After the latest update of the infamous artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT-4, the technology has been a buzzword inside and outside the crypto industry. While opinions on the technology may be mixed, companies continue to integrate AI to enhance their user experience. On March 31, the cryptocurrency exchange and Web3 technology company OKX announced that it will be launching a new integration from EndoTech.io The algorithms incorporate both machine learning and "other advanced techniques" in an effort to conduct real-time analyses of data and trading opportunities. OKX also jumped on the AI bandwagon on March 30 when it posted an AI-generated poem from ChatGPT-4 about the company's wallet. The amazing features of #OKXWallet presented as Sea Shanty by #ChatGPT.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak were signatories on an open letter signed by more than 2,600 tech industry leaders and researchers. The open letter called for a temporary halt on any further artificial intelligence (AI) development. The petition shared concerns that AI with human-competitive intelligence can pose serious hazards to society and mankind. It urged all AI firms to "immediately cease" developing AI systems that are more potent than Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4 (GPT-4) for at least six months. GPT-4 is a multimodal large language model created by OpenAI and the fourth in its GPT series.

For years, Google was seen as one of the most cutting-edge developers of A.I. But, with OpenAI's release of ChatGPT, and other chatbots beating Google to market, is that distinction still the case? Google's chief executive is in an unenviable position: Scramble to catch up or, in the face of potentially harmful technology, move slowly.

Generative AI – including large language models such as GPT-4, and image generators such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion – is advancing in a "storm of hype and fright", as some commentators have observed. Recent advances in artificial intelligence have yielded warnings that the rapidly developing technology may result in "ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control". That's according to an open letter signed by more than 1,000 AI experts, researchers and backers, which calls for an immediate pause on the creation of "giant" AIs for six months so that safety protocols can be developed to mitigate their dangers. But what is the technology currently capable of doing? Midjourney creates images from text descriptions.

Italians might not have access to ChatGPT for much longer. Italy's Privacy Guarantor has ordered ChatGPT blocked over concerns OpenAI is violating the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) through its data handling practices. The regulator claims there's no "legal basis" for OpenAI's bulk collection of data for training ChatGPT's model. The sometimes-inaccurate results also indicate the generative AI isn't processing data correctly, the Guarantor says. Officials are particularly concerned about a flaw leaked sensitive user data last week.

People haven't exactly been impressed in the short time since Google released its "experimental conversational AI service" Bard. Coming up against OpenAI's ChatGPT and Microsoft's Bing Chat (also powered by OpenAI's GPT-4) users have found its responses to not be as knowledgeable or detailed as its rivals. That could be set to change, however, after Google CEO Sundar Pichai confirmed on The New York Times podcast "Hard Fork" that Bard will soon be moving from its current LaMDA-based model to larger-scale PaLM datasets in the coming days. When asked how he felt about responses to Bard's release, Pichai commented: "We clearly have more capable models. Pretty soon, maybe as this goes live, we will be upgrading Bard to some of our more capable PaLM models, so which will bring more capabilities, be it in reasoning, coding." To frame the difference, Google said it had trained LaMDA with 137 billion parameters when it shared details about the language-based models last year.

Although the EU is currently working on the world's first legislation on AI, BEUC's concern is that it would take years before the AI Act could take effect, leaving consumers at risk of harm from a technology that is not sufficiently regulated.

Elon Musk wants to push technology to its absolute limit, from space travel to self-driving cars -- but he draws the line at artificial intelligence. The billionaire first shared his distaste for AI in 2014, calling it humanity's'biggest existential threat' and comparing it to'summoning the demon.' At the time, Musk also revealed he was investing in AI companies not to make money but to keep an eye on the technology in case it gets out of hand. His main fear is that in the wrong hands, if AI becomes advanced, it could overtake humans and spell the end of mankind, which is known as singularity. That concern is shared among many brilliant minds, including the late Stephen Hawking, who told BBC in 2014: 'The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education is calling for submissions to our Collection on New advances in artificial intelligence applications in higher education. There has been growing interest in the educational potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications within the field of educational technology for the past decade. Despite the recent peak of excitement towards advanced features and techniques of AI-driven language models and OpenAI's ChatGPT, their actual impact on higher education (HE) institutions and participants have been largely unknown. Thus, the discussions in the field have continuously remained, mainly consisting of overstated hype and untested hypotheses, either optimistic or pessimistic, about the impact of AI applications. About three years ago, the editors of the ETHE Special Issue "Can artificial intelligence transform higher education?" However, a lot has happened since then.

Mark Standen, who runs the staffing business for artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation at Hays in the UK, told Bloomberg the prompt engineer market was the'fastest-moving for 25 years'. He added that although salaries start at £40,000 ($49,000), expert prompt engineers'can name their price' and charge up to £200,000 ($247,000) or £300,000 ($371,000) per year. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI which created ChatGPT, has previously spoken about a need for prompt engineers. Last month he tweeted how'writing a really great prompt for a chatbot persona is an amazingly high-leverage skill'. OpenAI, a private company backed by Microsoft Corp, made ChatGPT available to the public for free in late November.