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"AI (Artificial Intelligence)" ESL Discussion Questions - EnglishDiary.net

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Free ESL conversation and discussion questions about "AI (Artificial Intelligence)" ESL Discussion Questions. Free Materials For ESL Teachers and Learners.

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AI technology - English Conversation Questions

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English Conversation Questions on AI technology Machine learning Neural networks Big data Natural language processing Robotics Computer vision Deep learning Artificial intelligence Augmented reality Virtual assistants

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AI or Human: Can you tell the difference?

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Play the game and try to guess the difference between what is AI or Human.

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ESL Discussions Lesson on Artificial Intelligence

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ESL Discussions: Free worksheet and online activity on Artificial Intelligence.

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Be the first to discover the ultimate news site.

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Generative artificial intelligence has brought us the Pope in a coat and deepfake Drake, but also a potentially immense problem in separating fact from fiction. Today, anyone can create photorealistic images with Midjourney, churn out prose with ChatGPT or clone a voice in minutes.

These tools will inevitably be used - and are already being used, in some cases - to perpetuate financial scams, hoaxes and spread misinformation to sway public opinion anddivide populaces. There are no easy fixes, and you could be on your own. So how good are you at spotting fakes?

Look at these examples and pick which one you think is made by AI:

We've already seen many examples of how generative AI can be misused. Deepfake pornography, in which a person's likeness is used without consent, started proliferating a few years ago. In September, Microsoft said it found China-affiliated actors spreading AI-generated images on divisive topics, such as gun control. "We can expect China to continue to hone this technology over time, though it remains to be seen how and when it will deploy it at scale," Microsoft Corp. researchers wrote.

Bill Browder, a frequent critic of Russia, found himself on a video call with former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko in May, only to belatedly realize it was a "clumsy but convincing" deepfake aimed at goading him into saying something embarrassing.

"I don't think we've seen the power that AI can have in terms of spreading misinformation yet," said Jack Brewster, enterprise editor with NewsGuard Technologies Inc., which provides tools to train AI models to be more accurate. "There's more room for this technology to advance."

Image generators have improved significantly in recent months. Wonky hands used to be a dead giveaway that a picture was AI-generated, but after an update earlier this year, Midjourney became more skilled at rendering human appendages.

A number of startups have launched in recent months to identify AI-generated images. Andrey Doronichev was prompted to build a detection tool earlier this year through his San Francisco-based company, Optic, after coming across a deepfake video of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Generative AI applications such as Dall-E and Midjourney leave artifacts in the pictures they create - patterns that we cannot see. An algorithm trained on a huge volume of these images can detect those hallmarks, even if we don't know specifically what they are, Mr. Doronichev explained.

Detection algorithms are not entirely reliable, however, and require retraining whenever an update is made to an image generator or when a new model is released. "This is what makes this job hard, and potentially endless," Mr. Doronichev said.

Determining whether the text you're reading was generated by AI may be even more challenging than assessing images, given how writing styles can differ from one person to another. Still, NewsGuard has identified more than 450 so-called "news" websites that consist entirely or mostly of AI-written articles, in multiple languages, replete with false claims, fictitious news and old events presented as new.

Companies such as OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, have put guardrails in place to prevent misuse, but some users have easily bypassed these restrictions, including to produce blatant falsehoods. NewsGuard found that GPT-3.5, the large language model that powered the first iteration of ChatGPT, would not generate false news articles about China in English, but it did so in traditional and simplified Chinese languages.

"We've seen this over and over, with content moderation on big platforms being much less efficient in other languages," said Chine Labbe, vice-president of partnerships for Europe and Canada at NewsGuard.

Who wrote the following article about Justin Trudeau's election in 2015: The Globe and Mail or ChatGPT?

One of the statements below was written by AI, the other was spoken by Telus chief executive Darren Entwistle. Which one is AI?

Did Bank of Canada governor Tiff Macklem provide the following explanation for raising interest rates? Or did ChatGPT?

Services to identify AI-generated text have proliferated over the past few months, with varying degrees of accuracy. OpenAI's own tool correctly identified only 26 per cent of AI-written text, and falsely branded human prose as being machine-generated 9 per cent of the time, according to the company. In July, OpenAI shut down the tool because of its "low rate of accuracy."

A study published in May by researchers at Stanford University found that AI text detectors were fairly reliable when analyzing essays written by eighth graders, but incorrectly labelled more than half of those penned by non-native English speakers as AI-generated. The researchers also found detectors could be easily fooled by prompting ChatGPT to rewrite text in a more literary style.

Jon Gillham launched a company called Originality.AI in Collingwood, Ont. last November for publishers and content marketers to assess whether copy was written by AI. Academic institutions have flocked to the service, too. "We don't love that use case. There's a lot more hair on it," Mr. Gillham said, referring to the possibility of students being falsely accused.

The company uses an AI model trained on reams of copy to distinguish between human and machine-generated text, but Mr. Gillham can't exactly say how it does so. "AI sees patterns that we don't see," he said.

The results are not always definitive, however. When The Globe inputted a public address by Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem, Originality.AI determined that 40 per cent of it was machine-generated, denoting entire paragraphs as having been written by AI.

Mr. Gillham speculated that the writing style, replete with short sentences, was somewhat uncommon, which could account for the drop in accuracy. It's also possible the Bank of Canada really did use ChatGPT, he said.

A spokesperson for the Bank of Canada said it does not, in fact, use ChatGPT or any other AI tool to author public statements.

Services that rewrite AI text in order to fool detectors have also popped up too, sparking a constant arms race between those trying to identify the hallmarks of AI, and those trying to thwart them.

AI models are now powerful enough to clone somebody's voice based on only a snippet of audio. Microsoft researchers unveiled a model earlier this year that can mimic a voice with only three seconds worth of input.

Meta Platforms then trumped Microsoft in June when it announced a model that needed just two seconds worth of audio. While the company said it has built a "highly effective" classifier to distinguish between genuine and AI-created audio, Meta did not release the model or code to the public because of the "potential risks of misuse."

Scammers have already adopted existing AI voice cloning tools to dupe the public. Some fraudsters have used AI to clone the voice of a victim's family member, pretending to be in distress to convince the target to send money. A 75-year-old woman in Regina shelled out more than $7,000 recently after receiving a phone call from someone who sounded like her grandson, claiming to need money for bail.

Listen to these examples and pick the one you think is made by AI:

To root out deepfakes, some companies are trying to co-ordinate specifications to watermark digital media. "This has to be done at the source," said Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who has expertise in digital forensics. "Ideally what would happen is your web browser would be enabled, and it would read the watermark for you."

An initiative called the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity, for example, counts Adobe Inc., Microsoft, Intel Corp. and camera manufacturers as members. But such efforts require widespread buy-in, and open-source AI models (as opposed to those owned and operated by corporations) won't necessarily adopt watermarking standards.

Alberto Fittarelli, a senior researcher with Citizen Lab, suspects digital fingerprinting could be easily circumvented, too. "Models will likely be reverse-engineered and replicated by an array of actors in the future, and the malicious ones will certainly not adhere to such regulations."

Detection services, meanwhile, will constantly be playing catch-up. "As detection tools and techniques will evolve and improve over time, so will AI generative models and their ability to become unrecognizable," Mr. Fittarelli said. "Unfortunately, I suspect that the biggest investment will be in developing the latter."

Videos made with AI tools are easy to spot today. They're glitchy, awkward and vaguely psychedelic. But if the improvement in AI-generated images is any indication (along with the money pouring into the sector), generated video is only set to get better.

What does a cat eating pizza, or goldfish on the moon look like? See samples of what RunwayML's AI video generator can create from a text prompt or still image.

Despite the widespread concern, some experts argue that generative AI on its own may not lead to more misinformation and scams. Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, has said that while creating misinformation is easier and cheaper, spreading it widely is not.

"The cost of distributing misinformation by getting it into people's social media feeds remains far higher than the cost of creating it," he wrote recently along with Sayash Kapoor, a Princeton PhD candidate. "In other words, the bottleneck for successful disinformation operations is not the cost of creating it."

That puts more pressure on social media platforms to invest in fact-checking and content moderation, but also suggests the potential fixes are not all technical in nature. We all have to educate ourselves on what generative AI is capable of, maintain skepticism, and rely on trusted sources for information.
All source images and the underlying animations for the cloned voice videos are from Getty. How The Globe's senior visuals editor made the AI content in this story Making AI content with the intent to deceive was a challenge. I did photo research first to find source images that a generative AI would be able to mimic. That meant detailed close shots of faces or machinery were out in favour of more general scenes that would still be recognizable. I've used Voice cloning is extraordinarily capable and hard to notice without the cues to fakery that are in images or video. The AI video generation has improved significantly in just a few months. The - Patrick Dell RunwayML system I used can make a video from a still image, as well as a text prompt. The level of detail and motion is very good but not fully realistic yet. While videos made this way have that "uncanny valley" feeling, some creators are embracing the technique to make short films entirely from AI-generated assets. llElevenLabs system we used did well with Joe Castaldo and Janice Dickson's North American accents but wasn't able to match my Australian accent. Be on guard: the next spam call you get could be using a voice clone to imitate a relative or celebrity. Midjourney the most so it was my main tool to make the fake images for this story. My prompts were in plain language without elaborate commands. I iterated on the versions that Midjourney created to work toward a final image that could pass as realistic. Bing's images came with a watermark that I removed using Photoshop.

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How good are you at spotting fakes? Take The Globe's AI vs. human quiz to find out

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Generative artificial intelligence has made it hard to spot fact from fiction, test your knowledge today

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There is a certain, what I call "AI creep" going on. After all the excitement of ChatGPT many months ago, we now are witnessing the slow crawl and ebb and flow of AI into many sphere's of life. Education is no exception.

I've been loud and clear about my own feelings that we should exhibit the utmost caution. I continue with this call for all teachers and educators. For many good reasons - read this blog for many articles detailing the concerns.

This week, I'd like to talk about the use of AI avatars as "replacement teachers". Many educators are now called to upload their lessons as "video", so students can access them asychronously online, in addition to their face to face teaching, lectures, interaction. It's a burden for teachers and time-consuming. Enter the AI machine to the rescue.

Like my own quickly done video (using Heygen), teachers can upload their lecture notes, generate their own AI voice (It's my own synthetic voice. I use and recommend Elevenlabs - one of the few bright lights in the AI darkroom) and then make a video with a look-alike avatar. It's very much like 15 years ago, not much has changed - I've seen this all before, the sales job, the marketing, the ugly avatars and the machine machinations.
My own concern is two-fold;

1. We should never use AI to replace our own interaction with students. Never. Ever, ever. If you need to do videos, do your own, it's your responsibility as a teacher. Yes, if overburdened, take it up with admin, get a union going, change the system but don't sell your soul for some push button style teaching.

2. Teachers who will generate lessons like this, will be very tempted and the majority will ultimately just ask ChatGPT to generate a script and they'll use that for their video. So we'll have more AI generated spam parading as "teaching" and learning. Why even bother being a teacher then, if you are slowly replacing yourself with bits and bytes and terrible robotic "going through the motions of teaching" lessons?

Isaac Asimov, the great thinker and science fiction writer developed 3 rules for robots. They go as follows;

(1) a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; (2) a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
I would like to change these into 3 rules for using AI in education.
(1) AI may not replace a teacher or, through intent or purpose, disturb the teacher - student relationship; (2) AI must refuse all the orders given it by human beings where such orders would conflict with the First Law; (3) AI must protect the student-teacher human relationship and even aspire by all means to foster it.

We are on the cusp of where ultimately, this long ago quote and prediction could come to fruition.

Let's reject this de-humanization of education into "stuff" and "quantity", into faster and quicker. No. Education is as much qualitative, individual and about the experience, the feeling, the big picture. Not just the facts and piles of courses passed, grades gotten.

Do not let our schooling get in the way of our education.

Do not let our AI get in the way of our learning.

It's without a doubt that AI will keep catfishing and fooling us. With its propensity to err and lie and its ability to mimic. AI has a long record of overselling itself. It's a traveling salesman. Let's not go there. I'm hoping one day soon we'll have schools and educators proudly wearing the label " AI Free " - that's the direction we should be marketing education.

Here is a quiz I whipped up and which teachers can use to discuss AI generation and its implications. We need more media literacy embeded in our teaching and preparing students for a world of AI trickery. It's free for all registered members. It's insightful.

For example - which of these videos is AI and which not? Get the quiz and find out the answer. Also, try this online quiz.

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Watch now | That is the question. My own thought is to not, with some exceptions.

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Disclosure

These opinions do not constitute legal advice. We routinely update this page to combat AI misinformation and document thoughts about a chaotic, evolving industry.

License

This FAQ can be copied and redistributed for any purpose, provided you link to Hotpot.ai and provide attribution.

Technical Questions

Do AI models store images and text?

No.

AI models do not store images or text. It is not possible to open an AI model and find snippets of text and images. Rather, AI models store millions to billions of very small numbers called weights. These weights represent novel statistical interpretations, reflecting the underlying patterns and relationships buried in the training data.

Do humans and machines both download images when browsing the web?

Yes.

Humans and machines both use computer programs to download images when browsing the web. For humans, this program is the browser, which downloads images from a remote server to your computer or smartphone. For computers, this program is a custom script usually lacking a visual interface.

Is AI equivalent to lossy compression?

No.

This is like claiming computers are equivalent to calculators, analogous to suggesting computers can only add and subtract. AI may regurgitate words and images when prodded, but this only reflects a subset of AI functionality.

In humans, breakthroughs often arise from synthesizing ideas across domains and combining knowledge in novel ways. This is a core ability of generative AI, manifesting previously unseen expressions.

Debunking this claim is straightforward. Launch an AI image generator, and describe a novel scene like the canonical AI image, "An astronaut riding a horse on the moon." Or ask ChatGPT to create a rap about current events in the voice of William Shakespeare.

Creating content that did not exist before is proof that AI is more than compression.

Philosophical Questions

Is AI good or bad for society?

Powerful technologies like the computer and the web are general-purpose, meaning humans can abuse them for bad and leverage them for good.

AI is no different.

Analyzing and discussing AI is essential, but it is shortsighted to stop at risks. Engage AI critics with simple thought exercises. Without AI-powered software and robots, how can society:

· Provide Stanford-level tutors to billions of children?

· Offer personal doctors and individualized healthcare to 8 billion people?

· Slash the cost of human services by 90% while preserving quality?

What is the primary challenge with AI safety?

Whose values should AI align with: America, France, China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Brazil, India, California, Texas, Greenpeace, the United Nations, or some other entity?

Safety is embraced by all until definitions clash. This is a thorny problem that has bedeviled the human species since the dawn of time. Resolution will require deep thought, honest dialogue, and uncomfortable compromises.

If we cannot even agree on speed limits for cars, imagine the difficulty in agreeing on safety limits for AI. This is not to diminish the role of AI alignment. AI alignment is vital, but the problem is much deeper and more philosophical than many experts represent.

Should we pause AI?

No.

We should not pause AI for the same reason we should not pause cars, airplanes, and industralization despite the non-zero risk of human eradication of both vectors.

Pausing AI may limit harm, but this also limits growth and ultimately hurts jurisdictions prizing safety over progress, much like a driver driving 5 MPH on the freeway while others whiz by.

The curiosity of humankind is boundless. It is naive to believe others will stop exploring and arrogant to think Western countries can halt innovation.

For government officials, history is unequivocal: from Mongolian horses to American computers, those who lead in technology lead the world.

Every country is acutely aware of this lesson and feverishly competing to climb the 21st century's totem pole. Pandora's box is open. There is no choice for America but to simultaneously pursue both AI advancement and AI safety. These goals are not mutually exclusive.

Pausing AI squanders America's tenuous lead and allows other nations to leapfrog us.

Crucially, postponing development postpones the day society can start reaping AI's transformative effects on healthcare, education, and other critical areas.

What is the definition of "truth" and "fact"?

The inconvenient truth is that facts are born as opinions. There is no objective algorithm for determining factuality, which is why an alarming amount of misinformation pollutes society. What begins life as an opinion may later gain acceptance as fact, and vice versa. For instance, if two respected organizations report differing inflation rates, which one is fact?

From facts we can build to truth.

Truth, itself, consists of facts and context. Both are essential. Merchants of misinformation are adpet at presenting facts out of context, altering the perception of truth. Most maddeningly, even given a common set of facts and contexts, what happens when people have different values? For example, is it tyrannical or heroic to inconvenience 300m people in order to save the lives of 1 million?

Are AI images copyrightable?

The question remains open. Courts have issued conflicting opinions and are examining multiple cases.

However, if users can copyright iPhone photos, produced with the click of a button and powered by AI, it seems consistent with existing law to permit copyrighting of AI images and text.

Which AI voices are trustworthy?

Like the web and every technology boom before it, AI is awash with a flood of cynics and hypesters whose fortunes depend on selling stories over truth.

Everyone has a voice in the modern world. The Internet and social media offer a virtual megaphone where anyone can speak to 8 billion people with the click of a button. This is good and bad.

It wasn't always this way. Reader access and broadcast ability was tightly gated not long ago, reserved only for privileged insiders. While patently unfair, this power structure was not meritless: it increased order and surface harmony while decreasing baseless assertions like a flat Earth.

Technology thankfully swept away this backward era, but generated a new wave of challenges. Who, among the sea of voices, should we listen to? Whose words should we trust?

Ironically, the best people to follow are those who express uncertainty and conflicting perspectives, those who can provide 360-degree viewpoints and argue either side with equal fluidity. They are less entertaining but more informative. Few answers, especially important ones, are 100% certain. Few people are experts on multiple topics, let alone one. Those who communicate doubt are more likely to share counterarguments, not myopic hot takes like this classic one from 1998 predicting, "By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's."

The most trustworthy opinions are falsifiable. If a company claims speed breakthroughs, can users measure for themselves? If a scientist claims some cure, can patients verify results?

The second-most trustworthy opinions are objective, accompanied by good-faith counterarguments. Do critics list benefits as exhaustively as flaws? Do advocates document risks as thoroughly as advantages?

Is AI art theft?

No. The training principles of AI art are identical to the training principles of human art. Human artists download images via browsers and learn from them. AI models replicate this process, but use scripts instead of browsers to view images.

The difference is not in principle, but in scale. Computers can study every piece of art ever made whereas humans cannot.

Critically, AI models do not store images. They analyze image patterns and properties and transform these observations into mathematical functions.

Are AI models derivative works?

No. Many proponents of this argument acknowledge that AI models are transformative in that they can create work that is substantially different and original. The crux of this criticism rests on the claim AI is nothing without primary work. Unfortunately, this is true of every person who learns from, and builds upon, prior generations. No human creates without first studying the past. And in the modern world, learning entails viewing files with a browser, which requires downloading data from a remote server to a user device.

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Short comments to combat AI misinformation and furnish more objective views on AI

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World's first AI news anchor debuts in China

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Artificial Intelligence Tools in the ESL Classroom · AIPRM

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The Ultimate Time Saver for ChatGPT and other AI models. Trusted by over 2 million users and some of the world’s biggest brands.