🤖 #53: NYC bans ChatGPT (but Ryan Reynolds embraces it) and AI dinosaurs

Greetings, fellow humans. 👋

This is Not A Bot - the newsletter about AI that was definitely not written by AI. I’m Haroon, founder of AI For Anyone, and I’ll be sharing with you the latest news, tools, and resources from the AI space.

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NYC Schools Ban ChatGPT

Last week, the New York City Department of Education has announced a ban on ChatGPT from its schools’ devices and networks due to concerns about its potential negative impacts on student learning.

For tech-savvy students using ChatGPT to get A+'s on their essays, this may signal the return to the tough times (i.e. writing their own essays)...

There's a couple of nuances to this ban:

• It doesn't apply to the City University of New York system (college students are off the hook)

• ChatGPT can still be made available for classes studying artificial intelligence

Why educators don't like ChatGPT

The gripe educators have with ChatGPT is that students can use it as a crutch for their learning.

According to Jenna Lyle, spokesperson for the NYC department of education, "[ChatGPT] doesn't build critical-thinking and problem-solving skills, which are essential for academic and lifelong success".

Okay, let's be honest - if we were students today (or if you are a student today), would we be tempted to use a tool like ChatGPT to save a ton of time on things like writing essays? Probably. 🤷‍♂️

But it's hard not to agree with the department's reasoning here. Introducing ChatGPT to students can make them lazy learners.

It's like allowing students use calculators when teaching them the multiplication table. Their math skills would struggle to fully develop if they're using a calculator as crutch.

This also raises an important question: if students will have access to tools like ChatGPT in the real-world, how should school curriculum change to reflect that? Let me know your thoughts on Twitter.

The truth? You can't handle the truth

Although large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT do a remarkable job of creating stylistic content, they don't hold an understanding of: (*ba-dum*) "the truth".

ChatGPT is trained on so much data that it can create the illusion of true understanding, but it doesn't have an ability to reason or truly comprehend the concepts it writes about.

So in addition to leading to lazier practices from students, using tools like ChatGPT can output (and reinforce) falsehoods.

Educators (and brave students) fight back

Fortunately, several efforts to combat the proliferation of AI-generated writing are underway.

OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, has confirmed that they are "already developing mitigations to help anyone identify text generated by that system".

Additionally, students like Edward Tian, a computer science student at Princeton University, have taken matters into their own hands. Edward created a tool to detect if a piece of text was generated by a human or an artificial intelligence.

There is a lot of work being done in this space and we'll inevitably see progress in our understanding of what is AI-generated and what is not.

When it comes to AI in education, a few thing are for certain:

• Technologies like ChatGPT are here to stay

• These technologies will only get better over time (GPT-4 is right around the corner)

• Students will inevitably use these technologies

Banning ChatGPT is a bandaid solution to a massive dilemma.

How educational institutions, like Washington University, respond and adapt to the proliferation of AI in the long run will be very, very interesting to see.

More News

• VALL-E: Microsoft’s new zero-shot text-to-speech model can duplicate everyone’s voice in three seconds (article link)

  • Microsoft's new TTS model VALL-E is a transformer-based model that can generate speech in any voice after hearing a three-second sample. This is a major advance in the field of TTS technology, as previous models required longer training periods. The intonation, charisma, and style of the voice are maintained in the generated speech, making the system sound more natural. Microsoft has released a few examples of the model in use, and you can listen to this in this article.

• Google's Deepmind releases DreamerV3, an algorithm to collect diamonds in Minecraft from scratch (Twitter link)

  • This isn't all fun and games. It's proof that reinforcement learning can be used (without tuning) to master a variety of domains.

• Ryan Reynolds uses ChatGPT to create an ad (in his likeness) for his wireless company, Mint Mobile (Twitter link)

  • Fun fact: I ran into Ryan Reynolds in NYC a few years ago and he was wearing black Deadpool AirPods. Awesome.

• ChatGPT is soliciting user feedback on Twitter for a paid, professional version of the product with higher rate limits and faster performance. Let the monetization begin.

• Bringing Extinct Dinosaurs Back To Life Using AI (link)

  • The author uses a variety of AI tools (including ChatGPT, Midjourney AI, and Lex.page) to create descriptions of 10 extinct dinosaurs. These descriptions, which include information about the size and physical characteristics of each dinosaur, are then used to create art with Midjourney AI. Cool stuff!

Cool Tools

• re:tune - train and customize your own AI assistant for any industry or use case (PH link)

• Langotalk - learn languages faster using AI (link)

• PlaylistAI - create Apple Music and Spotify playlists from AI prompts (link)

Have cool tools to share? Tweet me at @haroonchoudery if you'd like me to include it in a future issue of Not A Bot.

Tweet of the day

Are we at the OG iPhone stage of generative AI? Emad, founder of StabilityAI (of Stable Diffusion fame) thinks so.

And that does it for this week’s issue.

As always, thanks for reading, and see you next time. ✌️

- Haroon - (definitely) Not A Robot and @haroonchoudery on Twitter

Win one of 10 Google AIY Kits! All you have to do is refer 5 people to Not A Bot using the below link. I'll be announcing the winners on @haroonchoudery on January 31st.

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