Serendipity35

.Coursera’s CEO, Jeff Maggioncalda, says leveraging AI in online learning is key to a more accessible, flexible education experience. Coursera is a major platform for free and paid, non-credit and credit learning opportunities. Remember MOOCs? The term isn't in as wide usage as it was a decade ago but Coursera was an early serious player in that space and still offers short-form training and master’s degrees from Ivy League institutions like the University of Pennsylvania.

While many in education have been worrying about how AI is and will impact teaching and learning, online providers and course designers have been more likely to embrace AI tools.

Generative AI is good at language translations and Coursera who now has 4,200 courses translated into 17 languages as AI has made the translations easier and more affordable. They have also experimented with using AI for a personalized learning companion (chatbot) named Coach where students can ask for help on a concept, to create practice problems, or summarize activities. It won’t give users the answer, especially during testing.

For course designers, it can create outlines, write learning objectives, and compile lessons into new courses.

Coursera works with partners who can make content available for free.

The prediction game is a tough one to win. I wrote a piece in 2013 titled "In 4 Years Your Phone Will Be Smarter Than You (and the rise of cognizant computing)" That would mean I should have checked back in 2017 to see if my predictions came to pass. Well, not my predictions but those from an analysis of market research firm Gartner. I did check back at the end of 2022 and now I'm checking in again after just a few years.

That original report was predicting that it wouldn't have as much to do with hardware, but rather from the growth of data and computational ability in the cloud. That seems to be true about hardware. My smartphone for 2024 is not radically different from the one I had in 2017. More expensive, better camera, new apps, but still the same basic functions as back then. It looks about the same too. New radical changes.

If phones seem smarter it means that you have a particular definition of "smart." If smart means being able to recall information and make inferences, then my phone, my Alexa, and the Internet are all smarter than me. And in school, remembering information and making inferences are still a big part of being smart. But it's not all of it.

"Cognizant computing" was part of that earlier piece. That is software and devices that predict your next action based on personal data already gathered about you. It might at a low level suggest a reply to an email. At a high level, it might suggest a course of treatment to your doctor. The term "cognizant computing" doesn't seem to occur much anymore. In fact, looking for it today on Wikipedia brought the result "The page "Cognizant computing" does not exist."

It seems to have been grouped in with machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and human-computer interaction and any intelligent systems that can perceive and understand its environment, interact with users in natural ways, and adapt behavior based on changing circumstances. I think the average person would say to all that, "Oh, you mean AI?"

It's there in virtual assistants (like Siri, Alexa, or Google Assistant), personalized recommendation systems (such as those used by Netflix or Amazon), smart home devices, and various other domains where systems need to understand and respond to user needs effectively.

I asked a chatbot if it was an example of cognizant computing and it replied, "Yes, a chatbot can be considered an example of cognizant computing, particularly if it is designed to exhibit certain key characteristics."

The characteristics it meant are context awareness, personalization, adaptability, and natural interaction.

Chatbots can be aware of the context of the conversation and may remember previous interactions with the user, understand the current topic of conversation, and adapt their responses accordingly. In these ways, it can personalize interactions. That shows its adaptability and ability to learn from user interactions and improve over time. Using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to understand and generate human-like responses makes for more natural conversations between humans.

Is my smartphone smarter than me in 2024? It is smarter, but I think I still have some advantages. I'll check in again in a few years.

After retirement, some older workers are turning to gig work to keep busy and sharp, as a lifeline, or as a last resort. So reports Rest of World who spoke to 50 older workers worldwide.

Most gig workers globally are relatively young: Research published in 2021 by the International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations agency focused on improving working conditions, puts the average age for delivery workers at 29 and the average age for ride-hailing drivers at 36. But older individuals are turning to gig work, and their numbers are expected to grow in the coming years.

For example, a man in São Paulo drives people at least 12 hours a day, and at 62, he doesn’t see himself stopping anytime soon. He makes roughly 4000 reais ($790) per month after paying off all expenses; it is now his household’s only income. In a country where the monthly minimum wage is 1,412 reais ($273), it’s a good income.

I wrote about gig work and "unretirement" on this blog five years ago, and started writing about it 9 years ago on another blog when I decided to do it myself.

The global population of people 65 or older is expected to double by 2050, surpassing 1.6 billion, according to the U.N. At the same time, family units worldwide are transforming, often requiring older people to support themselves for longer. Not all gig workers do it full-time, and for many people (especially younger workers) it supplements other work.

In America, things are different but the trend is still evident. Over the last two decades, the share of the workforce aged 55 or older almost doubled and the government is looking at labor trends like this. By 2028, over a quarter of the workforce will be 55 or older. Inflation has been a factor in forcing retirees back to work. 43 percent of those considering returning to work are doing so because of inflation. One report identifies that older Americans are increasingly turning to the gig economy to supplement their incomes and savings due to its flexibility. Nearly 1 in 3 independent or “gig” workers are over age 55.

You may feel like there is too much about artificial intelligence all around you. It's in the news, conversations and, in education and industry, it is in the tools we use. It has also dominated this blog in the past year. Too much so, I'm beginning to think.

I know that AI is a big topic currently and it can't be ignored. But it is just one of many topics this blog has addressed since 2006. I will make a more conscious effort this summer to address some non-AI issues, acknowledging that it seems to permeate almost every other category.