GPT4 Immersive Learning Experiences
Are you concerned about the disruptive potential of artificial intelligence? New technology can be used for good and evil, and innovation disrupts industries causing job loss. Innovation also creates jobs, and the invention extends human potential.
Consider life before electricity, rail and air transportation, roads, air conditioning, or the internet. In every way, life is better today compared to the middle ages. The positive effects of creative destruction have more than offset punitive innovation costs.
Listening to a podcast last week reinforced my belief in technology and innovation.
Tyler Cowen is a thoughtful host. I’ve been listening to his podcast for several years. He prepares for his interviews—by asking nuanced questions that surprise and delight his guests.
In episode 175 of Conversations with Tyler, Cowen interviews GPT4 interpreting Irish Satirist Jonathan Swift. If Swift were alive today, he would be three hundred fifty-five years old. Swift is best known for his book, Gulliver’s Travels. The podcast engaged an Irish actor to read GPT4’s answers. The actor, and his Irish accent, make GPT4’s responses feel like a live discussion.
I believed the illusion. The podcast is enchanting. It got my head spinning about the potential of this use of AI.
Thinking of grade school children—how much better would it be for them to learn history using GPT4 to explain events through the lens of historical figures using reasonable facsimiles of their voices?
The AI will respond to children’s questions in real-time.
Cowen’s podcast demonstrates this kind of interaction makes history come to life in ways that feel more real than reading it in a book.
GPT4 can express verbal responses without the aid of an actor reading the text, using credible voices facsimiles, just as an actor does in Conversations with Tyler.
Speech synthesis software created by Eleven Labs could bring this vision to life. Please look at their website and watch some YouTube videos covering it.
There are risks associated with artificial intelligence, but the potential benefits of the technology are astounding.
How do you feel about artificial intelligence? Listen to the podcast. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about using GPT4 and how you imagine the technology might enhance learning.