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Hello Reader,
Welcome to Promptcraft, your weekly newsletter on artificial intelligence for education. Every week, I curate the latest news, developments and learning resources so you can consider how AI changes how we teach and learn.
In this issue:
- Disney faces designer backlash
- OpenAI warns about limits of new model
- Google’s Pixel 8 launch was a parade of AI
Let’s get started!
.: Tom
Latest News.: AI Updates & Developments .: Disney’s Loki faces backlash over reported use of generative AI ➜ There has been backlash against Disney over the reported use of generative AI in creating a poster for the second season of Loki. Designers flagged that an image of a spiralling clock in the background of the poster appears to be from a Shutterstock image that was likely created by an AI. This could violate Shutterstock’s rules banning AI-generated images unless they use Shutterstock’s own tool. .: Canva’s new AI tools automate boring, labor-intensive design tasks ➜ Canva has released new AI-powered design tools called Magic Studio to automate tasks like converting designs to different formats and editing images. The tools aim to make content creation more accessible for all users. .: OpenAI warns folks over GPT-4 Vision’s limits and flaws ➜ OpenAI has upgraded its GPT-4 model to include image processing capabilities, which it calls GPT-4V. This allows users to upload an image and then ask GPT-4 questions about the image via ChatGPT. However, in documentation about GPT-4V, OpenAI warns of several limitations and safety risks. |
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.: UK data watchdog warns Snap over My AI chatbot privacy issues ➜ The UK Information Commissioner’s Office issued a preliminary enforcement notice to Snap regarding its My AI chatbot for teenagers. Regulators found Snap failed to adequately assess privacy risks to children before launching the product.
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.: Google’s Pixel 8 launch was a parade of AI ➜ Google emphasised AI over 50 times during its Pixel 8 launch event, aggressively positioning itself as an AI leader. While useful features ultimately matter most to customers, Google’s frequent mentions of AI may reflect anxiety about keeping pace with competitors in the AI space.
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.: Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive ➜ Microsoft plans to overhaul OneDrive by adding Copilot AI capabilities to the cloud storage service. This will allow Copilot to help users find and organise files within OneDrive. Microsoft also wants to steer users towards using the OneDrive web interface, which they are enhancing with new features. .: Arc browser’s new AI-powered features combine OpenAI and Anthropic’s models ➜ The Arc browser is launching new features called “Arc Max” that integrate AI from OpenAI and Anthropic to provide contextual assistance when browsing, including renaming tabs and files, previewing links, and conversing with ChatGPT. The features aim to boost productivity without requiring extra steps, and user feedback will determine which features remain over time. .: AI Startup Reka Challenges ChatGPT with Multimodal AI Assistant ‘Yasa-1’ ➜ Reka has announced a new multimodal AI assistant called Yasa-1 that understands text, images, audio and can be customised for businesses. It aims to compete with ChatGPT by providing answers from internet context and supporting 20 languages. |
Reflection.: Why this news matters for education Amidst all of the rollouts, announcements and hype about new products and AI-powered features, we need to keep the spotlight on what is happening in social media. The proliferation of AI capabilities in social media is one of the clearest near-term risks we might face. Never mind existential dread; this impacts young people now. The platforms, networks and apps we know can cause so much harm are experiencing a surge in new AI-powered tools and features. Meta has announced a wide range of chatbots across their portfolio of products including, Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. Earlier this year, I shared about Snap’s integration of MyAI, a chatbot available within the Snapchat app. Young people initiated over 10 billion conversations with the chatbot within a few months. Snap released a rose-tinted set of user data explaining the different topics young people were talking with the chatbot about. We need to be asking what was missing from the topics. What were the minority cases, and how were they handled? In the news this week, Snap has been flagged by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the UK’s data watchdog, for potential privacy risks for 13-17 year olds using the MyAI feature. The provisional findings of our investigation suggest a worrying failure by Snap to adequately identify and assess the privacy risks to children and other users before launching ‘My AI’.
~ Information Commissioner, John Edwards. These are early signals and warnings, and no breach of data privacy compliance in the UK has been proven. Yet this issue stretches far beyond the importance of data privacy. We must grapple with the emergence of synthetic relationships becoming a normal part of our digital lives. What relational diet are young people experiencing via chats with MyAI and other large language models? How do these new synthetic, relational hooks keep people within the toxic confines of social media? Has the attention economy found a new power-up? We still have much to learn, but AI getting plugged into social media is critical for educators to monitor. .: ~ Tom |
Prompts.: Refine your promptcraft A simple Promptcraft recommendation for you this week, which I have been using a lot lately: Make this better
I used Midjourney, the AI image generator, before I used any of the popular chatbots, and it has a reroll button: 🔁 to re-generate a response. This is one of the most important tips for working with LLMs or other AI tools, re-generate more responses if it is not quite right. Google’s Bard has a similar button and you can see different drafts, but if you are using other tools like ChatGPT, just prompt for “make this better”. You get the added bonus of a reroll with improvements. ✨ .: Remember to make this your own, tinker and evaluate the completions. |
Learning.: Boost your AI Literacy .: How Your Brain Organises Information ➜ My name is Artem, I’m a computational neuroscience student and researcher. In this video we talk about cognitive maps – internal models of outside world that the brain to generate flexible behavior that is generalised across contexts.
.: What Is Natural Language Processing And How Does It Work? ➜ Ever wondered how we can talk to machines and have them answer back? That is due to the magic of NLP. In this video, we will answer the question ‘What is NLP?’ for you. We will then look at some important steps involved in NLP, all in 5 minutes!
.: Introduction to large language models ➜ Large Language Models (LLMs) and Generative AI intersect and they are both part of deep learning. Watch this video to learn about LLMs, including use cases, Prompt Tuning, and GenAI development tools.
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Ethics.: Provocations for Balance
~ Inspired by this week’s developments. |
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That’s all for this week; I hope you enjoyed this issue of Promptcraft. I would love some kind, specific and helpful feedback.
If you have any questions, comments, stories to share or suggestions for future topics, please reply to this email or contact me at tom@dialogiclearning.com
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.: Tom Barrett/Creator /Coach /Consultant |