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1

Microsoft 365 Copilot / Microsoft Launches Microsoft 365 Copilot

« on: March 21, 2023, 09:43:19 AM »

Microsoft Launches Microsoft 365 Copilot

Copilot is all about leveraging the power of AI technology based on GPT-4 to reuse information stored in Microsoft 365 to perform tasks. The idea is that the AI can take care of creating basic documents and leave users to refine and complete the content. In effect, Copilot is a kind of personal assistant on steroids.

Microsoft’s demo was compelling, but I still came away with a nagging doubt whether I will use Copilot when it’s available. For instance, the OWA demonstration of Copilot deciding how to prioritization email in a busy inbox reminded me of previous Microsoft attempts to help users impose order on inboxes with the Clutter feature and then Focused Inbox. Maybe it’ll be a case of third-time lucky.

On the surface, I am a classic example of a person that will benefit from Copilot. My data is stored in Microsoft 365. I use apps like OWA, Teams, SharePoint Online, and OneDrive for Business. I work on Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations daily. The large language model that Microsoft will deploy in Azure to service the queries generated by Copilot and respond to apps with suggestions should cater for my every need. But yet, I still have doubts.

Perhaps it’s just the nature of demos. I reminded myself midway through the magic that what I was watching was a carefully produced show put on by Microsoft executives rehearsed to within an inch of their lives using content crafted to generate the best possible results. The demonstration exhibited perfection of a kind seldom found in real life. I wondered if the way I work and the content I generate will result in such wonderful documents, spreadsheets, and presentations. And even more pertinently, how will the AI make sense of the information stored by the average Office user?

After all, GPT-4 depends on the content it knows about and the context delivered by Copilot. If someone asks Copilot to generate a project report about Contoso and not much can be found about Contoso in Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive for Business, or Teams, then GPT-4 will probably generate something that’s banal and uninteresting, not to say possibly wrong (a danger acknowledged by Microsoft).

Encouraging More Use of Office Features
The best thing about the magic was the promise to liberate people from their lack of knowledge about the potential of applications. One of the speakers said that most people knew how to use 10% of PowerPoint’s features. The same is probably true of Word and Excel too, and it could be construed as a reflection on the complexity of the software rather than the inability of their human users. But the magic is that Copilot knows how to generate snazzy documents using features that I certainly don’t know how to use – or at least need to look up each time I attempt to use.

Encouraging more use of Office features could be considered value if it doesn’t hide the actual content among the bells and whistles conjured up by the Copilot AI. Clarity and conciseness are often attributes that better serve business communications.

The thing about automatically-generated content is that it can be wrong, so it was nice to see how Microsoft crafted in features to tell Copilot to redo something after the human (in charge) made a change or to do things like make text clearer. That was a nice touch.

No Technical Details Available Yet
From a technical perspective, there’s much that we don’t know about how the “sophisticated processing and orchestration engine” used by Copilot to link apps, the Graph, and GPT-4’s large language models. The Microsoft Technical Community post is full of aspirations and low on detail. On the upside, Jarod Spataro gave a brief insight into the technology when he said that the interaction between Microsoft 365 apps and the AI goes like this:

*Tell the AI what the user needs.
*Use the Graph to extract information from the user’s data to add context. I imagine that this involves Graph queries against repositories like SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business to find documents, and Teams and Exchange Online to find messages. This process is called “grounding.”
*Pass the refined query to the AI/Large Language Model for processing.
*Post processing to make sure that the AI response is appropriate and meets security and compliance requirements.
*Respond to the app, which inserts the text and images.

There are many open questions that arise from this brief description. How is security enforced? Assumably this means that the information surfaced by the AI is trimmed similarly to the way Microsoft Search handles results to make sure that no one sees any information that they’re not allowed to. How is compliance handled or what does compliance mean when chatting with an AI bot? What auditing is performed so that organizations know who is using Copilot? Can use be restricted to certain users (perhaps by licensing, but maybe along to handle the requirements of unions or works councils who aren’t happy about AI usage). To be fair, Microsoft is still working out the administrative framework for Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Licensing and Cost
Other things that we don’t know about Copilot include licensing, availability in other languages than English, and implementation dates for different Microsoft 365 apps (online, desktop, and mobile). Microsoft says that they “will share more about pricing and details in the coming months.” Given the early stage of the software, it’s reasonable for Microsoft to not want to make a definitive statement at this point. We know from products like Loop (due to reach public preview on March 22) that it can take much longer than anticipated to bring software from concept to shipping product. My best guess is that we’ll see some Copilot features light up in Microsoft 365 apps later in 2023.

As to cost, Copilot looks like it is a premium feature instead of something that every Microsoft 365 subscriber will get. My hope is that Microsoft will include Copilot in products like Office 365 E5 and Microsoft 365 E5 instead of requiring customers to buy yet another add-on license. Of course, it would be nice if Microsoft made add-on licenses available for organizations that don’t have high-end licenses. However, recent examples like Teams Premium show that Microsoft like to carve AI-based features out into separate licenses, possibly to drive as much revenue as possible.

Source: https://practical365.com/microsoft-365-copilot-launches/

2

Education / Pakistan calls for mutual recognition of educational degrees among OIC states

« on: March 20, 2023, 10:17:02 AM »

Pakistan calls for mutual recognition of educational degrees among OIC states

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s education minister Rana Tanveer Hussain on Sunday stressed the need to develop a framework for mutual recognition of degrees among the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries to facilitate “greater movement of skilled manpower” among the Islamic world.

Hussain said this during a two-day Vice Chancellors’ (VC) Forum of Islamic countries in Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Over 200 vice chancellors, including 40 from the 20 OIC countries’ universities that are participating in the forum, attended the event.

The goal of the fifth edition of the forum is to share experiences, pool resources, foster collaborations, strengthen networks, and encourage dialogue on the future of higher education in the Islamic World.

The VC Forum is being jointly organized by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Pakistan — the statutory education body in Pakistan — the Islamic World Educational, and Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO), Pakistani Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, COMSATS University Islamabad (CUI), and the British Council Pakistan.

“There is a need to develop a framework for mutual recognition of degrees among OIC member countries, which would facilitate greater movement of skilled manpower among them and increase collaborative research,” Hussain said at the event.

He stressed on the need to develop the youth’s skills, adding that universities needed to respond more effectively to the rapidly developing realities of professional development.

“All Muslim countries need to pool their resources and expertise to benefit the entire Muslim world,” the minister added.

In his video message to the audience, Pakistan’s President Dr. Arif Alvi urged the forum to chalk out a strategy to promote the practice of adopting modern education and technology among the Muslim youth.

“The Muslims were slow to adapt to technological advancements and this needed to change,” he said, adding that in the last 10 years, sectors focusing on natural resources were overtaken by technological companies such as Amazon and Google.

These companies, he said, represented intellectual capital and pointed toward the need for greater access to online education.

Dr. Salim M. Al-Malik, director general of ICESCO, said development of robotics would make 97 million jobs obsolete and in the next 10 years, 375 million people would have to switch jobs, causing immense disruption worldwide and hence increase the digital divide.

“There is a great need to recreate the glorious Islamic heritage in science and ICSESCO would create 100 science researchers in top universities of the member countries by 2025,” he added.

Dr. Mukhtar Ahmed, the HEC’s chair, said this forum posed an immense challenge for academia to rethink its role beyond conferring degrees on developing critical thinkers who could adapt and respond to fast-changing global trends with agility and creating lifelong learners with relevant skill sets.

“This forum will help higher education institutions in the Islamic world keep pace with rapid developments in science and technology,” he said. Ahmed hoped that at the end of the two-day activities of the Forum, participants would come up with tangible initiatives for enhanced collaboration and would help bring excellence in higher education systems.

Speaking to Arab News, Professor Dr. Alyaa Ali Al-Attar, president of the Northern Technical University in Iraq, expressed her delight in attending the conference. She said it had provided a valuable opportunity to engage with leading academics from the Islamic world.

“The conference has provided us an opportunity to interact with top academicians from the Islamic world and exchange ideas for the advancement of higher education in the Muslim world,” she told Arab News.

She said the conference provided a platform for exploring various avenues of future collaboration among the participating higher education institutions.

“We are looking forward to discussing different ways and means of future collaborations between different higher education institutions whose heads are participating in this conference,” she added.

Maria Rehman, the country director of the British Council Pakistan, said there was an immense need to bridge the gap between universities and the industry to improve the quality of skilled education.

“There is a need of reforming the educational system, building partnerships for increasing access to quality learning, which is quite a challenge,” she added.

Source: https://www.arabnews.pk/node/2271451/pakistan

3

Education / Do we need branches of foreign universities?

« on: March 20, 2023, 09:58:41 AM »

Do we need branches of foreign universities?

When the Tigers roared against the three lions, there was another surprise waiting for us on the cricket ground; a brand positioning of a foreign university. The emblem on the field declared that a second-tier university had opened its branch in Bangladesh. According to the university's website, it is ranked in the QS "most improved" category, which probably suggests its future potential. Its position among the top 10 Malaysian universities is no guarantee that it is a world-class one.

In recent years, Malaysia has become a preferred academic destination for many Bangladeshi students for several reasons. Their tuition fees are comparatively lower than in Anglophone countries. Many parents prefer sending their children to an Asian country because of its geographical proximity and cultural similarity. The local interest in the regional universities has probably teased them to extend their catchment area of overseas students. They have ventured to come to source countries to secure their business interests. According to a press report, another Chinese university is all set to launch its branch in Bangladesh.

Those who permitted these overseas educational institutions must have thought these universities would give the local universities a run for their money, forcing them to improve quality, at least in theory. I am trying to rationalise their decisions for my consumption. The logic, however, prompts me to a parental coaxing that my generation grew up with. There was always this cousin or dad's boss's child in the office who was better than us in every way. "You need to drink the water from his/her washed feet," our parents would occasionally poke.

Of course, competition is (un)healthy. After my hiatus at a private university, I have recently resumed my professorial post at the oldest public university. I can see how sincerely Dhaka University is trying to adapt to the demands of the time. They are focusing on in-house faculty and curricula development guided by the prescription of the University Grants Commission's (UGC) quality assurance framework. The outdated recording system and bureaucratic practices of public universities make them weak candidates in the ranking yardstick. In other words, it does not have the right system in place to present its activities. The universities do not have an automated resource management system to quantify their teaching-related services. Unless the research outputs are published in the portals of a selected few data management agencies, their fate becomes those of desert roses: they bloom without any audience to appreciate them.

Any patriotic policymaker will priorities improving the health of local institutions by first trying to understand the nature of the ills affecting the system before bringing in a foreign remedy. The introduction of foreign universities follows the same principle of various premium cricket leagues, I believe. In the Indian Premier League (IPL) or Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), local players get the opportunity to rub shoulders with big players, watch them play from proximity, and pick up ideas from sharing the dressing rooms. The stock of local players improves with foreign players in the vicinity. No wonder, the Malaysian university announced itself on the cricket ground as it knows its target audience.

Having a university in a locality is considered to be a prestige symbol. And to boost the ego of some local leaders, we have allowed education to spread thin. Our insistence on quantity has made us compromise quality.

Unfortunately, education is not a cricket game where you put up a show for a spectacle. Education belongs to a tradition, and it creates a tradition. Each nation has its priorities. True, we are faced with international pressure to standardise our education system by following some measurable units. We have been told by UGC to make education relevant to our industry. The focus should be on creating employable graduates. Since the fourth industrial revolution is changing the face of the job market, the new graduates are expected to master the machines so that they do not become our masters. Traditional subject-specific education will fast become redundant, as our graduates today are expected to be multitaskers. It's not enough for doctors to be good surgeons, for instance; they need to know the law to protect themselves, IT skills to work remotely, counselling skills to make customers happy, and presentation skills for idea sharing.

Do you think a foreign university with a monetary interest will come to your country to make a significant contribution to your national interest? I doubt it. We need to figure out what we want from our education sector.

If the purpose is to stop our young ones from going abroad, by giving them an international degree while staying at home, before they could migrate abroad when they are a bit more mature, then the opening of study centres makes some sense. But if you reread my last sentence, then you will begin to see the embedded nonsense. These international outlets are likely to recruit local teachers and ask them to follow their prepared template while charging international tuition fees. There could be one or two visiting faculty members or some online components to validate the international label of education. If you think deeply, this is just one more way to launder money.

We have allowed our local universities to struggle to make room for these imported ones. Just like we allowed our goods to suffer in an open market system. We don't have manufacturers, but MBA graduates to sell someone else's products. Did we need to have 150-plus universities to cater to our students, out of which probably 20 universities are offering some semblance of education that is of any value? The question needs to be asked, why did we allow so many malnourished universities to grow in a resource-scarce country? Why did we allow the weaklings to thrive? The answer is often cosmetic.

Having a university in a locality is considered to be a prestige symbol. And to boost the ego of some local leaders, we have allowed education to spread thin. Our insistence on quantity has made us compromise quality. It is no wonder that the country does not have academic leaders to become vice-chancellors. Many institutions do not have the bare minimum number of faculty members or the full set of PC-PVC-Treasurer. And now foreign universities are coming as a saving grace (read, disgrace). If you want us to learn from the foreigners, bring in the best. Look at what Qatar has done with their academic city where they have brought in all the top schools of the world.

You must have noticed what happened to the last edition of BPL. We did not get good foreign players as there were too many matches happening simultaneously. Bangladesh is not a prize destination. We managed to attract unknown foreign players just for the sake of it.

Let's not turn our education into a similar commercial farce.

Source: https://www.thedailystar.net/opinion/views/blowin-the-wind/news/do-we-need-branches-foreign-universities-3274416

4

Chat GPT / HOW TO GET RICH USING CHATGPT

« on: March 20, 2023, 09:25:56 AM »

HOW TO GET RICH USING CHATGPT

Can you make a million dollars using ChatGPT? Many popular influencers claim that it is possible and accessible to anyone. Unfortunately, this lovely promise is more of a mirage than anything else.

Everyone wants to benefit from ChatGPT’s success. A big number of influencers do not hesitate to promote the chatbot as the ideal tool for achieving financial success while the internet giants scramble to plan their counterattacks. They insist that the OpenAI chatbot can quickly and, most importantly, easily produce millions of dollars in income.

They offer training, guidance, or tutorials designed to educate you on how to use artificial intelligence properly on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and even TikTok. We rapidly saw accounts offering “full tutorials” to ChatGPT for copywriters, marketers, and other content creators while perusing Twitter news feed. Some people don’t think twice to follow Internet users to buy training packages or PDF instructions.

“It’s one of the craziest software I’ve ever seen on planet Earth, and you can become a millionaire just by using ChatGPT, I guarantee it,” a young financial influencer said in a video. “This is simply the best way to make money with ChatGPT to start earning $1000 a day!” Another said in a video on YouTube.

Others make similar hacks that automate the development of a successful internet business promise. These kinds of offerings have become popular on social media since ChatGPT’s introduction in the fall of last year. For instance, there are several videos on YouTube that describe creative and occasionally dishonest ways to profit from the chatbot. Untrustworthy accounts do reveal many fraudulent tactics, as the media reports.

CAN WE MAKE A FORTUNE USING CHATGPT?

USING CHATGPT FOR FREELANCE

Influencers suggest, for instance, signing up on a website of freelancers, like Fiverr or Upwork. The freelance writer uses ChatGPT to compose the order quickly after getting his first client.If a consumer critiques the production, the writer uses the chatbot again. He only notifies him of the client’s requirements for modifications. ChatGPT continues to operate until the produced text satisfies the buyer’s requirements. The latter will not recognize that the job he just paid for was generated by an artificial intelligence if he is not discerning. The majority of individuals are still not accustomed to using the official tool provided by OpenAI or a third-party solution, like GPTZero, to confirm the veracity of a text. These instruments will undoubtedly progressively spread across society.

USING CHATGPT TO MAKE MONEY ON YOUTUBE
Using ChatGPT, other influencers have discovered a secret to success on YouTube. They create a whole storyline for each successful video they produce using artificial intelligence. For instance, ChatGPT can provide a list of the top 10 travel destinations worldwide. Or the top 15 most dangerous beaches in the globe. These videos are popular on the site, yet they frequently have a lot of success. All you need to do is use royalty free photos to illustrate the created script. Then you will gain money from the ads that will show up on your video. A video may be produced in its entirety in less than twenty minutes.

CHATGPT SCAM
However, the writings offered on Fiverr, Upwork, or Udemy run the danger of undermining Internet users’ ambitions for financial success. Despite how great a paragraph created by ChatGPT is, it frequently lacks accuracy and relevancy. Even sometimes, the chatbot will produce entirely false replies.

In reality, influencers don’t actually profit from their deception. Instead, they generate income by offering their community advice that may be dishonest and unproductive. For instance, YouTube videos outlining the best techniques to use ChatGPT to get wealthy receive thousands of views. Influencers receive ad money even if their plans fail. Similarly to this, there are some that advertise ChatGPT apps and subscriptions to get more options. While in reality, it’s a complete scam. They instead make a fortune by buying apps and courses for Internet users wanting to make quick money.

This ChatGPT-related content is a part of the get wealthy without doing anything craze. Influencers have led Internet users to believe that making money online is incredibly simple and requires no work at all since the advent of the Internet and online commerce. Some accounts have bitcoin, dropshipping, or internet marketing specializations. Selling Internet users a magic trick to make money is always the same procedure.

WHAT DOES CHATGPT THINK IN THIS REGARD?
We asked ChatGPT about how can we get rich using it, and here’s the answer: “No, ChatGPT is an AI language model and does not have the ability to generate wealth or provide financial advice. It can provide information and assist with various tasks, but ultimately, wealth creation requires hard work, smart financial planning, and often, a bit of luck”.

Getting rich is a common goal for many people, but the journey to wealth and financial stability is not always straightforward. While ChatGPT cannot guarantee wealth, it can provide some helpful tips and strategies to set you on the path to financial success. Here are a few ways that you can use ChatGPT to assist with your wealth building journey.

SO… HOW CAN WE MAKE A FORTUNE USING CHATGPT?
Educate yourself on personal finance: One of the most important steps to building wealth is to educate yourself on personal finance. ChatGPT can provide you with a wealth of information on budgeting, saving, investing, and other key financial concepts. By gaining a better understanding of these topics, you will be better equipped to make informed decisions about your money and build wealth over time.

Create a budget: A budget is a powerful tool for keeping your spending in check and helping you save more money. ChatGPT can provide you with guidance on how to create a budget that works for your unique financial situation, as well as tips on how to stick to it.
Start investing: Investing is a critical component of building wealth over the long term. ChatGPT can help you understand the basics of investing. Including different types of investments, investment risks, and how to create a diversified investment portfolio.
Look for ways to increase your income: Increasing your income is another key strategy for building wealth. ChatGPT can provide you with suggestions on how to earn more money. Whether that means asking for a raise, starting a side business, or exploring freelance work opportunities.

Seek professional advice: While ChatGPT is a valuable resource, it is always a good idea to seek professional advice when it comes to your finances. Consider working with a financial advisor or investment professional who can help you develop a customized financial plan tailored to your specific goals and needs.

In conclusion, building wealth is not a one-time event. But a continuous journey that requires discipline, dedication, and a willingness to learn and grow. By using ChatGPT as a tool to educate yourself and make informed decisions, you can set yourself on the path to financial success and long-term wealth.

Source: https://www.gizchina.com/2023/03/17/heres-how-to-get-rich-using-chatgpt-guide/

5

Chat GPT / ChatGPT বর্তমানে বিরাট বিষয়

« on: March 19, 2023, 09:35:43 AM »

ChatGPT বর্তমানে বিরাট বিষয়

ChatGPT বর্তমানে বিরাট বিষয়। মূলত এটি হচ্ছে স্বয়ংক্রিয় প্রোগ্রাম, যা কৃত্রিম বুদ্ধিমত্তা ব্যবহার করে আপনার করা প্রশ্নগুলির উত্তর স্বয়ংক্রিয়ভাবে দেবে। ২০২১ পর্যন্ত আপডেট থাকায়, ল্যাংুয়েজ রিলেটেড সব উত্তরই সে দেবে।

কিন্তু, এই ধরুন আপনি ChatGPT কে একটি কবিতা লিখে দিতে বললেন। লিখেও দিল। কিন্তু সেটা কবিতা হলো না কি হলো এটা আল্লাহ্ই জানে। যদিও প্রযুক্তির কাছে এটাই বিশাল ব্যপার। এখানে একটি বিষয় কিন্তু পরিস্কার। যে, আর্টিফিশিয়াল ইন্টেলিজেন্স কখনো হিউম্যান ইন্টেলিজেন্স এর সমতায় আসতে পারে না। যদি না আপনি তাকে সেই ক্ষমতা দিয়ে দেন।

মজার ব্যপার হলো। আপনি আবার একই ক্ষেত্রে যদি কোন রোগের মেডিসিন প্রেসক্রাইব করতে বলেন ChatGPT কে, তাহলে সেই চ্যাট বোট উত্তর দিবে যে, সে কোন ডাক্তার না। তাই সে মেডিসিন প্রেসক্রাইব করতে পারবে না। মানে এরও কিছু লিমিটেশনস আছে। সব তথ্যই সে দিবে বা দিতে পারবে তাও নয়। কিংবা কনফিউজিং উত্তরও দিতে পারে যা হয়তো রিলেটেড না।

সুতরাং, নতুন প্রযুক্তি এসেছে। আপনি প্রযুক্তির সাথে তাল মিলিয়ে সেই সুবিধা নিন। এটার এসিস্টেন্সি নিয়ে কাজের অগ্রগতি সাধন করেন। কিন্তু সৃজনশীলতা ভিন্ন জিনিস। এটা "আমি ভাত খাই,  আর "ভাত আমি খাই" এর মধ্যে সীমাবদ্ধ বিষয় না। যা আপনার মাথায় আছে, তা ChatGPT এর মাথায় নাই।

তাই ChatGPT তে বিভোর হয়ে আপনি নিজের সৃজনশীলতা নষ্ট করবেন না। তাকে এসিস্ট্যান্ট বানান। নট সাবস্টিটিউট। এটা দুশ্চিন্তার না বরং বিবেচনার বিষয়। যে, আপনি নিজের সৃজনশীলতা এই প্রযুক্তির হাতে তুলে দিবেন নাকি নিজেই তা প্রাক্টিস করে নিজেকে কর্মক্ষম রাখবেন। সোজা হিসাব।

Source: Social Media

6

AI in Education / THE LARGEST AI TOOLS DIRECTORY

« on: March 18, 2023, 04:41:22 PM »

THE LARGEST AI TOOLS DIRECTORY

Details in the link: https://www.futurepedia.io/

7

Chat GPT / AI is the future and it's going to change every industry forever

« on: March 18, 2023, 04:11:52 PM »

AI is the future and it's going to change every industry forever

OpenAI's GPT-4 has been live for less than 24 hours but it already changed the world. Here are the most mindblowing things you can do with GPT-4 right now:

AI is the future and it's going to change every industry forever.

Details information:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/linasbeliunas_openais-gpt-4-is-mindblowing-activity-7041861912757706752-z9x0?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Source: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/linasbeliunas_openais-gpt-4-is-mindblowing-activity-7041861912757706752-z9x0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

8

Chat GPT / How ChatGPT Can Take Your Career To The Next Level

« on: March 18, 2023, 11:18:48 AM »

How ChatGPT Can Take Your Career To The Next Level

Generative AI is causing a big buzz at the moment. The ability of tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 to create text and images from simple prompts to a standard that can often pass for human means everyone is wondering what this technology means for the future of work. Rather than making humans redundant, professionals are learning to use it to supercharge their work, automating mundane everyday tasks to carry out their jobs more quickly and efficiently.

However, it’s important to remember that AI isn’t – and may never be – a replacement for human intelligence. Understanding this means learning its limits and recognizing the situations where human skills, knowledge, judgment, and creativity are still vital.

Learning how to use this powerful new technology to augment our own capabilities while freeing up our time to focus on more challenging, higher-value work will be a key workplace skill for many professionals in the age of AI.

First, what is ChatGPT?

For those of you who may not have tried – or even heard of – ChatGPT yet, firstly, what’s it like living on Mars? Secondly, the Cliff’s Notes version is that it’s a conversational interface (or chatbot) that understands and generates human languages. Think Alexa or Siri but far more advanced and capable of handling much more complex inquiries and responses. It’s an example of "generative AI" because it can use existing data to generate new outputs, ranging from poetry and fiction to emails, essays, blog posts, and even computer code. ChatGPT was created by Open AI, which is funded by a number of technology and venture capital firms, most prominently Microsoft, who recently invested $10 billion and are integrating it into their Bing search engine. To get a little more technical, ChatGPT itself is actually a user interface (UI) for OpenAI’s large language model, called GPT-3. It was trained on a dataset consisting of over 175 billion pieces of information, including web pages, books, and articles in many different languages.

How Can Professionals Supercharge Their Abilities With ChatGPT and Generative AI?

A recent guest on my webinar was Dominic Allon, CEO of cloud CRM solutions provider Pipedrive. Discussing how professionals and businesses will integrate generative AI into their work, he told me, "It's helpful to reflect on how previous [technological advancements] have been integrated into the way we get work done.

“Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI, often uses the example of a calculator – how does a calculator change the way we figure out math problems and teach math?

“It actually got integrated into the way we work quite quickly; My expectation is this new tool – this ability to generate text quickly in a foundational, quite generic but logical manner will get embedded quite quickly into the way we work.”

Many examples already exist of ways in which ChatGPT and related technologies can be used by professionals:

· Writers can use it to generate blogs, articles, and informational material.

· Teachers can use it to summarize educational material and create assignments.

· Financial professionals can automate bookkeeping and reporting.

· Lawyers can use it to summarize case law and quickly develop an understanding of areas of law that they have not previously studied.

· Marketers can use it to create ad copy and sales emails.

· Customer service agents can use it to generate responses to inquiries and compile FAQ documents on issues that are frequently raised.

· Healthcare professionals can use it to extract relevant information from medical records and examinations and compile reports and summaries of patient data.

Augment Your Skills With New Abilities

But that’s just the start. Crucially, professionals can use it to augment their abilities to carry out tasks that might happen to fall outside of their skillset or area of expertise.

For example, a data analyst might be good at drawing conclusions based on charts and statistics but not great at writing these up into reports for their colleagues. This is where generative AI can step in, lending a hand with day-to-day activities and enabling professionals to spend their time on tasks where their strength lies.

Conversely, a writer can use their analytical abilities to augment their written work with statistics, even if they aren’t great at statistical research and analysis themselves.

A teacher might be fantastic at drawing the best out of their students and encouraging them to achieve their potential in exams but not enjoy the process of creating lesson plans or designing learning material. They can put generative AI to work to fill in the blanks in their skillset and become a more rounded, capable professional.

And a computer programmer might instinctively know how to use their programming language of choice but find it hard to explain what their code is doing to a non-coder. Generative AI can annotate code and create human-language explanations of what’s happening under the hood (and even spot bugs they might have missed.)

As Allon puts it, “What this will do is free up those professionals to do two things … firstly to be more efficient and effective, and to own a wider scope of work. And secondly to [focus on] a higher level of cognitive tasks.”

One example comes from his previous career at QuickBooks. Allon told me that once automated tools were in place to handle routine tasks such as reconciling transactions, accountants have been able to spend more time working directly with clients and developing their role as “trusted advisors” within their own organizations or with clients.

"The other point here," he continues, "is the role we all play in our different fields … will continue to be critically important because typically ChatGPT will offer up a fairly generic answer, and it's always the case that you'll have to augment that with a particular point of view, or the right tone and style for your company, so for me it’s about this combination of ‘better together’”.

The Way Forward

So, to summarize, there are three steps that we need to consider if we want to transform ourselves into supercharged, AI-augmented professionals. The first is to think about how AI can automate the routine and repetitive tasks we do every day.

Then we need to consider how it might expand our abilities and allow us to take on challenges that previously might have had us stumped or turning to others for help.

Last but by no means least, we need to think about how we can use the time we've freed up by harnessing generative AI to spend more time on truly human tasks. This means face-to-face time with clients, customers, and colleagues, as well as high-level strategic tasks, creative tasks, and work that requires us to come up with genuinely new ideas.

Taking this step-by-step approach is a great way to minimize our chances of being left behind by the AI revolution that's set to transform the world of work and make sure we’re in the best position to continue to add value.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2023/03/15/ai-and-you-how-chatgpt-can-take-your-career-to-the-next-level/?sh=d40ff3e25fc0

9

Chat GPT / Faculty Members Still Aren’t Sure What to Make of ChatGPT

« on: March 18, 2023, 10:37:55 AM »

Faculty Members Still Aren’t Sure What to Make of ChatGPT

As anxiety about ChatGPT continues to pervade higher ed, a recent survey suggests that most colleges, departments, and individual faculty members have yet to develop guidelines on how artificial intelligence should — or shouldn’t — be used in the classroom.

Most professors surveyed were also not sure whether educators should encourage students to use ChatGPT, and not sure how they felt about their colleges’ efforts to deal with the consequences of the new technology. That’s a sign of the tool’s novelty: It debuted in November 2022, in the middle of the academic year.

Source: https://www.chronicle.com/article/faculty-members-still-arent-sure-what-to-make-of-chatgpt?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6410423_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230317&cid=at&source=&sourceid=

10

AI in Education / Asia faces shortage of workers who can fill growing number of tech roles

« on: March 18, 2023, 10:30:21 AM »

Asia faces shortage of workers who can fill growing number of tech roles

Asia maybe struggling with a shortage of workers after the pandemic, but Peter Bithos, CEO of job portal operator Seek Asia, said it is not the same as North America’s “Great Resignation.” Instead, Asia’s workforce has a shortfall of people who possess the skills to fill tech roles in companies, Bithos told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”

“What we’ve been seeing is a large reconfiguration of the types of talent needed” in the workforce, he said. This is reflected in the increase of tech role listings on Seek’s platforms, which is up 66% year on year in Singapore and 29% in Asia, according to Bithos.

Despite layoffs at tech companies, almost “every sector in the economy outside of tech” is hiring for tech workers, Bithos explained. Tech jobs across Asia remain robust and are “very high in demand,” he added.

A search on job portals JobsDB and JobStreet, which are operated by Seek Asia, showed 57,902 jobs available under the information technology category across six Asian economies: Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand.

Applicants for those tech roles are up 14%, which Bithos said could be driven by tech sector layoffs as well as people feeling “confident” enough to seek employment as the pandemic comes to an end.

Laid off workers still have many jobs available to them, although those roles may not be at a “pure tech” company, Bithos said.

Technological jobs make up almost half of the fastest-growing job titles in Singapore over the past five years, LinkedIn said in its 2023 “Jobs on the Rise” list. These include jobs such as cybersecurity engineer, back-end developer and artificial intelligence engineer.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/15/asia-faces-shortage-of-workers-who-can-fill-tech-roles-seek-asia.html

11

Chat GPT / Shannon Ahern teaching her class with the help of a ChatGPT-generated slide

« on: March 18, 2023, 09:55:27 AM »

Shannon Ahern teaching her class with the help of a ChatGPT-generated slide

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shannon Ahern, a 27-year-old high school math and science teacher based in Dublin, Ireland, who uses ChatGPT to help her teach. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

When I first learned about OpenAI's ChatGPT last December, I was frightened. As a high school math and science teacher, I had a bit of an existential crisis about my job. I pride myself in creating unique resources that play to the interests of my students, so when I saw that ChatGPT can do things like generate a math lesson in seconds, I thought: What am I here for? What's my purpose? What's unique about me now that anyone with access to AI tools can create a lesson in 30 seconds?

I was intimidated to try it out, but I knew that ChatGPT would only become more popular, and I didn't want to be left behind. After using the chatbot to help with lesson planning and resource creation, I realized that I have nothing to worry about. When I first used ChatGPT, I treated it as a joke; I asked it to write poems about the Pythagorean theorem and a song about math in the style of Taylor Swift. My students said they enjoyed them, which gave me the push I needed to keep testing it. Since then, I've asked ChatGPT to write lesson plans, generate exercise worksheets, and come up with quiz questions. I even got it to generate a "fill in the blank" worksheet by feeding my lecture notes to the bot and telling it to remove keywords, a task that would've taken me ages to do manually. It also developed an interactive game. As a result, my productivity has gone through the roof.

ChatGPT has saved me hours on manual tasks like lab generation and has significantly cut down my paperwork. Before using the AI, I stayed up late preparing class materials and would show up to class the next day feeling sluggish and tired. Now, I go to work feeling refreshed.

ChatGPT isn't perfect, but it can save hours of time if used correctly. Still, I have noticed that ChatGPT sometimes calculates things wrong. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, I would point out the error through an additional prompt, and the bot would correct it. I also worried that my students would use it to cheat and plagiarize. But then I remembered that students have always been cheating — whether that's copying a classmate's homework or getting a sibling to write an essay — and I don't think ChatGPT will change that. While these concerns have led to school-wide bans of the tool around the world, I hope that ChatGPT doesn't get banned by my school. ChatGPT is a fantastic learning tool that students can use as a private tutor. We are in the generation of AI, and students need to learn how to use it responsibly. Still, I understand why some teachers are hesitant about using ChatGPT. Learning how to use a new piece of technology — especially for teachers who didn't grow up with computers in the classroom — can be tough. But I do believe they will find the tool helpful.

After all, AI is going to take a lot of the things we don't like such as admin work off our plates and free up time for creative lesson planning. We can even ask ChatGPT for advice in the same way we would ask a talented colleague if we needed help on, say, building an Excel spreadsheet. Like Google and Microsoft Excel, ChatGPT will eventually become a part of our instructional toolbox.

Most importantly, I don't think ChatGPT will ever replace teachers or make our jobs harder. There will always be a need for us and the human connection that comes with in-person instruction.

I am always discovering new, creative ways to use ChatGPT and will absolutely keep on using it in the long run.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/high-school-math-science-teacher-uses-openai-chatgpt-education-learning-2023-3

12

AI in Education / Building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem

« on: March 18, 2023, 09:43:51 AM »

Building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem

The future of artificial intelligence (AI) will be open. New and innovative capabilities in areas like generative AI will come from all corners of the technology ecosystem and from companies distributed around the globe — from early stage startups to cloud-native AI platforms to large, global enterprises. The momentum in this space is incredible. In fact, we've seen a significant acceleration in the number of AI startups that have joined the Google for Startups Cloud Program in 2023.

To help customers and developers harness this innovation, we’re bringing the best of Google’s infrastructure, AI products, and foundation models to partners at every layer of the AI stack: chipmakers, companies building foundation models and AI platforms, technology partners enabling companies to develop and deploy machine learning (ML) models, app-builders solving customer use-cases with generative AI, and global services and consulting firms that help enterprise customers implement all of this technology at scale.

Today, alongside exciting new Generative AI support in Vertex AI, Generative AI App Builder, and Google Workspace that we’re unveiling, we’re also announcing new partnerships, programs, and resources for each segment of the ecosystem that showcase our open approach.

Foundation models and platforms
Companies like Anthropic and Cohere are building foundation models, including LLMs, that can significantly accelerate the development of generative AI and natural language processing (NLP) applications. Google Cloud offers these model builders high-performance infrastructure with industry-leading efficiency for both training and serving foundation models.

As the preferred cloud provider for both Anthropic and Cohere, our cloud infrastructure and GPU and Cloud Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) clusters are helping train LLMs more quickly and sustainably, and providing the massive computational capability required for large-scale AI research and development. Anthropic and Cohere, along with all our AI customers, have access to Google Cloud’s AI, including large model offerings, and the same infrastructure that powers YouTube and Google Search.

Through our open approach to the AI ecosystem, any partners building foundation models have access to the best of Google Cloud. Today, we’re announcing that three more leading companies building and training exciting foundation models and generative AI platforms are coming to Google Cloud: AI21Labs, Midjourney, and Osmo.

AI21 Labs, a startup aiming to fundamentally change the way people read and write using generative AI, provides API access to large language models that power text generation and comprehension features in thousands of live applications. AI21 leverages Google Cloud infrastructure including GPUs and TPUs for training and inference, and we are working together to solve customer use-cases such as NLP queries for analytics.

Midjourney is a community-supported research lab providing AI-powered creative tools that produce images using natural written language. Members of the community use a special AI-powered creative process that interweaves words and images to create stunning imagery and explore new worlds. Midjourney uses Google Cloud infrastructure, TPUs, and GPU VMs to train its cutting-edge AI models and empower its community of free expression.

Osmo is a startup focused on helping computers detect and understand scents through unique AI models and mapping technology. The Osmo team is using Vertex AI and Google’s Data Cloud to train its models, process huge amounts of data quickly, and scale its operations as needed. You can go here to learn more about the importance of Osmo’s work in digital olfaction and how Google Cloud AI, ML, and data cloud capabilities are supporting their mission.

The work of these teams, underpinned by Google Cloud, will bring the power of generative AI to more application developers, drive a new wave of creativity and user-created content, and help customers bring AI into important projects.

Technology partners
Organizations and developers undertaking ambitious AI projects typically deploy multiple solutions to help build, manage, and deploy their own models. These tools help developers handle important tasks like labeling unstructured data, observing model performance, or scaling model training workloads. Google Cloud works with these organizations to solve critical needs of machine learning engineers and data scientists. We also offer them new ways to reach customers through the Google Cloud Marketplace, and integrate them with industry-leading data and AI platforms, BigQuery and Vertex AI.

To meet growing demand from developers building generative AI models on Google Cloud, many of the leaders in AI solutions are launching new or expanded partnerships with Google Cloud today. These include:

Aible is bringing its platform for AI-driven data science and data analytics to Google Cloud Marketplace so customers can quickly and seamlessly deploy Aible on Google Cloud. Aible leverages Google Cloud to bring serverless architecture and a unique augmented approach to analytics and data science use cases across user types while realizing significant cost efficiencies. Aible also uses Vertex AI to train its models and brings the power of Vertex AI into the hands of business users.

Anyscale will expand its partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate enterprise adoption of Ray, its open source AI/ML framework. Both companies will jointly provide dedicated expertise and best practices that will ensure customers can deploy Ray and adopt the Anyscale Platform on Google Cloud with security and governance at enterprise scale. This collaboration enables customers to use Ray to fine-tune, train, and deploy large Python ML models easily, leading to faster time-to-market and a competitive advantage. We continue to see more customers like Spotify design their ML platforms on Google Cloud using Ray.

Gretel is making a native integration available for Vertex AI and BigQuery, and launching on Google Cloud Marketplace, enabling developers to train models safely with its multi-modal synthetic data platform.

Labelbox and Google Cloud are partnering to enable developers using Vertex AI to accelerate model development and leverage BigQuery to unlock the business value within unstructured data and build more effective ML models. As part of this collaboration, Labelbox natively integrates with both BigQuery and Vertex AI.

Snorkel AI and Google Cloud are partnering to help enterprises harness the power of large language models to solve real-world problems with production-level accuracy. Together, we're empowering data scientists to quickly generate high-quality training data over complex, unstructured data sources, train custom ML models, or fine-tune pre-built models including the latest LLMs and foundation models, and rapidly deploy ML models into production. As part of this collaboration, Snorkel Flow integrates natively with BigQuery and plugs seamlessly into Vertex AI.

Weights & Biases is deepening its partnership with Google Cloud on MLOps, and will roll out new enhancements to its platform that will enable ML engineers to easily scale their existing, local ML training activities into cloud-based enterprise workloads, utilizing TPUs, GPUs, Google Kubernetes Engine, and Vertex AI.

By supporting these critical technology partners, we offer developers the best platform and ecosystem in which to build the next generation of helpful AI applications, and provide customers with a single destination for building, innovating with, and applying AI.

Application providers leveraging generative AI
Google Cloud is the destination for developers and partners to build the next generation of innovative applications with AI and ML, including exciting new generative AI capabilities. Developers have access to Google Cloud’s infrastructure, multiple go-to-market resources including our Solution Connect program for ISVs, and new cloud credits and resources specifically tailored to startups building with generative AI.

To further support these partners and accelerate their app development, we’re launching a new initiative, called Built with Google Cloud AI, which recognizes select partners whose applications and platforms are optimized to run as-a-service on Google Cloud infrastructure and who are utilizing Google Cloud’s AI capabilities in new and helpful ways. The new Built with Google Cloud AI initiative helps ISVs get started building applications using Google Cloud AI services. The program provides dedicated access to Google Cloud expertise, training, and co-marketing support to help partners build capacity and go to market. Furthermore, Google Cloud engineering teams will work closely with our partners in this program on product design and optimization, as well as architecture patterns and best practices.

Several partners are joining the initiative today, including Bending Spoons, Faraday, Glean, Replit, and Tabnine, all of whom are delivering applications for customers by leveraging our portfolio of AI services.

Bending Spoons, a leading developer of SaaS and mobile applications, is partnering with Google Cloud and leveraging Google’s AI infrastructure for generative AI use cases across its portfolio of products.

Faraday’s platform for no-code AI marketing and consumer predictions is now available on Google Cloud Marketplace. Customers can utilize BigQuery ML alongside Faraday’s platform to apply AI for better insight into consumer behavior and to better inform marketing campaigns.

Glean is an AI platform for next-generation enterprise search and knowledge discovery. With 100+ app connectors, Glean uses deep learning and LLMs to understand enterprise knowledge and pairs this with a custom knowledge graph to deliver highly relevant, highly contextual answers to employees’ questions. Glean leverages a combination of Google Cloud’s infrastructure and AI services as part of its tech stack.

Replit is one of the fastest-growing developer platforms in the world, with 20 million-plus users. Google Cloud and Replit are working together to advance generative AI for code and software development. Replit will bring Google Cloud AI and infrastructure to millions of developers globally as part of this collaboration.

Tabnine provides a leading solution for secure generative AI in coding. It acts as an AI code assistant, which integrates seamlessly with modern IDEs and offers dependable code completion capabilities to increase developers’ efficiency.

Partners can go here to learn more about the Built with Google Cloud AI initiative and requirements.

In addition, much innovation in the generative AI space comes from fast moving, early stage startups. AI startups like Elai.io, Aiva.ai, and Cradle, are choosing Google Cloud for industry-leading data and AI solutions and fully-managed and serverless infrastructure, which makes it faster and easier to scale. To enable more AI-first startups, we’re expanding the Google for Startups Cloud Program with exclusive benefits for AI startups (seed to series A):

More than double the amount of cloud credits: We’re offering AI-first startups up to $250,000 USD in cloud credits for their first year — 2.5x the amount we typically offer startups in their first year. In their second year in the program, we’ll cover 20% of their cloud costs up to $100,000 USD.

Free customer care and enhanced support: AI startups are innovating quickly, so we’re providing 24/7 access to fast, high-quality technical support to accelerate onboarding and implementation with Google Cloud.

Access to Google Cloud experts and community: Startups in the program will get access to Google Cloud success managers, customer engineers, and networking events with the startup community.

Interested AI startups can go here to apply to join the program and register for the upcoming Google Cloud Startup Summit, taking place on April 25.

Consulting and implementation services
AI and ML capabilities are creating profound value for enterprises, for example: helping businesses predict and mitigate disruptions to global supply chains, more sustainably procure products from deforestation-free sources, and optimize store operations to deliver better experiences for millions of daily shoppers. These kinds of industry-specific use cases illustrate how innovations in AI can translate into business outcomes, and our consulting partners are at the forefront of helping enterprise customers accelerate and scale their AI projects.

Today, several of our leading partners, Accenture, BCG, Deloitte, McKinsey, Quantiphi, and TCS are committing to significantly grow the Google Cloud AI and generative AI advisory and implementation services and capabilities available to customers. These partners already play a critical role helping enterprises adopt Google Cloud AI services like Vertex AI, Contact Center AI, Document AI, and Vision AI. Moving forward, they will play an equally essential role applying new generative AI capabilities to solve industry-specific challenges and helping enterprises build generative AI into their products and everyday business processes.

At Google Cloud, we are dedicated to being the most open hyperscale cloud provider, and that includes our AI ecosystem. Through partnerships, we can help organizations more easily access and innovate with generative AI and large language models, apply fast-evolving AI and ML capabilities to address real industry use cases, and build a new wave of applications utilizing all of these capabilities.

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/building-an-open-generative-ai-partner-ecosystem

13

Chat GPT / Google Cloud brings generative AI to developers, businesses, and governments

« on: March 16, 2023, 02:44:53 PM »

Google Cloud brings generative AI to developers, businesses, and governments

Generative AI is poised to usher in a new wave of interactive, multimodal experiences that transform how we interact with information, brands, and one another. Harnessing the power of decades of Google’s research, innovation, and investment in AI, Google Cloud is bringing businesses and governments the ability to generate text, images, code, videos, audio, and more from simple natural language prompts.

Realizing the potential of this technology means putting it in the hands of every developer, business, and government. To date, it has been difficult for organizations to access generative AI, let alone customize it, and at times the technology is prone to producing inaccurate information that could undermine trust. A decade ago, mobile ecosystems soared as businesses and developers gained safe, secure, and powerful tools suited to new form factors, interfaces, and interactions — and likewise, for generative AI to blossom, organizations need a new generation of tools that make it simple to build generative AI applications, or gen apps.

To address these needs, Google Cloud will launch a range of products that infuse generative AI into our offerings, empowering developers to responsibly build with enterprise-level safety, security, and privacy. This journey starts today with the introduction of two new technologies:

Generative AI support in Vertex AI gives data science teams access to foundation models from Google and others, letting them build and customize atop these models on the same platform they use for homegrown ML models and MLOps.

Generative AI App Builder allows developers to quickly ship new experiences including bots, chat interfaces, custom search engines, digital assistants, and more. Developers have API access to Google’s foundation models and can use out-of-the-box templates to jumpstart the creation of gen apps in minutes or hours. Across these, Google Cloud ensures organizations have complete control over if, how, and for what their data is used.

“Google Cloud is bringing decades of AI research, innovation, and investment to the world with the launch of Generative AI support in Vertex AI and Generative AI App Builder,” said Ritu Jyoti, Group Vice President, Worldwide Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Automation Research, IDC. “With this, Google Cloud is poised to enable a whole new generation of builders, innovators, developers and doers to harness the power of AI in novel ways. Google Cloud's vision to empower teams, transform industries and truly change the world for the better is inspiring, and what sets them apart is their thoughtful yet bold approach, grounded in their deep commitment to responsibility.”

Build, tune, and deploy foundation models with Vertex AI
Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s machine learning platform for training and deploying ML models and AI applications, is getting its biggest upgrade ever.

Generative AI support in Vertex AI offers the simplest way for data science teams to take advantage of foundation models like PaLM, in a way that provides them with the most choice and control, including the ability to:

Choose the use case you want to solve for. Developers can now easily access PaLM API on Vertex AI to immediately address use cases such as content generation, chat, summarization, classification, and more.

Choose from Google’s latest foundation models. Options will include models invented by Google Research and DeepMind, and support for a variety of data formats, including text, image, video, code, and audio.

Choose from a variety of models. Over time, Vertex AI will support open-source and third-party models. With the widest variety of model types and sizes available in one place, Vertex AI gives customers the flexibility to use the best resource for their business needs.

Choose how to tune, customize, and optimize prompts. Use business data to increase the relevance of foundation model output and maintain control over costs, while ensuring data sovereignty and privacy.

Choose how to engage with models. Whether via notebooks, APIs, or interactive prompts, a variety of tools lets developers, data scientists, and data engineers all contribute to building gen apps and customized models.

“Since its launch, Vertex AI has helped transform the way CNA scales AI, better managing machine learning models in production,” said Santosh Bardwaj, SVP, Global Chief Data & Analytics Officer at CNA Insurance. “With Generative AI support in Vertex AI, CNA can now tailor its insights to best suit the unique business needs of customers and colleagues.”

Build applications in minutes or hours with Generative AI App Builder
Businesses and governments also want to make customer, partner, and employee interactions more effective and helpful with this new AI technology. To enable this, we are announcing our new Generative AI App Builder, the fastest way for developers to jumpstart the creation of gen apps such as bots, chat apps, digital assistants, custom search engines, and more, with limited technical expertise required. It lets developers:

Build in minutes or hours — not weeks or years. Developers can get going quickly with direct API access to foundation models and out-of-the-box templates for major use cases, including search, support, product recommendations and discovery, and media creation. Additionally, pre-built connectors let developers integrate their data with the intelligence of foundation models, all while keeping data private.

Combine organizational data and information retrieval techniques to provide relevant answers. Organizations can now build apps that infer the intent of a user’s question, surface proprietary data alongside relevant information from the foundation model, and serve responses with the required citations and attributions, all while ensuring data isolation and sovereignty.

Search and respond with more than just text. Customers can type, talk, tap, and submit images when they interact — and bots, assistants, and other gen apps can reply with text, voice, and media.

Combine natural conversations with structured flows. With granular control, developers can now blend the output of foundation models with step-by-step conversation orchestration to guide customers to the right answers, no matter the duration of engagement.

Don’t just inform — transact. Beyond just serving content, digital assistants and bots can connect to purchasing and provisioning systems, and escalate customer conversations to a human agent when the context demands.

“With the growing popularity of voice assistants in everyday life, consumers increasingly expect accurate and consistent voice interactions. The integration of Google Cloud’s industry-leading, AI-based speech services are already providing high-quality voice services to Toyota and Lexus customers," said Steve Basra, CEO and president, Toyota Connected North America. "With these latest generative AI announcements, we’re excited to expand our partnership and explore how foundation language models can further our vision to bring the best and most innovative in-car experiences to drivers.”

“Thanks to their AI capabilities, Google Cloud has been a key strategic partner for Mayo Clinic in advancing the diagnosis and treatment of disease to improve the health of people and communities,” said Christopher Ross, CIO, Mayo Clinic. “Generative AI-powered search has the potential to help clinicians find, understand, and interpret information while keeping the data private and secure. We look forward to our continued co-innovation to deliver solutions for clinicians and employees to help reduce cognitive information overload and improve operational efficiencies.”

“Google Cloud’s leading AI technology enables STARZ customers to discover more relevant content, increasing engagement with, and the likelihood of completing the content served to them,” said Robin Chacko, EVP Direct-to-Consumer, STARZ. “We’re excited about how generative AI-powered search will help users find the most relevant content even easier and faster."

Starting today, trusted testers are accessing Generative AI App Builder. If you are interested in updates on our early access opportunities, please join our technical community, Google Cloud Innovators.

Turning generative AI building blocks into enterprise value
Let’s look at a few examples of how organizations are already looking to unlock the power of generative AI with Google Cloud:

Automated content generation. Generative AI can facilitate brainstorming, perform copywriting, and generate media assets — meaning that emails, marketing messages, and creative assets can be prototyped in seconds, and ready for review within minutes or hours, not weeks or months. Marketing and creative teams across organizations are looking to augment current workflows with this technology to instantly bring more choices, more flavors, and greater ingenuity to campaigns, programs, ads, and more.

AI experiences and assistants for virtually any task. Because generative AI lets businesses and governments turn large, complex volumes of data into summaries, interactive multimedia experiences, and human-like conversations, we see many customers interested in leveraging this technology for not only customer-facing experiences, like brand or product Q&As, but also more complex data science scenarios. For example, gen apps, like digital assistants, can help data analysts and business users up-level their skills, by generating SQL queries, enabling exploration of data through natural language queries, and more.

Searching and understanding large, internal datasets that span many sources. Many of our banking customers analyze various internal and external data sources to get a comprehensive view of the market. They’re exploring how to use this technology to ensure that when employees search for information across these sources, they get relevant results, accurate summaries of large documents, tools to refine queries’ sources, and citations and attributions so employees can trust outputs and dig deeper as needed.

Providing a foundation to jumpstart the wave of gen app startups. Vertex AI levels the playing field for development with generative AI. By providing API access to foundation models while reducing the massive and prohibitive data requirements these technologies usually entail, Vertex AI will empower builders and innovators of all kinds, from data scientists to self-taught developers, to create the next generation of startups.

Protecting data and shaping conversation flows with Responsible AI
When Google Cloud brings new AI advances to our products, our commitment is two-fold: to deliver transformative capabilities, while ensuring our technologies include proper protections for our organizations, their users, and society. To this end, our AI Principles, established in 2017, form a living constitution that guides our approach to building advanced technologies, conducting research, and drafting our product development policies. For more information about how we put our AI Principles into practice, read our most comprehensive report to date.

Our new announcements are no exception, providing:

Transparency and explainability: Both Vertex AI and Generative AI App Builder include tools to inspect, understand, and modify model behavior.

Data privacy and sovereignty: Whether a company is training a model in Vertex AI or building a customer service experience on Generative AI App Builder, private data is kept private, and not used in the broader foundation model training corpus. Organizations always maintain control over where data is stored and how or if it is used, letting them safely pursue data-rich use cases while complying with various regulations and data sovereignty laws.

Factuality and freshness: Generative AI App Builder uses information retrieval algorithms to provide the right sourcing and attribution while serving the most relevant information.

Probabilistic models with deterministic workflow controls: Organizations want to blend the interactive and probabilistic nature of generative AI with results that are controlled, deterministic, and reliable.

Choices to fit different requirements: To meet organizations' differing needs, our platforms are designed to be flexible, including data and model lineage capabilities, integrated security and identity management services, support for third-party models, choice and transparency on models and costs, integrated billing and entitlement support, and support across many languages.

“Google Cloud has been a strategic partner for Deutsche Bank, working with us to improve operational efficiency and reshape how we design and deliver products for our customers,” said Gil Perez, Chief Innovation Officer, Deutsche Bank. “We appreciate their approach to Responsible AI and look forward to co-innovating with their advancements in generative AI, building on our success to date in enhancing developer productivity, boosting innovation, and increasing employee retention.”

Source: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/generative-ai-for-businesses-and-governments

14

Chat GPT / The next generation of AI for developers and Google Workspace

« on: March 16, 2023, 02:23:57 PM »

The next generation of AI for developers and Google Workspace

Google has been investing in AI for many years and bringing its benefits to individuals, businesses and communities. Whether it’s publishing state-of-the-art research, building helpful products or developing tools and resources that enable others, we’re committed to making AI accessible to everyone. We’re now at a pivotal moment in our AI journey. Breakthroughs in generative AI are fundamentally changing how people interact with technology — and at Google, we’ve been responsibly developing large language models so we can safely bring them to our products. Today, we’re excited to share our early progress. Developers and businesses can now try new APIs and products that make it easy, safe and scalable to start building with Google’s best AI models through Google Cloud and a new prototyping environment called MakerSuite. And in Google Workspace, we’re introducing new features that help people harness the power of generative AI to create, connect and collaborate.

PaLM API & MakerSuite: An approachable way to explore and prototype with generative AI applications
So many technology and platform shifts — from mobile to cloud computing — have inspired entire ecosystems of developers to start new businesses, imagine new products, and transform how they create. We’re in the midst of another shift with AI that is having a profound effect on every industry.

For developers who are experimenting with AI, we’re introducing the PaLM API, an easy and safe way to build on top of our best language models. Today, we’re making an efficient model available, in terms of size and capabilities, and we’ll add other sizes soon. The API also comes with an intuitive tool called MakerSuite, which lets you quickly prototype ideas and, over time, will have features for prompt engineering, synthetic data generation and custom-model tuning — all supported by robust safety tools. Select developers can access the PaLM API and MakerSuite in Private Preview today, and stay tuned for our waitlist soon.

Bringing generative AI capabilities to Google Cloud
For developers who want to build and customize their own models and apps using generative AI, they can access Google’s AI models, including PaLM, on Google Cloud. We’re bringing new generative AI capabilities to our Google Cloud AI portfolio to help developers and organizations access enterprise-level safety, security, privacy, as well as integrate with their existing Cloud solutions:

Generative AI support in Vertex AI: Developers and businesses already use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to build and deploy machine learning models and AI applications at scale. We are now providing foundation models, initially for generating text and images, and over time with audio and video. Google Cloud customers will have the ability to discover models, create and modify prompts, fine tune them with their own data, and deploy applications that use these powerful new technologies.

Generative AI App Builder: Businesses and governments also want to build their own AI-powered chat interfaces and digital assistants. To enable this, we are introducing Generative AI App Builder, which connects conversational AI flows with out of the box search experiences and foundation models — helping companies build generative AI applications in minutes or hours.
New AI partnerships and programs: In addition to announcing new Google Cloud AI products, we’re also committed to being the most open cloud provider. We’re expanding our AI ecosystem and specialized programs for technology partners, AI-focused software providers and startups. Starting today, trusted testers are accessing Vertex AI with Generative AI support and Generative AI App Builder.

New generative AI features in Workspace
More than 3 billion people already benefit from AI-powered features in Google Workspace, whether it’s using Smart Compose in Gmail or auto-generated summaries in Google Docs. Now, we’re excited to take the next step and bring a limited set of trusted testers a new set of features that makes the process of writing even easier. In Gmail and Google Docs, you can simply type in a topic you’d like to write about, and a draft will be instantly generated for you. So if you’re a manager onboarding a new employee, Workspace saves you the time and effort involved in writing that first welcome email. From there, you can elaborate upon or abbreviate the message or adjust the tone to be more playful or professional — all in just a few clicks. We’ll be rolling out these new experiences to testers in the coming weeks.

Scaling AI responsibly
Generative AI is an emerging and rapidly evolving technology with complex challenges. That’s why we invite external and internal testers to pressure test new experiences, and why we have AI Principles to guide this work. These principles also serve as an ongoing commitment to our customers worldwide who rely on our products to build and grow their businesses safely with AI. Our goal is to continue to be bold and responsible in our approach and partner with others to improve our AI models so they’re safe and helpful for everyone.

We’re so excited by the potential of generative AI, and the opportunities it will unlock — from helping people express themselves creatively, to helping developers build brand new types of applications, to transforming how businesses and governments engage their customers and constituents. Stay tuned for more to come in the weeks and months ahead.

Source: https://blog.google/technology/ai/ai-developers-google-cloud-workspace/

15

Education / Case for inter-university collaboration in Asia

« on: March 16, 2023, 11:24:23 AM »

Case for inter-university collaboration in Asia

Asia and the Pacific region has around 5990 universities, though they vary very much among themselves and more than half of them are funded and managed privately, like in other continents of the world, albeit following the laid out principles of the governments of the nations.

The global rating and ranking of universities have some preferred areas of focus. There are quite a few of them of which Times Higher Education and QS Ranking are the most famous and widely accepted. Most such rankings look at a few parameters very favorably with high scores. First, academic research is a major outcome of universities, more particularly if the research is in fundamental areas of seeking knowledge or explaining natural and social phenomena.

Second, academic excellence is looked from learner to professor ratio, which is usually preferred to be within 20:1. Third, academic leadership is valued in terms of personal achievements, degrees and research, published work in academic journals, and years in academics. Fourth, infrastructure in terms of large real estate and elaborate machinery is another highly preferred area of evaluation. Fifth, the cost of education is not a major focus of ranking while the outcome of high investments in terms of infrastructure, expensive faculty, advanced laboratories, etc, is surely a major focus. Sixth, there is a strong emphasis on internationalization as to how many foreign students are studying in the university being ranked and rated, how many foreign teachers are there, how many tie-ups with foreign, read Western, universities exist, etc.

How the developing world universities are different

All these parameters are important ones in a globalized world, but are primarily suited for the advanced economies and universities in the developed West, more than the under-developed and developing Asia and Africa. While academic research on fundamental issues is extremely important for advancement of knowledge, poorer nations have to invest their scarce resources for applied research that solves their immediate economic, social, cultural, ecological and technological problems in their immediate environments and give them immediate or mid-term succor. Also, as an outcome, employability quotient and entrepreneurship skills, technological skills for their learners is the most outstanding outcome for universities in Asia and Africa. The universities in Asia will survive based on their performance in this outcome. Most of these come at ease in the developed Western economies with lesser proportion of youth in their societies, and with higher standard of living along with techno-savviness and access.

It is extremely expensive to have 20:1 learner to professor ratio in developing nations and focus on huge infrastructure. The governments do not have the capacity to invest on these parameters in public universities, and if the private ones do so, their cost of education goes extremely high and beyond the reach of the huge majority of their countrymen. Hence, universities in the developing world have to focus primarily on their resources to ensure the minimum required infrastructure, faculty members and learning resources. The developing Asian and African nations are usually densely populated and they need cheaper higher education with reasonably good quality more than international students seeking expensive high quality education. While international tie-ups are important for Asian universities, they cannot be a primary parameter to ascertain their quality and ranking.

In such a scenario, the rationale for a different paradigm of rating and ranking of universities in the developing world is perhaps necessary, and to evolve that a much more intense collaboration among Asian universities is needed.

Pan Asian university brotherhood

There are several reasons why a pan-Asian university brotherhood and intense collaboration among universities would be beneficial. This is going beyond merely signing MOUs and speaking in platitudes.

Enhancing educational quality

Collaboration among universities can lead to the sharing of knowledge, resources, and best practices, which can help improve the quality of education offered by each institution. This can benefit students by providing them with a more comprehensive and high-quality education. These best practices shall be more suited for developing societies with lower per capita income, lesser learning resources and investments available, and technology still being much lesser than the developed Western universities of the US, UK, Canada, Australia et al.

Promoting applied research and real-life innovation

Collaboration among universities can also foster innovation and promote research in different fields. By pooling resources, expertise, and infrastructure, universities can undertake more ambitious research projects and make more significant scientific breakthroughs. And these research can be in applied areas of development in these nations, and in close collaboration with their governments and their fledgling MSME sector of the economy. The innovations can be those which can be put into practice fast making a positive economic contribution. Universities can play a significant role in developing new technologies and solutions that can address social, economic, and environmental challenges facing Asia. An association of universities can promote collaboration on research and development, as well as provide funding for innovative projects that can spur growth and development.

Building cultural bridges

A pan-Asian university brotherhood can help build bridges between different cultures and promote mutual understanding and respect among developing nations of Asia with similar or relatable history and traditions. This can lead to increased collaboration and exchange between universities and learners, facilitating cross-cultural learning and the sharing of different perspectives. By fostering academic and cultural exchange programs, universities can facilitate the exchange of ideas, perspectives, and experiences, which can contribute to greater mutual understanding and respect among Asian nations.

Addressing societal challenges

Collaborative efforts among universities can also help address societal challenges facing Asia, such as climate change, poverty, and inequality. By working together, universities can identify and tackle complex challenges that require multidisciplinary and cross-sectoral solutions. For example, tackling soil erosion, repeated mega storms and cold waves in South and Southeast Asia is a common challenge which universities can take up collaboratively for research, innovation, and solutions etc.

Strengthening regional integration

A pan-Asian university brotherhood can help strengthen regional integration by promoting collaboration and cooperation across borders. This can lead to increased economic and social integration, as well as the development of a common regional identity and shared values. An association of universities can facilitate knowledge exchange and collaboration among universities across Asia, which can help universities learn from each other's experiences, share best practices, and build partnerships. This can lead to the development of joint research programs, student and faculty exchanges, and collaborative projects that can have a positive impact on the region.

Asian Universities for Asian Development:

An association of universities of Asia can support the development of Asian nations in several ways:

Developing human capital: Universities are critical institutions for producing highly skilled and educated individuals who can contribute to the growth and development of their nations. An association of universities can collaborate on employability oriented curriculum development, mentors’ training, and applied research programs that can enhance the quality of education and provide a highly skilled workforce for the region.

Providing policy advice: Universities can also provide independent policy advice and analysis to policymakers, which can help shape policies and strategies that promote sustainable development and address key challenges facing Asia. The association can contribute to this in various nations.

It is high time that Asian Universities look at themselves as equals and collaborate as partners, rather than looking at only the Western nations for crumbs of unequal relations. Competition is a discredited 20th century concept. This is the time for collaboration, and the pandemic has proven it like never before.

Source: https://businesspostbd.com/editorial/2023-03-16/case-for-inter-university-collaboration-in-asia-2023-03-16