#50 - The half century!

Issue #50! Wow - I thought that this little newsletter probably wouldn't have legs when I started experimenting with the new LinkedIn blog format back on April 27th 2023. But people keep subscribing, commenting and asking me questions about AI, and the pace just hasn't let up, so here I am at 50 issues, and still going, with over 2,300 subscribers now.

Thanks everyone for your support and interest - I'll keep on putting this out and keeping you all up to date on developments as long as you keep reading. Saw a lovely comment earlier on from the last issue #49 where Dana Sheehan described me as her AI secret weapon - loved that! Just for fun, I uploaded my normal headshot into Adobe Firefly as a reference image, then asked it to create an image with the prompt "Joe Houghton as an AI secret weapon - hi tech, action, computer background". So this is for you Dana!

I was talking with Jennifer Keenahan last week - she's gone through the whole back-catalogue from #1 and mentioned that it's like a social documentary on AI reading through the issues and seeing how the tools have changed and developed. I think when we look back in a few years time this period will be seen as an inflection point in tech - the emergence of mainstream use AI really is going to change so many things about life for so many people. There are big issues to be tackled around safety, equality of access and bias, but the power of these tools to make connections so much faster than human can will revolutionise many fields - medicine being a prime example that is really only just getting started.

Of course, we are more focussed on education and learning, and the pace of change may be a bit slower here as the institutional inertia against change, and the challenges for some educators to embrace new ways of doing things, slow down transformation. However, it's happening, and will continue to, as more and more educators and students try the tools and become used to using them in their daily routines.

The headlines get always taken by the big players, but the open source models are very powerful and will provide free access to much of the core benefits to anyone with a computing device. We will quickly see the AI models migrating down onto our computers, tablets and phones - within the next year - it's already possible to install and run local AI's that will work with no internet connection, and the ever-increasing power of our devices will make these models more and more capable with every generation.

Soon, AI will be even more baked into our daily lives - Alexa is already almost part of our family sitting on our kitchen table, and more and more household appliances can now be controlled just by voice. Humanoid robots are in the works - Elon Musk claims that his company will be using them as early as 2025 - see this recent Guardian article. Black Mirror starts to look more and more likely...

Wearable and then embedded tech is next - early experiments like the Humane pin have not so far impressed but someone will come up with a way of us having ubiquitous access to AI smarts that is personal, discreet and non-invasive.

The tech we are seeing in the bulky headsets is miniaturising fast - RayBan already have smart glasses - eye watering prices at present but as the tech becomes more common these will fall.

The really big challenge - as always - in this tech revolution will not so much be around the tech itself - that'll sort itself out. Behavioural change - how we as humans decide to use these new possibilities in our daily, weekly and yearly cycles, habits and routines - this is the challenge. Will the pervasive presence of AI just worm it's way into our lives simply by being there, or will we consciously and pro-actively think about and decide how we want to implement and adapt to the new opportunities (and threats) that this powerful tech offers?

The answer will be somewhere in the middle for most. The bleeding edge adopters on the adoption curve (that's you if you are reading this!) will explore, try, fail, try again and provide data for the early adopters and then pragmatists to decide whether they want to come and play.

This isn't something we can ignore either - the pull is coming from the students. In a recent report more than 70% of polled graduates said they think generative AI should be incorporated into courses - so if we don't teach this stuff they'll go to places that do!

Here's a starting point - a free, 2 hour online course "Generative AI for Teachers" from Google in collaboration with MIT RAISE.

Podcasts

A useful podcast episode here from the University of Queensland - "Guidance for academics - how students talk about AI"

One I featured in recently:

How are you preparing and updating your own teaching to incorporate AI? My new book "Study smart with AI" is written for teachers and students to highlight 150 essential and useful AI apps that can help you supercharge your studies - available in Kindle and paperback format with hardback and audio in the works.

EPALE - The European Adult Learning Network

Do you know about EPALE - the European Adult Learning Network? I'm one of the Irish Ambassadors for EPALE, and you can join over 100,000 educators across Europe in a free online community - it's a great way to get different points of view, participate in training from across the continent and stay up to date on educational thought. Create your free account at https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/user/login

Affiliate Links (stuff I use and recommend)

Perplexity AI - Best search and my go-to AI now... Uses the latest top AI models from ChatGPT, Claude et al, innovates constantly - give it a try!

https://perplexity.ai/pro?referral_code=VYD33BFN

Unriddle AI is a research site that lets you upload docs and then interrogate them.

https://www.unriddle.ai//?ref=JH

Check out Humata - it's another AI that let's you work on your own documents and interrogate them. https://www.humata.ai/?via=joe-houghton

My tool of choice for serious AI image creation is Leonardo. The user interface is easy and very powerful, enabling you to create just what you want in any style really quickly. https://app.leonardo.ai/?via=joe

Notion

This is my tool of choice now for collecting all the bits'n'pieces of information I squirrel away for talk, articles and presentations. I can then generate webpages in a snap and share them, and they update in real-time as I add new info to them! There's so much you can do in Notion - well worth a look:

OK, that's enough for today - see you next time!

Joe Houghton is an Assistant Professor at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business where he directs the MSc programmes in Project Management. After a career in IT in multinationals, Joe switched into a portfolio career of University teaching, management coaching and training.

He has authored 7 books to date including "Applying Artificial Intelligence to Close the Accessibility Gap: A practical handbook for educators & students!", "Innovative teaching with AI: Creative approaches to enhancing learning in education", and "Project Management made easy...: the ECCSR approach". His latest book "Study smart with AI: 150 essential apps" is now available on Amazon!

Contact Joe on email at [email protected] for any requests for training, seminars, workshops or keynote speaking.