A Curated, 21-Video Study Guide for Absolute AI (Artificial Intelligence) Newbies: What It Is, Where You Can Play with It & How We Might Want to Shape Its Role in Our Lives

(Images above generated using AI tools Dall-E & ToonArt)

Overview

If you're like me, you may be finding that nearly every news story about AI (artificial intelligence) assumes that we already know something about it. I find myself continually feeling like I'm being pulled into the middle of a robust, ongoing conversation. And that drives me nuts! As a former instructional designer and trainer, I know if I'm going to intelligently assimilate this stuff I need to approach it in a systematic way, starting with the basics. So, in the spirit of scratching my own itch, I have combed through bunches of AI-oriented YouTube videos and created a sensibly-sequenced video study guide. And I hereby share it with you!

Think of this as a road map. In it you'll find a selection of relatively brief videos and related reference links that you can follow, as an absolute AI newbie, to build your knowledge of the subject and answer these broad questions: 

1. What is AI (basic definitions, distinctions, etc)

2. How are people using AI? (Including some examples and links to sample tools you can play with)

3. What are the controversial issues related to AI that we need to know about in order to:

• "see behind the curtain" regarding how AI is entering our lives,
• control how we use AI and where we let it into our lives, and
• raise our voices (in an informed way) to help policy makers figure out a path forward for AI in our society.

Note: These resources are not intended to help you become an AI programmer or developer or other AI professional, though they might inspire you to pursue such a path on your own. I'm assuming that you simply want answers to the questions above so you can become an informed consumer of AI outputs.

_________________________________________

_________________________________________

The Basics: What is AI? 

What is artificial intelligence (AI)? "This animated video describes how artificial intelligence works, where it can be found, and how it influences our lives."

   

_________________________________________

How AI works in everyday life - More practical ways AI helps people in daily life. 

_________________________________________

Learn More: 

• The A to Z of Artificial Intelligence
• What is artificial intelligence (AI)?

_________________________________________

_________________________________________

Some Popular AI Tools & How People are Using Them

What is ChatGPT? OpenAI's Chat GPT Explained -- "What is Chat GPT? What is OpenAI? Who Founded OpenAI? What is Chat GPT Explained? What is Artificial Intelligence? What is Dall e 2? What is Artificial Intelligence art?"

_________________________________________

Groundbreaking research in health AI -- "Dr. Alan Karthikesalingam introduces new research on Med-PaLM 2, our exploratory work with large language models to provide high quality, authoritative answers to medical questions."  

_________________________________________

6 Mind-Blowing AI Tools for 2023! (don't fall behind) - "... exploring six cutting-edge AI tools that are set to revolutionize the way we live and work in 2023."

_________________________________________

Best AI Art generators & AI tools to create better artwork! - "... whether it's Midjourney, Dall-E or Stable Diffusion!"

_________________________________________

A.I. Music Is Insane - "From creating completely new compositions from scratch to providing personalised listening experiences – artificial intelligence is revolutionizing how we experience [music]..." 

_________________________________________

The ChatGPT Playbook of EPIC Prompts [Caution... Watching this guy's videos is like trying to drink from a fire hose! They're loaded with good info, but it's best to just let the content wash over you and get what you can out of them. Don't try to retain all the details!]  This video digs deep into the weeds and shows a few of the many ways ChatGPT can be used. ("In this video, I break down some of my favorite prompts with ChatGPT.")

_________________________________________

Generative AI Is About To Reset Everything, And, Yes It Will Change Your Life [from Forbes...] "Whether you like it or not, generative AI like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion are about to change not only how you work, but how the content you consume is produced. Forbes spoke with a number of leading voices in the AI space to determine both the benefits and the dangers of this next wave of technological innovation, and find out why both tech giants as well as cutting edge startups are racing to grab their share of the market."

_________________________________________

How ChatGPT 5 Will Change the World - "What would Chat GPT 5 be able to do? The answers might surprise you." 

Caveats regarding GPT-5:  

• GPT-5: A New Era of AI Approaches as OpenAI Prepares to Unveil Its Latest Achievement
• OpenAI’s CEO confirms the company isn’t training GPT-5 and ‘won’t for some time’

_________________________________________

Learn more... and play with some AI tools!

• ChatGPT (the AI tool that everyone's talking about!)
• DALL-E (the AI tool that creates art from your text descriptions)
• Bard (Google's "creative and helpful collaborator")
• 35 Ways Real People Are Using A.I. Right Now
• How to Use Midjourney to Create AI Art 
• Google’s AI music generator is like ChatGPT for audio
• 20 Best Free AI Tools Online for Your Business or Personal Use 
• 25 Cool AI Tools That Are Fun To Try Online in 2023 
• The best AI productivity tools in 2023
• 7 Ways to Use ChatGPT at Work to Boost Your Productivity, Make Your Job Easier, and Save a Ton of Time
• New Smart Glasses Tell You What to Say on Dates Using GPT-4

_________________________________________

_________________________________________

AI Hopes & Fears: What Citizens & Lawmakers Should be Thinking About

AI expert reveals his 'single greatest fear' about the technology - "AI expert Dr. Gary Marcus joins CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield to discuss the dangers of artificial intelligence."

_________________________________________

ChatGPT: Artificial Intelligence, chatbots and a world of unknowns [from 60 minutes] -  "Lesley Stahl speaks with Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, and others about the emerging industry of artificial intelligence systems people can have conversations with."

_________________________________________

OpenAI CEO, CTO on risks and how AI will reshape society - "OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tells ABC News’ Rebecca Jarvis that AI will reshape society and acknowledges the risks: 'I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this.'”

_________________________________________

What is Technological Singularity? "... Jason Silva explains the concept of technological singularity and how artificial intelligence is nothing to be afraid of."  

_________________________________________

Our Final Invention - Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) - An overview of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in the context of biological evolution.

_________________________________________

The Path To Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) - "In this video we focus on if we can reach Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) in the first place and how to get there."  

_________________________________________

This Just Changed My Mind About AGI - "GPT-4 can teach itself to become better through self reflection, learn tools with minimal demonstrations... act as a central brain and outsource tasks to other models [and] behave as an autonomous agent that can pursue a multi-step goal without human intervention (Auto-GPT). It is not an overstatement that there are already Sparks of AGI."  

_________________________________________

AI That Learns: We're Closer To AGI Than You Think -  [Caution... Watching this guy's videos is like trying to drink from a fire hose! They're loaded with good info, but it's best to just let the content wash over you and get what you can out of them. Don't try to retain all the details!] "Let's talk about AGI  - It's much closer and probably much scarier than you actually realize. In this video I break it down."

_________________________________________

ChatGPT Prompts Itself - Should We Fear AutoGPT?  "AutoGPTs the next frontier of prompt engineering... just like people join organizations so they can specialize, learn new skills, and work with others in parallel, AutoGPTs will do the same thing." 

_________________________________________

Full 60 Minutes interview: "Godfather of artificial intelligence" talks impact and potential of AI - "Geoffrey Hinton is considered a godfather of artificial intelligence, having championed machine learning decades before it became mainstream. As chatbots like ChatGPT bring his work to widespread attention, we spoke to Hinton about the past, present and future of AI."

_________________________________________

The AI revolution: Google's developers on the future of artificial intelligence  "Competitive pressure among tech giants is propelling society into the future of artificial intelligence, ready or not. Scott Pelley dives into the world of AI with Google CEO Sundar Pichai." 

_________________________________________

Learn more about these complicated and ethically-charged issues: 

• Here's how experts see AI developing over the coming years
• How should AI systems behave, and who should decide?
• Yes, Machines Make Mistakes: The 10 Biggest Flaws In Generative AI
• The Hacking of ChatGPT Is Just Getting Started
• Elon Musk, who co-founded firm behind ChatGPT, warns A.I. is 'one of the biggest risks' to civilization
• ChaosGPT is the first public attempt to destroy humanity with AI
• An AI Program Is Currently Trying To Destroy Humanity. It Has Access To The Internet.

--------------------

• Bill Gates predicts A.I. will change the world more and faster than his personal computing revolution
• What is Auto-GPT and why are hustle bros hype for it?
• GPT-4 tried to escape into the internet today and it ‘almost worked’
• Machine Learning Expert Calls for Bombing Data Centers to Stop Rise of AI
• The dark side of ChatGPT: things it can do, even though it shouldn’t
• ChatGPT's intelligence is zero, but it's a revolution in usefulness, says AI expert

--------------------

• Predicting “Black Swan” Disasters With AI Combining AI with Bayesian reasoning can help forecast events without a historical track record to analyze
• A.I. tools such as ChatGPT are the hottest new trend for companies, but experts urge caution
• Chinese Company Ditches Human Creatives for ChatGPT-Style AI
• Stability AI's New 'XL' Is a Super Powered Deepfake Generator for Businesses
• AI Doesn’t Need Consciousness to be Frightening
• Sam Altman: Size of LLMs won’t matter as much moving forward
• Worried About AI? The Feds Want Your Help Writing Rules to Keep It in Check

--------------------

Related articles from this website: 

• Inside the Black Box: Thoughts on Judgement, Intuition, Synthesis & Artificial Intelligence
• 6 Podcasts to Help You Become an Amateur Tech Geek

Inside the Black Box: Thoughts on Judgement, Intuition, Synthesis & Artificial Intelligence

Your Inner "Wisdom Filter" & Decision-Making

[Note: This article was inspired by a comment from a Facebook friend, one of the smartest people I know, after I posted a link to a news article about the potential for AI systems to attain singularity with humanity very soon. She said, "... as a writer and artist, I am not convinced that the divine spirit that informs great writers and artists can be replicated by computers." This comment poked at me for days, irritating and causing me to abandon the half-written article I had been working on. There is an old saying that sometimes writers write to figure out what they are actually thinking. Below is my response to my friend's comment, in which I have begun to figure out what I think about AI's place in our world. - MG]

Why You Can "Trust Your Gut" 

A few years back, when I was teaching project management (PM) for new project managers, I encouraged them to overcome their decision-making doubts and "analysis paralysis" by showing them a graphical depiction of why their so-called "gut decisions" or intuitions were actually grounded in their many valuable life experiences. (See diagram above.) I later captured the matching narrative in a podcast then an essay which became the chapter Why You Should Trust Your Judgement (Your "Inner Wisdom" Filter) in my book Worth Sharing: Essays & Tools to Help Project Managers & Their Teams.  

Here's a quick summary: 

"... Your intuitions, “gut feelings,” and hunches are derived from, and ultimately grounded in, your unique life experiences, both good and bad. And because of this, they have behind them the solid proof of your reality. To illustrate how all these experiences come together to generate solid, trustworthy judgments, I present to you the analogy of the common kitchen strainer... Your inner voice (i.e., your judgment) operates pretty much like that kitchen strainer! Let’s say you have to make a difficult decision and don’t have time to think about it. All sorts of possibilities and pertinent facts and constraints and outcomes rattle around in your brain. Your “internal strainer” is activated to deal with this. The wires in your strainer are made up of a vast set of unique experiences that you’ve acquired over your lifetime. Successes, failures, joys, miseries, and all sorts of life events combine to form this internal screening mechanism.... when all the possible solutions and issues related to a problem are dumped into that strainer, the good stuff — a unique and powerful judgment — emerges. It’s a judgment that’s automatically informed by all of your life experiences. And, as such, it’s powerful and trustworthy!" -  from Why You Should Trust Your Judgement (Your "Inner Wisdom" Filter)