“Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.” — Stephen Hawking
Upcoming Events
AILA Tools Team Demos SCISPACE; 11/28 @ 5p in Frost Library Cafe
The Mentorship and Tools team will be popping-up to demo Scispace, an AI search engine, paraphrase and citation creator designed for academic research. Come visit the Tools team for one-on-one help with specific projects, setting up the tool on your laptop, or how learn how to use AI in your projects.
Hack the Herd 2023: A 24-hour Problem Solving Event
December 1-2; 5p-5p; Science Center, Amherst College
In partnership with the Office of Sustainability and Amherst Computer Science Club, AILA presents our first-ever “Social Hackathon”. Hack the Herd is a 24-hour problem-solving event where people from various backgrounds come together to solve sustainability problems at Amherst. If you see yourself as a Programmer, Communicator, Designer, Manager, or Strategist, put a team together to compete to come up with a solution using real-life technologies and tools! Food from Crazy Noodles and Prizes to be had! Read more and sign-up today! Signups due Nov. 25th.here!
ChatGPT, One Year Later
December 6; 4:30-6p; CHI ThinkTank, Amherst College
On December 6th at 4:30pm, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI) and the AI in Liberal Arts (AILA) Initiative will convene a panel of three professors exploring the many developments that are reshaping our shared sense of generative AI and of its potential impacts on higher education. The panel will feature Professors Chris Grobe (Director of the Center for Humanistic Inquiry), Kristina Reardon (Director of the Intensive Writing Program), and Matteo Riondato (Associate Professor of Computer Science) followed by an open discussion with the Amherst community. Learn more about the event here. See you there!
AILA Community Hours
Part of our mission is to offer support and guidance to our diverse community of supporters as they navigate AI Technology and its implications in our lives and work. During our community hours we open our doors to provide individual consultation and assistance.
Our doors are open:
- Wednesday Evenings – 6:30- 7:30p (Science Building, C211)
- Thursday Afternoons – 12-2p (Virtually by appointment)
Contact us today if you have questions or projects you’d like to talk through or AI-related concerns you’d like discuss. We’re here to support you!
Please Note: 10/19 Community Hours will be held at Frost Library in conjunction w/ ChatGPT Café
Featured AI News
It’s hard to keep up with all the AI-related News these days, but here are a couple stories that have us thinking and discussing. Let us know what AI News stories have you riveted!
SAG-AFTRA Reveals How Studios Will Handle AI Actors
As part of the new strike agreement struck last week between SAG-AFTRA and Hollywood studios, several provisions have been included to protect actors from the use of AI. These provisions require companies to obtain consent before creating digital replicas of actors and ensure that actors are compensated for their use. The rules also extend to deceased actors. The billion-dollar deal aims to safeguard actors’ rights and addresses the potential impact of AI in the entertainment industry. Read more!
(SAG-AFTRA members on day 95 of their strike against Hollywood studios. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
OpenAI Holds Inaugural DevDay, Announces Record-Breaking New GPT-4 Turbo
Last Monday, at OpenAI’s inaugural DevDay CEO Sam Altman announced a new model, GPT-4 Turbo. Its context window — the amount of text it can remember in a conversation — is 32 times larger than Chat-GPT’s, equivalent to 300 pages of text (128k tokens). Altman further announced cheaper pricing models, new developer tools, and enterprise solutions. He also revealed Copyright Shield, which will support and cover legal fees for OpenAI users (individuals and companies) facing legal claims around copyright infringement. Read OpenAI’s blog post here, or watch the full keynote.Read more here!
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at DevDay. (OpenAI / YouTube)
AILA Recommended Reads
Engaging an interdisciplinary community of participants in discussions and activities about AI requires we stay in the know. Here are some of our recommended reads this week!
Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis (Pantheon, 2019)
Gary Marcus has distinguished himself as one AI’s big critics and in this text it is clear why. Rebooting AI provides a foundational understanding of some of the big things that AI developers are getting wrong and what to do about it. Listen to Gary Marcus talk about it here!
Featured AI Tool
Our AI Mentorship and Tools team is always exploring new applications of AI. Here we feature some of our favorites. Please explore these tools freely with your personal account, but be mindful of bias, accuracy, content ownership, and use of personally identifiable information with these tools. Institutions are evaluating the use and configuration of AI-based tools, so please check with your IT department before using these tools with college or institutional systems or data.
Music LM is an experimental text-to-music model that generates unique songs based on your ideas. Simply provide a clear and concise description of your desired music, such as the genre, mood, tempo and then the AI will generate two different tracks based on your input. Built by Google’s AI Test Kitchen, Music LM is both innovative and secure being regulated by the same security and privacy policies Google uses for all of their products: opt in/out data sharing, easily personal data deletion, 2 step verification and activity controls to decide what personal and metadata gets saved or not.
Security and Privacy Rating: 
