The Beginning of AI Revolution & Human Evolution — Part 3a: Intro, Personal & Self learning Use Case
It has been quite a long time since the writing of part-2 to this series. #Generative AI has taken the world over and making my earlier writing look archaic. In this part, I will focus on the usage scenarios, and part-4 would be the concluding part. My blog gets lengthier, and based on feedback, I am splitting this part into two sections. Since this one relates to learning to use AI and learning with AI. There are scenarios where we can use (use case) and does contain anecdotes and images. And it caters to different readers who come with varied understanding of current trends on AI. So, I this section I will cover on Personal and Self-learning Usage scenarios.
At whatever pace any technology grows, it seems to certainly follow two major trends.
- The Gartner hype cycle (Pic 1) on any change that technology triggers and the current AI trigger has the time scale crunched creating multiple waves.
- Any “adoption entity” like wealth, economy and technology creates a disparity, a divide and thus a poverty. Like we have seen economic disparity, poverty line that divides people into the ‘haves and have-nots’, the technology change does create a digital divide, tech-disparity and tech -poverty.
In my writing I adopt a generic language that helps a broad spectrum of people — from a novice to understand new technology; to those who are on a similar trajectory as mine and help them find some direction based on my learning; or to an adept who can do just a casual reading and help myself by providing any feedback.
During the last few months, as I tried my hands on different newer #AI Large Language Model — #LLM — one I found useful is @Richard Socher and @Bryan McCann’s you.com which has combined the power of AI with internet search. I asked you.com to provide me a summary of my own blogs on AI. I had posted this as a teaser to this blog on LinkedIn earlier. Though exaggerated by LLM, this provided me some motivation to break my slack and start writing again. 😀
At the genesis, all things are pure, including AI. Many have already started using #LLM and #GenerativeAI provided by #ChatGPT #GoogleBard #You.com #AutoGPT and several others from a simple chat entertainer, to help in social media post, writing emails, creating presentations and to help know and learn, without having to do a google search. Students at all levels are already using it at a much higher rate than older adults. It is like the earlier times — when calculator was invented, and people hesitated to use it, and later the same with computers and other technologies.
I have categorized the usage scenarios into the following sections in this blog to apply different approach to use of Artificial Intelligence.
AI for Personal Usage
I am going to keep it simple for this section. Many who might already have leaped into AI may want to skip this. This section is for those, who still hasn’t started trying it out, or want to give it a fresh way of looking at learning to use.
It is imperative for everyone to start using AI. In fact, you might be using it even without knowing it. Most of us — depending on which generation we are from — may have varying levels of resistance in adopting a new technology. Some of us who are a little nostalgic, or from older generation might even dislike use of modern technology. But the greater the resistance we exhibit, the greater will be the difficulty for us to learn, and thereby align with even newer social norms. At the same time, there is a greater need for the wisdom from the older generations to be shared with the newer generations. Despite the generation we belong to, and our likeness to adopting AI, unless we really want to isolate ourselves, and contribute to the digital divide, we should start learning the newer technology. This will help us to remain socially relevant and be able to bridge wisdom across generations, by guiding others through a safe use of newer technology medium. On the other hand, the younger generation and/or those who are quicker in adopting AI, might also need to understand that the faster we adopt, we too contribute to the digital divide. So, while we adopt and use AI, we should be considerate of the fact that there are those who will need time to adopt and help the society evolve in its own time frame, while moderating the way we display our knowledge of AI.
The new #AIRevolution has made the playing field even. So, if you are newbie or adept, it is never late and you can do right away, starting with any of these below which are easy to play around with. Use it either for entertainment or testing the AI model, either for learning or increase your curiosity quotient. Remember curiosity kills the cat! 🐱
Simplest Usage
Use for an impersonal chat asking any questions with any topics.
- Sign up and use the Open AI’s ChatGPT. Use the web version / the Android App / iOS App (Beware of fake Apps, use the link provided by Open AI)
- Google Bard is still in experimental and is available for most gmail user
Both of the above are text prompt-based chat. Very easy to start using and supports many languages. They are built on Large Language Model (LLM) and Generative AI technology. A quick primer on LLM can be found here.
Once you play with it, to improvise, get better results change the text prompt to align the results for the required context. While there is a view that AI can take creativity and thinking capability of humans, we will only learn better from AI by using them, so over time, we should only get smarter and more creative. Think of it as an intelligent tool or a calculator that becomes your companion. You can always choose to ignore it, not get biased by its response and use your own ways to guide it as well, so that in future it can align to our thinking or language style.
AI based Internet Search & Chat Usage
Several search engines are enhanced to use Natural Language Processing #NLP algorithms to understand the meaning and context of user queries. Few of the below are quite popular in recent times.
You.com — This is my favourite so far (in terms of ease of use and speed). You.com, founded in 2020 by is @Richard Socher and @Bryan McCann’s, it uses multiple LLM models to provide AI based chat and internet search, along with a very different set of apps and filters. One example, as I mentioned at the start of this blog that provided me a review of myself as a blog writer once it did a search. More on you.com here .
Microsoft Bing Search (Using Open AI’s ChatGPT / GPT-4) — Microsoft went quickly to leverage ChatGPT popularity and partnered with OpenAI to combine GPT’s model with its own set of products. Bing search popularity spiked as it started using AI for its search and chat feature. Google Bard is supposed to combine the awesome power of it’s search engine with AI, but seems still very experimental and slow. (at least when I tried it now)
Use these to search the internet instead of googling and see the difference. Here is a generic comparison snapshot of these AI based search engine — one Elon Musk’s view on AI using you.com, second Bing AI Search on G20 Summit, and third a Bard conversation with search result.
Image / Media creation usage
AI is not just limited to text. #GenerativeAI capabilities get extended to image, audio / music, video generation as well. Simple to use in content development or artistic presentations. For personal use, there is nothing to worry in terms of content creation, but when we use for professional use, check the recent content usage policy from the respective provider, and legal requirements as per the local laws and policies. In general, acknowledging the source of such media should be sufficient enough.
- Dall-E -OpenAI’s Image Generator — Came along with ChatGPT
- Adobe Firefly’s Text to Image, Generative Fill, Text Effects — Pretty decent. Some features are free, and it’s still experimental
- Microsoft Bing Image Creator (Using OpenAI’s Dall-E model)
- You.com provides YouImagine
@Borriss’s post provides a collection from the latest version of Dall-E 3 Image Creator coupled with ChatGPT GPT-4 Vision (GPT-4V) and indicates powerful ability to create faster #GenerativeImages, cartoons with text stories, and ability to process image and voice input more intelligently than before.
For personal usage, apart from the above, there are multiple other scenarios where we can take AI’s help in a meaningful way. We can ask AI to write code, create website, solve complex problems, create resume, Google or PowerPoint slides, etc. The student community has probably grabbed this like no one else. Kids have started using this for their school homework. Teenagers are using it for their college thesis and projects. Some have even used it for writing their own stories, blogs, creating artwork, movies and publishing it on website to cash-in. There are various websites and tools customized for different scenarios. Few links for reference:
[ AI Roads @Sharyph’s tool collection] [ @Alfaiz Ali2 posts ] [ @HeyGen’s avatar video generation ] [ @SteveNouri’s posts & newsletter ] [ @EyeingAI ] [ AutoGPT by Significant-Gravitas ] [ @Borriss’s prompt tool ]
AI for Self-Learning
The next step in our usage could gradually evolve into using AI for self-learning. Continuous learning through online or offline mode has its own challenge. We can utilize AI as a more personalized learning tool. It can act as a reference, a tutor, a learning tracker, and even for self-assessment and improvisation.
Simple Learning Usage
For those who get mentally blocked to get started, let me give a simple example which I started with using ChatGPT. In this example I asked ChatGPT to provide a weekly/daily learning plan to learn Microsoft PowerPoint. Then I asked it to test me on week 1 topics. See the full conversation in this link. Yes, ChatGPT now allows to share link to a conversation thread, and anyone can click on the link and continue the conversation with ChatGPT in their own private chat.
So, you can use AI to help you learn on your own, and thus acts as a personal mentor or trainer and without any personal inhibitions of feeling low, when we are hesitant to learn with human trainer or mentor.
Use cases for Edu Institutes / EdTech
Most online education portal have already started integrating AI based learning on their portal to support their existing users. Online learning portals have been the popular self-paced learning. Coupled with the benefits of Generative AI, and to have an impersonalized way to build skills would gain prominence. Many have also expressed opinion about the use of tech / AI in educational institutions and recommended data & feedback based approach to implementation rather than marketing and commercialization of the same. Here are few references:
[ Khanmigo by @Khan Academy ] [AI / EdTech Posts by @Marc L ] [ Posts/Research by @Dr. Wayne Harrison ] [ @Bill Gates on AI / Education Gap ]
In the next section to this part, I will cover AI for Business Use and AI Technology As a Service (AITaaS). Click here to read the next part!
