As I reflected on the ASU GSV Conference I attended last week, it is clear the AI Revolution is here. ChatGPT came out in November 2022. The general population likely doesn’t know it was released in August 2021. An Application Programming Interface (API) was available to connect to it. APIs are used to move data back and forth between different applications. It was only in November 2022 when the web-based version was released, that it became very well known. Sam Altman, one of the creators of Open AI, was interviewed at ASU GSV. When asked what most surprised him when it was released, he noted educators who originally wanted it blocked have flipped and realized how much they can use it and how it helps students learn. Here is an audio snippet from the interview.
Sal Khan, creator of Khan Academy, has Khanmigo in beta. Khanmigo uses AI for teachers to create assignments, develop workbooks and rubrics. Assignments can then be assigned to students. Students can have an active dialogue with literacy characters. Unlike ChatGPT, which will provide answers or write essays, Khanmigo, in contrast, uses AI to prompt questions to students and continues a logical conversation for students to answer and think for themselves. This is a game-changer for education. Pedagogical experts have been working with Khan Academy to develop and train the AI. 
Starting in spring 2023 my district has been using Turnitin’s AI Detector. Since this time, 53 million papers have been run through the detector. It has caught about 12% of AI written papers. This number is expected to increase as ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLM) are brought to market. Both of the English Departments in my district have caught students using ChatGPT for their papers. Turnitin’s AI Detector has a very low 1% false positive rate and more than 85% accuracy rate with a confidence score. They are continuing to develop their detector as different LLMs come out.
Microsoft’s Copilot is available to their business clients, and they expect it to be available soon for Office 365 for Education. Here is a video explaining its power. In a nutshell, their AI will write Word Documents, PowerPoint Presentations, invitations and perform Excel calculations for you. Let’s say, for example, you would like to have it create a PowerPoint Presentation on a topic. It will pull images and information from your OneDrive and create a PowerPoint with images and information.
Then there is Google. They have had their Bard AI available since 2017. This is their smallest AI model. They can take images of a cancerous tumor cell and immediately diagnose which type of cancer it is. They’re planning on the explosive growth of their LLM to cater to all industries. Think of that as an AI model that can work with any data set and organization. Google continues to think BIG.
The spend on AI software is expected to reach $64 billion by 2025.
What does all this mean? Should we be afraid of AI or embrace it? I will let you decide after some additional thoughts.
AI technology is at a tipping point in history, not only for technology but for the world itself. It is moving at gigaspeed. This is happening now and at a very fast pace.
Think of the invention of the Internet and how it has changed the world. Information is at our fingertips. Social Media is used to spread information, and disinformation quickly. YouTube has changed the way people consume information and learn.
The health field can greatly benefit from this technology. Take a doctor trying to diagnose a health issue and doesn’t quite know what it is. Symptoms can be put in an AI model and the doctor will receive instant feedback on a likely diagnosis, or exact match. AI collects information from the Internet or can be fed from individual medical organizations.
Education can greatly benefit from this technology. What if there was a model where we could feed it student grades, attendance, discipline and other data and then the AI predicts student outcomes and provides interventions for them to succeed? Predictive analytics at our fingertips. It can also intelligently interact and tutor students while keeping them engaged. This is already the power of Khanmigo. SEL models can interact with students to improve their health and well-being. Classcompanion uses AI to help high school Social Studies teachers assess written assignments and provide immediate feedback for students. Packback is an AI writing tutor for students.
Jasper AI can be used to write anything.
Synthesia AI can be used to create video avatars.
AI Lawyer can help with your legal questions.
DallE-2 can generate art.
Voice AI can change the sound of your voice.
Repurpose AI can take long content and create shorter content to post to numerous Social Media sites.
Jenni AI is a writing assistant.
Fireflies AI can record, transcribe, search and analyze voice conversations.
Murf AI converts text to speech for voice-overs.
Timely AI is an automated time tracker.
Quillbot AI will paraphrase to rewrite anything.
Kuki AI is an AI chatbot.
Copy AI can be used for copywriting.
Mailmentor AI can be used for creating sales messages.
Andi AI is a virtual assistant.
What should we be concerned about? First and foremost, the privacy of the data. ChatGPT owns all input and output from their LLM. They can also share the information without you knowing. This is one of the reasons my district is unable to open it up for student use. However, students can use it on their cell phones or on a home computer. One of the questions I asked every company using AI is how they can guard and put a wall around the data for privacy. Some weren’t thinking about it, while others provided an answer. It will be important to take this into consideration when speaking with vendors we may want to use in the future. When will the government start stepping in and start developing governance around AI? Well, it is already taking place. Sam Altman is speaking with government agencies about this and the ethical use of AI.
AI can be used maliciously. You can ask it to write a macro for Excel that when opened executes xxxx. Bad actors are already using it to write malicious code and for hacking into systems. On the flipside of this, AI is being developed for cybersecurity. It can detect malicious activity through AI algorithms very quickly. Bad actors also use voice AI to extort money from people by using the voice of someone in their family when making calls.
Jobs will change in the future; which ones will be replaced by AI, or not, is still to be determined. Predictions are already being made. Only time will tell as this evolves.
The world was afraid of the Industrial Revolution and look how it transformed the world. There are many inventions we can point back to in history that changed the world for the better. In my opinion, we are at the precipice of one of the greatest inventions of our time.
I leave you with this quote from Malcolm Forbes. “The purpose of education is to replace empty minds with an open one.”
Author:Keith Bockwoldt, Chief Information Officer at Hinsdale Township High School District 86
ASU GSV 2023 Blog Series
Blog 1: What EdTech Leaders Learned from ASU GSV 2023
Blog 2: AI is Poised to Change the Future of Education: Data Interoperability and Privacy Need to be the Foundation
Blog 3: A Reminder of the Global Perspective
Blog 4: The AI Revolution: How Artificial Intelligence is Shaping Our Future
Blog 5: AI Observations from EdTech Innovators
Published on: June 13th, 2023
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