On Thursday, OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, launched a mobile app on iOS that integrates Whisper, an open-source speech-recognition system, enabling voice input. Workers can use ChatGPT for tasks such as idea generation, note summarization and technical topic assistance. In the last couple of months, Microsoft also announced new AI features for its apps in Microsoft Office, including its email provider Outlook, word processor Word and presentation maker PowerPoint. Similarly, Google released its vision and very first features for its workplace suite of tools called Google Workspace. Other workplace software providers that have recently announced AI integrations include Salesforce and Salesforce-owned Slack, Zoom, Box, Adobe and HubSpot, to name a few.

Last week, at Google's annual conference dedicated to new products and technologies, the company announced a change to its premier AI product: The Bard chatbot, like OpenAI's GPT-4, will soon be able to describe images. Although it may seem like a minor update, the enhancement is part of a quiet revolution in how companies, researchers, and consumers develop and use AI--pushing the technology not only beyond remixing written language and into different media, but toward the loftier goal of a rich and thorough comprehension of the world. ChatGPT is six months old, and it's already starting to look outdated. That program and its cousins, known as large language models, mime intelligence by predicting what words are statistically likely to follow one another in a sentence. Researchers have trained these models on ever more text--at this point, every book ever and then some--with the premise that force-feeding machines more words in different configurations will yield better predictions and smarter programs.

After ChatGPT burst on the scene last November, some government officials raced to prohibit its use. New York City, Los Angeles Unified, Seattle, and Baltimore School Districts either banned or blocked access to generative AI tools, fearing that ChatGPT, Bard, and other content generation sites could tempt students to cheat on assignments, induce rampant plagiarism, and impede critical thinking. This week, US Congress heard testimony from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and AI researcher Gary Marcus as it weighed whether and how to regulate the technology. In a rapid about-face, however, a few governments are now embracing a less fearful and more hands-on approach to AI. New York City Schools chancellor David Banks announced yesterday that NYC is reversing its ban because "the knee jerk fear and risk overlooked the potential of generative AI to support students and teachers, as well as the reality that our students are participating in and will work in a world where understanding generative AI is crucial."

A professor says AI chatbot software, such as ChatGPT, could restructure postsecondary education by replacing some textbooks and promoting critical thinking. New York City is reversing course after restricting the use of OpenAI's artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT in public schools. David Banks, the chancellor of the Big Apple's school system, announced the shift in a Thursday op-ed in Chalkbeat. He said that while the technology had initially caught educators off guard, the school system is now determined to embrace its potential. "While initial caution was justified, it has now evolved into an exploration and careful examination of this new technology's power and risks," Banks explained.

This week, we're focusing on Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD), an annual event meant to promote the need for accessible tech solutions. Cherlynn returns to tell us what Apple, Google, Adobe and others are doing to make their products more useful for people with disabilities (and, it turns out, many general users too). We also discuss Sam Altman's trip to Congress, and why we're not entirely impressed with the OpenAI CEO's calls for AI regulation. Finally, we explain why the BlackBerry movie is one of the best films about tech ever made (take that, Tetris!). Listen below or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments!

During my initial interactions with ChatGPT Plus, I was not fully convinced that OpenAI's $20-a-month subscription was worth it. While it was quite fun to test the upgraded chatbot powered by GPT-4, the free version seemed good enough for most prompts. I'm not a software developer who needs a deft coding assistant; I'm a nerd who uses chatbots to have entertaining conversations with artificial intelligence and brainstorm a little. On May 12, OpenAI announced that users who pay for ChatGPT Plus would be able to access beta versions of its chatbot with web browsing and plugins. Curious about the new features, I eschewed an evening of takeout, ate some gross leftovers, and spent money on finally upgrading my personal ChatGPT account.

With generative artificial intelligence rapidly gaining traction around the world, Japanese firms ranging from SoftBank to Hitachi are developing or incorporating the technology into their businesses. At the same time, the government is working toward crafting a national AI strategy. Following the public debut of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT last November, global tech giants such as California-based Google and China's Baidu have rolled out their own AI-powered chatbots, but Japanese firms have been conspicuous in their absence. Still, the nation's companies are beginning to make their presence felt, with SoftBank's mobile unit declaring earlier this month that it will develop a Japanese equivalent of ChatGPT. This could be due to a conflict with your ad-blocking or security software.

New York attorney and writer Alexander Zubatov weighs in on how A.I. is rapidly changing society and says he's concerned about A.I. being used as a weapon against dissent on'The Ingraham Angle.' ChatGPT is a sophisticated artificial intelligence chatbot developed by AI research company OpenAI. The AI technology was added to Microsoft products including Bing, the corporation's search engine. ChatGPT is a generative AI that is capable of producing content from text to images, having conversations with humans, suggesting edits to computer programming code and more. The chatbot has the ability to answer questions or assist humans in queries or tasks through its vast training using social media, websites, articles, datasets, books and other forms of text on the internet. ChatGPT is set to be one of the most disruptive forces in Big Tech, specific industries like education and business, and for the future of the human workforce in coming years.

MikeRoweWorks Foundation CEO Mike Rowe discusses a surge in white-collar job layoffs and responds to Elon Musk's comments on working from home. Generative artificial intelligence systems are already making it easier for scammers to con elderly Americans out of their money, and several senators are asking the Biden administration to step in and protect people from this quickly emerging threat. Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., the top Republican on the Senate Special Committee on Aging, spearheaded a bipartisan letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Thursday that asks for an update on what the agency knows about AI-drive scams against the elderly and what it is doing to protect people. The letter, signed by every member of the Senate committee from both parties, asks about AI-powered technology that can be used to replicate people's voices. The letter to FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan warned that voice clones and chatbots are allowing scammers to trick the elderly into making them believe they are talking to a relative or close friend, which leaves them vulnerable to theft.

Generative AI tools introduce new and accessible forms of media creation for youth. They also raise ethical concerns about the generation of fake media, data protection, privacy and ownership of AI-generated art. Since generative AI is already being used in products used by youth, it is critical that they understand how these tools work and how they can be used or misused. In this work, we facilitated students' generative AI learning through expression of their imagined future identities. We designed a learning workshop - Dreaming with AI - where students learned about the inner workings of generative AI tools, used text-to-image generation algorithms to create their imaged future dreams, reflected on the potential benefits and harms of generative AI tools and voiced their opinions about policies for the use of these tools in classrooms. In this paper, we present the learning activities and experiences of 34 high school students who engaged in our workshops. Students reached creative learning objectives by using prompt engineering to create their future dreams, gained technical knowledge by learning the abilities, limitations, text-visual mappings and applications of generative AI, and identified most potential societal benefits and harms of generative AI.