🙋‍♂️ AI hallucinations, a great timer, AI is coming to Google Education customers, and more – Of bits and bytes for May 20, 2024

Internet Travels

Of bits and bytes is my weekly round up of interesting links and ideas I discovered on the internet. It is published on Mondays for the previous week

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I joke about AI “lying with the confidence of a middle schooler that was caught cheating on a test”. Scientists don’t call it lying, they say that these are hallucinations. Whatever you want to call them, you need to be aware of them and verify everything.

If someone asks me for a website timer, I usually direct them to Google where you can time your timer length (“5 minute time”) into Google Search and get a timer, but now that I’ve learned aboutAftel h/t – https://twitter.com/tonyvincent/status/1788524317770211593, it’s going to be my top recommendation. By default, it gives you a timer. That’s all well and good, but you can also have it adjust the background color as the timer progresses, create links to preset timers, and more. Very cool site and an excellent app for the classroom.

@scispace_official • Tired of AI hallucinations?😮‍💨 Avoid ChatGPT’s fabrications by switching to SciSpace, … • Threads

Apps

Google is adding the capability to create a filtered and/or sorted table of data withing a larger sheet. The feature is coming to most people by May 30th, and should be available to all by June 6th. I checked three of my accounts and none of them have it yet.

Pedagogy

Will AI make you dumber? The answer, as it is for most things, is “maybe”. AI usage does show a tendency to procrastinate and display memory loss in some students. The use of AI programming assistants is already changing how coding is taught.

procrastinating meme : r/SequelMemes

Technology

At Google’s I/O conference last week the search company showed off all sorts of demos of their Gemini AI coming to Google Workspace, promising data and privacy protection. Google is also looking at generative AI can help teachers in the classroom.

Tips

Google now offering a way to your web search results without a lot of the extra image and shopping results.

You will soon be able to set Microsoft Word’s default paste to paste and match formatting. No more having to either remember to past with {Control}{Shift}{v} or having to change the formatting later.

Pop Culture

If you don’t understand what you are producing, then maybe you shouldn’t use AI to generate your cover letter.

Extra Credit

Here are extra links that I found interesting that may or may not be education related or interesting to you and I didn’t want to lose them.

• ChatGPT Both Is and Is Not Like a Calculator
• Is writing by hand better for learning and memory than typing? – Deseret News
• Frontiers | Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom
• Is the Internet bad for you? Huge study reveals surprise effect on well-being

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