{"id":124,"date":"2023-11-06T20:19:23","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T20:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/academic-technology\/?p=124"},"modified":"2023-11-06T20:23:47","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T20:23:47","slug":"ai-large-language-models-examples-at-dickinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/academic-technology\/2023\/11\/06\/ai-large-language-models-examples-at-dickinson\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Large Language Models: Examples at Dickinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

We were happy to see the <\/span>Japanese chat bots<\/span><\/a> highlighted in the Dickinson Today.\u00a0 While there are some advantages connecting to AI services with code via an API, there are also many potential uses for AI with their freely available web sites.\u00a0 I have highlighted some examples below, and if you\u2019re interested, have questions, or want to discuss potential projects, please contact us in <\/span>academic technology<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0 We\u2019d be happy to discuss.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Background<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point I imagine many have tried one of the major players in AI: <\/span>ChatGPT<\/span><\/a>, Bing browser (Microsoft using ChatGPT), <\/span>Claude<\/span><\/a> by Anthropic, and <\/span>Bard<\/span><\/a> (Google).\u00a0 Maybe the most important thing to understand when working with these large language tools is that they are probabilistic models.\u00a0 In practice, based on the enormous amount of text they\u2019ve consumed, they are providing the most likely reply.\u00a0 This means you\u2019ll find responses to be very average, relative to the prompt, and often but not always correct.\u00a0 Unfortunately, unlike other probabilistic models, it does not show a percentage of certainty.\u00a0 It would be similar to always clicking the first result in a Google search.\u00a0\u00a0 While these are limitations, average is not always a bad thing.\u00a0 Ask an AI model to produce a press release version of an academic article, and it will generally do quite well.\u00a0 Average summaries, drafts, suggestions and brainstorming can save us all a great deal of time.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Scenarios<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One perhaps underappreciated use for AI is prompts for creating text-based scenarios.\u00a0 I have found ChatGPT to be the most useful for these and other more \u201ccreative\u201d examples for prompts.\u00a0 Give ChatGPT a scenario and a role to play in a situation, and you or a student can have a dialogue.\u00a0 I can imagine potential uses from business to philosophy, any situation that involves working through a multi-step problem where \u201caverage\u201d wouldn\u2019t be a negative.\u00a0 You may have to work with the wording of the prompt at first.\u00a0 ChatGPT tends to want to create an entire dialogue on its own, so it is important to specify you want a role-play scenario, and it should wait for your response before continuing. \u00a0 I used the prompt below for my German 102 class during their \u201chealth\u201d chapter.\u00a0 My instruction to speak to the student as a child was to avoid ChatGPT from being too verbose and to write at a level suitable for beginning language students.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n