In the dim and distant past (well, about 5 years ago), there was a time when very few people working in education were interested in AI. And if they were, most people only had the vaguest of understanding on what it could do – either vastly overestimating what was possible, almost seeing it as akin to magic, or discounting things that were, in fact, quick and simple to achieve with AI.
Demos to help us imagine the future
We could see things were changing and AI was going to have a massive impact on education, and wanted a way to help people see the potential. We decided the best way to help with this was to create a demo site, ExploreAI, showing some of the most common things AI could do. This included recognising images, sentiment analysis, recommendation engines, and working out detail from pictures (is it a wasp or a bee?). We got a lot of positive feedback, and it always drew a huge amount of interest at events like Digifest. A particular favourite was an ‘emotion’ recognition demo, which was a huge hit at events, and also helped us explore the ethical dimensions of such approaches and techniques.
We used it to stay ahead of the game and explore new AI technologies. In 2021, we came across a research paper explaining how you could generate questions from text by a new technique called ‘Transformers’. Little did we know quite how transformative (excuse the pun) this technique would be. We found an open-source implementation of this, and used it to create a questions generator demo. You could enter some text and it would generate questions based on it. It was probably the first generative AI application anyone would have seen in the sector, and with hindsight I wished we’d shouted more about what it meant and what was coming.
We created a filter to show how AI could moderate bad language. But we needed examples and didn’t want to write the whole test set ourselves. Instead, we got the then-unknown GPT-2 to generate examples for it. It was perhaps one of the few things it could do well!
In early 2022 we created demos that could generate whole essays based on the pre-ChatGPT language model GPT-3. It wasn’t easy to create that much text at the time, but my colleague Rebecca Flook figured out that if you got it to create an outline and then got it to write a paragraph or so at a time for each part of the outline, it could get there. Those that saw this at conferences were wowed. Again, in hindsight, I wish we’d shouted and demoed much louder to reduce the shock to the sector when ChatGPT was released.
After ChatGPT, access to AI became much easier, and we decided to start also sharing good practices. So we introduced the AI map, showing short case studies, as AI use spread across the sector. We added an ‘AI in practice’ resource hub showcasing how people were using AI.
A fond farewell and a look to the future
We have now decided, though, that the time has come to retire ExploreAI. Why? Well, we no longer need to provide access to demos in order to show what AI can do. AI is now all around us. And a map to showcase where AI is being used is now no longer relevant, as AI is used everywhere, in all institutions across the whole UK.
So we are now going to shift focus. Instead of showing demos, we are going to produce more articles that go behind the AI that you use every day, to help everyone keep up with the rapid pace of change. We’ll explore how new features work and share any interesting points or issues that you need to be aware of.
The content from the AI map won’t be lost – instead, we’ll produce a regular report highlighting interesting case studies and giving an overview of how we are seeing AI used, still focusing on submissions from individual institutions. We’re just finishing the first of these, which we’ll publish as a blog, based on the content of the existing AI map, so nothing there will be lost.
We’ll take the same approach with the content of Generative AI in practice, so we’ll now produce a regular guide sharing interesting and practical examples of how staff at universities and colleges are using AI tools. And the learner/staff AI literacy resources will be incorporated into an updated version of our main website.
So thanks everyone who’s used, commented and contributed to ExploreAI over the last 5 years. It’s been one of the most enjoyable things to work on, but times change and now exciting things lay ahead.
Find out more by visiting our Artificial Intelligence page to view publications and resources, join us for events and discover what AI has to offer through our range of interactive online demos.
Join our AI in Education communities to stay up to date and engage with other members.
Get in touch with the team directly at AI@jisc.ac.uk