Blog Series: Exploring the Power of AI

Blog Entry 2: Introduction to AI: Beyond the Hype

Demystifying AI: What It Is and Why It Matters

This is part 2 in an ongoing series to acquaint people with AI. Part 1

Introduction

In the second year of burgeoning popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI), many companies are working to figure out how it can benefit them. My own company has hackathons where we try to introduce and flesh out ideas to use AI to work better, faster, more efficiently.

When I was growing up, computer science was the burgeoning field and ambitious people could make an impact by taking up the new challenges and opportunities that it offered.

Similarly, AI offers opportunities to those who are ready to learn and utilize this new technology. Steve Little feels that 20 hours of hands-on practice are needed in order to become reasonably fluent. (See his great blog post about the Dunning-Kruger Cliff of learning the technology.)

But where to start? Good news, it is easy to get going in it. In this blog series, we will offer easy hands-on experience to start feeling competent, in a range of models and a wide variety of applications.

This can only open doors for you – be they employer doors or doors in your mind!

The tools

AI is not a search engine. Use Bing (or Google, if you must) for that. GPT is Generative Pre-trained Transformer and refers to Large language models (LLMs). GPT models are a subclass of LLMs. They are essentially language tools.

A brief introduction to some of the big models you may have heard of and some things they are known for:

• Copilot by Microsoft – it is being built into many tools we already use, such as Bing, Office, and, of course, GitHub: I have it summarize my emails and meetings
• ChatGPT by Open AI – this is good for reasoning: I used ChatGPT to help me decide among RFP responses, and explain why a vendor was or was not chosen
• Claude by Anthropic–consider Claude for writing and summarizing: I fed it a very long will and had it summarize it
• Gemini by Google – also considered good for writing and it has a large capacity
• Perplexity by Perplexity AI – this is great for research

There are many other specialized tools such as Transkribus for reading handwriting in many languages, MyHeritage photo tools which make your ancestors’ heads and lips move, and, hey, isn’t Grammarly AI?

Hands-on work

Without further delay, let’s get into it! I’ll do my best to keep this blog focused on the free versions of the models, though most or all have both free and paid tiers.

Copilot by Microsoft

• In this example, we’ll use Microsoft’s AI chatbot in Bing to create a superhero. On Edge or Chrome, navigate to https://www.bing.com/chat
• Select a strength of yours. In the New topic box, where it says Ask me anything… type:

Create a superhero for me who is <your strengths>. Tell me about their superpowers and how they saved the world.

• Now refine the prompt:

Select a new more exciting name, and create an avatar for this character

• Finally, let’s see your avatar, since it didn’t really “get” what you meant last time:

Create the image for this avatar

ChatGPT by Open AI

• In this example, we’ll create a logic puzzle. Navigate to https://chatgpt.com/ and log in with a Google, Microsoft, or Apple account. This will enable you to step up from ChatGPT 3.5 to the latest version, ChatGPT 4o.
• At the Message ChatGPT prompt, enter:
  • Puzzle: There are three boxes, each with a label. One box contains only apples, another contains only oranges, and the third contains both apples and oranges. The boxes are labeled incorrectly. You are allowed to pick one fruit from one box. How can you determine which box contains what fruit?
• Let’s refine the prompt:
  • Create a similar logic puzzle for me to give someone.
• OK, it was a little too similar, but it can of course be further refined!

Claude by Anthropic

• Let’s summarize a white paper. Navigate to https://claude.ai/login and use a Google account, or your email
• In another tab, download the Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in the Azure Cloud white paper from https://info.microsoft.com/rs/157-GQE-382/images/FO-whitepaper-final-differentiators.pdf
• For the prompt, enter the following text and attach the white paper you downloaded by selecting Add content:
  • Summarize the attached white paper. Create an introduction, several bullets of key points, and a conclusion which includes takeaways.
• Refine the prompt:
  • Make it easier to read by using bold font appropriately

Gemini by Google

• Let’s summarize a video. Navigate to https://gemini.google.com/app
• Enter this prompt:
  • Summarize this video. Tell me how the outage could have been prevented. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAzEJxOo1ts
• Refine the prompt:
  • Recommend the most popular YouTube videos about the same topic

Perplexity by Perplexity AI

• Let’s do some research. Navigate to https://www.perplexity.ai/
• Enter a prompt in the Ask anything… box:
  • Are orange cats dumber than other color cats? Cite your sources.

• I think you’ll be as pleased as I was to find the good news. Refine your prompt:
  • How about boy orange cats and girl orange cats?

Note that it has forgotten we were talking about intelligence and moved on to other characteristics.

Summary

I hope that this has been a fun start to your dabbling in AI! The key takeaways here are:

• There are many different models available, each with its own strengths
• You don’t need a paid subscription to get valuable results
• Prompts are not a “one and done” thing but are meant to be refined
• AI can be fun and useful!

Go practice! Let us know what you think, what you do, what you find! Next week we will talk about AI in everyday life.

p.s. Please forgive my formatting, I have a learning curve with WordPress! 🙂

For further information

https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/which-ai-should-i-use-superpowers – this blog is an introduction to the great Ethan Mollick, a professor at Wharton and one of the leading minds in AI today