Weekly Link Roundup #22
It's gonna be May....MTFBWY
Instructors as Innovators: a Future-focused Approach to New AI Learning Opportunities, With Prompts: “This paper explores how instructors can leverage generative AI to create personalized learning experiences for students that transform teaching and learning. We present a range of AI-based exercises that enable novel forms of practice and application including simulations, mentoring, coaching, and co-creation. For each type of exercise, we provide prompts that instructors can customize, along with guidance on classroom implementation, assessment, and risks to consider.”
Chegg stock crashes as free AI tools send online education company 'spiraling': I’ll get to the relevant quote in a second but here’s the key - Chegg deals with students and their behavior is changing. Their expectations are changing. Now where do you think those students are going to end up? That’s right. In your orgs. How do you think they’re going to feel about your enterprise systems? “As students returned to the classroom and free AI solutions emerged, the company's revenue tumbled, and the stock is now trading hands around $6 per share.” > > Seriously, this is like watching it rain upstream and not thinking that it will eventually flood downstream.
Amazon Q adds feature to create AI apps using natural language: Let’s not bury the lede - “Amazon says it will give non-developers the ability to create apps using natural language as part of a new feature for Amazon Q, the AI assistant unveiled by Amazon Web Services last fall. Amazon Q Apps “allows employees to easily and quickly create generative AI-powered apps based on their company data, without requiring any prior coding experience,” Amazon said in a news release Tuesday morning.” > > Read that again, slowly. Now call your CIO and ask how she feels about the confluence of Low/No Code app development and AI trained on proprietary company data. I’ve said multiple times that this was coming and that this would make the issues around BYOD look like child’s play - well here it is and its at AWS scale. So now ask who is taking the lead to train and educate your people on this capability so that you don’t create a Cambrian explosion of orphan apps that are leaking company data all over the place. (maybe #LearningAndDevelopment could help).
Atlassian launches Rovo, its new AI teammate: Signs, signs, everywhere signs….If you’re tempted to blow this off as just another company announcement, pause and ask your devs or your PMs if they use Jira, or Confluence, or Trello, and then try to understand how far reaching this is. I’d put Atlassian just behind MSFT in terms of penetration and organizational reliance. “During its Team ’24 conference in Las Vegas, Atlassian today launched Rovo, its new AI assistant. Rovo can take data from first- and third-party tools and make it easily accessible through a new AI-powered search tool and other integrations into Atlassian’s products. The most interesting part, though, may be the new Rovo Agents, which can be used to automate workflows in tools like Jira and Confluence. One nifty aspect of these agents: Anyone can build them using a natural language interface. No programming required.” See also: GitHub previews Copilot Workspace, an AI developer environment to turn ideas into software.
LinkedIn now has Wordle-style games you can play every day: Just. So. Dumb. People are looking for jobs and connections and to share professional wisdom, not a worse version of Wordle. This is so far off where LinkedIn needs to be working, there is so much there that could be tapped.
A new report explores the economic impact of generative AI: (from Google so grain of salt) “Generative AI is one of the rare technologies powerful enough to accelerate overall economic growth — what economists call a “general-purpose technology.” These innovations have the potential to positively transform economies and societies. By one estimate, close to 80% of the jobs in the U.S. economy could see at least 10% of their tasks done twice as quickly (with no loss in quality) via the use of generative AI.”
How an empty S3 bucket can make your AWS bill explode: I happen to think there is great value in studying unintended consequences…and boy, this one is a doozy. “Two days later, I checked my AWS billing page, primarily to make sure that what I was doing was well within the free-tier limits. Apparently, it wasn’t. My bill was over $1,300, with the billing console showing nearly 100,000,000 S3 PUT requests executed within just one day!”
NIST launches a new platform to assess generative AI: Well, someone has to > > “The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. Commerce Department agency that develops and tests tech for the U.S. government, companies and the broader public, on Monday announced the launch of NIST GenAI, a new program spearheaded by NIST to assess generative AI technologies including text- and image-generating AI. NIST GenAI will release benchmarks, help create “content authenticity” detection (i.e. deepfake-checking) systems and encourage the development of software to spot the source of fake or misleading AI-generated information, explains NIST on the newly launched NIST GenAI website and in a press release.”
A Lawsuit Argues Meta Is Required by Law to Let You Control Your Own Feed: “A lawsuit filed Wednesday against Meta argues that US law requires the company to let people use unofficial add-ons to gain more control over their social feeds.” Big signal here in terms of how the boundaries of our shared spaces are shaped. See also 8 Daily Newspapers Sue OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. for more news about how new tech is bumping into older ways.
The Arc browser just launched and yes, it really is that good: Time to try it. I kinda miss the days of really energetic browser competition.
Meet the Woman Who Showed President Biden ChatGPT—and Helped Set the Course for AI: In addition to a spate of new technologies, you’re going to have to learn a whole new set of biographies. This is a good place to start.
Meet the AI Expert Advising the White House, JPMorgan, Google and the Rest of Corporate America: Remember when I said that about biographies you need to learn? This one, this guy, is ridiculously smart and experiments faster than anyone I’ve seen. You need to read this and follow his work.
Google announces a new $75 million fund to train workers in AI—and a new $49 online AI course: “Amidst this race, on Friday, Google announced a new $75 million “AI Opportunity Fund” through the company’s philanthropic arm, as well as a new $49 AI course offered online through Coursera. The initiative promises to teach one million Americans AI skills by providing grants to partner organizations, which will offer the course for free. Partners will include employers like Goodwill and higher education institutes like Miami Dade College.” The $49 is a little silly. You’re really gonna charge that while starting this fund?
Cohere releases toolkit to accelerate generative AI app development in the enterprise: I’ll keep saying it, the confluence of Low/No Code and AI is going to make BYOD challenges look like kid’s play.
F.C.C. Votes to Restore Net Neutrality Rules: “Commissioners voted along party lines to revive the rules that declare broadband as a utility-like service that could be regulated like phones and water.” Since the Net is kinda where we all live, how this plays out will be a huge vector.
This AI-Powered ‘Poetry Camera’ Turns Photos into Poems: OK, this is cool. Love this actually.
The Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses have multimodal AI now: Not ready yet but this is where I want the AI to live.