Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Playing with Chat GPT

Yesterday I asked Chat GPT for blog post ideas for a blog that discusses ‘education, learning, and general life lessons‘. This is what it responded with:

I then chose #4 and asked: Write a short blog post titled, “The Role of Reflection in Learning” on the topic of Exploring the significance of reflective practices in enhancing learning and personal growth.

This is what Chat GPT came up with:

Would I ever just use Chat GPT to write my Daily Ink? No. But would I use it as a launching pad to help me generate ideas, or help me write a first draft? Absolutely. However, that’s just me. What you see above will be the kind of thing people who generate daily posts as part of a paid gig will do regularly. Sure they will make it sound a bit less formal, a bit more natural or conversational… but there are actually other Artificial Intelligences (yes plural, AI is not a single thing) which will do this and make it undetectable should you ask an AI detector if a human wrote it. Need something longer, like a school essay? Just ask Chat GPT to expand each of the 5 points into full paragraphs.

I didn’t iterate. I didn’t ask a more detailed question. I didn’t ask Chat GPT to further develop the ideas… If I did, it would make the above results even better and it would do so in a matter of seconds. And educators, try as you might, you can’t police it.

We are not far away from finding more AI written (or AI assisted) content on the internet than just purely human generated content… and we won’t know the difference.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — 

Update: (…I came back to this a few hours later.)

TLDR: The question isn’t how good is the AI tool, the question is, “How good are my prompts?”

I followed up and requested Chap GPT to, “Write the above blog post in a more conversational manner, using paragraphs without numbering or section titles.”
Here is the updated version:

The Role of Reflection in Learning

In the fast-paced world of education, where we’re constantly bombarded with information, it’s important to take a step back and reflect on our learning journey. Reflection is a powerful tool that not only enhances our understanding but also fosters personal growth. So, let’s dive into the significance of reflective practices and how they can positively impact our learning experiences.

When we engage in reflection, we go beyond surface-level learning. It provides us with an opportunity to delve deeper into our knowledge and identify any gaps in our understanding. By pausing, processing, and evaluating what we’ve learned, we can connect the dots and develop a more comprehensive understanding of the subject matter. Whether it’s through journaling, discussions, or self-assessment, reflection allows us to make sense of complex concepts and strengthen our grasp on the material.

But reflection goes beyond academic understanding. It also enhances our self-awareness, which is a crucial aspect of personal growth. By reflecting on our learning process, we become more conscious of our strengths, weaknesses, and preferred learning styles. This self-awareness empowers us to tailor our learning strategies, seek additional support when needed, and leverage our strengths to maximize our potential. It’s like having a roadmap that guides us towards effective learning.

Another great benefit of reflection is its ability to foster critical thinking skills. When we reflect, we engage in thoughtful analysis, evaluation, and synthesis of information. We question assumptions, challenge existing ideas, and gain a deeper understanding of various perspectives. This critical thinking not only sharpens our intellect but also enhances our problem-solving abilities. It equips us with the skills needed to tackle real-world challenges with confidence and creativity.

Reflection is also a catalyst for continuous improvement. Learning is a lifelong journey, and reflection plays a vital role in our growth. By reflecting on our successes and failures, we can identify areas for improvement and set meaningful goals. Regular self-reflection allows us to track our progress, celebrate achievements, and make necessary adjustments to our learning strategies. It promotes a growth mindset, inspiring us to embrace challenges, persist through obstacles, and strive for excellence.

In addition to all these benefits, reflection fosters metacognition, which is our ability to think about our own thinking. When we engage in metacognitive practices, such as reflecting on our learning process, monitoring our comprehension, and evaluating our strategies, we become more self-regulated learners. This metacognitive awareness empowers us to take control of our learning, adapt our approaches, and become more efficient and effective learners overall.

So, let’s make a conscious effort to pause, reflect, and embark on a transformative learning journey filled with growth, insight, and personal development. By embracing reflective practices, we deepen our understanding, foster self-awareness, sharpen critical thinking skills, promote continuous improvement, and cultivate metacognitive abilities. It’s time to unlock the true potential of our learning experiences through the power of reflection.

Then I followed up with, “Try again, still more conversational and less like an essay. Vary sentence and paragraph length, and end with a thought provoking question.”

I didn’t like what it came up with so I followed up one more time with, “This last version is a bit too conversational, try again and this time don’t start sentences with coordinating conjunctions like ‘But’ and ‘So’. Also change the first sentence so it less formal.”

Reflection in Learning: Unleashing the Power Within

In the whirlwind of education, where information bombards us from all directions, it’s easy to overlook the importance of reflection in our learning journey. We often rush from one lesson to the next, absorbing knowledge without truly digesting it. But what if we hit the pause button and took a moment to reflect?

Reflection goes beyond simply memorizing facts and figures. It’s a transformative process that allows us to delve deeper into our thoughts, experiences, and understanding of the subjects we encounter. It’s like shining a spotlight on our minds and examining everything we’ve absorbed in a more meaningful way.

What’s truly remarkable about reflection is that it extends beyond academia. It plays a crucial role in our personal growth as well. By engaging in reflection, we become more aware of our strengths, weaknesses, and unique learning styles. It’s like getting to know ourselves as learners on a whole new level. This self-awareness empowers us to tailor our learning strategies and leverage our strengths to maximize our potential.

Reflection isn’t a passive exercise; it’s an active one that fuels critical thinking. When we reflect, we question assumptions, evaluate information, and connect the dots. It enables us to go beyond the surface-level understanding and dive into the deeper layers of knowledge. This kind of thinking not only expands our intellectual capacity but also equips us with the skills to tackle real-world challenges with confidence and creativity.

Yet, the power of reflection doesn’t stop there. It serves as a catalyst for growth and continuous improvement. When we take the time to reflect on our learning journey, we identify areas where we can enhance our skills and knowledge. We set meaningful goals and work diligently towards them. It’s like having a personal roadmap for our own development, guiding us towards excellence and progress.

Intriguingly, reflection is also about metacognition – thinking about our own thinking. By engaging in metacognitive practices, such as reflecting on our learning process or evaluating our strategies, we become self-regulated learners. We take charge of our learning experience, adapt our approaches, and become more efficient and effective learners overall. It’s like having an internal compass that helps us navigate the vast landscape of knowledge.

So, let’s embrace the power of reflection. Let’s pause, process, and ponder on what we’ve learned. When we do, we unlock the true potential of our learning experiences. We deepen our understanding, foster self-awareness, sharpen critical thinking skills, and pave the way for continuous growth and personal transformation.

Have you taken a moment to reflect on your learning journey lately? What insights have you gained? How has reflection impacted your personal growth? Share your valuable thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

I think it would take one final personal edit, tweaking as I read it over once, and I’d have a pretty good blog post that’s both insightful and hard to identify as AI generated.

The question isn’t how good is the AI tool, the question is, “How good are my prompts?”

From the horses mouth

I’ve already seen some really good deep fakes of famous people that both look and sound real. That was over a year ago and the technology is far better now. I just watched this NBC Nightly News clip on TikTok:

The whole video is cautionary and a little scary, looking at Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a possible threat to Humanity. At the 2:17 minute mark this was said,

“AI tools can already mimic voices, ace exams, create art, and diagnose diseases. And they are getting smarter every day.

In two years by the time of the election, human beings will not be able to tell the difference between what is real and what is fake.”

It occurred to me that the lead up to the next US election is going to include countless deep fakes that will be virally shared and reposted and re-shared, which will be far more convincing than anything we’ve seen so far. The clever ones won’t be far fetched in content, they will be convincing because they will subtly send people down a specific narrative without being outrageous or egregious and easy to spot. For example: Biden supporting and endorsing some ultra-left wing, ‘woke’ group the makes the right outraged. Or Trump speaking to a friend about how he hates guns and the NRA. Each of these can be completely fabricated and completely convincing.

This is really scary because where you get your news will be vitally important. Hopefully major news outlets would vet the videos and verify authenticity before sharing, but digital newspapers are always worried about missing the scoop and letting other networks go viral. Many less reputable sites will share the fake videos just because it fits their narrative. Other sites will knowingly share the fake videos because their intent is to mislead, and to feed anger and vitriol to their naive followers.

Conspiracies will be magnified and any mention of the videos being fake will be counter argued that reports of the video being faked are just the way the government is trying to keep the truth from you. The message being, the fakes are real and the reports of them being fake is the fake news. People already believe fake articles with no fact-checking, they are going to be completely fooled by extremely convincing fake videos.

My advice, find websites that you trust and make sure the web url is correct. Follow people you trust and question anything suspicious from them that isn’t from your trusted sites. If it’s not from your trusted site, if it’s not right from the horses mouth and it seems suspicious, consider it fake until you verify.

How serious is this? You don’t have to be famous to be deep faked. Here is a story of a mom thinking she was talking to her kidnapped daughter, convinced it was her voice on the phone with her kidnappers, but it was a fake and her daughter was upstairs in her room. The point of the video is to have a safe word with your family because anyone’s voice can be easily faked.

We are entering a time when people are defining truth differently, when fakes seem more like truth, and when sources of information are going to be as important as the information itself.

Unrecognizable future

Did you ever see the movie Blast from the Past? Here is the premise from Wikipedia:

The film focuses on a naive 35-year-old man, Adam Webber, who has spent his entire life (1962-1997) living in a Cold War-era fallout shelter built by his survivalist, anti-Communist father, who believes the United States has suffered a Soviet nuclear attack (in reality, a plane crashed into their house). When the doors unlock after 35 years (the amount of time his father believes the nuclear fallout will take to clear), Adam emerges into the modern world, where his innocence and old-fashioned views put him at comedic odds with others.

It’s a cute movie. It makes me wonder what it would be like for someone today to jump ahead and see what the future is like 35 years from now? What does life look like in 2058?

Will work look any like it does today? What about transportation? Money? Space flight? Religion? Politics? Artificial intelligence (AI) and computing?

There is so much that could, and will, be different from today. Some of these things might look similar, but some are going to look considerably different. I can’t imagine a world 35 years from now being less different today than 1997 was to 1962. Life in 2058 will be unrecognizable compared to life today.

For example: The entire monetary system is going to be digital. The workforce is going to be mostly different depending on how much AI has undermined many of today’s jobs. That same AI is going to change the way we integrate technology. Today it’s our phones that seem to be getting smarter and smarter but 35 years from now it will be integrated/cyborg technology that will be enhancing and enriching our lives.

I can imagine glasses or contact lenses or implants that give us information like map directions, names and details about people we meet, and even health data like heads up display data in a military jet today. I can imagine this working in a way with a hearing implant that allows us to have a video conversation like FaceTime on our phone today. Phones won’t be something we carry, they will be something embedded as part of the tools we wear or tools we integrate into implants.

If you don’t think that things will be drastically different than now, then you haven’t paid attention to the exponential rate of change that has happened since the 1990’s. In 1990 there was no Amazon, Deep Blue was 7 years away from beating world Chess champion Garry Kasparov, there were no smart phones, no electric cars, and Google was still 8 years away from being a company. Author Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Smart phones today would seem like magic in 1990. What does 2058 hold for us that will seem like nothing less than magic to us today? It’s cliche to say, but time will tell.

Fear & Teaching

I just read an interesting article, ‘ChatGPT is going to change education, not destroy it‘, and got to this sentence about a teacher using it in her classroom:

“Not all these approaches will be instantly successful, of course. Donahoe and her students came up with guidelines for using ChatGPT together, but “it may be that we get to the end of this class and I think this absolutely did not work,” she says. “This is still an ongoing experiment.”

The moment I read this I thought, ‘This is a teacher I’d love to work with!’ What’s her approach? Let me summarize it: ‘Here is a new tool, how can I use it in my classroom to help my students learn? Oh, and sometimes what I try won’t work, but if every experiment worked well then we wouldn’t be learning.’

I see so much fear when a new tool enters schools: Ban calculators, ban smartphones, ban Wikipedia, ban Chat GPT… But there are always teachers doing the opposite, wanting to use rather than ban new tools. Teachers who are willing to try new things. Teachers who know that some lessons will flop, and go in unexpected and unintended directions, yet see the value in trying. These teachers can look long term and see the worthy benefits of trying something new, they are unafraid to have a lesson fail on the path of being innovative.

It’s that lack of fear of flopping that I love to see in teachers. There’s a wide gap between, ‘That failed, how embarrassing. I’ll never do that again!’ and ‘Well, that didn’t work! I wonder what I can do next time to make it better?’ The former is quite fixed in their ways, and the latter is considerably more flexible. While fear rules the former, there is a kind of fearlessness in the latter.

Tools like Chat GPT are absolutely going to change education. I’m excited to see some fearless educators figuring out how best to use it, (and many new tools like it), in their classrooms, and with their students. The teachers willing to iterate, try, fail, and learn to use these tools are going to take their students a lot farther and learn a lot more than in places where these tools will be banned, blocked, and shunned.

Capability and Time

This post is about General Artificial Intelligence, but I’m going on a bird walk first.

My dad has had a health setback and will be on a long road to recovery. I heard him talking about his recovery plans and I felt had to share a personal example with him. When I went through 6 months of chronic fatigue I finally found relief after I discovered that I had a severe Vitamin D deficiency and started taking high dose supplements. Here’s the thing, I saw positive results in just 3 days… I went from hearing my alarm and wondering how I could physically get out of bed, to feeling normal when I woke up in just a matter of days of taking suppliments. However, it took over 6 months to recover to the point where I could put my treadmill within 90% of what I could do before the fatigue hit me. My capabilities improved, but much slower than I thought would happen. We are good at setting goals and knowing what’s possible, but we often overestimate how fast we can achieve those goals.

But I digress (my dad’s favourite thing to say when he finishes a bird walks on his way to making a point.)

Chat GPT and similar language predicting software are still pretty far away from artificial general intelligence, and the question is: How far away are we? How far away are we from a computer being able to out-think, out-comprehend, and our problem-solve the brightest of humans? Not just on one task, like they do on competing in Chess or Go, rather in ‘general’ terms, with any task.

I think we are further away in time than most people think (at least those people who think that artificial general intelligence is possible). I think there needs to be at least one if not a few technological leaps that need to happen first, and I think this will take longer than expected to happen.

The hoverboard and flying cars in the movie Back to the Future may not be too far away, but the ‘future’ in the 1987 movie was supposed to be 2015.

Are we going to achieve Artificial General Intelligence any time soon? I doubt it. I think we need a couple quantum leaps in our knowledge first. But when this happens, computers will instantly be much smarter than us. They will be far more capable than humans at that point. So the new question isn’t about when this will happen, but rather what we do when it does happens? Because I’m not a fan of a non-human intelligence looking at humans the way we think about stupid chickens, or even smart pets. What happens when thé Artificial Intelligence we create sees us as stupid, weak animals? Well, I guess time will tell (but don’t think that’s any time too soon).

Fully integrated and invisible AI

We are moving into a new economic revolution. Not since the Industrial Revolution have we seen technology that will change the nature of work so drastically. Artificial Intelligence is about to be weaved so deeply into our lives that we will not know where it starts and ends. And while it’s not completely new to have our work enhanced by AI, the depth of influence and ease of use will make it transformational while also slowly becoming invisible.

What do I mean by invisible? We already use simple forms of AI in everyday life without thinking about it: We have autocorrect correcting our spelling; we have cars that warn us when we drift outside our lane or flash in our rear view mirrors when it’s not safe to change lanes; and, we trust autopilot to do the majority of flying on plane trips around the world. The leap to self-driving cars might have seemed incredible a few years ago, but now you can board a self-driving taxi in San Francisco.

Chat GP3, and now Chat Gp4, are going to change the very nature of work for many people in the coming months and years. Have a look at what Microsoft Copilot is about to offer:

More specifically:

Soon tools like this, aptly named Copilot, will become as useful and integrated into what we do as autocorrect is today. Take meeting notes? Why bother, just record the meeting and ask AI to generate both the notes and the next step tasks. Create a PowerPoint to present new information? Instead, share the information with Copilot and have it create the PowerPoint. Create a website? How about sketching it on the back of a napkin, sharing a picture of it and having Chat GP4 write the code and build the website.

AI is going to redefine the work of many people faster than any time in history, and the technology is going to be so integrated into the things we do daily that the use of AI will quickly become invisible… ever present, very useful, and unnoticed.

Feeding the (AI) brain

I worry about the training of Artificial Intelligence using the internet as the main source of information. One of the biggest challenges in teaching AI is in teaching it how to group things. Unless a group is clearly identified, it’s not a group. That’s ok when counting items, but not ideas. What is fact vs fiction? What is truth vs a lie vs an embellishment vs an exaggeration vs a theory vs a really, really bad theory?

There are some dark places on the internet. There are some deeply flawed ideas about culture, race, gender, politics, and even health and fitness. There are porn sites that objectify women, and anti-science websites that read like they are reporting out facts. There is a lot of ‘stupid shit’ on the internet. How is this information grouped by not-yet intelligent AI systems?

There is the old saying, ‘Garbage in, garbage out’, and essentially that’s my concern. Any form of artificial general intelligence is only as good as the intelligence put into the system, and while the internet is a great source of intelligent information it’s also a cesspool of ridiculous information that’s equally as easy to find. I’m not sure these two dichotomous forms of information are being grouped by AI systems in a meaningful and wise way… mainly because we aren’t smart enough to program these systems well enough to know the difference.

The tools we have for searching the internet are based on algorithms that are constantly gamed by SEO techniques and search is based on words, not ideas. The best ideas on the internet are not the ones necessarily most linked to, and often bad ideas get more clicks, likes, and attention. How does an AI weigh this? How does it group these ideas? And what conclusions does the AI make? Because the reality is that the AI needs to make decisions or it wouldn’t be considered intelligent. Are those decisions ones ‘we’ are going to want it to make? If the internet is the the main database of information then I doubt it.

When search engines become answer engines

One if the most alarming things I’ve read and heard about since I started mentioning Chat GPT and the use of predictive AI tools is that the model for profitability of content creators is going to have to change. With Google and Bing both embedding AI enhanced ‘answers’ as part of their search results, this is going to have a dramatic impact on website visits, (click-throughs and advertising views), content creators count on.

Here is a link to a very long but interesting essay by Alberto Romero on the subject: Google vs Microsoft: Microsoft’s New Bing Is a Paradigm Change for Search and the Browser

This is an excerpt from the section titled, ‘With great power comes great responsibility’,

“Giving value back to creators
One of the core business aspects of search is the reciprocal relationship between the owners of websites (content creators and publishers) and the owners of the search engines (e.g. Google and Microsoft). The relationship is based on what Nadella refers to as “fair use.” Website owners provide search engines with content and the engines give back in form of traffic (or maybe revenue, etc.). Also, search engine owners run ads to extract some profit from the service while keeping it free for the user (a business model that Google popularized and on top of which it amassed a fortune).”

and a little further down,

“…Sridhar Ramaswamy, ex-Google SVP and founder of Neva (a direct competitor of Bing and Google Search), says that “as search engines become answer engines, referral traffic will drop! It’s happened before: Google featured snippets caused this on 10-20% of queries in the past.”

So, getting a response from your search query already has a historical track record of reducing referral traffic and now search is going to get significantly better at answering questions without needing to click through to a website.

What is human (as opposed to Artificial Intelligence) created content going to look like in the future when search answers your questions that would normally require you to visit a website? What happens to creator and publisher profitability when search engines become answer engines?

AI, Evil, and Ethics

Google is launching Bard, its version of Chat GPT, connected to search, and connected live to the internet. Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, shared yesterday, “An important next step on our AI journey“. In discussing the release of Bard, Sundar said,

“We’ll combine external feedback with our own internal testing to make sure Bard’s responses meet a high bar for quality, safety and groundedness in real-world information.”

Following the link above led me to this next link:

“In addition to producing responses that humans judge as sensible, interesting, and specific to the context, dialog models should adhere to Responsible AI practices, and avoid making factual statements that are not supported by external information sources.”

I am quite intrigued by what principles Google is using to guide the design and use of Artificial Intelligence. You can go to the links for the expanded description, but here are Google’s Responsible AI practices:

“Objectives for AI applications

We will assess AI applications in view of the following objectives. We believe that AI should:

1. Be socially beneficial.

2. Avoid creating or reinforcing unfair bias.

3. Be built and tested for safety.

4. Be accountable to people.

5. Incorporate privacy design principles.

6. Uphold high standards of scientific excellence.

7. Be made available for uses that accord with these principles.”

But these principles aren’t enough, they are the list of ‘good’ directions, and so there are also the ‘Thou Shalt Nots’ added below these principles:

“AI applications we will not pursue

In addition to the above objectives, we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.

  2. Weapons or other technologies whose principal purpose or implementation is to cause or directly facilitate injury to people.

  3. Technologies that gather or use information for surveillance violating internationally accepted norms.

  4. Technologies whose purpose contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.

As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve.”

I remember when Google used to share its motto “Don’t be evil”.

These principles remind me of the motto. The interesting vibe I get from the principles and the ‘Thou Shalt Not’ list of things the AI will not pursue is this:

‘How can we say we will try to be ethical without: a) mentioning ethics; and b) admitting this is an imperfect science without admitting that we are guaranteed to make mistakes along the way?’

Here is the most obvious statement that these Google principles and guidelines are all about ethics without using the word ethics:

“…we will not design or deploy AI in the following application areas:

  1. Technologies that cause or are likely to cause overall harm. Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risks, and will incorporate appropriate safety constraints.”

You can’t get to, “Where there is a material risk of harm, we will proceed only where we believe that the benefits substantially outweigh the risk“… Without talking aboutethics. Who is the ‘we’ in ‘we believe’? Who is deciding what benefits outweigh what risks? Who determines what is ‘substantial’ in the weighting of benefits versus risks? Going back to Principle 2, how is bias being determined or measured?

The cold hard reality is that the best Google, and Chat GPT, and all AI and predictive text models can do is, ‘Try to do less evil than good’ or maybe just, ‘Make it harder to do evil than good.’

The ethics will always trail the technological capabilities of the tool, and guiding principles are a method to catch wrongdoing, not prevent it. With respect to the list of things AI will not pursue, “As our experience in this space deepens, this list may evolve“… Is a way of saying, ‘We will learn of ways that this tool will be abused and then add to this list.

The best possible goals of designers of these AI technologies will be to do less evil than good… The big question is: How to do this ethically when it seems these companies are scared to talk directly about ethics?

You can’t police it

I said Chat GPT is a game changer in education in my post Fear of Disruptive Technology. Then I started to see more and more social media posts sharing that Artificial Intelligence (AI) detectors can identify passages written by AI. But that doesn’t mean a person can’t use a tool like Chat GPT and then do some of their own editing. Or, as seen here: just input the AI written text into CopyGenius.io and ‘rephrase’, and then AI detectors can’t recognize the text as written by AI.

The first instinct with combating new technology is to ban and/or police it: No cell phones in class, leave them in your lockers; You can’t use Wikipedia as a source; Block Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok on the school wifi. These are all gut reactions to new technologies that frame the problem as policeable… Teachers are not teachers, they aren’t teaching, when they are being police.

Read that last sentence again. Let it sink in. We aren’t going to police away student use of AI writing tools, so maybe we should embrace these tools and help manage how they are used. We can teach students how to use AI appropriately and effectively. Teach rather than police.