weekend ai reads for 2024-05-17

May 17, 2024

📰 ABOVE THE FOLD: GOOGLE & OPENAI ANNOUNCEMENTS

The fly-by summary is OpenAI and Google announced advancements in personal, voice-activated AI companions that aim to provide more natural and personalized voice interactions, mimicking real conversations and adapting to user preferences and habits.

Introducing GPT-4o / OpenAI, YouTube (26 minute video)

  • try it via links on OpenAI’s blog post, Hello GPT-4o / OpenAI (3 minute read)

Google Keynote (Google I/O ‘24) / Google, YouTube (1 hour, 52 minute video)

  • highlight: Demis Hassabis introducing a low-latency demo with a phone and AR glasses (caveat emptor with Google “demos”); starts at 26:10 (direct link)

some analyses:

Improvements to data analysis in ChatGPT — Interact with tables and charts and add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. / OpenAI (4 minute read)

Google is redesigning its search engine — and it’s AI all the way down — From ‘AI Overviews’ to automatic categorization, Google is bringing AI to practically every part of the search process. / The Verge (6 minute read)

What GPT-4o illustrates about AI Regulation — The important difference between regulating technology use and regulating conduct / Hyperdimensional, Substack (sorry) (6 minute read)

on education:

Google’s new LearnLM AI model focuses on education — LearnLM is already integrated into Google products like Android and YouTube / The Verge (2 minute read)

Math problems with GPT-4o with Sal Khan / OpenAI, YouTube (3 minute video)

 

📻 QUOTE OF THE WEEK

Being a writer is the best way I know how to get paid for being insane.

Fredrik Backman (source)

 

🏗️ FOUNDATIONS & CULTURE

Generative AI Is Totally Shameless. I Want to Be It — The best thing about brain-melting software like ChatGPT? It doesn’t feel remorse. / Wired (5 minute read)

AI and the cost of failure / Tom Loosemore, Wordpress (3 minute read)

Start by researching the aggregate cost of failure. Estimate the cost of all the different ways you might fail people, from the trivial to the catastrophic (aka failure modes). And estimate the cost your failure imposes on your users; not just on your organisation.

 

🎓 EDUCATION

Ava enhances the counseling process with its expert-driven content, sourced from more than 277 top specialists across 110 topics, ensuring advice is both personalized and aligned with current academic standards. It offers comprehensive, personalized road maps that detail month-by-month planning tailored to each student's academic progress, extracurricular activities, and personal interests.

In Wisconsin, Chippewa Valley Technical College is keeping an eye on what the AI Incubator Network is producing, though it is not part of the network itself. In response to changing work requirements, the college is overhauling some of its existing programs, including the administrative professional associate’s degree program.

GeoGebra is more than a set of free tools to do math. It’s a platform to connect enthusiastic teachers and students and offer them a new way to explore and learn about math.

A quarter of public K-12 teachers say using AI tools in K-12 education does more harm than good. About a third (32%) say there is about an equal mix of benefit and harm, while only 6% say it does more good than harm. Another 35% say they aren’t sure.

 

📊 DATA & TECHNOLOGY

How should you adopt LLMs? / Irrational Exuberance (12 minute read)

Behaviors do vary across models, but it’s also true that behavior of existing models varies over time (e.g. GPT 3.5 allegedly got “lazier” over time), which means the overhead of dealing with model differences is unavoidable even if you only adopt one. Altogether, vendor lock-in for models is very low from a technical perspective, although there is some lock-in created by regulatory overhead, for example it’s potentially painful to update your Data Processing Agreement multiple times, combined with the notification delay, to support multiple model vendors.

The Limits of Data — Data is powerful because it’s universal. The cost is context. / Issues in Science and Technology (19 minute read)

AnythingLLM — The ultimate AI business intelligence tool. Any LLM, any document, full control, full privacy.

  • at capacity for hosted

  • self-host here: AnythingLLM: The all-in-one Desktop & Docker AI application with full RAG and AI Agent capabilities. / Mintplex Labs, Github

  • possibly related, LLMWhisperer

    • requires sign-up

    • adequate free tier for testing; obviously, don’t give it bank statements or anything sensitive

 

🎉 FUN and/or PRACTICAL THINGS

Microsoft Places includes a dedicated location plan section where you can set and share the days you’ll use the office and view which days your co-workers are proposing to head in. Managers can set up priority days for in-office plans, so if there’s an important event or a team day, everyone knows about it.

For Conversations You Dread, Try a Chatbot — Role-playing with an AI conversationalist can prepare you to handle difficult subjects with family, friends and colleagues / Wall Street Journal (7 minute read)

How Airlines Are Using AI to Make Flying Easier — Airlines are using artificial intelligence to save fuel, keep customers informed and hold connecting flights for delayed passengers. Here’s what to expect. / New York Times (6 minute read)

via nic, 101 real-world gen AI use cases from the world's leading organizations / Google Cloud Blog (21 minute read; 3 minute skim)

 

🧿 AI-ADJACENT

Smry — AI Summarizer and Free Paywall Remover

  • not as effective as archive.today or 12ft.io in our testing, but still nice to see minor innovation in this space

  • summarizer worked one time out of ten; your mileage may vary

 

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