[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] 13 ways people in the Boston area are using artificial intelligence right now

Wed Jul 12 05:46:41 PDT 2023

Do the copyright police work with the library police?

On Wed, Jul 12, 2023 at 8:33 AM Harry Forsdick <forsdick at gmail.com> wrote:

> Bob,
>
> You are right.  My bad.  I did this because I know that not everyone has a
> subscription to the Globe.  I did have some qualms about posting the
> article because I violated the copyright.  And again I am sorry for that.
>
> I trust when the copyright police come to put me in jail for this, someone
> will mention that I need to have some Wednesdays off to run the LCTG hybrid
> meeting system… (but not today since I’m on vacation :-)
>
> — Harry
>
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 11:34 PM Robert Primak <bobprimak at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>> To Everyone:
>>
>> Please do not send entire articles to this mailing list. They make for
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>> Not everyone wants to read the entire article. We should have a choice,
>> short of unsubscribing from this email list altogether.
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>> The reference URL is sufficient.
>>
>> -- Bob Primak
>>
>>
>> On Tuesday, July 11, 2023 at 07:38:09 AM EDT, Harry Forsdick <
>> forsdick at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Folks,
>> The more I look into ML/AI the more I think about my friends at MIT in
>> the early days of AI.   I refer to "AI" this way (ML/AI) in honor of the
>> predecessors of the current people doing ML/AI because my contemporaries
>> were trying so hard to model the processes of how humans think.  These are
>> the so-called pioneers of AI.  These are people at MIT like Marvin Minsky,
>> John McCarthy, Terry Winograd, and Carl Hewitt.
>> The MIT pioneers are very different from today's researchers.  The ML/AI
>> researchers and developers have approached the problem extremely
>> differently, and have been more successful in showing positive results.
>> But ML/AI don't address the problem with the intention of representing
>> intelligence and the processes of creativity as the pioneers who struggled
>> in the early days did, trying to mimic human intelligence.
>> The question is, as with the researchers into airplanes who approached
>> the problem initially by modeling birds by strapping large wings to people
>> rather than the Wright Bros approach which skipped that part and went to
>> something that worked, I suspect some day ML/AI will prevail and my friends
>> on the upper floors of 545 Tech Square will be looked at like the bird wing
>> guys of AI.
>> -- Harry
>>
>> 13 ways people in the Boston area are using artificial intelligence right
>> nowEarly adopters are finding creative ways to make the most out of the
>> buzzy technology
>> By Dana Gerber
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/about/staff-list/staff/dana-gerber/?p1=Article_Byline>
>> Globe Staff,Updated July 10, 2023, 5:38 a.m.
>>
>> <https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/10/business/locals-using-ai/?event=event25>
>> <https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Here%27s%20how%20people%20in%20Boston%20are%20using%20AI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bostonglobe.com%2F2023%2F07%2F10%2Fbusiness%2Flocals-using-ai%2F%3Fevent%3Devent25&via=BostonGlobe>
>> 11
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/07/10/business/locals-using-ai/?s_campaign=breakingnews:newsletter#bgmp-comments>
>> [image: From an AI-generated beer recipe to meal-planning for Marathon
>> training, local early adopters are finding creative ways to make the most
>> out of the buzzy technology.]From an AI-generated beer recipe to
>> meal-planning for Marathon training, local early adopters are finding
>> creative ways to make the most out of the buzzy technology.ADOBE, AP,
>> MEGAN LAM/GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
>>
>> The chatbots have arrived, and we are already keeping them busy.
>>
>> There’s no end to the ways that people are using artificial intelligence
>> systems like ChatGPT, Google’s Bard, and Bing’s new search engine in
>> everyday life. Yes, this can include more outlandish uses — like suggesting messages
>> to send matches on dating apps
>> <https://mashable.com/article/chatgpt-tinder-tiktok> — but it can also
>> mean outsourcing tedious tasks that require time but little brainpower.
>> Following up on that pesky e-mail chain? Meal-planning for a family of
>> four? Organizing meeting notes? Check, check, check.
>> RELATED: A technophobe’s guide to AI chatbots
>> <https://bostonglobe.com/2023/07/10/business/chatbot-how-to-guide/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>>
>> There are risks to using artificial intelligence, of course: In one
>> high-profile case, two New York lawyers found themselves in hot water
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/nyregion/lawyers-chatgpt-schwartz-loduca.html> after
>> filing a legal brief filled with information that ChatGPT had invented out
>> of whole cloth — an egregious example of the potential for these systems
>> to “hallucinate,”
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/01/business/ai-chatbots-hallucination.html> or
>> make up facts. Experts are concerned that AI could even pose a “risk for
>> extinction,”
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/31/business/this-is-civilization-threatening-heres-why-ai-poses-an-existential-risk/?s_campaign=trendlines:newsletter&p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link> and
>> tech leaders have called for regulations and guardrails
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/03/29/business/mit-scientists-tech-leaders-call-pause-artificial-intelligence-research/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link>
>> .
>>
>> But for tasks with relatively low stakes — picking out a new car, writing
>> real estate listings, or crafting a class syllabus — users are finding
>> chatbots to be diligent assistants. The Globe talked with more than a dozen
>> Massachusetts residents about how they’re using this technology in their
>> day-to-day lives. Here’s what we found. (If you want to try any of these
>> out for yourself but need some help getting started, check out our AI
>> guide
>> <https://bostonglobe.com/2023/07/10/business/chatbot-how-to-guide/?p1=Article_Inline_Text_Link>
>> .)
>> [image: Night Shift Brewery in Everett enlisted ChatGPT's help to concoct
>> a new IPA recipe, which the AI gave the name AI-P-A.]Night Shift Brewery
>> in Everett enlisted ChatGPT's help to concoct a new IPA recipe, which the
>> AI gave the name "AI-P-A."COURTESY OF NIGHT SHIFT BREWING
>> *Beer brewing*
>>
>> AI might not be able to malt the barley or mill the grain — at least not
>> yet — but Night Shift Brewery in Everett used ChatGPT to handle other parts
>> of the beer-making process. Enlisted by cofounder Michael Oxton to create
>> the “perfect beer,” ChatGPT concocted a recipe for a 7.5 percent hazy IPA
>> with notes of mango, orange, and pine. Oxton then sent the recipe to Night
>> Shift’s head brewer. “He was just like, ‘Damn, that’s a good recipe,’” said
>> Oxton.
>>
>> Night Shift’s team didn’t stop there: They asked ChatGPT to come up with
>> a name for the brew (it offered up “AI-P-A”). They also used Midjourney, an
>> AI service that generates images from text descriptions, to design the
>> beer’s label — a graffiti-like illustration of a robot handling a pint.
>> Night Shift released a limited supply of the beer in February
>> <https://www.instagram.com/p/Co8EAPbPM8-/>, and plans to revive it at
>> some point down the line.
>>
>> In the meantime, they’re launching a new ad campaign:
>> Midjourney-generated images depicting owls taking over Boston landmarks
>> have been plastered on billboards along Interstate 93, Route 1, and Route
>> 16, to ring in the release of a new “Owls in Boston” IPA.
>> RELATED: We asked AI to plan the perfect Boston day. Here’s where it
>> took us.
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/26/business/we-asked-ai-plan-perfect-boston-day-heres-where-it-took-us/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>> *Someone to talk to*
>>
>> When Chris Zombik was trying to kill some time, he typed a request into
>> ChatGPT: *I am dying of boredom and need someone to talk to.*
>>
>> “And it came up with a bunch of ideas of topics we could discuss,” said
>> Zombik, an author who lives in Somerville. Soon, they were talking about a
>> book he had recently read — “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S.
>> Thompson — and it became “quite a philosophical conversation,” he said,
>> about generational dismay.
>>
>> “The bot is a very careful listener, so to speak, and really engaged with
>> what I was saying,” he said. “When your other friends aren’t responding to
>> you and you’re looking for a distraction in the middle of the day, that’s
>> pretty powerful.”
>>
>> Zombik returned to this conversation multiple times, and within weeks he
>> had crashed the “context window,”
>> <https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/14/openai-is-testing-a-version-of-gpt-4-that-can-remember-long-conversations/> or
>> the extent to which the chatbot is designed to “remember” previous
>> interactions. “That was actually kind of despairing when that happened,
>> because it was like my friend had kind of died,” he said.
>> *Marathon meal-planning*
>>
>> As she was gearing up to run the Boston Marathon for the first time,
>> Middleton resident Audrey Ellis enlisted a running coach — but it was
>> ChatGPT that she tasked with building some pre-race meal plans. She input
>> her allergies and her calorie intake goal, specifying that she is mostly
>> vegetarian, and ChatGPT spit out recipes for quinoa salad, veggie burgers,
>> and yogurt bowls. She then asked it to generate a grocery list.
>>
>> Though she didn’t end up using all the robot-suggested recipes — and she
>> had to prod it to exclude almond butter even after saying she was allergic
>> — she did complete the Marathon, with a finishing time of 4:47:43.
>> [image: Union Realty Group in Newton has begun using an AI chatbot to
>> generate real estate listings for Facebook.]Union Realty Group in Newton
>> has begun using an AI chatbot to generate real estate listings for Facebook.COURTESY
>> OF UNION REALTY GROUP
>> *Real estate listings*
>>
>> Arman Khachatryan, a data analyst, saw the labor involved in producing
>> real estate listings from his friend, Shant Davidian, who is a co-owner and
>> agent at Union Realty Group in Newton. So Khachatryan used ChatGPT’s API
>> <https://techcrunch.com/2023/03/01/openai-launches-an-api-for-chatgpt-plus-dedicated-capacity-for-enterprise-customers/> —
>> which allows businesses to customize the model for specific purposes — to
>> create a chatbot to scan Union’s database, generate short descriptions for
>> properties, and post listings to Facebook, all in one fell swoop.
>>
>> Davidian said that Union can now post over 100 Facebook listings in about
>> an hour, leading to anywhere from 10 to 50-plus inquiries a day.
>> Khachatryan is working on fleshing out the tool to interact with interested
>> renters directly, show them other properties that may be a good fit, and
>> schedule showings.
>>
>> “All agents are now spending more time going and showing the apartments
>> to their clients than just sitting in front of a computer,” said
>> Khachatryan.
>> RELATED: How a couple of Olin College students helped spark the AI
>> chatbot revolution
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/10/business/how-couple-olin-college-students-helped-spark-ai-chatbot-revolution/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>> *Car shopping*
>>
>> Scott Johnson, an Allston/Brighton resident, turned to Bing’s AI-powered
>> search engine to help him decide on a car to buy for a drive to
>> Bakersville, California. He asked Bing — which, unlike ChatGPT, can surf
>> the web
>> <https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/02/07/reinventing-search-with-a-new-ai-powered-microsoft-bing-and-edge-your-copilot-for-the-web/> in
>> real time for updates — to provide information on vehicle mileage, the
>> amount of space in the back of various cars, and the differences between
>> model years. Using Bing’s insights, he decided on a Subaru, and now has
>> plans to purchase a 2023 Forester.
>>
>> He noticed some discrepancies between the mileage figures listed on Bing
>> and on Subaru’s website, but Bing was a good place to start research,
>> Johnson said. “Instead of having, like, 10 [search] windows open, I have
>> this device that can do all that for me,” he said.
>> *Poetry writing*
>>
>> When a friend was recovering from a trip to the hospital, Lexington
>> resident Bill Rosenfeld charged ChatGPT with composing a poem as a get-well
>> note. He typed in some of his friend’s personality traits, the reason he
>> was in the hospital, and the get-better-soon sentiment. It spat out a
>> seven-stanza poem, which Rosenfeld made some small edits to before sending
>> it off to his friend, “who absolutely loved it,” he said.
>>
>> He had never attempted being a rhymester before, but Rosenfeld has now
>> used ChatGPT to write about 10 more poems for occasions like retirements
>> and birthdays.
>>
>> “My first thought was, Hallmark’s in big trouble,” he said. “It’s
>> personalized, and it looks like much more work than it is, even if you
>> completely attribute it to ChatGPT.”
>> RELATED: Tech Lab: ‘This is civilization-threatening’: Here’s why AI
>> poses an existential risk
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/31/business/this-is-civilization-threatening-heres-why-ai-poses-an-existential-risk/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>> *Job hunting*
>>
>> After Caitlin Gillooly, a Brighton resident, was laid off from her job as
>> a manager of merchandising compliance at Wayfair, she turned to ChatGPT to
>> help craft cover letters for job applications. She plugged in details about
>> her background and the sort of strategy consultancy and e-commerce
>> operations jobs she was interested in, and ChatGPT spit out drafts for her
>> to spice up — a cure for her self-described “blank page syndrome.”
>>
>> “I think a personal touch in a job search is still super critical,” she
>> said. AI, she added, “isn’t going to eliminate the importance of things
>> like networking, personal connections, and letting a little of your own
>> personality shine through.”
>>
>> Gillooly got a few interviews from these AI-assisted applications, but
>> she is now forgoing the job search to launch an AI consultancy
>> <https://www.looly.co/>to help others increase their productivity.
>> [image: ChatGPT helped Allston resident Taryn L’Hussier find the Disney
>> World parks that would best accommodate her Celiac disease. Pictured here
>> are the gluten free chicken tenders and fries that she ate in Animal
>> Kingdom.]ChatGPT helped Allston resident Taryn L’Hussier find the Disney
>> World parks that would best accommodate her Celiac disease. Pictured here
>> are the gluten free chicken tenders and fries that she ate in Animal
>> Kingdom.COURTESY OF TARYN L'HUSSIER
>> *Meal-planning at Disney*
>>
>> As she was preparing for a trip to Disney World in March, Allston
>> resident Taryn L’Hussier wanted to find the parks that would best
>> accommodate her celiac disease. ChatGPT told her where in each park she
>> could find gluten-free grub, and she asked it to devise a walking path to
>> hit all of the eateries.
>>
>> She ended up chowing down on everything from churros at Animal Kingdom to
>> onion rings at Disney Springs to a macaron ice cream sandwich at Epcot. “I
>> ate so good in Disney World,” she said.
>> *Accent training*
>>
>> Jennifer Abramson runs The Accent Helper, a small business that works
>> with people who want to adopt an American intonation. Recently, the
>> Somerville resident has asked ChatGPT to write practice material tailored
>> to each client’s interests and needs.
>>
>> For one soccer-obsessed client from South America, for instance, this
>> meant supplying sentences about Lionel Messi chock-full of words with the
>> “-TH” sound, which he was learning to pronounce. The ChatGPT-generated
>> lines included phrases like “the epitome of breathtaking scale,”
>> “thunderous brilliance,” and “athleticism in sync.”
>>
>> “Could I write that? Of course,” she said. “But will it take me an hour
>> to do what ChatGPT did in literally 20 seconds? Yes.”
>> RELATED: Innovation Beat: Apple isn’t labeling its AI products ‘AI.’
>> Here’s why that’s important.
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/06/06/business/apple-isnt-labeling-its-ai-products-ai-heres-why-thats-important/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>> *Distilling complex concepts*
>>
>> Chris Feifer, an executive vice president of medical marketing agency
>> FreshBlood Group, is often tasked with simplifying complex concepts from
>> biotech and pharmaceutical clients for an audience of laypeople.
>>
>> “Sometimes it’s a lot of work for a copywriter or for a medical director
>> to distill that information and to find the key messages,” said Feifer, who
>> is based in Sharon. So FreshBlood has started using ChatGPT to take a first
>> pass. One client, Feifer said, asked FreshBlood to prepare a presentation
>> on validating a specific kind of clinical trial study, and ChatGPT broke
>> down the process into simple steps.
>>
>> It’s not a silver bullet, though. “There are cases where something
>> doesn’t seem quite right,” said Feifer, adding that any and all
>> AI-generated information is carefully validated by a medical director and
>> edited. “It’s obviously invaluable as a tool, but it’s not a crutch. You
>> can’t rely on it completely.”
>> [image: Beth Bailey, who teaches pottery classes, uses ChatGPT and Bard
>> to devise class curriculums and syllabi.]Beth Bailey, who teaches
>> pottery classes, uses ChatGPT and Bard to devise class curriculums and
>> syllabi.ALISON THOMPSON PHOTOGRAPHY
>> *Crafting a syllabus*
>>
>> Beth Bailey runs pottery classes out of her home studio in Whitman
>> <https://bethbaileypottery.com/>, and also teaches at various art
>> institutions, including Clay Lounge in the South End and Local Pottery in
>> Norwell. To pitch to outside studios, she has to write a concise curriculum
>> outlining what her class will cover, as well as a student syllabus.
>>
>> She used to gin these up from scratch, but now, she plugs in information
>> about the class to Bard or ChatGPT, which condenses and formats it to her
>> specifications. It also simplifies some of the more advanced language —
>> cutting words like “underglaze” and “sgraffito” — “so that it’s not
>> insider’s baseball,” said Bailey.
>>
>> “I’ve even said things like, ‘In this particular sentence, make it less
>> cringey,’ — and it does,” said Bailey. “It’s a game changer for the little
>> business I’m trying to build for myself here as an artist and an educator.”
>> RELATED: Tech Lab: Is AI a job killer? IBM may think so, but it’s all in
>> how you use it.
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/05/04/business/is-ai-job-killer-ibm-may-think-so-its-all-how-you-use-it/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>> *Study scheduling*
>>
>> Priya Sharma, who works as a risk consultant for the financial technology
>> firm Empyrean Solutions in Woburn, has aspirations to become a data
>> scientist. To that end, ChatGPT built her a five-month study schedule
>> outlining broad topics she should learn, such as data structures, coding
>> languages, and machine learning algorithms.
>>
>> She didn’t end up following the schedule to a tee, because she wanted to
>> dive deeper into some of the individual topics, like data structures. But
>> the bot also pointed her to the online course platform Udemy, which offers
>> a detailed class on the subject.
>>
>> “Anytime I have a question or something that I think might be difficult
>> to find on a search engine, ChatGPT is my first source of information,”
>> said Sharma.
>> RELATED: Innovation Economy: Boston needs to get smarter about AI
>> <https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/11/business/boston-needs-get-smarter-about-artificial-intelligence/?p1=Article_Inline_Related_Link>
>> *Getting class help*
>>
>> Manind Gera, who recently earned a master’s degree in computer science
>> from Boston University, used AI to help him understand concepts in a
>> graduate-level game theory class. One economic model, the Cournot duopoly,
>> was giving him particular trouble, so he asked ChatGPT to explain it to him
>> “like I’m five,” he said.
>>
>> “That really helps sometimes,” he said. “Usually I would just go on
>> office hours or spend hours on Google trying to find the right resource for
>> it.”
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Harry Forsdick <http://www.forsdick.com/resume/>
>> Lexington Photo Scanning <http://lexingtonphotoscan.com/>
>> Town Meeting Member Precinct 7 <http://lexingtontmma.org/>
>> harry at forsdick.com
>> www.forsdick.com
>>   46 Burlington St.
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>>
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