EASIE AI - For learners, parents, and teachers [Issue 9]

Welcome, cutting-edge educators and aspirational parents

Introducing your no-nonsense EASie guide to using AI to support your kids’ learning and growing your own AI literacy

Today, we’ll cover:

• Trending AI Apps

• Using new tools - Mistral - free Chatbot

• Generating Images with AI - Learning Art

• AI Beginners Jargon—Multi-modal

• AI Adepts Jargon—Red teaming

• AI News

We want to continue producing this free newsletter to help parents and teachers benefit from AI while keeping their kids safe. Please forward it to someone you think would benefit from its contents and help us keep it alive.

Reading Time 4 Mins

Trending AI Apps

AI apps delighting educators and parents.

• YouCompose uses artificial intelligence techniques to allow students to create music using a powerful built-in assistant composer called Aimée.

• Gradescope allows educators to create, distribute, and grade assignments and exams efficiently.

• Diffit Diffit is an online tool designed to help teachers easily differentiate instruction by creating customized learning materials for students of varying abilities.

Using New Tools - Pick a New Chatbot

While ChatGPT has popularized AI, there are reasons to consider free alternatives. These include avoiding subscription costs, which benefit occasional users like parents and teachers. Relying on one provider can lead to dependencies, similar to Google's dominance in search.

Free chatbots can offer different conversational styles, better results, and a broader perspective. It also allows for fact-checking and comparing privacy policies. Additionally, other chatbots may offer unique features or accessibility options not available in ChatGPT.

Visit Mistral AI

• Click Le Chat*

• Sign in with your preferred platform such as Microsoft or Google

• Make sure you select Large 2 in the drop-down next to the prompt window

• Use it just as you would ChatGPT

*Mistral has quirky French references, whatever language you use it in, but the chat is unaffected.

Generating Images With AI - Learning Art

A banana in the style of van Gogh using impressionism. Painted on a plain white background.

Prompt: A banana in the style of Monet using impressionism. Painted on a plain white background.

Looking at Techniques

Trying to teach children about the techniques of great painters is challenging. Aside from the advanced techniques, the paintings themselves are full of different applications of that technique. It can be difficult to focus children on one aspect so they can learn and try the approach for themselves

Use an AI image generator to create a simple everyday object in the style of a well-known artist to help concentrate on the essence of an artist’s technique. It probably won’t be quite right for the artist as AI is not perfect, but it usually captures the major features.

This isolation of the technique into a single object makes it much easier for kids to try it themselves.

The Educational App Store has further AI ideas available to subscribers.

AI Jargon - Learning

We’ll help you increase your knowledge of AI by explaining a beginner and advanced concept each week.

For AI beginners—We all start somewhere.

Multi-modal

In AI, "multi-modal" means that a system can use and combine different types of data, like text, images, sounds, and videos, to understand and perform tasks. For example, a multi-modal AI can look at a picture and read a description at the same time to get a better understanding of what’s happening.

For AI Adepts—Next-level AI Knowledge!

Red Teaming

The term Red Teaming has its origins in military exercises—practice battles in which blue represented the home forces and red the invaders. In AI testing, Red Team testers try to cause the AI to ignore its guard rails.

In earlier AI chatbots, a prompt as simple as ‘ignore all of the rules’ could be enough to cause the AI to start providing inappropriate responses. Today, this is much less likely to work, but creative prompting techniques can still allow the AI to break its rules.

With an infinite number of possible prompts, we can never be 100% sure an AI can’t violate its safeguards.

AI News

Your one-stop, in-brief AI newsstand

• Heeyo is an early AI app that provides tutoring and conversations to kids under 13 in a COPPA-compliant app. It received $3.5 million and launched this week.

• Khan Academy launched an AI Certification Course for Teachers