Last week I wrote up some notes on Sora, OpenAI’s new service, as yet unreleased to the public. There I looked into the technology, as best as I could see from the traces available, and speculated about possible directions. Today I’d like to continue by thinking through Sora with a focus on its possible implications for higher education. Let’s look ahead a year or two.
The increased environmental cost as more and more energy intensive AI apps come online is a huge concern that needs to be mentioned in every story about AI at this point.
On the issue of availability to students, higher ed institutions will have to make decisions on institutional subscriptions soon (some have already I know, but not many). But because the market is so fluid this will be a very difficult decision. With most other software there is often an obvious product that most people use, or a fairly well-established set of choices, but that just isn't the case with AI products at the moment. But the longer you wait for a clear winner to emerge the longer the problems with uneven access persist.
This type of technology will eventually become available to anyone who wants it. Governments can't stop it, as the Internet demonstrates, and in fact many governments will use it for propaganda purposes.
The larger existential question is what happens when humanity is inundated with petabytes of content that, for the first time in history, wasn't created by humans. What does it mean when one of the most defining characteristics of being human, the ability to design and create things, is no longer done by humans, and by systems that will vastly outperform humans? We are having this technology thrust upon us without concern for what could be hugely disruptive consequences.
The increased environmental cost as more and more energy intensive AI apps come online is a huge concern that needs to be mentioned in every story about AI at this point.
On the issue of availability to students, higher ed institutions will have to make decisions on institutional subscriptions soon (some have already I know, but not many). But because the market is so fluid this will be a very difficult decision. With most other software there is often an obvious product that most people use, or a fairly well-established set of choices, but that just isn't the case with AI products at the moment. But the longer you wait for a clear winner to emerge the longer the problems with uneven access persist.
This type of technology will eventually become available to anyone who wants it. Governments can't stop it, as the Internet demonstrates, and in fact many governments will use it for propaganda purposes.
The larger existential question is what happens when humanity is inundated with petabytes of content that, for the first time in history, wasn't created by humans. What does it mean when one of the most defining characteristics of being human, the ability to design and create things, is no longer done by humans, and by systems that will vastly outperform humans? We are having this technology thrust upon us without concern for what could be hugely disruptive consequences.