AI Weekly Insights #13 - Educational Leaps and Smart AI Integrations
Kharee Smith
Success Manager | Technical Instructor | Software Engineer | Music Producer with a passion for Technology, A.I., Music, and Gaming
Happy Sunday!
I almost skipped this issue and moved right into 14 (unlucky numbers and all), but let’s get into it with “AI Weekly Insights #14”! This week we're zipping through OpenAI's educational strides at ASU, Microsoft's Copilot leveling up, and Samsung's AI-infused Galaxy S24.
The Insights
For the Week of 01/14/24 - 01/20/24 (P.S. Click the story’s title for more information ??):
What’s New: OpenAI has announced a deal to bring ChatGPT to Arizona State University’s researchers, staff, and faculty.
AI in Education: Starting in February, ASU will run an open invitation for staff to submit ideas for ways that ChatGPT can enhance their work, with a focus being placed on student success and streamlining processes. ASU will provide ChatGPT Enterprise to full-time employees, allowing for priority access and enhanced privacy capabilities.
Why It Matters: This is significant as opinions on the use of AI in education have shifted a bit since its introduction. Just last year, many schools banned the tool over concerns of cheating and plagiarism. I believe AI can be a serious force for good in the education sector, we just need to start with acceptance of the technology.
What's New: Microsoft is introducing a Pro plan for Copilot as well as expanding its availability to Enterprise customers.
Copilot Pro: The new plan, offered for $20 per user per month, will allow users to access Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. Additionally, the 300-user minimum and required Microsoft 365 license have been removed as a requirement for Enterprise customers looking to try the technology.
Why It Matters: Expanding Copilot’s use into the commonly used applications will greatly increase the adoption of generative AI’s capabilities. While offered in the Pro plan now, I could see this being migrated to the Free offering eventually to be a benefit for more users.
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What's New: Samsung is launching its new flagship smartphone with a host of AI features powered by Google’s Gemini and Imagen 2 models.
Gen. AI in Smartphones: Features include better summarization in the Voice Recorder or Notes apps and crafting messages in different styles in the Messages app. The Gallery app will also feature image editing capabilities powered by Imagen 2. Most notable is the “Circle to Search” feature which will allow users to draw a circle around anything in an image and perform a search with that image and keywords.
Why It Matters: 2024 is going to be a year where many smartphones will ship with generative AI capabilities (there are rumors of the iPhone following suit as well). This represents the beginning of what will be possible, and expect this to expand in features and scope over time.
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AI History Corner
Generative AI is a relatively new and exciting field of study, but Artificial Intelligence has been around since the 1950s. Here are some significant milestones in AI development in the realm of image generation:
In 2013, a new architecture for neural networks was introduced by Diederik P. Kingma and Max Welling by the name of Variational Autoencoder (VAE). This model was designed to take in data (like images, sounds, etc.), learn how to represent it compactly, and then, when asked, generate new, similar data. Or simply, it could generate variations based on examples seen before.
In 2014, this was expanded upon with the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) proposed by Ian Goodfellow and his colleagues. The GAN framework applied a “critic” to the model that would verify newly generated content. Imagine an artist who is trying to make art that looks real, and the critic points out flaws that the artist would correct.
In 2021, OpenAI would expand upon the Transformer models introduced by Google to release DALL-E, a text-to-image generator that could create high-quality images based on simple prompts. At the time, the first DALL-E was revolutionary in its simple capabilities.
In 2022, both Midjourney and the open-source Stable Diffusion were released, which led to a huge growth in the use of AI for generative art. These have both seen many updates since their initial release and are capable of much higher quality and realistic-looking images.
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Your curiosity fuels this exploration of the ever-evolving AI landscape. Share these insights with fellow AI enthusiasts ??. Got any thoughts? Questions? Comment or hit reply. See you next Sunday!
Warm regards,
- Kharee