"The single biggest thing we are ever going to see in our lifetime..." -Sebastian Thrun 

(Can you suggest something else of this sort that has or will touch nearly every industry, business, career?)

Udacity CEO and Co-founder, Stanford Professor Sebastian Thrun joins Becky Anderson on CNN International and shares his thoughts on the impacts of AI and what that means for the future of education. 

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/udacity_sebastian-thrun-on-cnn-international-activity-7031769235810881536-KGnk

Should educators worry about ChatGPT? -  JODI HECKEL, Illinois 4/5/2023

Some students are using models to help write their papers and do homework, and yes, that is something to worry about. We want students to learn, and if they’re just pasting an assignment into a box and hitting return, they’re not learning much.  But that’s a small part of a bigger issue, which is that the students now entering college are likely to graduate into a world transformed by artificial intelligence. Models like ChatGPT are already being integrated into word processing software and search engines. In 10 years, they will be as familiar as autocomplete is to us now. So, telling students “just say no to AI” is not going to be a sufficient way to prepare them for the 2030s. Students will be using these models, and will need to understand them.

https://news.illinois.edu/view/6367/49261563

On 2/21/2023 I asked ChatGPT:  

What can you do for me as a search engine?

(So I went directly to the source and asked ChatGPT)

It's response in just a few seconds was:

As a language model and search engine, I can help you find information on a wide range of topics. You can ask me any question or input a search query, and I'll do my best to provide you with the most relevant and accurate information available based on my training and the sources I have access to.

Here are some of the things I can do for you as a search engine:

1. Answer questions: You can ask me any question you have, and I'll try to provide you with a helpful answer.

2. Provide information on a wide range of topics: I can help you find information on just about anything, from history and science to entertainment and sports.

3. Offer suggestions: If you're not quite sure what you're looking for, I can provide you with suggestions on topics that might interest you.

4. Define terms: If you're not familiar with a term or concept, I can provide you with a definition to help you better understand it.

5. Filter and sort results: I can help you filter and sort your search results based on different criteria, such as date, relevance, or popularity.

6. Offer related searches: If you're not quite satisfied with your search results, I can provide you with related search terms to help you refine your query and find the information you're looking for.

Overall, my goal as a search engine is to help you find the information you need quickly and easily, and to provide you with the best possible answers to your questions.

Building guardrails for ChatGPT - Michael J. Ahn and Yu-Che Chen, Brookings

(These points are key to understanding why and how we will want to use generative AI for searching)

One of the key advantages of ChatGPT over traditional search engines is its ability to provide contextualized and processed information. ChatGPT can understand the context of a search query and provide results that are relevant and specific to the user’s needs by using natural language processing techniques. It can also interpret the intent behind a user’s query, even if it is phrased in a casual or conversational way, which makes it easier for users to ask questions and get the information they need.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2023/02/07/building-guardrails-for-chatgpt/

Can AI-Generated Text be Reliably Detected? - Sadasivan, Aounon Kumar, Sriram Balasubramanian, Wenxiao Wang, Soheil Feizi, arXiv Forum 3/30/2023

Empirically, we show that paraphrasing attacks, where a light paraphraser is applied on top of the generative text model, can break a whole range of detectors, including the ones using the watermarking schemes as well as neural network-based detectors and zero-shot classifiers. We then provide a theoretical impossibility result indicating that for a sufficiently good language model, even the best-possible detector can only perform marginally better than a random classifier. Finally, we show that even LLMs protected by watermarking schemes can be vulnerable against spoofing attacks where adversarial humans can infer hidden watermarking signatures and add them to their generated text to be detected as text generated by the LLMs, potentially causing reputational damages to their developers. We believe these results can open an honest conversation in the community regarding the ethical and reliable use of AI-generated text.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11156?ref=emergentmind

"Did I Mention this Content Infrastructure Will Be Open?"

(This from the co-founder of Lumen Learning - what does this mean to the future of OER and copyrights?)

 Excerpted from AI, Instructional Design, and OER - David Wiley, Open Content

In his application to register a work he created using AI software like Stable Diffusion, Steven Thaler wrote that the work “was autonomously created by a computer algorithm running on a machine” and that he was “seeking to register this computer-generated work as a work-for-hire to the owner.” In other words, he applied for copyright protection for a work he created by providing a prompt to a generative AI tool. The US Copyright Office rejected his attempt to register copyright in the work – twice. In their final response they wrote:

Copyright law only protects “the fruits of intellectual labor” that “are founded in the creative powers of the [human] mind.” COMPENDIUM (THIRD) § 306 (quoting Trade-Mark Cases, 100 U.S. 82, 94 (1879)); see also COMPENDIUM (THIRD) § 313.2 (the Office will not register works “produced by a machine or mere mechanical process” that operates “without any creative input or intervention from a human author” because, under the statute, “a work must be created by a human being”)….

While the [review] Board is not aware of a United States court that has considered whether artificial intelligence can be the author for copyright purposes, the courts have been consistent in finding that non-human expression is ineligible for copyright protection….

Courts interpreting the Copyright Act, including the Supreme Court, have uniformly limited copyright protection to creations of human authors…. For this reason, the Compendium of U.S. Copyright Office Practices — the practice manual for the Office — has long mandated human authorship for registration…. Because copyright law as codified in the 1976 Act requires human authorship, the Work cannot be registered.

In other words, as far as the US Copyright Office is concerned, output from programs like ChatGPT or Stable Diffusion are not eligible for copyright protection. 

https://opencontent.org/blog/archives/7129

Searching with AI tools

3 free ChatGPT Chrome extensions to make you more productive - Doug Aamoth, Fast Company

(Here are some quick examples of how ChatGPT can make you more efficient: automate email writing, add to Google search (and other engines), and read social postings and offer you a draft reply)

Is ChatGPT coming to take your job? Probably not anytime soon. But while watching my editor, Harry, routinely razz the popular chatbot into the digital equivalent of the fetal position is one of the best things about the recent AI boom, the technology itself can be plenty useful for daily tasks. In that spirit, here are a few free and helpful Chrome extensions that leverage ChatGPT to save you a ton of time.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90846682/best-chatgpt-chrome-extensions

ChatGPT vs. Google Search: In Head-to-Head Battle, Which One Is Smarter? - Eric Griffith, PC Mag

(Before you read the summary... which one do you guess will be "smarter?")

Why all the hubbub? Preply(Opens in a new window), an online language learning/tutoring site, showcased exactly why in its new report on whether ChatGPT or Google is smarter. Note that it did all this research in January 2023. The field is moving fast, with announcements flying daily from the big companies. Nevertheless, the results Preply found are interesting for anyone following the space—because the clear winner is the technology that has a significant handicap. To test the two, fA three-person team looked at the results garnered from ChatGPT and Google for each question and rated those responses across a number of characteristics, including whether the answer is clear, the level of detail it contains, and whether the result is actionable. The team even checked responses for impartiality and whether the data included is up to date. (Editor Spoiler Alert: "ChatGPT won with a majority in almost every case, except for the time-fluid questions, where Google did better.")

https://www.pcmag.com/news/chatgpt-vs-google-search-in-head-to-head-battle-which-one-is-smarter

Chat GPT for Google

1. What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, it's a type of AI that is able to understand and generate human-like text. It's been trained on a vast amount of text data from the internet, so it has a good understanding of various topics and it can perform various natural language processing tasks such as language translation, text summarization, and text completion. Essentially, it's a computer program that can communicate with people in a way that feels natural and human-like.

2. What is ChatGPT for Google?

ChatGPT for Google is a browser extension that enhance search engines with the power of ChatGPT. It works by showing ChatGPT response alongside normal search engine results.

3. Is ChatGPT for Google free to use?

Yes, the extension is free to use.

4. What search engines are supported?

Currently, ChatGPT for Google supports Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo and more search engines

5. Do I need a ChatGPT/OpenAI account?

Yes, you need to have a ChatGPT account to use this extension. You can create an account for free at chat.openai.com

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chatgpt-for-google/jgjaeacdkonaoafenlfkkkmbaopkbilf

How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations - David Gewirtz, ZD Net 3/13/2023

(This, of course, is an important step in academic and scholarly work)

Ask ChatGPT to provide sources: This is where a bit of prompt engineering comes in. A good starting point is with this query: Please provide sources for the previous answer. I've found that this often provides offline sources, books, papers, etc. The problem with offline sources is you can't check their veracity. But it's a starting point. A better query is this: Please provide URL sources - This specifically tells ChatGPT that you want clickable links to sources. You can also tweak this up by asking for a specific quantity of sources, although your mileage may vary in terms of how many you get back: Please provide 10 URL sources.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-make-chatgpt-provide-sources-and-citations/

Perplexity, perhaps this is my FAVORITE generative AI search Engine

(When I want an answer quickly and I also want embedded links to sources - Perplexity is hard to beat -- see far below the draft of my upcoming April 12 "Trending Now" column)

Perplexity says "We want to advance the way people discover and share information. We are a small interdisciplinary team determined to bring novel technology and useful products to the world.  Perplexity is not limited by the 2021 database cutoff that ChatGPT is.  It includes 2023 materials - making it much more sueful!  Also, Perplexity includes citations by URL with every response - no need to ask retrospectively.

https://perplexity.ai 

Monica - the ChatGPT CoPilot in Chrome

Searching success is all in the prompts that you create - an art

How to write an effective GPT-3 prompt - Reid Robinson, Zapier

(How to ask the right questions in the right way)

At its most basic level, OpenAI's GPT-3 predicts text based on an input called a prompt. But to get the best results, you need to write a clear prompt with ample context. After tinkering with it for more hours than I'd like to admit, these are my tips for writing an effective GPT-3 prompt. GPT-3 vs. ChatGPT. GPT-3 isn't the same as ChatGPT. ChatGPT, the conversation bot that you've been hanging out with on Friday nights, has more instructions built in from OpenAI. GPT-3, on the other hand, is a more raw AI that can take instructions more openly from users. The tips here are for GPT-3—but keep those chats going with ChatGPT.

https://zapier.com/blog/gpt-3-prompt/

ChatGPT Guide: Five basic prompt strategies for better results - Jonathan Kemper, the De-Coder

To get the result you want, you need text prompts that are as concrete as possible. Besides simple prompts for blog or social media posts, ChatGPT can cover many more, sometimes curious, use cases where you need to come up with more specialized prompts.  ChatGPT processes up to 4,096 tokens in an input, any character beyond that is ignored without a message. A token is roughly equivalent to a word, depending on the use case.  If too much knowledge has been exchanged during a chat, it may be helpful to start a new chat so that subsequent replies are not corrupted.

https://the-decoder.com/chatgpt-guide-five-basic-prompt-strategies-for-better-results/

11 Tips to Take Your ChatGPT Prompts to the Next Level - David Nield, Wired 3/26/2023

ChatGPT and tools like it have made AI available to the masses. We can now get all sorts of responses back on almost any topic imaginable. These bots can come up with sonnets, code, philosophy, and more. However, while you can just type anything you like into ChatGPT and get it to understand you, there are ways of getting more interesting and useful results out of the bot. This “prompt engineering” is becoming a specialized skill of its own.

https://www.wired.com/story/11-tips-better-chatgpt-prompts/

Here are a few parameters you might include in your prompt:

ChatGpt (GPT-3) parameter generator - This tool is to help you build and understand ChatGPT parameters.

https://chatx.ai/chatgpt-parameter-generator/

How to write better ChatGPT prompts (and this applies to most other text-based AIs, too) - David Gewirtz, ZD Net 4/10/2023

There's an art to writing effective prompts to get the results you want from your friendly neighborhood AI. Here's how to up your prompt-writing game. Keep that in mind, because no matter how good your prompts are, there's always the possibility that the AI will simply make stuff up. That said, there's a lot you can do when crafting prompts to ensure the best possible outcome. That's what we'll be exploring in this how-to.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-write-better-chatgpt-prompts/

Awesome ChatGPT Prompts - Fatih Kadir Akın 

Welcome to the “Awesome ChatGPT Prompts” repository! This is a collection of prompt examples to be used with the ChatGPT model. The ChatGPT model is a large language model trained by OpenAI that is capable of generating human-like text. By providing it with a prompt, it can generate responses that continue the conversation or expand on the given prompt. In this repository, you will find a variety of prompts that can be used with ChatGPT. We encourage you to add your own prompts to the list, and to use ChatGPT to generate new prompts as well.   You can also use the prompts in this file as inspiration for creating your own.

https://prompts.chat/

A search engine that creates art for you - You.com

(A Search Engine that Incorporates Image Creation?  Ok.  It takes some time get proficient, but this certainly does create copyright-free images that can be used in publications and classes without copyright notice.)

Let your imagination run wild with our AI art apps.  1️⃣ Create stunning images with YouImagine 🔍 Go to You.com/imagine, type in what you want to create, and get a copyright-free image in seconds If you’re already using YouChat, our AI Search Assistant, simply type “generate image” to prompt the Imagine app to appear.

https://you.com/

The Image Creator from Microsoft Bing

This is a fast image generator using DALL-E.  I use this one most often.  It is one more alternative to consider.

https://www.bing.com/images/create

How to use Bing Image Creator (and why it's better than DALL-E 2) - Maria Diaz, Wired  4/6/2023

It's free, there's no waitlist, and you don't even need to use Edge to access it. Here's everything else you need to know to get started using Microsoft's AI art generator.   Both Google and Microsoft have released their own AI chatbots with Bard and Bing Chat, respectively, even while the AI craze hasn't been without its security, ethical, and economic concerns. More recently, Microsoft released an AI image creator within Bing, using a more advanced version of DALL-E 2, another one of OpenAI's projects.  Similar to using ChatGPT, the DALL-E 2 image generator is accessed by logging into OpenAI's website, where users can then enter a prompt in a text area and wait while it creates an image using artificial intelligence. 

https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-use-bing-image-creator/

And, Now There's a Music Creator!  Royalty-Free Music for modern creators & apps.

https://mubert.com/render

The Race to Build a ChatGPT-Powered Search Engine - Will Knight, Wired

(These are some of my favorite search tools - ChatGPT for Google | You.com | Perplexity.ai | Neeva.com - you will need a ChatGPT logon for the first one - the others are freely available)

While the tech giants prepare their responses to the ChatGPT emergency, several startups have launched search engines with chat interfaces similar to the bot. They include You.com, Perplexity AI, and Neeva. The tools they have built illustrate both the potential and the challenge of adapting ChatGPT-style technology to search. You.com, founded by Richard Socher, an expert on language and AI, can provide answers through a chat interface. The responses come with citations, which can help a user track down the origins of a piece of information.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-race-to-build-a-chatgpt-powered-search-engine/

Neeva.ai - free, no wait, and includes links 

When you want “best of” advice — best sneakers, skincare, headphones — where do you go: Neeva or Reddit?  With our latest NeevaAI feature, you don’t have to choose. Just add site:reddit.com to your Neeva searches for an instant AI-generated summary of the top discussions related to your query. 

NeevaAI does the hard work for you, sifting through millions of threads to summarize the best of Reddit in exactly one answer, with citations. As a 100% ad-free search engine, Neeva is free to surface the best results, products, and reviews from real people, for advice and answers you can trust.

https://neeva.ai 

AI Pause Urged by Musk, Wozniak and Other Tech Leaders - Government Technology (3/30/2023)

An open letter calls for a six-month break on powerful AI training efforts. The idea is to develop safety and oversight systems and otherwise allow time for consideration of the tech’s rapid development.  But the letter also urges more coordination between AI developers and policymakers. It describes a “robust AI governance” regime that would include AI-dedicated regulators; oversight and tracking of AI systems; watermarking to help people discern real and fake images; liability for any harm caused by AI; and public funding of AI safety research. An open letter calls for a six-month break on powerful AI training efforts. The idea is to develop safety and oversight systems and otherwise allow time for consideration of the tech’s rapid development.

https://www.govtech.com/biz/ai-pause-urged-by-musk-wozniak-and-other-tech-leaders

Chat with Any PDF

This is the age of the AI revolution! Intelligence will be free and ubiquitous soon, restructuring our society and enabling new possibilities of interaction. With ChatPDF, your documents are becoming intelligent! Just talk to your PDF file as if it were a human with perfect understanding of the content.It works great to quickly extract information from large PDF files. Try talking to manuals, essays, legal contracts, books or research papers. ChatPDF can not yet understand images in PDFs and might struggle with questions that require understanding more than a few paragraphs at the same time. The PDF is analyzed first to create a semantic index of every paragraph. When asking a question the relevant paragraphs are presented to the ChatGPT API. Your data is saved in a secure cloud storage and deleted after 7 days.

https://www.chatpdf.com/

What is Google Bard? Here's everything you need to know - Sabrina Ortiz, ZD Net

Bard was unveiled on February 6 in a statement from Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. Even though Bard was an entirely new concept at the announcement, the AI chat service is powered by Google's Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), which was unveiled two years ago. Google's Bard had a rough launch, with a demo of Bard delivering inaccurate information about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). To launch the AI service, Google tweeted a demo of the AI chat service in which the prompt read, "What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope can I tell my 9 year old about?". People quickly noticed that the output response was factually incorrect.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/what-is-google-bard-heres-everything-you-need-to-know/

Reading Between the Lines: Quick thoughts on the search wars' opening moves - Sentient Syllabus Project

Recent news, toots, and blogs have been overflowing with Microsoft’s plans to integrate generative AI into its struggling Bing search engine, and Google’s plans to leverage their own technology stack on top of a search engine enhancement called Bard. Of course, the current explosion of new AI-based services is a much broader topic, but search is where the money is,2 and this will determine the developments in the near term. The search wars have begun, we are seeing the opening moves, we can’t tell how this will end, but we can get a better idea where the battlegrounds will be.

https://sentientsyllabus.substack.com/p/reading-between-the-lines

A roadmap for an AI-allied course - Sentient Syllabus

(Follow the development of a generative AI-integrated course designed for Fall 2023)

This letter embarks on a first step along the path to rethink the academy from the ground up: re-building a single course.1 Courses are the basic unit from which the university is constructed.2 With the bigger picture in mind, I sketch out a roadmap to prepare teaching in the fall term – and we will implement this over the coming months. I will re-imagine a course that I plan to teach in the fall term, from the ground up, based on everything we know so far about generative AI, while using our best estimates for its developing impacts, and our best predictions for future changes. The course that we craft will serve as a model for what can be done, a model that can help others in their own work, either by adopting some of the patterns, or by figuring out what they don’t like and how to go their own way. 

https://sentientsyllabus.substack.com/p/starting-over-1

Chat GPT-3 Statistics: Is the Future Already Here? [2023] - Maryia Fokina, Tidio 3/29/2023

(Some interesting survey questions/answers that go beyond education to society-wide perspectives)

Chances are, you’ve heard the name ChatGPT a million times in recent weeks. With so much information scattered around the web, bold claims, and endless social media posts, it might be hard to grasp the full essence of what ChatGPT can do for us.  To some it seems like another AI tool (just a bit more hyped up), to others it signifies the end of the world as we know it. We decided to dig deeper into what society thinks about this whole big thing that generative AI is.  After sending out a survey to internet users, collecting 945 responses, exploring notable examples of ChatGPT’s capacity, and experimenting with ChatGPT—it’s safe to say that some things managed to surprise us.

https://www.tidio.com/blog/chat-gpt/

Biocomputers Using Human Brain Cells Could Overpower AI - Adriana Nine, Extremetech

Right now, it feels as though AI is an unstoppable force—but scientists at Johns Hopkins University believe one thing might overpower it.  It’s called organoid intelligence, or OI, and it uses actual human brain cells to make computing “more brain-like.” OI revolves around using organoids, or clusters of living tissue grown from stem cells that behave similarly to organs, as biological hardware that powers algorithmic systems. The hope—over at Johns Hopkins, at least—is that it’ll facilitate more advanced learning than a conventional computer can, resulting in richer feedback and better decision-making than AI can provide.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/343498-biocomputers-using-human-brain-cells-could-overpower-ai

And, Finally ... ChatGPT Has Written Its Own Book! (Are you surprised?)

ChatGPT on ChatGPT: The AI Explains Itself Paperback – December 12, 2022

by ChatGPT AI (Author), Jeff Hampton P.E. (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/ChatGPT-AI-Explains-Itself/dp/B0BPVR1JSB

Larger metasite - regularly updated by Ray

https://sites.google.com/view/upcea-gpt/home

~~~~~~~

How can you keep up with the daily developments and trends?

Ray's Daily Curated Reading Lists and Social Media. Blogs with daily updates on the field of online / continuing learning in higher education

• Inside Higher Education - "Online: Trending Now" https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/online-trending-now

• UPCEA Professional, Continuing and Online Education Update http://continuingedupdate.blogspot.com/

• Economics and Change in Higher Education by UPCEA http://recessionreality.blogspot.com/

• OER Update by UPCEA https://oerupdate.blogspot.com/

• Ray's Curation by UPCEA https://rayscuration.blogspot.com/

• Alternative Credentials in Higher Ed by UPCEA https://altcred.blogspot.com

• LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/rayschroeder

• Twitter https://twitter.com/rayschroeder

Contact Ray

rschr1@uis.edu ~ rayschroeder@gmail.com - ray@upcea.edu

Senior Fellow, University Professional and Continuing Education Assn.

Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois Springfield

https://rayschroeder.com

APPENDIX - Draft of Ray's April 12, 2023 Inside Higher Ed Column

Trending Now 258 A Few AI Apps I Use Most Often 

In the flurry of launches of generative AI apps this year, there are some that I find are gems that don’t get enough attention.  These are ones that I think colleagues in higher ed might use every day. 

First, let me note that I have no investment in, have received no compensation from, or stand to gain from, the companies that produce or sell the apps mentioned in this article.  These are applications that I have encountered in my readings for the UPCEA daily curation lists such as the Professional, Continuing and Online Update by UPCEA.  https://continuingedupdate.blogspot.com/ I have tried them out, found them particularly useful, and put them in my "frequent-link box” so I can quickly access them throughout the day.   

Let me begin with ChatGPT Plus. https://chat.openai.com/chat   I found it well worth the $20 a month to get access to the GPT-4 version as well as the promise of front-of-the-line when times get busy.  The version 4 has the highest reasoning and conciseness ratings of the three versions that OpenAI supports: Default GPT-3.5, Legacy GPT-3.5 and GPT 4.  If you use it once or twice a day, I think the plus version is well worthwhile.  The time saved adds up to more than $20 in monthly wages.   

I most often recommend this one as the first among alternatives to ChatGPT-4.  Perplexity.AI  https://www.perplexity.ai/ is a top choice for colleagues in higher ed.  I have found it to be a highly-reliable, quick-response generative AI chat.  It is like ChatGPT with a few important differences. It is a search/chat interface that uses an OpenAI's GPT 3.5 model to power its chat tool and search interface. Perplexity AI was founded by Aravind Srinivas, who worked as a research scientist at OpenAI.  However, Perplexity AI is not a commercial product of OpenAI, but rather a demo inspired by OpenAI's WebGPT.  Perhaps the most valuable feature is that it automatically embeds citations within the responses!  You have to ask for sources of information at the end of your searches done with ChatGPT.  Having it presented up front, in response to every prompt, is useful, not only for those of us in higher ed, but everyone, to ensure the veracity and to uncover any potential bias in the response.  Simply click on the URL-based citations, to check their relevance and accuracy.  

Perplexity.AI also provides a short list of a few follow-ups in the form of possible prompts that it “thinks” you might want to consider to get a more complete response. Just click on one of those to get it added to your inquiry.  Oh, and the initial responses are usually relatively concise – one or two paragraphs – that are ready for targeted expansion with follow-up prompts.  There is no rambling, no padding, just the relevant information.  In brief, it is a very quick-response tool that allows you to build a longer, more complex response – all with built-in citations. 

Another of my favorites is ChatPDF.  https://www.chatpdf.com/  I love this app!  Perhaps you are like me in that you are often viewing longer .pdf files.  Government reports, commercial product promotional material, specification sheets, monthly/annual reports, financial reports, legal documents, training manuals, formal academic papers, book chapters, and so many more of our resources are held in .pdf or extended .docx format (which is easily converted to .pdf).  This app responds to prompts such as summarizing, priority listing, a host of analysis approaches, and most all of the other GPT prompts to enable you to efficiently summarize and analyze your documents.  The free version covers 120 pages, 10 megabytes, for three .pdf documents analyzed with 50 question prompts a day.  The $5/month version covers 2,000 pages, 32 megabytes, for 50 documents and 1,000 question prompts a day.  Your data is kept confidential in a secure cloud storage and can be deleted at any time. 

I am a fan of Bing’s Image Creator.  https://www.bing.com/images/create  It is powered by DALL-E, which was revealed by OpenAI in a blog post in January 2021, and uses a version of GPT-3 modified to generate images.  It is faster than some other image generators.  As ChatGPT explained it to me (3/1/2023), “The difference between Bing's image creator and DALL-E is that DALL-E is designed to create images that are more sophisticated and specific to the user's input, whereas Bing's image creator is more focused on quickly generating relevant images based on the user's query. Overall, both Bing's image creator and DALL-E use natural language processing to generate images, but the difference lies in the level of detail and sophistication of the generated images.” 

The next generative AI favorite of mine is not really an app, rather it is an explanation of how to get GPT to create Excel spreadsheet formulas.  https://www.zdnet.com/home-and-office/work-life/how-to-use-chatgpt-to-write-excel-formulas/ This is a great utility for ChatGPT that fits right into the spreadsheet format that is favored by so many higher ed project directors and administrators.  It also can write for Google Sheets which is popular in many shared environments.   

Finally, here’s a look ahead into much more fully-integrated generative AI in business and productivity software.  Eric Hal Schwartz writes in Voicebot.ai that Microsoft has released Microsoft 365 Copilot suite of models to 20 business customers that infuse generative AI into every Office application.  https://voicebot.ai/2023/03/16/microsoft-365-copilot-infuses-generative-ai-into-every-office-app/  

The samples are stunning!  Schwartz explains: “The AI’s integration with Microsoft’s services allows it to turn raw data into Excel graphs, design and animate a PowerPoint presentation, and translate a meeting transcription into a long-term strategic plan for a company. The natural language prompts only require a vague description of the user’s goal and a connection to the relevant documents or meeting transcriptions to gather the data.”  There are videos attached to the article that demonstrate the advanced capabilities that GPT performs using only very cryptic prompts.  It is unclear if this will become a part of Microsoft 365 and if it will carry additional charges.  https://voicebot.ai/2023/03/16/microsoft-365-copilot-infuses-generative-ai-into-every-office-app/ 

Those are my hidden generative gems, from the simple to the resplendent.  Do you find any of these to hold possible promise for your work?  Will they enable you to be more efficient and effective at your job?  As AI expert Jaspreet Bindra is quoted as saying “ChatGPT will not take your jobs, someone who knows how to use it, will.” https://www.republicworld.com/business-news/international-business/chatgpt-will-not-take-your-jobs-someone-who-knows-how-to-use-it-will-ai-expert-articleshow.html