Tag Archives: future

Teaching in an era of AI

Yesterday I wrote about Next level artificial intelligence and since then I’ve learned quite a bit about ChatGPT capabilities. It’s an amazing tool and people are catching on, with over 1 million users trying it out in just 6 days. The implications for teaching are huge. Students can use this AI to have original work created for them that will not show up in a Google search if a teacher suspects plagiarism.

For years now I’ve heard the mantra that teachers need to ask questions that you can’t find the answer to on Google. But those questions could be uniquely answered by Chat GPT with no way of a teacher knowing it wasn’t done by a student… other than the fact that the writing might be of a higher quality than usual.

I don’t see Chat GPT completely doing all the work, but it will be a tool students use to build on. For instance, I asked this AI to do the following:

Write a 5 paragraph essay that compares and contrasts Winston Smith in George Orwell’s novel 1984 with Bernard Marx in Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World.

This is what it came up with in about 5 seconds:

Winston Smith and Bernard Marx are both characters in dystopian novels, but they have some significant differences. In George Orwell’s 1984, Winston is a rebellious member of a totalitarian society who secretly resists the oppressive government. In contrast, Bernard Marx in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a member of a highly technologically advanced society where the government has complete control over its citizens.

One of the main differences between the two characters is their relationship with their respective governments. Winston is actively opposed to the government, and he goes to great lengths to avoid detection and to resist their control. Bernard, on the other hand, is more accepting of the government’s authority, and he is content to live within the strict societal boundaries set by the ruling class.

Another significant difference is their social status. Winston is a low-ranking member of society who works in the Ministry of Truth. He is not well-liked and is considered an outsider by many of his coworkers. Bernard, on the other hand, is a high-ranking member of society and is considered to be one of the ruling elite. He is well-liked and respected by his peers, and he has access to privileges and luxuries that are not available to the lower classes.

Additionally, the two characters have different views on love and relationships. In 1984, love is considered to be a dangerous emotion that must be suppressed. Winston, however, longs for intimacy and connection, and he ultimately falls in love with Julia despite the risks. In Brave New World, love is viewed as a primitive and outdated concept. Bernard, like many other members of society, is content with superficial relationships and casual sex.

Overall, Winston Smith and Bernard Marx are two characters who live in vastly different societies, and they have different attitudes towards the government and their own social status. While Winston is a rebellious outsider who longs for love and connection, Bernard is a conformist member of the ruling class who is content with the superficial relationships of his society.

Now I don’t think this is a great piece of literature, but I will tell you that the comparing and contrasting that was done offers insights I might not have made if I was writing this essay on my own. This would be a great starting point to a more comprehensive essay… which I could further get Chat GPT to assist me with.

This is a game changer for teaching. The question won’t be how do we stop students from using this, but rather how do we teach students to use this well? Mike Bouliane said in a comment on yesterday’s post, “Interesting post Dave. It seems we need to get better at asking questions, and in articulating them more precisely, just like in real life with people.“

Indeed. The AI isn’t going away, it’s just going to get better. When I asked the question above, I didn’t ask the AI to give specific examples as evidence. That was my first and only attempt. What happens if I iterate a bit more? Add more detail? Put the result back into the AI and ask it to make improvements?

We aren’t going to be able to teach around this tool, so we are probably going to have to teach students when and how to use it. Teaching in the age of very articulate AI is going to have to look different than teaching just a few years ago.

Next level artificial intelligence

Most of the images I use to accompany my blog are created by artificial intelligence (AI). For yesterday’s post on Childhood memories I wrote about a memory of being frozen from the walk home from school on a cold day. I put the following into DALL•E, “A boy walking on a sidewalk in a snowstorm, in an abstract watercolour ” and chose one of the 4 images this AI created:

Impressive to think that this artwork was created by a computer.

Well now there is a new AI called Chat GPT.

Chat GPT is language based… and when I say language based I mean just about any language, including code. Apparently it can write the code to create an APP if you tell it what features you want the APP to have. You can share code in any computer language and ask this AI to find errors. Or you can input an error message you got in your code and it will find the problem.

That’s great for coding, but it’s also very articulate and creative in most languages. I was interested in what it could write and so my first attempt was to have it write a blog post for me. So, this is what I asked, “Read a few posts at https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/ and write a post that the author would write”. It didn’t do exactly what I asked. Instead it created a promotional advertisement for my blog. Even though I didn’t get what I was asking for read this and see how well it is written:

As a writer, I am constantly on the lookout for inspiration and new ideas. One of my favorite sources of inspiration is reading the work of other writers. Recently, I came across the website https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/, and I was blown away by the quality of the writing I found there.

The posts on this website cover a wide range of topics, from personal reflections on life and love to thought-provoking discussions of current events. Each post is beautifully written, with clear and concise language that is a joy to read.

One of the things that really stood out to me about this website is the author’s ability to convey complex ideas in a way that is accessible to a wide audience. Whether you are a seasoned writer or someone who is just starting out, you will find something to love on this website.

In addition to the high-quality writing, I also appreciated the website’s clean and simple design. The layout is easy to navigate, and the posts are organized in a way that makes it easy to find what you are looking for.

If you are looking for a new source of inspiration, I highly recommend checking out https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/. I guarantee that you will not be disappointed.

Not a person, an artificial intelligence wrote that!

Here was my second attempt: “Write a short news story about the coming of age of artificial intelligence.”

And this is what Chat GPT came up with in just a few seconds after my query:

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the capabilities of artificial intelligence. This technology, which was once only found in science fiction novels, is now becoming a reality.

One of the key developments in the field of AI has been the advancement of machine learning algorithms. These algorithms allow computers to learn from data and improve their performance on a variety of tasks. This has led to the creation of intelligent systems that can perform a wide range of tasks, from recognizing images and speech, to playing games and even driving cars.

As AI technology continues to improve, it is being used in an increasingly wide range of applications. It is being used in healthcare to help diagnose diseases, in finance to make better investment decisions, and even in the criminal justice system to help predict the likelihood of recidivism.

Despite the many benefits of AI, there are also concerns about the potential negative impacts it could have. Some worry about the potential loss of jobs as more tasks are automated, and there are also concerns about the ethical implications of creating machines that can make decisions without human input.

Overall, the coming of age of AI is a significant development that has the potential to change our world in many ways. As the technology continues to evolve, it will be important to carefully consider the potential benefits and drawbacks of this powerful technology.

Impressive! You literally can not tell that a human didn’t write that article. Wow. AI is going to change the world as we know it… this is absolutely a new level of intelligence.

All atwitter

I’m fascinated by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. This is going to get interesting because while social media companies pretend to have community guidelines that are designed for the public good, they are private companies that can make arbitrary decisions… and they often do. There are always stories in the news about how certain perspectives are silenced, or questions about why some extreme groups are banned while others are not.

But in the end, they are private companies and they can make arbitrary decisions. Elon wasted no time making some of his own:

“Elon Musk fired key Twitter executives Thursday, one of his first moves as the official owner of the social media platform. According to reports from the New York Times, CNBC, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and other outlets, Musk fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, general counsel Sean Edgett, and head of legal policy, trust and safety Vijaya Gadde.” ~ TechCrunch

I suspect that he is going to make some very subjective decisions in the coming weeks, and while the narrative used to be, “we are looking out for you as best as we can,” Elon’s message will be more like, “I’m running a private company and I make the decisions.” He will say he is trying to ‘clean up’ Twitter, but his decision-making will be very personal and I’m not sure his perspective on public good will be transparent or based on public feedback.

I’m uncertain where he’s going to take Twitter, but I don’t think the social media landscape will look the same 6 months from now.

Cold, dark universe

Take a half hour and watch TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time

The current theories about the future of the universe is that it will expand into vast, empty, cold darkness. Even before all this happens the universe will be a very lonely place with stars moving away so fast that our telescopes would not be able to see them. Of course the timeline for this happening is so unfathomably long it simply isn’t conceivable. How inconceivable?

Life will only be possible for this percentage of time of the universe’s existence:

This would be utterly depressing if the scale of time wasn’t so enormous. But on this scale, if I looked forward 1,000 generations, that too would be a blip in time, with almost no change in the universe described in this film happening yet. We have a lot more immediate concerns about humanity’s survival than the expansion and aging of the universe.

I wonder if our universe isn’t like a lonely atom in empty space… a simple speck in a multiverse of distant universes that are oblivious to the existence of other atom-like universes also floating in empty space. Maybe some universes are aware of each other, quantum entangled with each other, playing out inverse existences. And maybe they are all entangled, universe-particles in a cosmic wave, vibrating in every possible direction. Grab your surfboards, it’s time to surf the cosmos.

Strong Opinions, Weakly Held

Stanford University professor Paul Saffo is a futurist and future forecaster who coined the phrase, “Strong opinions, weakly held.”

I love this idea. One of the biggest problems today is that too many people have strong opinions that are strongly held. Well, maybe the biggest problem is that too many people have incorrect, unsubstantiated, or uninformed strong opinions that are strongly held. And these poorly formulated strong opinions are exactly the kind of thing that gets magnified on social media… they incite interaction that is more likely to become viral by attracting both opposing views, and the attention of equally like minded, strongly held opinions. Strong opinions, weakly held don’t pull as much social media attention, mainly because these aren’t opinions that people need to shout about online.

The power of strong opinions, weakly held is that ‘strong opinions’ allow you to ‘see’ and be passionate about your perspective, while being ‘loosely held’ allows you to take newly found information and adjust or change your strong opinions.

Case in point: Flat Earthers are the perfect example of strong opinions strongly held. Any evidence given to them doesn’t matter, it’s immediately cast as false or contrived by people conspiring against them. And so no matter the proof given to them, their strong opinion of a flat earth stay unchanged.

Imagine if doctors and scientists held such strong opinions? We’d probably still be blood letting with leaches to treat a fever, and not washing our hands before dealing with open wounds, surgery, and childbirth. Progress comes from being able to let go of conventions and norms that keep us stuck in our current frame of thinking.

Nothing wrong with strong opinions, they are just better off loosely held.

4-day work week

Maybe it’s my age, but I really wish the work week was just 4 days long. Too often a weekend feels too short. It’s not even about rest, it’s about wanting to do more in such a short time.

We’ve had a few 3-day weekends recently and I’ve really noticed a significant difference compared to this past 2-day weekend. I got stuff done beyond the ‘need to do’ stuff when I had one more day.

I don’t know the history behind the 5-day work week, and frankly I don’t care to look it up. It doesn’t matter what the reason was, it just doesn’t seem necessary anymore. Add an hour a day to the school day, Monday to Thursday, and Fridays get added to the weekend.

What would it take to make this happen? Whose game to try?

Food and fuel insecurity

Since the pandemic started we’ve seen shortages in both consumable items and merchandise, which we haven’t seen before in my lifetime. I recently paid over $2.40 per litre of gas, and can remember being upset at having to pay over $2 not that long ago. Early in the pandemic it was toilet paper that was scarce to find, but that was driven by fear of shortages. More recently I’ve seen the back of empty shelves where I have not seen them before, ranging from items in the butcher section, to baking items, to well known products that usually seem to have an endless supply.

And I think things will get worse before they get better.

Parts of Europe are being deforested by concerned citizens collecting firewood, by people uncertain if they will be able to afford heating fuel in the coming winter. Food banks are reporting record number of people needing their service. And certain items including basic food items will be both in short supply and more expensive than ever before.

This is not fear mongering, and it’s also not all doom and gloom, end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it, but life in general is going to get more expensive with less purchasing power and choice for a while.

How will this pan out over the next few years? It’s hard to guess because the issues of inflation, money devaluation, questions of war, and a shaky stock market are far beyond my understanding. What I suspect is that this global economic downturn is not something we will just have to deal with this winter, but something that we will deal with through all of 2023 and beyond.

We can live without our favourite brand of cereal in our grocery stores. We can wait longer than we hoped for an appliance or a new car to arrive after ordering it. What we can’t do is sustain gas and food prices that make it impossible for lower-middle class and poorer families to sustain themselves on their inflation-diminishing salaries for an extended period of time… while grocery stores and oil companies generate record quarters of profits. At what point do large corporations recognize that their record profits will fall when a significant part of the population has no buying power?

My fear is that it has to get a lot worse before significant system change will happen. In the mean time, prepare to watch your purchasing power fall over the next year and beyond.

AI video

If you’ve seen my blog on social media or on my website (as opposed to in your mailbox), you’ve seen images I created in Dall•E 2. Like these, along with my requests that created them:

“A man walking in a forest path and hugging a tree in a pastel drawing”

“A Picasso drawing of a young man walking in a forest surrounded by clocks”

“A small man on a giant piece of paper trying to write with an oversized pen that is bigger than the person”

“A person standing at the intersection of a path that leads to a choice of a dark, loomy forest or a bright open field in a van Gogh style”

“A transparent head with a tree, an ocean wave, cogs, math symbols, a protractor, and science lab equipment inside the brain. ”

“A hand squeezing the film coming out of a reel of film with a movie projector in the background in a vector style”

“A vapourware drawing of a kid running with a kite in his hand. ”

“Headphones in the ear of a dark haired man, in a Kandinsky style ”

—-

I write a description and it gives me 4 options to choose from. I don’t always get exactly what I had in mind, but if it’s too far off from my expectation then I just refine my wording and try again.

Well now Meta AI has come up with Make-A-Video, which creates video clips from descriptions. The examples on the website download onto my phone as images rather than video clips, so you’ll need to visit there to see them.

This is exciting stuff in the field of video creation and soon it will also become so good that you won’t be able to distinguish it from a real video. The creativity that’s possible is exciting. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg and soon we’ll see all kinds of fascinating uses for this tool.

Artificial Intelligence is just getting better and better and in the field of creative arts this is going to really change the landscape of what is possible.

(Also, I recognize that there are some scary deep fake implications, but for now I’m just excited to see what people do creatively with this tool.)

Unsustainable and increasing inequality

Here is page 7 of an OXFAM report, Inequity Kills:

What’s not necessarily well known is that the Forbes and Bloomberg ‘Top 10 Richest’ lists never includes some of the richest and wealthiest families which have accumulated wealth above and beyond anyone on these lists… there is a lot more extreme wealth than these lists suggest.

Add to this the first two sentences in the report’s summary:

“A new billionaire has been created every 26 hours since the pandemic began. 6 The world’s 10 richest men have doubled their fortunes, while over 160 million people are projected to have been pushed into poverty.”

This kind of lopsided wealth distribution simply can’t be sustained. And yet in the hardest times of the pandemic, when many low wage people couldn’t work, prices and inflation skyrocketed while corporations that produce oil, and sell groceries, reported their greatest profits in years. They also returned their largest dividends to stock holders… most of whom are already very rich and can afford to hold a significant amount of stocks. We’ve all heard the saying, ‘The rich get richer while the poor get poorer,’ and it seems that this is more true now than it ever has.

I stumbled onto this report after reading this article on NPR, “Move over, Jeff Bezos. India’s richest man is now wealthier than the Amazon founder“. The Billionaire club used to be almost exclusively a Saudi and USA thing, other than old family wealth, but now it’s a global phenomenon. Everywhere in the world there are small groups of people accumulating wealth in significant size, while there are populations in significant size that are dropping below the poverty line. This simply isn’t sustainable. That said, I don’t see anything upsetting this trend in the near future. Further, I’m at a loss to think of how this will change in the coming years?

At what point does a society with a few people owning more than half of the global wealth become unproductive for the wealthy? The abject poor can’t by the products the rich manufacture. The suffering middle class with less-than-ever disposable income, and more-than-ever accumulated debt soon won’t be able to help either. So what breaks? How does this self-correct?

I certainly don’t have any answers.

Nationalism vs Globalism

I remember reading The World is Flat back in 2006 and thinking about how our world had changed.

I hired a patent lawyer in India shortly after that and paid less than 10% of what I would have paid in Canada (a story for another time). I recognized the value of outsourcing, and seeing the entire globe as a single supply chain. It was a time of breaking down walls and getting access to whatever you needed, wherever you needed it, faster and cheaper. We have benefited greatly from this as consumers of products, many of which are made of component parts that are manufactured in different countries around the world, then delivered to our local stores, or dropped off at our doorstep.

But the tides are changing and we could very well see a move away from the globalization we’ve been benefiting from. Shortages and supply chain issues have been issues across the globe. War, fuel costs, inflation (or stagflation), compounded with severe weather systems affecting crops, have all led to things we haven’t seen in decades: Jumps in prices, delays in delivery, and shortages in products leaving some shelves bare in our grocery store.

This is all leading to a shift from globalism to nationalism. Why would a country export a product desperately needed in their own country? Why rely on a component part being made slightly cheaper in another country when shipping and supply are causing delays in production of the final product? What is a country to do when neighbouring countries don’t trade enough food, because they are focussing on feeding themselves? And the food that is coming in is very expensive due to increased transportation costs.

All these changes lead to a more nationalistic approach. An approach counter to the globalization that brought us such prosperity, with an endless supply of cheap food and goods. Is this the end of globalization? Probably not, but it could be the start of a rebalancing where countries get more nationalistic, and things get tougher for a while.

High prices, shortages of products, and a focus on countries protecting themselves from dependencies on other countries…dependencies that we relied on to create a global economy that brought us better, and more affordable products faster than ever before. Things really might get worse before they get better. And while I believe that there will be a return to globalization, I’m not convinced it will happen any time soon.