The Web Almost Killed Me

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For a decade and a half, I’d been a web obsessive, publishing blog posts multiple times a day, seven days a week, and ultimately corralling a team that curated the web every 20 minutes during peak hours. Each morning began with a full immersion in the stream of internet consciousness and news, jumping from site to site, tweet to tweet, breaking news story to hottest take, scanning countless images and videos, catching up with multiple memes. Throughout the day, I’d cough up an insight or an argument or a joke about what had just occurred or what was happening right now. My brain had never been so occupied so insistently by so many different subjects and in so public a way for so long.  If you had to reinvent yourself as a writer in the internet age, I reassured myself, then I was ahead of the curve. The problem was that I hadn’t been able to reinvent myself as a human being.

I realized I had been engaging—like most addicts—in a form of denial. I’d long treated my online life as a supplement to my real life. But then I began to realize, as my health and happiness deteriorated, that this was not a both-and kind of situation. It was either-or. Every hour I spent online was not spent in the physical world.

Andrew Sullivan, I used to Be a Human Being

13 Great Quotes about AI & Students

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Understanding what AI can and cannot do well within the context of your course will be key as you contemplate revising your assignments and teaching.” -Hechinger Report

The University of Southern California rolled out its AI for Business major last year, a joint degree between the business and engineering schools. In its first year, the major received 713 applications from incoming freshmen for fewer than 50 spots. This year, over 1,000 students applied.  -Wall Street Journal

More than 1 in 6 bot conversations seemed to be students seeking help with their homework,” according to a review of nearly 200,000 English-language conversations by The Washington Post. “Some approached the bots like a tutor, hoping to get a better understanding of a subject area. Others just went all-in and copy-and-pasted multiple-choice questions from online courseware software and demanded the right answers. -Washington Post

Faculty will need to improve their own AI literacy. A good way to begin is to ask AI to perform assignments and projects that you typically ask your students to complete — and then try to improve the AI’s response. -Hechinger Report

Three in five college students say they are regular users of AI compared to 36 percent of instructors, according to research released in June by Tyton Partners -Inside Higher Ed

Magic School's Academic Content Generator: Enter your assignment description to receive suggestions on making it more challenging for AI chatbots, promoting higher-level thinking among students. -Magic School

Half of surveyed college students say they would be likely or extremely likely to use generative AI tools, even if they were banned by their instructor, according to research released in June by Tyton Partners. -Inside Higher Ed

What should a young person study in college? JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently said, “It almost doesn't matter because (we're) looking for smart, ethical, decent people. But I do think in business you should learn the language of business. So I think it would help to do accounting, finance, markets, something like that.” -Wall Street Journal

Nearly all college-bound high school seniors are familiar with generative artificial intelligence tools, and the vast majority of them have used those tools, according to a new survey. It found 19 out of 20 students are familiar with generative AI and 69% of college-bound students have used generative AI tools. -The National Desk

There are students who are leaning on AI too much. But it’s not pervasive. The number of students using AI to complete their schoolwork hasn’t skyrocketed in the past year. -Ed Week

If students don’t learn about how AI works, they won’t understand its limitations – and therefore how it is useful and appropriate to use and how it’s not. -The Conversation

The teachers will say, ‘Don’t use AI because it is very inaccurate and it will make up things. But then they use AI to detect AI.’ - a Houston high school senior quoted in EdWeek

A survey of students in grades 6-12, released by the nonpartisan think tank Center for Democracy & Technology, found that students with special needs are more likely than their peers to use generative AI and be disciplined for doing so. -Center for Democracy & Technology

AI discussion questions at the start of the semester

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Suggested questions for teachers and professors to bring up with their classes at the start of the school year:

  • What AI policies have you had in other classes?

  • Are you using it and how? (talk about how you are using it)

  • How could AI be ethically used in education? 

  • What counts as AI-enabled plagiarism?

  • How could AI be ethically used in the production of media?  

  • When should students rely on AI assistance? 

  • When should students not rely on AI assistance? 

Talk about transparency (perhaps show some examples of transparency statements)

Be sure to tell them about your expectations regarding the use of generative AI and when it can be used in the class.

In Pursuit of Failure

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When you consider failure, it is important to distinguish between two kinds. There is the failure of giving up, turning around, and walking away. Although this failure holds a certain seductive appeal, you must not let it divert you from the true heart of failure: the triumphant defeat of all your hopes, stratagems, and efforts. This is the ultimate failure that tells you who you are. This is the failure you have had to work hard for, the failure you put everything into—failure so rich with loss and pain that, even years later, it gives you the basis from which to make yourself anew, the scar tissue that deeply confirms your aliveness. Real failure requires real effort and is its own reward.

Andrew Boyd, Daily Afflictions

20 Articles about the business of running an AI

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AI Scientists Have a Problem: AI Bots Are Reviewing Their Work ChatGPT is wreaking chaos in the field that birthed it.– Chronicle of Higher Ed 

How the Sparkles Emoji Became the Symbol of Our AI Future – Wall Street Journal

Google’s AI Search Gives Sites Dire Choice: Share Data or Die – Bloomberg  

The AI bubble has burst. Here's how we know. - Mashable 

The New A.I. Deal: Buy Everything but the Company – New York Times 

Inside the company that gathers ‘human data’ for every major AI company – Semafor

Websites are Blocking the Wrong AI Scrapers (Because AI Companies Keep Making New Ones) – 404 Media  

A CIO canceled a Microsoft AI deal. The reason should worry the entire tech industry – Business Insider  

Perplexity will soon start selling ads within AI search – Fast Company 

Meet Stability AI's Stable Video 4D, a nuanced take on AI video generation - ZDnet 

Bing’s AI redesign shoves the usual list of search results to the side – The Verge  

OpenAI starts testing prototype of new AI search tool – Axios  

Oops GPT OpenAI just announced a new search tool. Its demo already got something wrong. – The Atlantic  

Big Tech says AI is booming. Wall Street is starting to see a bubble. – Washington Post

Crisis Looms as AI Companies Rapidly Losing Access to Training Data – Futurism   

AI’s Real Hallucination Problem – The Atlantic   

Alphabet Reports 29% Jump in Profit as A.I. Efforts Begin to Pay Off – New York Times  

Google Fails to ‘Wow’ as AI Bills Mount - Wall Street Journal 

Meta Is Offering Hollywood Stars Millions for AI Voice Projects – Bloomberg

San Francisco’s AI startup boom is so big, even international founders who don’t run AI startups are relocating there to help their companies grow – Tech Crunch

Clear Writing vs Legalize

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MIT cognitive scientists set out to determine why laws are written in an incomprehensible style. Lawyers don’t like it. Your average person doesn’t like it, so why does it persist? The researchers theorized that legal writers start by coming up with a main idea but then they keep finding reasons to qualify the rules, and soon the writing is overly complicated. It turns out that wasn’t it at all. When they had people try to write laws, they immediately adopted a convoluted style of legal language. It’s called the "magic spell hypothesis." The researchers say, “Just as magic spells are written with a distinctive style that sets them apart from everyday language, using legal language appears to signal a special kind of authority.” Academic writing is similar. When students are asked to write something for a class, they immediately adopt the overly-formal writing style of academics.  

More: Study explains why laws are written in an incomprehensible style

16 Great Quotes about the Impact of AI on Jobs

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On Handshake, a job-search platform for college students, the share of job descriptions that mention ChatGPT and other generative-AI tools has tripled in the past year. While about one-quarter of those roles are tech-related, 16% are in marketing and 12% are in art and media. - Wall Street Journal

LinkedIn data shows that 59% of hiring managers wouldn’t hire someone without AI literacy skills. Professionals can no longer afford to ignore AI. -Fast Company

Valerie Capers Workman, chief talent engagement officer at Handshake, said generative AI is the new Microsoft Office. “The skill set will be ubiquitous 10 years from now, but in the next two to five years, it’s going to be a major asset in getting recruited,” she said. -Wall Street Journal

A Japanese mega-conglomerate says it's using AI to build what one of its designers called a "mental shield" that manipulates angry customers' voices so that call center employees don't have to deal with drama. Softbank insists it won't change customers' words, but instead will do things like make a shrill, angry voice lower, to become less grating, or else, raise the pitch. -ArsTechnica

Some employers have started administering prompt-engineering assessments, which evaluate how well you can instruct generative-AI models to complete a task, during the hiring process. -Wall Street Journal

The Stanford AI Index Report talks about how AI is associated with more productive workers, with work of higher quality, and with workers that are able to get work done in less time. There’s also data that suggests companies that integrate AI see tangible revenue increases and tangible cost decreases. -Big Think

AI has become such an inherent part of the copywriting process that many writers now add personal ‘AI policies’ to their professional websites to explain how they use the technology. They will forgo AI for those who prefer it – but you can expect to pay more. The extra time and mental energy required means AI-free projects come with a higher price tag. -BBC

Freelance jobs that require basic writing, coding or translation are disappearing across postings on job board Upwork. The number of freelance jobs posted on platforms, in the areas in which generative AI excels, have dropped by as much as 21%. -Wall Street Journal

Certain sectors are expected to experience growth due to AI advancements, particularly in healthcare and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields. However, the majority of job impacts will be concentrated in four main categories… -India Today

Job seekers are using AI to craft cover letters and résumés in seconds, and deploying new automated bots to robo-apply for hundreds of jobs in just a few clicks. In response, companies are deploying more bots of their own to sort through the oceans of applications. The result: a bot versus bot war -Wall Street Journal

Microsoft released its annual Work Trend Index in partnership with LinkedIn, surveying 31,000 people. The report suggests 66% of business leaders wouldn't hire someone without AI skills, and 71% of leaders would prefer to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them. -ZD Net

You're not going to be replaced by AI; you're going to be replaced by somebody who knows how to use AI. -Abran Maldonado, community liaison for OpenAI

Which types of positions are being replaced by AI the fastest? In the past two years, “the number of writing jobs declined 33%.” Meanwhile, “Video editing/production jobs are up 39%, graphic design jobs are up 8% & Web design jobs are up 10 percent." -Inc. Magazine

For years, people working in warehouses or fast food restaurants worried that automation could eliminate their jobs. But new research suggests that generative A.I. will have its biggest impact on white-collar workers with high-paying jobs in industries like banking and tech. -New York Times

A recent survey found 4 out of 10 employers are actively looking for people with AI development qualifications—and they would be willing to “hike pay levels for AI-skilled workers across business functions” with salaries potentially rising by an average of 35-43%. -Higher Ed Dive

When it comes to using ChatGPT at work, some business leaders believe that soft skills will be crucial in the age of AI. Earlier this month, Aneesh Raman, a vice president at LinkedIn, said that communication, creativity, and flexibility are skills that will set employees apart in the workforce as opposed to technical skills like coding. Perhaps doubling down on what makes you human may be what saves you from being replaced by AI. -Business Insider

A Personal Notebook

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Successful people track their progress, set goals, reflect, and learn from their mistakes. And they often use some kind notebook to accomplish this. If you want to get somewhere in life, you need a map, and this notebook is that map. You can write down what you did today, what you tried to accomplish, where you made mistakes, and so forth. It’s a place to reflect. It’s a place to capture important thoughts. It’s a place to be able to track where you’ve been and where you intend to go. It’s one of the most underused, yet incredibly effective tools available to the masses.

Angel Chernoff

Setting Goals

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Self-regulation begins with setting goals - not big, life-directing goals, but more immediate goals for what you're going to be doing today. In the research, the poorest performers don't set goals at all; they just slog through their work. Mediocre performers set goals that are general and are often focused on simply achieving a good outcome - win the order; get the new project proposal done. The best performers set goals that are not about the outcome but rather about the process of reaching the outcome. 

The best performers are focused on how they could get better at some specific element of the work, just as a pianist may focus on improving a particular passage.

With a goal set, the next step is planning how to reach it. Again, the best performers make the most specific, technique-oriented plans. They're thinking exactly, not vaguely, of how to get where they're going. So if their goal is discerning the customer's unstated needs, their plan for achieving it on that day may be to listen for certain key words the customer might use, or to ask specific questions to bring out the customer's crucial issues.

Geoff Colvin, Why Talent is Overrated  

How do AI Checkers Work?

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AI checkers will break down text, removing punctuation then use a technique called vectorization to convert it into a mathematical hash code for comparison to other text. Phrases and grammatical structure are assigned weights with uncommon language rated as more likely human-written. The AI detector also looks across the internet for use of the same language. The comparison identifies exact matches and paraphrases. This means data-rich companies like OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are more likely to successfully identify AI-written material. Read more about this process on ZDnet

Setting Boundaries

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Many people feel that they are “people persons,” able to attract others and connect with them. At the same time, however, people persons often feel overwhelmed, anxious and frustrated about the obligations and responsibilities that their bonded relationships demand.  

Setting boundaries is the primary tool for strengthening your separateness and developing an accurate sense of responsibility.  The essence of boundaries is determining where you end and someone else begins, realizing your own person apart from others, and knowing your limits.  

A good way to understand this is to compare our lives to a house. Houses have certain maintenance needs, such as painting, terminate control and roof repairs. If, however, we’re spending all our time putting roofs on our neighbor’s houses while neglecting our own roof or we run the risk of a leaky roof or worse by the time we get back home.  

Think of all the different caring acts you performed over the last 24 hours. How many did you do grudgingly because you were under the threat of someone’s criticism or abandonment?  How many did you do under compulsion because you feel guilty if you don’t keep people happy?  And how many were from a cheerful heart, from the overflow caused by knowing you are loved by God and people in your life?   

John Townsend

Courses & Guides on Using AI

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Creating your own misery

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As long as you live in a society with other fallible humans you will be frustrated and hassled - not merely occasionally - all of your life. The best way to avoid feeling miserable about virtually anything that will ever occur in your lifetime is to admit that you create your own misery.

(Irrational beliefs that interfere with emotional health include..)

  • I must do well... win the approval of others... or else I will rate as a rotten person.

  • Others must treat me with considerately and kindly... Other people must not behave incompetently or stupidly.

  • The world (and the people in it) must arrange the conditions under which I live so that I get what I want when I want it.

Albert Ellis