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- Innovation Profs - 1/23/2024
Innovation Profs - 1/23/2024
Your weekly guide to generative AI tools and news
Innovation Profs
January 23, 2024
Last call for Friday AI workshop
We’re hosting an Intro to Generative AI Workshop Jan. 26 at Drake University (and virtually).
Don’t fall behind on generative AI knowledge. Attendees will learn about current generative AI tools and gain ideas of how those tools can be used in their professional lives.
You'll be testing out tools such as Chat GPT, Google Bard, Midjourney, DALL-E 3 and more during the day. So bring your laptop to get hands-on with these tools. The class is in a flex space made for hybrid teaching, so virtual attendees will have a great experience.
Generative AI News
OpenAI partners with Arizona State University to use ChatGPT in classrooms
OpenAI and Arizona State University have announced a partnership to bring ChatGPT Enterprise to the university, with the aim of “enhancing student success, forging new avenues for innovative research, and streamlining organizational processes,” according to an ASU press release. This is the first partnership between OpenAI and an institution of higher education.
Generative AI dominates Davos discussions as companies focus on accuracy
Generative AI was the topic du jour at last week’s annual meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, with a particular focus on increasing model accuracy. Across a number of panel discussions and interviews, CEOs of major corporations were optimistic about the use of generative AI in 2024. Some select quotes:
Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman: “It [generative AI] came onto the scene a little over a year ago. We did some experimentation. We started to kind of understand the potential of it. This year will be the year of activations for us and for everyone.”
Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger: “You’ve now reached the end of today’s AI utility. This next phase of AI, I believe, will be about building formal correctness into the underlying models.”
Both of these agencies want a piece of Microsoft’s Open AI partnership
The Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Justice are in talks to determine which entity will consider potential antitrust violations raised by the partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft. Although Microsoft claims that it does not exercise control over OpenAI, suspicions to the contrary were raised when Microsoft hired Sam Altman after he was briefly ousted as OpenAI’s CEO. “[N]either agency is ready to relinquish jurisdiction, the people said, which must be resolved before the government can formally intervene in one of the most high-profile and controversial tech partnerships in recent years.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says ChatGPT doesn’t need New York Times data amid lawsuit
In a panel discussion at last week’s World Economic Forum in Davos, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman described his surprised reaction to the New York Times’ lawsuit against OpenAI. According to Altman, OpenAI was having “productive negotiations” that would pay the New York Times “a lot of money to display their content.” As stated on the panel, “We are open to training on The New York Times, but it’s not our priority.” He continued, “We actually don’t need to train on their data. I think this is something that people don’t understand. Any one particular training source, it doesn’t move the needle for us that much.”
Author Admits She Used ChatGPT to Write Award-Winning Novel
Japanese author Rie Kudan, whose novel, "The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy" received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in Japan, admitted last week at a ceremony for the award that she used ChatGPT to write approximately 5% of the novel, quoting verbatim from the outputs she received. According to Kudan, ““In recent years, we find ourselves in a situation in which words have expanded without limit, and permitted unlimited interpretations. I want to use the words with care, and to think about the positive and negative aspects of language.” It is unclear whether ChatGPT was used to produce the words of an AI system protrayed in Kudan’s novel.
Quick Hits
Tool of the week: Runway Multi Motion Brush
Generative AI video startup Runway added a new feature this week - multi motion brush. The new tool allows users to specify multiple areas in a video where motion will take place.
This gives users better control over the videos they make from images.
AI-generated image of the week
We tested out Runway’s multi motion tool (mentioned above) with an image of basketball fans created in Midjourney. Below is our starting image, the screenshot from Runway and a GIF of the final result. Click here to see the actual video (higher quality).
Prompt: basketball fans wearing blue and white cheer on their team from the stands
We selected five different regions in the photo and had the either move horizontally or vertically.
Prompt: Fans cheer at a basketball gameGenerative AI tip of the week
Did you know you can make a song with your Amazon Echo device? Say “Alexa, Open Splash Music,” and follow the prompts.
Get starting with Generative AI
New to generative AI? Here are some places to start…
What we found
Another cautionary tale about using chatbots to fully automate customer service:
Parcel delivery firm DPD have replaced their customer service chat with an AI robot thing. It’s utterly useless at answering any queries, and when asked, it happily produced a poem about how terrible they are as a company. It also swore at me. 😂
— Ashley Beauchamp (@ashbeauchamp)
5:28 PM • Jan 18, 2024