the role – thought to be the first of its kind in the sector – was to “consider how we could embed a learning objective or a learning outcome within the curriculum where we recommend students use AI technologies”. The computer scientist said universities needed to encourage students to use AI in their studies, or risk graduates falling behind, adding that she was interested in looking at introducing assessments that would test students’ AI capabilities.
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
Quantum Computer Launched for Generative AI - Bernice Baker, AI Business
Orca Computing has released its latest photonic quantum computer, PT-2, designed to tackle practical applications such as pharmaceutical development and biological imaging by integrating with generative AI models. PT-2 uses Nvidia’s CUDA-Q open-source platform for integrating and programming quantum processing units (QPUs), GPUs and CPUs in one system, offering quantum-enhanced machine learning capabilities. This means organizations could effectively embed quantum computing into generative AI and optimization workflows offering a potential route toward industrial-scale quantum AI.
AI Tops List of Most Important Technologies of 2025 - Heidi Vella, AI Business
The study by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization, surveyed 355 technology leaders, including CIOs, CTOs, and IT directors, in Brazil, China, India, the U.K. and U.S. When asked to select the top three areas of technology that will be most important in 2025 from more than a dozen areas, respondents overwhelmingly ranked AI first (58%) marking the second consecutive year they have done so. Cloud computing (26%) and robotics (24%) ranked second and third, respectively.
Monday, November 11, 2024
Study finds LLMs can identify their own mistakes - Ben Dickson, Venture Beat
A well-known problem of large language models (LLMs) is their tendency to generate incorrect or nonsensical outputs, often called “hallucinations.” While much research has focused on analyzing these errors from a user’s perspective, a new study by researchers at Technion, Google Research and Apple investigates the inner workings of LLMs, revealing that these models possess a much deeper understanding of truthfulness than previously thought. This finding suggests that current evaluation methods, which solely rely on the final output of LLMs, may not accurately reflect their true capabilities. It raises the possibility that by better understanding and leveraging the internal knowledge of LLMs, we might be able to unlock hidden potential and significantly reduce errors.
Educause ’24: University of Michigan's Journey With Generative AI - Abby Sourwine, GovTech
One major AI integration came in the form of U-M GPT, a chatbot that provides free access to the latest versions of large language models like GPT 4.0 and DALL-E 3. It has all the capabilities of these chatbots with a few customizations to best serve UM users. Pendse said the team also created a more focused AI tool, U-M Maizey, with which users can upload their own data sets to serve a customized GPT experience. In an academic setting, Maizey can be integrated with Canvas, the learning management system from the education software company Instructure, and used for things like generating practice exam questions and offering personalized tutoring. Pendse said the Canvas integration was designed to be simple — instructors can integrate in six minutes even without any coding experience.
Sunday, November 10, 2024
What Can AI Chatbots Teach Us About How Humans Learn? - Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge
Do new AI tools like ChatGPT actually understand language the same way that humans do? It turns out that even the inventors of these new large language models are debating that very question — and the answer will have huge implications for education and for all aspects of society if this technology can get to a point where it achieves what is known as Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI.A new book by one of those AI pioneers digs into the origins of ChatGPT and the intersection of research on how the brain works and building new large language models for AI. It’s called “ChatGPT and the Future of AI,” and the author is Terrence Sejnowski, a professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, where he co-directs the Institute for Neural Computation and the NSF Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center. He is also the Francis Crick Chair at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
ChatGPT 5: What We Know About OpenAI's Upcoming Model Orion - Shubham Arora, Times Now News
OpenAI is rumoured to be developing its next large language model (LLM), internally dubbed Orion or simply GPT-5. Following the largely successful run of earlier models like GPT-4, expectations of what Orion might offer are phenomenal. There were whispers of a potential December 2024 release, but information disclosed more recently from OpenAI indicates that this timeframe may not prevail anymore, especially following the exit of some key executive figures, including Mira Murati, the former CTO. Though the OpenAI Orion launch is a little far away, let's take a peek at what we expect from this new AI model.
Saturday, November 09, 2024
Satya Nadella on the Future of AI - Douglas, AI Newsroom
In Nadella’s view, AI is transforming how we learn and work, with implications for every industry. He envisions a world where AI tutors are accessible to everyone, enabling a deeper, more personalized learning experience. “The big novelty is that every student can now have access to a personalized AI tutor throughout their life.” This unprecedented access to knowledge, combined with the flexibility of tools like GitHub Copilot, opens doors for students, professionals, and lifelong learners. On the future of work, Nadella emphasizes that AI’s purpose isn’t to eliminate jobs but to improve the quality of work. By automating tedious tasks, AI allows professionals to focus on higher-value activities.
AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes - Business Insider
The rise of artificial intelligence has captured our imagination for decades, in whimsical movies and sober academic texts. A March Goldman Sachs report found over 300 million jobs around the world could be disrupted by AI, and the global consulting firm McKinsey estimated at least 12 million Americans would change to another field of work by 2030. A "gale of creative destruction," as economist Joseph Schumpeter once described it, will blow away countless firms and breathe life into new industries. It won't be all bleak: Over the coming decades, nongenerative and generative AI are estimated to add between $17 trillion and $26 trillion to the global economy. And crucially, many of the jobs that will be lost will be replaced by new ones.
Friday, November 08, 2024
Leveraging AI Agents to Transform the University Exam Experience - Talview
Artificial Intelligence has been transforming various sectors, and education is no exception. AI agents are revolutionizing how universities operate, offering new efficiencies and enhanced learning experiences. This blog explores the role of AI agents in universities, their current applications, benefits, challenges, and future trends. The adoption of AI agents in universities brings numerous benefits. They enhance efficiency and productivity by automating repetitive tasks, allowing staff to focus on more critical activities. AI agents provide personalized and adaptive learning experiences, improving student outcomes. They also support better resource management by optimizing schedules and facilities usage. In research, AI agents facilitate advanced data analysis and predictive modeling, driving innovation. Moreover, they offer support to faculty and staff, reducing administrative burdens.
How AI Is Reshaping Higher Education - AACSB
Because artificial intelligence will likely become the primary way humans access information, professors must prepare students to use the technology effectively in their lives and careers. Students will especially need to learn skills related to effective prompt engineering, which refers to the ability to craft questions that elicit the most useful answers from AI platforms. The more comfortable that faculty become with using AI, the better they will be at teaching students how to use this skill ethically and effectively in the years to come.
Thursday, November 07, 2024
AI as a Service (AIaaS): What Higher Education Needs to Know - Tom Mangan, EdTech
Artificial intelligence in the cloud could be a helpful part of your IT tech stack, but just because something says AI doesn’t mean it’s necessary. AI as a Service lets colleges and universities consume advanced learning automation applications in bite-sized servings without having to develop AI solutions on their own. Because AIaaS is hosted in the cloud, services can scale up or down as needed. These benefits give higher education leaders vast opportunities to improve student services and optimize campus operations. At the same time, campus IT teams must wade through a muddle of AIaaS uncertainties related to data, security and the responsible use of AI. Read on to find out how to navigate this new environment and learn best practices for AIaaS success in higher education.
https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/ai-as-a-service-aiaas-perfcon
EDUCAUSE 2024: The Risks and Rewards of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education - EdTech
The world took notice when OpenAI released the high-powered large language model ChatGPT in November 2022. Nearly two years later, at EDUCAUSE 2024 in San Antonio, artificial intelligence was still a hot topic of conversation among higher education’s leading technologists. They mostly agree that AI is a tool that could be beneficial to colleges and universities in a number of ways, but acknowledge that just because an AI solution exists, that doesn’t mean it’s the right solution. Working backward from a problem to identify if AI is the best path forward is a good way to avoid making AI mistakes, and ensuring good data governance before implementing AI is vital to producing accurate outcomes.
Wednesday, November 06, 2024
Amazon-backed Anthropic debuts AI agents that can do complex tasks, racing against OpenAI, Microsoft and Google - Hayden Field, CNBC
Anthropic, the Amazon-backed AI startup founded by former OpenAI research executives, announced artificial intelligence agents that can use a computer to complete complex tasks like a human would.
AI agents are built for productivity and to complete multistep, complex tasks on a user’s behalf. Anthropic’s new Computer Use capability, part of its two newest AI models, allows its tech to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing. The tool can “use computers in basically the same way that we do,” Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview, adding it can do tasks with “tens or even hundreds of steps.”
Education for all: An interview with Dr. Sven Schütt - McKinsey
Dr. Sven Schütt, CEO of the European university group IU Group (IUG), believes in lifelong learning and universally accessible education. IUG offers courses and degree programs in a variety of formats so that high school graduates and working adults can learn at their own pace and convenience. Founded in 2000, IUG, which currently has about 140,000 students enrolled worldwide, provides training, upskilling, and job certification across more than 250 degree programs and offers over 600 additional training programs.1 Schütt recently sat down with McKinsey partner Axel Domeyer to discuss how AI is transforming education—and his organization.
Tuesday, November 05, 2024
Leveraging AI to Improve Learner Outcomes and Learner Records - UPCEA
The implementation of AI-driven tools in higher education is still in its early phases. It's clear that institutional staff either are still learning how to incorporate the tools into the learning process or are encountering obstacles in optimizing their use. This study revealed that interest in the potential of these technologies is far outpacing adoption. Most respondents are heavily involved in developing learner experiences and tracking outcomes, though nearly half report their institutions have yet to adopt AI-driven tools for these purposes. The research also found that only three percent of institutions have implemented Comprehensive Learner Records (CLRs), which provide a complete overview of an individual’s lifelong learning experiences. Download your copy of UPCEA and Instructure's latest research study today.
Here Come the AI Agents! - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
Anthropic offers the new function that enables its Sonnet version to control your computer: “Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the first frontier AI model to offer computer use in public beta.” This is just the beginning of the next phase of generative AI. Over the coming weeks and months, we will see many platforms offer this capability to users. So, what’s the big deal? It is the equivalent of moving from an automobile to a self-driving autonomous vehicle. We have primarily worked with chat bot versions of generative AI in which we enter a prompt, the program does some research and responds via text, image, video or audio. That has been effective for single-instance transactional engagement. Yet, we have not been able to automatically create and complete a complex list of tasks on the computer that are dependent upon reasoning and prior actions.
Monday, November 04, 2024
OpenAI reportedly plans to release its Orion AI model by December - Maxwell Zeff, Tech Crunch
OpenAI is reportedly planning to release its next frontier AI model, codenamed Orion inside the company, by December of this year, The Verge reported on Thursday. Unlike previous releases, the company reportedly plans to release the model gradually to trusted partners before a broader rollout through ChatGPT. The Verge writes that Microsoft engineers expect to receive access to Orion as early as November, although it’s unclear what OpenAI will ultimately call the model. The o1 series of models was codenamed “strawberry” inside OpenAI for months before it was released.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/
The AI Paradox: Why Automation Will Fuel a Creative Revolution - Alina Okun, Future Skill
AI isn't replacing human workers. It's opening up a new frontier for them. As routine tasks get automated, we have more freedom to focus on the uniquely human skills that machines can’t replicate: Creativity, Critical thinking, and Innovation. This is what I call the AI Paradox: the more tasks AI takes over, the more space we have to lean into the things that machines simply can’t do. Let’s explore how this shift is evolving and why creativity is quickly becoming the most valuable skill in the workplace.
https://www.futureskillpro.com/p/the-ai-paradox-why-automation-will
Sunday, November 03, 2024
Memorandum on Advancing the United States’ Leadership in Artificial Intelligence; Harnessing Artificial Intelligence to Fulfill National Security Objectives; and Fostering the Safety, Security, and Trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence - the White House
This memorandum fulfills the directive set forth in subsection 4.8 of Executive Order 14110 of October 30, 2023 (Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence). This memorandum provides further direction on appropriately harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) models and AI-enabled technologies in the United States Government, especially in the context of national security systems (NSS), while protecting human rights, civil rights, civil liberties, privacy, and safety in AI-enabled national security activities. A classified annex to this memorandum addresses additional sensitive national security issues, including countering adversary use of AI that poses risks to United States national security.
Anthropic’s agentic Computer Use is giving people ‘superpowers’ - Taryn Plumb, Venture Beat
Still in beta, Computer Use allows Claude to work autonomously and use a computer essentially as a human does. The groundbreaking capability has broad implications for the future of work, as it can work essentially on its own, perform repetitive tasks and quickly gather up data from numerous disparate sources. “Anthropic just released the most amazing AI technology I’ve ever used. I’m not kidding,” startup founder Alex Finn posted to X (formerly Twitter). “It’s legit changing day to day.”AI agents are here and you can now build your own personal army of AI's that will do work for you. Here is your demo and complete beginner's guide:
Saturday, November 02, 2024
SynthID: Identifying AI-generated content with SynthID - Google Deep Mind
Being able to identify AI-generated content is critical to promoting trust in information. While not a silver bullet for addressing problems such as misinformation or misattribution, SynthID is a suite of promising technical solutions to this pressing AI safety issue. This toolkit is currently launched in beta and continues to evolve. It’s now being integrated into a growing range of products, helping empower people and organizations to responsibly work with AI-generated content. SynthID uses a variety of deep learning models and algorithms for watermarking and identifying AI-generated content.
Intelligent Agents in AI Really Can Work Alone. Here’s How. - Tom Coshow, Gartner
Today’s AI models perform tasks such as generating text, but these are “prompted” — the AI isn’t acting by itself. That is about to change with agentic AI, or AI with agency. By 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously. Intelligent agents in AI are goal-driven software entities that use AI techniques to complete tasks and achieve goals. They don’t require explicit inputs and don’t produce predetermined outputs. Instead, they can receive instructions, create a plan and use tooling to complete tasks, and produce dynamic outputs. Examples include AI agents, machine customers and multiagent systems.
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