External AI Resources

Helpful Videos, Blogs, and Posts

  1. Practical AI for Instructors and Students: 5 video playlist by Wharton Interactive’s Faculty Director Ethan Mollick and Director of Pedagogy Lilach Mollick. An overview of AI large language models for educators and students. They take a practical approach and explore how the models work, and how to work effectively with each model, weaving in your own expertise. They also show how to use AI to make teaching easier and more effective, with example prompts and guidelines, as well as how students can use AI to improve their learning.
  2. One Useful thing blog by Wharton business professor Ethan Mollick providing faculty with ideas on how to utilize AI tools in the classroom.
    1. A Guide to Prompting AI (for what it is worth)
    2. Democratizing the Future of Education
    3. The Future of Education in a World of AI
  3. AI Canon. An intro guide to what LLMs (Large Language Models), Neural Networks, and other AI-related tools are. Links to various deeper dives are available in the intro.

Current Surveys

  1. Survey of 1,000 Hiring Managers shows that ~9 in 10 Hiring Managers believe ChatGPT experience can be more valuable than a college degree.
  2. Survey of 1,223 college students shows that 1/3 of them used ChatGPT for schoolwork during 22-23 academic year.
  3. Survey of 1,593 Americans found that taking a course in ChatGPT resulted in a raise for 80%, a promotion for 61%, and a new job offer for another 61%.
  4. Survey of 1,000 high school, undergraduate, and graduate teachers/professors found that 98% use ChatGPT, and 79% approve of student usage.
  5. Survey of 3,017 high school and college students and 3,234 parents of younger students that shows “nearly all” students who used both human tutors and ChatGPT have replaced some of their tutoring sessions with ChatGPT. Of those, 95% reported an improvement in grades as a result, and 9 in 10 prefer studying with ChatGPT over a human tutor. Most common subjects that this is used for are math and science.

Papers & Research

  1. Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts
  2. GPT detectors are biased against non-native English writers
  3. GenAI in Higher Education (Added 10/31/2023)
  4. In the age of ChatGPT, what’s it like to be accused of cheating? (Added 10/31/2023)
  5. Assigning AI: Seven Approaches for Students, with Prompts (Added 10/31/2023)

AI-Text-Generation Tools to Try

  1. ChatGPT – (Updated 10/31/2023)
    • ChatGPT is the industry standard.
    • Free version available after account creation with email and password.
    • ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) offers an enhanced model.
      • Note: Don’t base assumptions about ChatGPT Plus on the free version.
    • New capability to upload and analyze various document types, including PDFs.
    • Voice chat feature added to the platform.
      • Suitable for teaching applications like student evaluations and feedback from multiple “perspectives”.
    • Code Interpreter is now named “Advanced Data Analysis”.
      • Enhancements in math, logic & reasoning, coding/programming, and data interpretation.
    • Phone app with the best vocal transcription ever is available for Android and Apple.
    • DALL-E 3 has now been included, which allows for advanced image recognition and creation.
      • Enhances visual content analysis and generation for academic and teaching purposes.
  2. Bing Chat (Must be used in Microsoft Edge) – (Updated 10/31/2023)
    • Accessible with a free Bing account.
    • Exclusively usable in Microsoft Edge browser.
    • “Creative Mode” is built on ChatGPT-4 (typically, ChatGPT-4 access requires a paid subscription).
    • Bing Chat can access the internet.
      • Capability to cite/link to web sources (always verify for accuracy).
    • Features image recognition and creation tools.
  3. Claude 2.0 – (Updated 10/31/2023)
    • Top competitor to ChatGPT-4 that is built on unique architecture.
    • Available for free to the general public.
    • Key upgrades:
      • Ability to upload up to 5 text documents.
      • “Memory” of nearly 70,000-word context enables extended conversational threads and improved analysis of longer texts.
      • Highly regarded for creative writing and poetry.
    • More pleasant user interaction compared to ChatGPT.
      • Note: Increased “agreeableness” may lead to more inaccuracies.
  4. Poe.com – Not its own AI bot, but a way to access versions of multiple others, this site allows you to try the premium versions of ChatGPT-4 and Claude+ in limited usage. Can be accessed with an existing Google account.
  5. Character.ai – While not the best for academic purposes, this tool does “hook” nonprofessionals much better (its demographic runs much younger). Its user base spends a LOT of time on the site, where they can converse with AI bots designed to imitate pop culture, historical, and fictional figures.
  6. Perplexity.AI – Designed to be a citation search engine, this AI will provide quick Wikipedia-like explanations of topics, as well as list links to reputable sources on that topic. It is fairly reliable (finds real sources), but not entirely useful (doesn’t provide access for those sources, not always relevant) for finding peer-reviewed sources on a particular topic. Probably provides utility only for source-finding over Googling.
  7. Google Bard – (Updated 10/31/2023) Currently an afterthought in the AI text generation space, as there is no unique use case or instance in which it outperforms other available tools. However, Google Gemini is expected to be a significant upgrade (possibly the first competitor to outperform ChatGPT-4) which will be released in 2024.

Other AI Tools to Try

  1. Gamma.app – A free AI tool to turn a lesson plan (or even just a small prompt) automatically into a nearly finished PowerPoint presentation. Here’s a video showing how it works. This is a functionality that will likely exist inside Office 365 within 2023. However, in the short term, it’s still a simple, massive time-saver.
  2. Guidde – A paid tool available only as an extension in Chrome (for now) to quickly create explanation videos, GIFs, or PDFs explaining a process. Helpful for creating documentation about how software or websites work for your students.
  3. Synthesys – A paid tool to create AI audio, video, and realistic human avatars from text prompts and scripts.
  4. Chirp (Discord Invite Link) – (Updated 10/31/2023) A lyric and musical generation tool only available through Discord for now. Here is an example that was made in 90 seconds after a prompt for a “hard metal song about how awesome East Central College Faculty are”.
  5. Midjourney – Midjourney is considered the best image generation tool available, but it has no free options and only operates through Discord.
  6. Stable Diffusion – Stable Diffusion is a free, open source image generation tool. The best available free version of the tool is ClipDrop, which is built upon Stable Diffusion’s tool.