How Can You Get Ready for the Gen-AI?

In the midst of today’s turbulent geopolitical dynamics and the ever-fluctuating landscape of macroeconomics, emerging technologies such as ChatGPT have sparked a glimmer of hope and ignited the flames of innovation. Aside from setting the record for having the fastest user-growth rate, ChatGPT has captured the public’s attention and curiosity about the huge potential of AI, especially generative AI (GenAI). Consequently, loads of investor money poured in, countless startups were founded, and every enterprise is exploring (formally or informally) ways to leverage GenAI. Thus, AI has become the driving force that energizes our stagnant economy.

Less than a year of ChatGPT

With so much development and advancement around generative AI (GenAI), it’s hard to believe that it hasn’t even been a year since ChatGPT was launched (on Nov 30, 2022). Although its steep adoption curve is somewhat accidental, the nascent ecosystem it has created is a very deliberate effort and a strategic alignment between investors, researchers, industry practitioners, and regulators.

The research community is publishing and open-sourcing new and improved models (e.g. LLMs, diffusion-based models, GANs, etc.) at an unprecedented rate. Meanwhile, the developer community is also releasing frameworks (e.g. LangChain, Hugging Face, and various types of autoML, etc.) that enable companies to easily build and deploy enterprise AI solutions.

Simultaneously, enterprises today are very eager to experiment with AI automation, because of the post-pandemic labor shortages. Most of the fact-based enterprise use cases of GenAI use the retrieval augmented generation (RAG) framework. And Common applications include everything from general content (both text and image) creation, chatbots for all sorts of internal and external (e.g. customer service) use cases, to language translation, code generation, and way too many to list here.

Finally, with so many people playing with such a powerful tool, regulators must provide some legal frameworks for AI oversight to ensure that we use it safely, fairly, and responsibly. The EU has already drafted the first AI Act for this. And the US is not far behind, holding a series of Senate Hearings to learn more before they over-regulate.

The bottom line is that these cutting-edge advancements in GenAI open new doors of opportunity and imagination, offering fresh solutions to the complex challenges that define our world. As they bridge the gaps in communication, inspire creativity, and facilitate collaboration on a global scale, they are poised to reshape the course of our economy in ways previously unimagined.

So how can YOU learn more about GenAI?

There is no doubt that GenAI is one of the most significant innovations of the century if not the most significant innovation (time will tell because it’s so new). So it’s crucial for everyone to learn more about it, and learn deeper than merely the superficial. That menas you need to learn more than just how to write effective prompts for ChatGPT, Midjourney, or other GenAIs.

You will need to learn more than what is GenAI, but rather how it works. You need to know more than just the fact that ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM), but rather how LLM generates words, sentences, and paragraphs. You will need to look under the hood. Only then you’ll know the limits and potentials of GenAI. You need to be “almost” an expert in GenAI. But what if you don’t have an advanced degree in computer science or a PhD in machine learning?

Believe it or not, you don’t need a PhD to understand the essence of how GenAI works.

But you will have to either go far or act fast!

Amsterdam (Dec 5th): Nyenrode Business University

If you can go far, across the pond to Amsterdam, you’re in luck. I am honored to be invited to give a guest lecture at the Nyenrode Business Univeristy next month on Dec 5th.

In this 90-minute invited lecture, we will dive deep and make you “almost” an expert in GenAI. You will know enough GenAI to be dangerous. Most certainly, you will know enough to manage and work effectively with AI developers to create value for your organization. You will NOT need a technical background. And I promise you will not get lost in the technical details, because it will be fun and entertaining.

Unveiling the Magic Behind GenAI: From Hallucination to Innovation

Abstract: As ChatGPT gains widespread popularity, its remarkable capabilities have fixated the world’s attention on generative AI (GenAI). Although GenAI is truly magical, is it really intelligent? In this captivating learning experience, we embark on an exciting journey to demystify GenAI, like ChatGPT. Beyond showcasing its ability to generate intriguing dialogues, stunning artwork, and melodious tunes, fueling the imagination of all, we’ll also explore how businesses can harness this transformative technology to drive innovation and growth. While we celebrate the marvels of GenAI, we’ll navigate its business use cases, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. Finally, we will also understand the magic behind GenAI, the science that makes it work. Armed with this knowledge, you’ll be empowered to wield GenAI effectively and responsibly, unlocking its full potential to create value.

San Francisco (Nov 8th): UC Berkeley Extension

If you cannot go far and are not going to be in the Netherlands, don’t worry. You can also act fast!

There is another public lecture at UC Berkeley Extension on Nov 8th that will be taking place right in the downtown financial district of SF. I will be providing a 60-minute interactive learning experience followed by a fireside chat Q&A moderated by Gauthier Vasseur from the Alliance for Inclusive AI, Berkeley Haas Business School. And you can still register for this event HERE, but you need to act FAST!

Understanding GenAI: The Science Behind the Sorcery of ChatGPT

Abstract: ChatGPT is akin to modern sorcery. With it, no subject is beyond the reach of the curious, including Generative AI (GenAI). However, ChatGPT often fails to offer an intuitive yet deep enough understanding of GenAI that enables leaders to leverage it effectively in business. In this captivating learning experience, we aim to is to shed light on the science that powers GenAI. Rather than telling you that GPT is a large language model (LLM), we will show you how LLM works, how it’s trained, what’s the training data, and why they will all hallucinate. Despite the certainty of hallucination, we will also provide a technique that enables businesses to use ChatGPT safely.

Moreover, we will go beyond ChatGPT and examine why GenAI is able to create captivating dialogues, stunning artwork, and melodious tunes that ignite the imagination. Throughout this exploration, we will also navigate the diverse landscape of GenAI’s business applications, including some great and not-so-great use cases. Through this interactive learning experience, we will “almost” make you an expert in GenAI by equipping you with the knowledge needed to wield this transformative technology responsibly to drive business innovation and growth.

Conclusion

So how can you get ready for GenAI in this fast-approaching Gen-AI (i.e. the generation AI)? You can go far or act fast. If you can GO as FAR as Amsterdam, I’ll see you on Dec 5th at the Nyenrode Business University. Otherwise, you can also ACT FAST. In this case, I will see you next week (Nov 8th) at the SF campus of UC Berkeley Extension. But you need to act fast and register NOW.

Remember, you won’t need a technical background or any advanced degrees. Just bring your curiosity and be inquisitive. See you soon!

We took a little digression from the AI bias mini-series this week so we can announce these 2 learning events in a timely fashion. We will return to this very important topic of AI bias next week, where we will discuss how to address the root cause of AI biases. And that will be the grand finale of the AI bias mini-series. So stay tuned!