Forget artificial intelligence breaking free of human control and taking over the world. A far more pressing concern is how today’s generative AI tools will transform the labor market. Some experts envisage a world of increased productivity and job satisfaction; others, a landscape of mass unemployment and social upheaval. Someone with a bird's-eye view of the situation is Mary Daly, CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, part of the national system responsible for setting monetary policy, maintaining a stable financial system, and ensuring maximal employment. Daly, a labor market economist by training, is especially interested in how generative AI might change the labor market picture.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
Meta AI releases OpenEQA to spur ’embodied intelligence’ in artificial agents - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
Meta AI researchers today released OpenEQA, a new open-source benchmark dataset that aims to measure an artificial intelligence system’s capacity for “embodied question answering” — developing an understanding of the real world that allows it to answer natural language questions about an environment. The dataset, which Meta is positioning as a key benchmark for the nascent field of “embodied AI,” contains over 1,600 questions about more than 180 different real-world environments like homes and offices. These span seven question categories that thoroughly test an AI’s abilities in skills like object and attribute recognition, spatial and functional reasoning, and commonsense knowledge. “Against this backdrop, we propose that Embodied Question Answering (EQA) is both a useful end-application as well as a means to evaluate an agent’s understanding of the world,” the researchers wrote in a paper released today.
Degrees Earned Fall Again, Certificates Rise - Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed
Fewer people are earning degrees for the second year in a row, but certificates are having a moment, according to a new report. The latest “Undergraduate Degree Earners” report, released Thursday, showed that almost 100,000 fewer people earned bachelor’s and associate degrees or certificates during the 2022–23 academic year, a 2.8 percent decrease. The number of certificate earners, meanwhile, is higher than it’s been in a decade, the report found. Students who earned these kinds of credentials increased by about 4 percent.
Wednesday, April 17, 2024
Generative AI Update for 2024 - Ray Schroeder and Katherine Kerpan, the European Business Review
Any update on this technology has to carry the caveat that it is changing day by day and that research and development is, in most cases, months ahead of what is available to the general public. We are now in a period of highly competitive one-upmanship in the features, speed, security, and reliability of GenAI products. As the top dozen or so competitors seek to build consumer and corporate markets, we will see usage expand. Currently, business and industry has effectively applied the technology to marketing, accounting, industry research, product development, trend analysis, report writing, and predictive applications. Clearly, GenAI has the potential to be a game-changer in the coming year. In this article, we will examine a number of the key changes, challenges, and opportunities that can be expected by the end of the year.
Google Announces STUNNING AI Agents | Google Cloud Keynote AI Agents - Wes Roth, YouTube
It looks like Google is going all in on AI agents the latest Google Cloud next keynote presentation which covers some of the new product developments across Google had one major theme and that is AI agents. AI agents for customer service. AI agents for helping your employees get more stuff done for marketing, for driving, for analyzing vast quantities of data, for creating content, and podcasts and videos. AI agents for cyber security, for coding, for deploying new e-commerce Pages. AI agents for everything.
Big tech unites around AI workforce training for 100M workers - Lindsey Wilkinson, CIO Dive
Microsoft, Google, IBM, Intel, SAP and Cisco plan to collectively train nearly 100 million technology workers over the next ten years to mitigate AI’s disruption to the workforce, the companies said Friday in an announcement. The group, which includes Accenture, Eightfold and Indeed, plans to evaluate the impact of AI on 56 information and communication technology job roles and provide training recommendations. The findings, which will be released in a report, intend to offer practical insights for employers. The efforts are part of a Cisco-led consortium focused on assessing AI’s impact on technology jobs, identifying skills development pathways and training workers. More details on the initiative are expected to arrive in the coming months.
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
GPT-5: 4 New Features We Want to See - Maxwell Timothy, Make Use Of
OpenAI's GPT-4 is currently the best generative AI tool on the market, but that doesn't mean we're not looking to the future. With OpenAI CEO Sam Altman regularly dropping hints about GPT-5, it seems likely we'll see a new, upgraded AI model before long. [skipping to wish #3] So, if GPT-5 ships with GPT Agents, you could ask it to "build a portfolio website for Maxwell Timothy" rather than just "write me a code for the homepage." GPT-5 would then theoretically be able to self-prompt by invoking expert AI agents to handle the various subtasks needed to build a website. It might invoke one GPT to scrap the web for information on Maxwell Timothy, another agent to write the code for different pages, another agent to generate and optimize images, and even another AI agent to deploy the site, all without the need for repeated human prompting.
AI Pioneer Shows The Power of AI AGENTS - "The Future Is Agentic" - Matthew Berman, YouTube
In this video, host Matthew Berman, steps through a short presentation by AI pioneer and co-founder of Coursera, Andrew Ng. This presentation at Silcon Valley Sequoia explains how and why the use of AI agents working as a team can produce results far superior to the current mode of using GenAI to generate responses, such as coding in "zero-shot" format (without iterative corrections and improvements).
OpenAI board member has a scary prediction for the future of work - Ian Krietzberg, the Street
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that it will take years for people to realize real productivity gains from AI. OpenAI board member Larry Summers said at the Fortune Innovation Forum Thursday the adoption of AI will take longer than expected. Still, he believes the technology has enormous economic implications. He said that eventually, AI will replace all human labor.
Monday, April 15, 2024
AI taking on more work doesn't mean it replaces you. Here are 12 reasons to worry less - David Gewirtz, ZD Net
Today, AI has the potential to destroy some jobs (possibly including my own), but it also has the potential to empower -- and provide deep value to -- workers and employers. We call that disruption, and it's nothing new because disruption is always new. As with nearly all the technology previously created, AI has a dual nature. It presents both challenges and opportunities. It's up to all of us where it goes. Will we be able to integrate AI into our lives as a force multiplier, or will we find ourselves fighting Skynet? Only time will tell.
Advancing Gender Equality in Data, Analytics, and AI - Women in AI, Omdia, AI Business
“We've made progress, but we still aren't where we want to be,” said Dhawan. “Bias may sometimes emanate from both the top down and the company culture, which is why it's important to support more efforts and dialogues with women. We want men to actively support women as well, so it's not just about women helping women. It's a deeply ingrained social system that we must address now more than ever before.” Findings from the Omdia, AI Business and Women in AI survey uncovered several key areas where work can be done to improve gender equity in the AI industry
Bridging the AI Divide: A Call to Action - Adela de la Torre and James Frazee, Inside Higher Ed
Leaders must take steps to prevent low-income and first-gen students from falling further behind, Adela de la Torre and James Frazee write. AI literacy has already become a gating qualification for participants across America’s workforce. In one recent survey by Amazon Web Services, a staggering 73 percent of employers report prioritizing hiring talent with AI skills. Those employers are willing to pay candidates with AI expertise significantly higher salaries—in some cases almost 50 percent more. Equipping students for career success and social mobility therefore requires an immediate, holistic and collective approach to building AI literacy. To do so, we must first begin with access while carefully examining both policy and pedagogy.
Sunday, April 14, 2024
Actionable strategies for integrating AI into the classroom - Elon University
As generative artificial intelligence (AI) continues its rapid ascent, higher education institutions are pondering strategies for adapting and equipping their students with the skills necessary to thrive in an AI-oriented workforce. Despite the pressing need for AI literacy, a recent BestColleges survey found that just 53% of students say they have been assigned coursework that requires them to use AI. This may be in part because faculty and staff are often unsure about how to integrate AI into the student experience. A report from Ellucian, a campus technology solutions provider, notes that fewer than one-third of higher education professionals have experience using AI as a part of their job.
OPINION: Artificial intelligence can be game-changing for students with special needs - Diana Hughes, Hechinger Report
Much has been made of artificial intelligence’s potential to revolutionize education. AI is making it increasingly possible to break down barriers so that no student is ever left behind. This potential is real, but only if we are ensuring that all learners benefit. Far too many students, especially those with special needs, do not progress as well as their peers do academically. Meanwhile, digital media, heavily reliant on visuals and text, with audio often secondary, is playing an increasing role in education.
There are No Shortcuts to Thinking: Promise in the way students are already using AI as a learning tool - Dan Sarofian-Butin, Education Next
I really thought everyone would cheat. That’s why I was shocked by their responses. “I use it the same way we use it for this class,” one student wrote. isten, therefore, to what another one of my students wrote: “I use ChatGPT as my TA and for it to give me extra help with brainstorming different ideas, like I would with any other person.” Dear reader, let that sink in: “like I would with any other person.” Let me be clear: I am not trying to anthropomorphize ChatGPT or pretend that it can solve all of the woes of higher education. Rather, I think we are at a crossroads with AI.
Saturday, April 13, 2024
How Generative AI Owns Higher Education. Now What? - Steve Andriole, Forbes
It’s astonishing that most professors, administrators and even donors don’t see the proverbial train barreling down the tracks, perhaps like how climate deniers cannot calculate storms, rainfall, floods, droughts and unbearable summers. Maybe it’s just a repeat of the Luddite phenomenon that surrounds the adoption of all new technology. Who knows, but worse, many universities have actually banned GenAI which is a naïve attempt to regulate a technology more compelling than the Internet and in so doing have actually provided encouragement to faculty and administrators to pretend that GenAI and its CustomGPT children are more of a threat than a service. Further, faculty who have not used GenAI to develop and deliver courses have already missed an extraordinary opportunity to improve the learning process for their students and increase the learning outcomes of their courses.
AI’s promise for teaching and learning - Santa J. Onto, Michigan Today
To help navigate the unprecedented scale and speed of this technology, we established the Generative Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee. This group – comprising faculty, staff, and students across all segments of U-M – is assessing the opportunities and challenges, as well as advising campus leadership and the wider community on how U-M can navigate responsible technological development and integration. The committee’s initial recommendations included establishing a University-wide initiative to leverage GenAI in developing tools and methodologies for AI-augmented education and research. The committee also focused on best-practice standards to ensure privacy protection, data-use controls, and research integrity when using GenAI. To implement these recommendations, we have begun making strategic investments to harness the technology for our campus community and be a leader not only in the field but also in its ethical use.
Exploring generative AI at Harvard - Jessica McCann, Harvard Gazette
The explosion of generative AI technology over the past year and a half is raising big questions about how these tools will impact higher education. Across Harvard, members of the community have been exploring how GenAI will change the ways we teach, learn, research, and work. As part of this effort, the Office of the Provost has convened three working groups. They will discuss questions, share innovations, and evolve guidance and community resources.
Friday, April 12, 2024
AI training revolution: Upskilling for a new era - HR Executive
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the role of HR professionals has expanded beyond traditional functions like recruitment and talent management. With the advent of transformative technologies like generative AI, HR leaders are increasingly tasked with driving innovation and facilitating continuous learning and development within their organizations. Coursera for Business, in collaboration with HRM Asia, recently hosted a webinar to empower HR professionals with the knowledge and strategies to harness GenAI for workforce development.
https://hrexecutive.com/ai-training-revolution-upskilling-for-a-new-era/
Let’s break down the barriers blocking neurodivergent people from higher education - Sourav Mukhopadhyay, Times Higher Ed
Neurodivergent students face barriers when accessing higher education, including negative attitudes of faculty members, lack of assistive technology, traditional teaching methods and inflexible curricula. All these factors can compromise academic and social development, as well as participation. Neurodiversity, an umbrella term for neurological differences as a result of autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia and many other conditions, describes a natural variation of the human brain rather than a deficiency.
Artificial Intelligence in Education Market Share Reach USD 88.2 Billion by 2032 Growing at 43.3% CAGR - Allied Analytics
Allied Market Research published a new report, titled, " The Artificial Intelligence in Education Market Share Reach USD 88.2 Billion by 2032 Growing at 43.3% CAGR." The report offers an extensive analysis of key growth strategies, drivers, opportunities, key segment, Porter’s Five Forces analysis, and competitive landscape. This study is a helpful source of information for market players, investors, VPs, stakeholders, and new entrants to gain thorough understanding of the industry and determine steps to be taken to gain competitive advantage.
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