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The evolving role of systems like ChatGPT in creating educational tools for students and educators

Dr. Cathy Cavanaugh, Chief Experience Officer and Technology Principal at the Lastinger Center for Learning at University of Florida; and Ethan Fieldman, founder & executive director of Curio XR, and a member of the UF Lastinger Center Advisory Board
Dr. Cathy Cavanaugh, Chief Experience Officer and Technology Principal at the Lastinger Center for Learning at University of Florida; and Ethan Fieldman, founder & executive director of Curio XR, and a member of the UF Lastinger Center Advisory Board

When OpenAI released the first publicly available, so-called ‘generative AI chat bot’ called ChatGPT, it didn’t take long for users — especially tech-savvy ones — to realize it was a game changer. While forms of artificial intelligence have been used in systems and applications for decades they weren’t this new form of generative AI that were being powered by what are called Large Language Models — or LLMs.

Since the release of ChatGPT a number of other LLMs have been released to the public - like Meta’s Lama, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude (though there are many more) and now we’re starting to see what’s referred to as multimodal’ systems, meaning voice, image, and video generators (and more) that are powered by LLMs.

OpenAI recently released a model called GPT-4o that allows users to talk to the program and have conversations with it in real time. And Apple just announced it’s going to be integrating an OpenAI model into its operating systems and will be using it to power the voice helper, Siri.

As these systems have quickly become more powerful companies and organizations are finding ways to integrate them into all sorts of applications. We talk with two people from the Lastinger Center for Education at University of Florida to find out they’re using these rapidly advancing Large Language Models in the work they do. The Lastinger Center is an education technology incubator that has been using a data-driven approach to help teachers and students since 2002.

Guests:
Dr. Cathy Cavanaugh, Chief Experience Officer and Technology Principal at the Lastinger Center for Learning
Ethan Fieldman, founder & executive director of Curio XR and a member of the Lastinger Center Advisory Board

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