March News and Research Roundup

AI Education Podcast

It's a News and Research Episode this week

There has been a lot of AI news and AI research that's related to education since our last Rapid Rundown, so we've had to be honest and drop 'rapid' from the title! Despite talking fast, this episode still clocked in just over 40 minutes, and we really can't out what to do - should we talk less, cover less news and research, or just stop worrying about time, and focus instead on making sure we bring you the key things every episode?

News More than half of UK undergraduates say they use AI to help with essays

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/01/more-than-half-uk-undergraduates-ai-essays-artificial-intelligence

This was from a Higher Education Policy Institute of 1,000 students, where they found 53% are using AI to generate assignment material.

• 1 in 4 are using things like ChatGPT and Bard to suggest topics
• 1 in 8 are using it to create content
• And 1 in 20 admit to copying and pasting unedited AI-generated text straight into their assignments

Finance worker pays out $25 million after video call with deepfake ‘chief financial officer’

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/04/asia/deepfake-cfo-scam-hong-kong-intl-hnk/index.html

An HK-based employee of a multinational firm wired out $25M after attending a video call where all employees were deepfaked, including the CFO. He first got an email which was suspicious but then was reassured on the video call with his “coworkers.”

NSW Department of Education Launch NSW EduChat

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/feb/12/the-ai-chat-app-being-trialled-in-nsw-schools-which-makes-students-work-for-the-answers

NSW are rolling out a trial to 16 public schools of a chatbot built on Open AI technology, but without giving students and staff unfettered access to ChatGPT. Unlike ChatGPT, the app has been designed to only respond to questions that relate to schooling and education, via content-filtering and topic restriction. It does not reveal full answers or write essays, instead aiming to encourage critical thinking via guided questions that prompt the student to respond – much like a teacher.

The Productivity Commission has thoughts on AI and Education

https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/making-the-most-of-the-ai-opportunity

The PC released a set of research papers about "Making the most of the AI opportunity", looking at Productivity, Regulation and Data Access.

They do talk about education in two key ways:

• "Recent improvements in generative AI are expected to present opportunities for innovation in publicly provided services such as healthcare, education, disability and aged care, which not only account for a significant part of the Australian economy but also traditionally exhibit very low productivity growth"
• "A challenge for tertiary education institutions will be to keep up to date with technological developments and industry needs. As noted previously by the Commission, short courses and unaccredited training are often preferred by businesses for developing digital and data skills as they can be more relevant and up to date, as well as more flexible"

Yes, AI-Assisted Inventions can be inventions

News from the US, that may set a precedent for the rest of the world. Patents can be granted for AI-assisted inventions - including prompts, as long as there's significant contribution from the human named on the patent

https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2024-02623/guidance-inventorship-guidance-on-ai-assisted-inventions

Not news, but Ray mentioned his Very British Chat bot. Sadly, you need the paid version of ChatGPT to access it as it's one of the public GPTs, but if you have that you'll find it here: Very British Chat

Sora was announced

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-16/ai-video-generator-sora-from-openai-latest-tech-launch/103475830

Although it was the same day that Google announced Gemini 1.5, we led with Sora here - just like the rest of the world's media did!

On the podcast, we didn't do it justice with words, so instead here's four threads on X that are worth your time to read\watch to understand what it can do:

• Taking a video, and changing the style/environment: https://x.com/minchoi/status/1758831659833602434?s=20
• Some phenomenally realistic videos: https://x.com/AngryTomtweets/status/1759171749738840215?s=20 (remember, despite how 'real' these videos appear, none of these places exist outside of the mind of Sora!)
• Bling Zoo: https://x.com/billpeeb/status/1758223674832728242?s=20
• This cooking grandmother does not exist: https://x.com/sama/status/1758219575882301608?s=20 (A little bit like her mixing spoon, that appears to exist only for mixing and then doesn't)

Google's Gemini 1.5 is here…almost

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/google-gemini-advanced-tasting-notes

Research Papers

Google's Gemini 1.5 can translate languages it doesn't know

https://storage.googleapis.com/deepmind-media/gemini/gemini_v1_5_report.pdf

Google also published a 58 page report on what their researchers had found with it, and we found the section on translation fascinating.

Sidenote: There's an interesting Oxford Academic research project report from last year that was translating cuneiform tablets from Akkadian into English, which didn't use Large Language Models, but set the thinking going on this aspect of using LLMs

Understanding the Role of Large Language Models in Personalizing and Scaffolding Strategies to Combat Academic Procrastination

arXiv:2312.13581

Challenges and Opportunities of Moderating Usage of Large Language Models in Education

arXiv:2312.14969

ChatEd: A Chatbot Leveraging ChatGPT for an Enhanced Learning Experience in Higher Education

arXiv:2401.00052

AI Content Self-Detection for Transformer-based Large Language Models

arXiv:2312.17289

Evaluating the Performance of Large Language Models for Spanish Language in Undergraduate Admissions Exams

arXiv:2312.16845

Taking the Next Step with Generative Artificial Intelligence: The Transformative Role of Multimodal Large Language Models in Science Education

arXiv:2401.00832

Empirical Study of Large Language Models as Automated Essay Scoring Tools in English Composition - Taking TOEFL Independent Writing Task for Example

arXiv:2401.03401

Using Large Language Models to Assess Tutors' Performance in Reacting to Students Making Math Errors

arXiv:2401.03238

Future-proofing Education: A Prototype for Simulating Oral Examinations Using Large Language Models

arXiv:2401.06160

How Teachers Can Use Large Language Models and Bloom's Taxonomy to Create Educational Quizzes

arXiv:2401.05914

How does generative artificial intelligence impact student creativity?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2713374523000316

Large Language Models As MOOCs Graders

arXiv:2402.03776

Can generative AI and ChatGPT outperform humans on cognitive-demanding problem-solving tasks in science?

arXiv:2401.15081