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

Wed Jul 12 09:29:21 PDT 2023

I took Minsky and Papert's A.I. survey course in 1968-69, which basically
discussed chapters in Feigenbaum/Feldman *Computers and Thought.*

One exception was a class on neural networks where I got the impression
that Minsky was sort of apologizing for his (with Papert) *Perceptrons*
book, which claimed "that basic perceptrons were incapable of processing
the exclusive-or circuit and that computers lacked sufficient power to
process useful neural networks. However, by the time this book came out,
methods for training multilayer perceptrons
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilayer_perceptrons> (MLPs) by deep
learning <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning> were already known."
(Schmidhuber, Juergen
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juergen_Schmidhuber> (2022).
"Annotated History of Modern AI and Deep Learning")

I got the impression that M & P wrote the book because they were miffed
that other researchers were getting AI research money from the Navy that
Minsky felt should rightfully be his. 😼

In retrospect, the neural network concept has turned out to be the
successful approach, and not the "G.O.F.A.I." (Good Old-Fashioned A.I.)
that we were taught in the '60s. I would add to the contention "computers
lacked sufficient power" in the '60s, that the training database for
contemporary A.I. didn't exist. In other words, we needed dozens of cycles
of Moore's law plus an ubiquitous and rich internet as ingredients,
the lack of which throttled A.I. thinking and progress in those days.

Don Cooke

Don Cooke   #523  603.219.9259

On Tue, Jul 11, 2023 at 11:37 PM Robert Primak <bobprimak at yahoo.com> wrote:

> To Everyone:
>
> Please do not send entire articles to this mailing list. They make for
> huge downloads for those of us who use desktop email clients.
>
> Also, articles tend to be sent here in extra-wide formats which do not
> display well in web mail interfaces.
>
> And when included in subsequent replies as quoted previous content, the
> message threads become absolutely unreadable and unmanageable with clients
> or web interfaces.
>
> It is much more considerate to only post reference URLs, and not to expect
> everyone who receives the messages to want to slog through a giant article
> in non-text format just to get through to the actual email message.
>
> If such extra-wide articles show up, the message itself is rendered
> unreadable, as it extends way beyond the viewing pane in web mail
> interfaces.
>
> We need a policy (if one is not already in place) to prevent this practice
> in the future.
>
> Not everyone wants to read the entire article. We should have a choice,
> short of unsubscribing from this email list altogether.
>
> 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.
> Lexington, MA 02420 <https://goo.gl/xZXT2F>
> (781) 799-6002 (mobile) <callto:17817996002>
> meet.jit.si/HarryForsdick (video)
> Click <http://forsdick.weebly.com/home/my-websites> to see my other
> websites
>
> ===============================================
> ::The Lexington Computer and Technology Group Mailing List::
> Reply goes to sender only; Reply All to send to list.
> Send to the list: LCTG at lists.toku.us      Message archives:
> http://lists.toku.us/pipermail/lctg-toku.us/
> To subscribe: email lctg-subscribe at toku.us  To unsubscribe: email
> lctg-unsubscribe at toku.us
> Future and Past meeting information: http://LCTG.toku.us
> List information: http://lists.toku.us/listinfo.cgi/lctg-toku.us
> This message was sent to bobprimak at yahoo.com.
> Set your list options:
> http://lists.toku.us/options.cgi/lctg-toku.us/bobprimak@yahoo.com
> ===============================================
> ::The Lexington Computer and Technology Group Mailing List::
> Reply goes to sender only; Reply All to send to list.
> Send to the list: LCTG at lists.toku.us      Message archives:
> http://lists.toku.us/pipermail/lctg-toku.us/
> To subscribe: email lctg-subscribe at toku.us  To unsubscribe: email
> lctg-unsubscribe at toku.us
> Future and Past meeting information: http://LCTG.toku.us
> List information: http://lists.toku.us/listinfo.cgi/lctg-toku.us
> This message was sent to doncooke2 at gmail.com.
> Set your list options:
> http://lists.toku.us/options.cgi/lctg-toku.us/doncooke2@gmail.com
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.toku.us/pipermail/lctg-toku.us/attachments/20230712/18af0416/attachment.htm>