AI Insights: December 2024 Newsletter

This message was originally shared to subscribers December 13, 2024.

Welcome to “AI Insights”

ITS is excited to share the first edition of “AI Insights,” our newsletter dedicated to all things artificial intelligence (AI). Each edition will feature the latest news in AI, including its applications in higher education and developments across the AI landscape. We also will share tips for how you can put AI to work for you in the office or in the classroom.

Would you like to share an article you found or a tip for taking advantage of AI? We’d love to hear it! You can share your links and ideas using our Microsoft Form.

News and Views

Government

  • Trump appoints former PayPal exec David Sacks as AI and crypto czar (Reuters)
  • The House AI Task Force readies the final report with eyes on “bite-sized” regulatory efforts (MeriTalk)

Higher Education

Industry

  • Grok is now free for all X users (The Verge)
  • Anthropic introduces the Model Context Protocol (Anthropic)
  • Introducing Amazon Nova foundation models: Frontier intelligence and industry leading price performance (Amazon)
  • AI eats the world (Benedict Evans)
  • Google Introduces A.I. Agent That Aces 15-Day Weather Forecasts (New York Times)
  • The End of Focus Groups? AI Replicates Consumer Responses With 85% Accuracy (PYMNTS)
  • OpenAI’s 12 days of ‘ship-mas’: all the new announcements (The Verge)

Science

  • Huge randomized trial of AI boosts discovery — at least for good scientists (Nature)

This Issue’s Tip: Protecting University Data

You should only enter University data when working in the following AI tools and platforms, which meet the University’s security and compliance standards:

  • Microsoft Copilot
  • Adobe Firefly
  • Gradescope
  • Blackboard’s AI

To learn more, refer to the University’s AI guidelines.

This Issue’s Prompt: Drafting an Email

Prompts are how you ask generative AI tools to do something for you (e.g., creating, summarizing, editing or transforming). Treat it like a conversation, using clear language and enough context to get the result you have in mind.

To get more practice, use the generative AI tool of your choice (for example, Microsoft Copilot, Open AI ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude) to draft an email customizing the following prompt: “Draft an email to [name] that informs them that [Project] is delayed two weeks. Make it short and casual in tone.”

You can then revise the result to add an important detail, reduce or increase the word count, change the tone or make any other modification. The more context and guidance you provide, the better the result will be.

Helpful Resources

ITS and the campuswide information technology community are available year-round to help with your tech questions. Resources include:

“AI Insights” will return on Jan. 2, 2025. Thank you for reading. Go Orange!