#56 AI model overload?
Joe Houghton
Husband, dad, educator, author, facilitator, speaker, consultant, coach, photographer - wearer of many hats! "People gardener".
it's almost 2 years since ChatGPT was released, and in the intervening time we've seen a dizzying slew of AI apps released. And the ones that have been around for a while, like ChatGT, now have multiple offerings. Look at this screenshot from my ChatGPT - all these different options. Now I'm a self-confessed nerd, and the aim of this newsletter is to keep you (and me) up to date on what's new and interesting for us all as educators in AI land, but even I'm getting overload at the number of version numbers to keep track on.
I was watching some old episodes of Jeremy Clarkson's Grad Tour last week, and the 3 presenters are all petrol-heads. Their combined knowledge of the minutiae of every car ever produced is incredible - they know the specific differences between the XT and the XT-turbo, of a car produced in Rumania in 1964.
It's getting a bit like that in AI land. Should I be using GPT-4o, or maybe GPT-4o mini, or is GPT-01-mini better? What'e even the difference?
Well, just like every student in your class is different, so is every one of these AI models. They have different levels of experience, or training, and different capabilities. Some are better at reasoning, some are fast but won't give such in-depth answers. But if you just need a quick response, that might be enough. And when the cost in-depth responses cost more - either in time waiting for the answer or in financial cost of requesting it - the smaller cheaper models have their place.
We are beginning to see AI making it's way down onto our devices. You can already download and run smaller AI's on your smartphone or tablet without the need for them to access the web - fully local AI's. They're not a powerful as the big cloud-based models but in may cases they'll do the job well enough.
Next issue I'm going to look at the new trend of training AI's to work on just your own data - that's where a lot of the current interest is in AI land right now... But back to what's been happening in the past week or two...
ChatGPT & Canvas
Well ChatGPT dropped Canvas, so I'm back paying for ChatGPT again! The latest update to the paid account is a beta (as I write this in early/mid October 2024) of a new feature called Canvas. This is now available by clicking on the drop down of the models available in the top left hand corner of your ChatGPT screen. When you ask for a document to be created it splits the screen (like Artifacts does in Claude). On the right is the created document, which is directly editable by you. On the left is a window where you can ask questions, request changes and these are then reflected in the document.
Very clever and this has a lot of potential. For instance, you can initially ask it to structure up a book by chapters, then one at a time get each chapter expanded, building up a full document. Iterating with prompts, questions etc in the left hand pane makes creating your document a conversational experience that feels very natural and frictionless. And the ability to edit your own changes directly into the document as well gives you lots of control over the normal fully generated responses.
When you're done, a single copy pulls the whole final document into clipboard to paste into Word or your preferred word-processor.
CoPilot gets new smarts
Microsoft isn't sitting still either - the pace of change is unrelenting! Copilot now has 4 voices and shiny new look to make generating stuff more user-friendly.
CANVA lets you share presentations
A nice little new feature dropped in CANVA recently - the ability to share a link to a presentation in CANVA that basically creates the presentation as a website that those with the link can go to and play through your slides. FAR easier than emailing round big slide decks to everyone, and there's the added benefit that as you make changes to the deck, those changes automatically reflect in the website, so once you've issued the link, it's always showing the latest version.
NotebookLM
I was listening to one of the AI podcasts the other day and a fascinating use case was mentioned, which struck a chord with me as one assignment I set my classes is for each student to create their own personal brand website.
So try this - open up a new notebook in NotebookLM, and add in some sources such as the URL of your LinkedIn profile, your latest CV, and any other websites that have info about you on them. Then ask NotebookLM to create the podcast using this data. What results is an audio look at your life, experience and strengths - all in a pretty complimentary and engaging discussion between the 2 "hosts". Certainly a different way of presenting yourself - why not give it a go - it'll either make you cringe or feel pretty good (and maybe both!).
Or here's another one. Upload your module outline document, and have NotebookLM create a discussion about the module - here's what it came up for my summer module Hot Topics in Project Management - https://notebooklm.google.com/notebook/894a2d34-4aa8-4a50-8257-2d8e65cfc5bb/audio
A great way for students to get a feel for what's coming up in a different format to the normal text-based document.
Scenario generation using ChatGPT
An in-class case study here on using AI to explore scenarios with students...
Google Gemini introduces new classroom tools
If you are using Google in your school, these new tools from Gemini might be worth looking at...
Freebie - Affinity is now free for educators!
CANVA recently bought Affinity (a suite of pro-level photo editing & desktop publishing tools), and they've made the whole suite free to educators. I use Affinity to produce longer form reports where I want more complex stuff like cross-referencing, page numbering etc that CANVA doesn't currently support. There's a bit of a learning curve but much less than trying to learn InDesign for instance!
Useful reading...
The UK Govt published a reading list on AI recently - might give you some useful insights:
领英推荐
A more general top 20 AI education reports/papers list:
Updated AI Assessment Scale
Leon Furze has done great work on this in recent times - the AI Assessment Scale has been revised to be more inclusive and accessible - all the details here:
TED talks on AI
If watching video is your way to learn, this set of over 200 TED talks dealing with AI issues might while away a few hours. I watch these when I'm chopping veg or clearing up the kitchen :)
OK, enough for now - see you next time when we'll be looking at the new big kid on the block - RAG...
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!
Unriddle AI is a research site that lets you upload docs and then interrogate them.
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:
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 "Innovative teaching with AI: Creative approaches to enhancing learning in education ", "Project Management made easy...: the ECCSR approach " & "Applying Artificial Intelligence to Close the Accessibility Gap: A practical handbook for educators & students! " His latest release "Study Smart with AI - 150 essential apps "is now available on Amazon! More on this in a future edition...
Contact Joe on email at [email protected] for any requests for training, seminars, workshops or keynote speaking.
Guiding educators through the practical and ethical implications of GenAI. Consultant & Author | PhD Candidate | Director @ Young Change Agents & Reframing Autism
1 个月Thanks for sharing the AIAS updates!