🤝 AidfulAI Newsletter #20: Mastering ChatGPT
Dear curious minds,
Welcome to the ultimate newsletter for those interested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). In this week's issue, I bring to you the following topics:
OpenAI published a guide for effectively using ChatGPT inspired by educators.
UAE's TII released Falcon 180B, a powerful new open-source AI model.
Zoom rebranded its AI features and scaled back customer data usage for training.
Reflect added an AI-powered backlink feature for note-taking.
Podcast interview with Nick Milo on building privacy-focused knowledge systems.
If nothing sparks your interest, don't waste time and move on, otherwise, let us dive in!
Major AI News
🛠️🤖 Teaching With AI Guide From OpenAI: Use ChatGPT Effectively
OpenAI published a guide for teachers using ChatGPT in their classroom.
The real-world examples of how educators are using ChatGPT are a useful source for everyone to get better results while using ChatGPT.
Role-play scenarios to sharpen argumentation skills or prepare for job interviews.
Generate quizzes, exams, and lesson plans based on a given curriculum.
Utilize for language translation and improving English proficiency.
Exercise critical thinking by double-checking AI-generated information.
Furthermore, the article gives four example prompts created by which show you advanced usage of ChatGPT.
A ChatGPT prompt by Ethan and Lila Mollick. [source] My take: Especially the shared prompts show that using ChatGPT effectively can differ from entering a simple question in the input box. Give it a try and explore for yourself what is possible with longer prompts. Besides the shared prompts, you should also take a look at the blog of Ethan Mollick where he publishes weekly an article about generative AI.
Privacy-Friendly AI
🦅🏅 Falcon 180B: The New Open Model
Developed by UAE's Technology Innovation Institute, which released a blog article about the new model.
It is 2.5x larger than Llama 2 and trained on 4x more compute.
You can try it on HuggingFace or download the base model and the chat model, but be aware that you need at least 400 GB of memory to run inference with Falcon 180B.
This model is an improvement over the previous Falcon-40B model, which was already considered powerful.
Competes with OpenAI GPT-3.5 and Googles PaLM-2.
In contrast to the previous version, the license is now a custom one named "Falcon-180B TII license" instead of the well-known Apache 2.0. More about it in this discussion.
My take: Fast, faster, progress of open-source LLMs. However, the model is too big to run it on your own hardware.
🎥🤖 Zoom's More Privacy-friendly AI-Driven Revamp
Zoom rebrands its AI features, including the former Zoom IQ, to AI Companion and adds even more generative AI features as stated in a TechCrunch article.
The in issue 10 discussed controversy in Zoom's terms, which stated to use customer data for AI training, were neglected and the updated policy states that they avoid using customer data for AI training.
AI Companion expands to Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Team Chat, and Zoom Mail.
A ChatGPT like conversation interface is announced to be added in spring 2024.
Demo of the announced Zoom conversation interface. [source] Many, if not all, of these AI features are only accessible for paying Zoom users.
My take: Good to see a step back from using customer data to train their AI tools. However, if you are interested in a really privacy-friendly video chat solution, you should take a look at Brave talk.
PKM and AI
📝✨ Reflect uses AI to create backlinks
The note-taking app Reflect describes in a blog article a new feature which adds backlinks to your notes by using AI.
To add backlinks, you mark a passage and trigger the prompt “Decorate my writing with backlinks” either by a keyboard shortcut or the stars icon.
Demo of the AI backlink creation feature in Reflect. [source] Full video walkthrough on YouTube.
My take: Interesting feature, but I prefer to add mostly non-obvious connections. However, maybe the feature can also help to identify some links which are missed otherwise and no one forces me to replace the text with the result.
Podcasts
📝✍️ Privacy-friendly Note-Making with Nick Milo
Cesar Abeid, host of the Project Management Podcast, interviewed Nick Milo, the creator of the Linking Your Thinking system.
Nick states that knowledge management systems should be tailored to individual needs and goals.
Privacy is a key factor when choosing technology tools for knowledge management and Obsidian, the tool of choice from Nick, promotes data privacy by storing files only locally and allowing to sync them encrypted.
My take: Nick Milo shares a lot of valuable information about how to make notes for free. The newest addition is the Ideaverse for Obsidian vault. Besides that, he also teaches his concepts in a paid workshop which will start in its next iteration end of September.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is written with the aid of AI. I use AI as an assistant to generate and optimize the text. However, the amount of AI used varies depending on the topic and the content. I always curate and edit the text myself to ensure quality and accuracy. The opinions and views expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of the sources or the AI models.