https://yourlearningguides.com/podcasts/In this podcast episode, the Learning Guides explore the diverse applications of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on tools like ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Leonardo. They discuss AI's role in text and visual content generation, along with AI's integration into programs like Canva. The hosts share personal experiences with AI, addressing concerns about job displacement and legal issues, such as unauthorized content creation.
The conversation extends to AI's potential in learning and development. The hosts dive into AI's role in creating foundational content, strategic planning, and visual design in the world of L&D. They encourage listeners to embrace AI, highlighting its potential for efficiency and creativity in various aspects of life and work. Below you'll find a resource we've built for you to understand how to use AI for building curriculum along with some other valuable resources.
- The Learning Guides Downloadable: AI Prompts for Curriculum Writing
- Canva's AI Tools
- AI's role in the SAG-AFTRA Strikes
Transcript:
I am here with my cohost Kishana.
Hey, Kishana. And today we're going to be talking about AI or artificial intelligence. And we're going to start off just by talking about the two core uses of artificial intelligence. The first being utilizing it for text creation or for code creation. And we're using tools like ChatGPT, for example. Just a little tidbit in case you didn't know GPT actually stands for general purpose technology.
The second way is by the creation of visuals and some popular tools for visual creation are Midjourney and Leonardo. Leonardo is one I've been getting into using. I think it's a really interesting tool. It's fun to create. You can go down a rabbit hole just like you can with Chat GPT as well.
Yeah. Hey, isn't Siri a form of AI? Yeah, you know what, Siri, interestingly, Siri, is actually a system that uses AI rather than being AI itself.
And yeah, we see a lot of that today. And I actually think that's how a lot of platforms and businesses are upping their game by adding AI as a kind of core component. I know you're a Canva user too, but Canva has actually just released a ton of new features around, um, bringing AI into their platform, whether it's writing or visuals, or I think even some base editing.
Oh, wow. No, I don't think that I knew that. I have been in Canva. I have been in it lately, but I did not notice the AI components. So now I'm going to be super interested, uh, to check that out. Yeah. I would definitely suggest taking a look.
Things like Siri or Canva are actually driven by prompts. Um, so for example, when we're using Siri, she waits for us to talk to her and then we ask her to do something and then she runs off and does that thing. And so what exactly are prompt driven AI? Like what exactly does that mean?
Well, and again, I'm no expert in AI. Let me just clarify that. So I'm just giving you your perspective from my perspective. I'll give you my take. But in my perspective, , whenever you go into some of these AI tools, like Chat GPT or, Leonardo, for example. The output that you receive is going to be solely based on the input you give, and that input is referred to as a prompt, and your prompts are driven by you as an individual, and so it becomes your voice, or the way you choose to word things, and how you word things will impact the output you get.
So if you use really specific language types, you'll start to see that your output will become slightly different.
So, oh, okay. Okay. So I think I remember this. So I do remember when you and I were talking about AI, um, previously, and we were thinking of titles for what we should name this podcast.
And I remember you going through an example and you were saying something like, you know, give me the top five podcast names for L & D. And after Chat GPT gave you, um, this list of things, you kind of came back with your prompt and just said, Hmm, um, give me five more or give me 10 more, or I didn't like this.
Don't include this, but include that. Could you give me some more examples? So that's what you're meaning by the prompts.
Yeah. And that actually gets into another component of this, which I think is really cool about Chat GPT and other AI tools is that once you start your prompt, you can keep on going with that same prompt.
Um, and just editing or revising it to get to an outcome that you're looking for. In that example, you know, if I had been specifically trying to target an audience, I could say, give me the five best podcast names based on a description, which is the description of what we came up with, what we wanted our podcast to be, for example, and then saying, but I want it to attract the millennial audience.
And then you'll see that it comes back and it gives you some kitschy words. And I might say, okay, these are too kitschy. Can you tone this down a little bit? Give me less kitsch, maybe a little bit more of something else. And then it gives you more. And so it's like a brainstorming tool that you can use. I know since that time you've been using it a little bit. Mm-Hmm. more often. So I'd love to hear more about your experience.
You know, I think that once you had done that demo for us on how you use Chat, GPT. It made things a lot easier for me to not have to rewrite my prompts or go back and edit my prompts.
Or I would edit the prompt, but instead of editing it, I would just, you know, go back into that field and just say, give me five more . So I actually use that every day just in my regular life when I am writing or whatever the case may be. I definitely use those prompts and editing a little bit more, , when I'm just trying to brainstorm and just kind of get something together.
Yeah. You know, a lot of people have been talking about a fear of AI and their job. Where do you stand on that? How do you feel about it?
I actually am not fearful. I have completely embraced AI. Like I mentioned a few moments ago is that I use it every day. I know that sometimes words flow and sometimes words don't flow when I'm writing. And I believe that phrase has always been called writer's block.
And so some days, I'm just like, I'm trying to say this thing. But it's not coming out right. How else can I, how else can I say this thing? So some of the times I use it for that, or I can use it just as a brainstorming tool to give me ideas on this certain topic.
And it just helps me like, Oh yeah, I wasn't really thinking of that, but thanks for saying that because now I want to do this. So yeah, I find myself using it every day.
Yeah, it's a great trigger that way. That's actually one of the things I love the most is sometimes you just need something to trigger your brain and set yourself off in a direction.
And it can be great for that, especially when we're in a remote culture where we're often working alone. Around that idea of people being fearful of AI as it relates to their work.
I saw a really interesting statement, maybe from someone on LinkedIn, and I can't I don't recall who it is specifically, but they said that there's no reason to be fearful of AI. AI itself won't take jobs. But what will happen is those individuals, those professionals who choose to embrace and utilize AI will take the jobs of those who don't.
And I thought that was really impactful. I've always been a diver inner. I don't think that's a real word, but anytime there's something, a new tool we can play with, I'm like, Ooh, let's go see what this does. Which I think has always helped me professionally. , I feel because of that, I've become a really fast learner.
So as soon as I have a chance, I'm just in there playing around and figuring it out. Leonardo has an online community on Facebook and it is, it's such a great learning environment. And it's, it's cool to see learning done that way, where it's a lot of peer education, cause it's trial and error. All of us are learning at the same time. And so we're going in and we're trying things. Some people are sharing prompts. Some people don't like to, because they look at their prompt almost as their property.
Right? Just like if you were to draw something with your hands, and that's your drawing, because you have that talent, if you happen to be a really strong prompt writer, and you don't want to share what you've written, then , you don't have to. It's not a requirement. But there's a huge debate, at least on the visual stuff, about whether or not people can say this is my image; because AI is really just made up of a bunch of things from different places and it's pulling it together based on the prompts that you're using.
I don't have any strong opinion either way. I just kind of think, it's there for me to utilize and I'm going to utilize it and you can sell it as your own. You just have to say it's digital art that was created via AI. So, you know, just two things that I thought about while you were talking.
I have evolved, Sharon, I used to not be this diver inner, um, you know, that you were describing, I used to be the one that sits on the side and I would watch everyone else do something. And then I would say, well, I'm not doing it because everyone else is doing it. And I often found myself as I, got more seasoned, as I aged, that trying new things and kind of jumping, diving in and just trying something new is actually been kind of fun. So there is one component of that diver inner personality that you have that I'm starting to embrace that because when Chat GPT came out, I didn't fear it. I actually just jumped in just like you did and just started using it and was like, well, how can I use it? So it was really, really fascinating.
You can't be afraid to fail forward and that's part of it. Right. And as long as you're not making any major mistakes, , I mean, there's no harm in going in and giving it a try.
The other thing was, just in the news yesterday, I learned that Scarlett Johansson is actually trying to sue whomever the company is that use some sort of AI that created her image, her likeness, um, her voice for a commercial ad, and she wants to get paid for it. So it is very interesting because the very first question that I asked when my husband and I were talking about it was, who exactly is she suing?
So when you were talking about, some people don't want to share their prompts that they consider their property. I can see that. I can see that and then on the other side of it, it's like, well, some of the things that AI has been able to generate because of your prompts and other people's prompts, they can kind of start making assessments on what exactly to generate for you.
I haven't used Leonardo, but I know that you have, so I'm just imagining that this is how this all evolves. And now we have someone made like a song and they use Beyonce's voice, but they did a Rihanna song or Justin Bieber or something like that, you know, and you start making songs and then you start thinking about it.
Like, well, who actually owns this, property. .Yeah. And that's some of the negatives, right? That start to play into the fear of AI. And actually the Scarlett Johansson thing isn't, that's not the only one I've heard about that. I've actually heard that there's a big conversation going on in Hollywood, even about using it for writing scripts. This is not my area of expertise here, but I feel like the SAG AFTRA is it, or something like that, they're still on strike. And some of it has to do with this and then also utilizing AI in general. So it's interesting to understand how all of that will start to play a role in, in everything.
Like it changes the foundation, and that actually lends into one of the other things we, we wanted to talk about today, which was how we're using it in learning and development specifically, and, you know, there, there are a myriad of ways that you could use it, but one we were talking about is taking the core functions of our work and utilizing AI to create those foundations and then being able to be more strategic in the way we're approaching our work. And so, objectives in our curriculum. Even developing the idea for a program, going through and utilizing it for creating the steps for a reference guide for a technical platform.
I mean, there's really just a large number of things and I think about the time that will be saved being able to utilize that and then edit it. Obviously I'm not a believer in just taking it straight and using it. I mean, sometimes you can. Like, every once in a while, it will deliver something that's so you that you're like, okay, great.
But most of the time you have to take it and really turn it into the thing you wanted it to be like you said earlier, though, it, it kind of sparks the mind and now you get to use all your learned knowledge from years of experience to start thinking about it a little bit differently and creating the version of it that you really wanted it to be from the beginning, but you needed a little help getting there.
Yeah. I love that we can create these things faster. And what that means to me is that, , L&D doesn't disappear, but L&D maybe becomes smaller. Maybe there's not as many people needed on an L&D team or their function becomes different, maybe is a better way to describe it. This is just speculation. We'll see what happens.
Yeah. And then I think the other way we were talking about using it and learning & development was around the visual component as well.
A lot of the times in learning and development, we are responsible for content creation- , e learning, quick reference guides, infographics. And the ability to create really interesting graphics in something like Leonardo or Midjourney, and then make them, um, cohesive all the way through your e-learning or your educational experience without being a graphic designer is incredible.
Oh, wow. Yeah. It opens up so many opportunities for creativity. I can think about when we were with Hobsons. And, we were working on an e-learning for a fictitious student named Jessica who was going through an entire experience from the time she was in like ninth grade to the time she was graduating until the time she got into nursing school.
And I had to like do my best to create and find images of a girl who looked like she was evolving over time to look like the same person. Um, but it was, it was a struggle and I was thinking about how with AI, that would have been a much easier journey for me and would have made the visuals much more relevant.
I mean, I think they were still fine, but because of this new tool I have access to, I feel like it allows me space to be even better at what I do.
Absolutely. And I love that Sharon. I didn't even - that thought didn't even cross my mind about the illustrations and then just the fact of being able to keep a cohesive look about the same person, throughout this journey and you want to, with your illustrations, have the same look and feel.
If you were able to teach AI, like, Hey, this is my Jessica. I like the way Jessica looks right now. I like the background. I like all of the visuals that go along with this thing so that they're all in the same family.
And I don't know if family is the right word that I want to use here.
I'm saying. But they call it seeds. In the AI world that I've been using, you train a model and part of that training, I think it, it identifies a seed or a number.
And that's, that is what you use to create that consistent character. Um, so you can create a training model. Like I've trained my dog, for example, she is one of my models in AI.
I'm sure that that's such a time saver too. Like once you've trained this model and now that it has this seed and it knows what to build off of, it's just a beautiful thing that that could have saved you so much time that I'm sure that you spent previously while you were on that project.
It does take effort and it takes effort to make sure you are getting that same model and it takes effort to make sure that she's doing exactly what you want her to do, because this is part of the thing that AI is still doing. It's still learning and it still makes mistakes. So in the visuals, for example, like. They have an, there's a negative prompt as well for visuals where it's like, Hey, don't do this thing though. So one of the things that it can't do well, our hands. So what was happening with a lot of the starting images is they were giving you six fingers or like the fingers were distorted or the faces were distorted.
And so what you could do is say don't give me distorted hands. Don't give me distorted faces. You'd have to prompt it about what you don't want in the image as well. Sometimes they'll give you multiples of something and you're like, I only want one of that thing. So that's part of learning the prompting process.
And some people are really, really good at the prompting and you can tell a difference. People choose to share things with the community. You can see images that are being created and you can see the prompts that they use.
And then you can steal little tidbits, and you as a photographer actually would do great in there because you can use photography language in your prompting and it will use the setting of the camera to give the image that thing. I used a slow motion that I copied from somewhere. I was like, Oh, let me try this and like suspended water droplet. And I had some really cool outputs. I don't want to make it sound like it's a cakewalk, like it's really easy to use. It is easy to use, but to get exactly what you want does take time and effort.
And in Leonardo, as an example, you do get free tokens, so you have a certain amount free every month that you can use, but you will run out if you're practicing, but the cost isn't super expensive for buying more tokens.
It doesn't always give you the context you're looking for. So you, again, as the writer of the prompt have to really determine. You know, how, how do I want this writer to show up for me? Earlier, I think off camera or not even camera, but off podcast, we were talking about, using Chat GPT as a colleague.
But one of the things you can do too, is define the colleague. You can say, Hey, I want. you to brainstorm with me, but I want you to do it from the perspective of someone who is strategic, uh, data minded, et cetera, whatever things you want to identify. And now you can start a brainstorm or conversation with chat GPT playing that role for you, which is I think really cool also. Yeah.
When you had mentioned it earlier, I was just so fascinated. I didn't even think about that perspective. I just love talking about AI and getting these different perspectives, these different use cases, these different scenarios, because then it just opens my, my mind to think, maybe I can try it this way- it's almost like it's role playing, in a sense. And I love that.
Well, and that's actually, so isn't that interesting? You just triggered for me another thought about how do we use AI in learning? There you go. So role playing is a major part of activities in education, right?
We use role playing a lot, but sometimes, especially now when we're dealing more in remote educational situations, maybe role playing gets harder, but if we utilize chat GPT as the other party in the role play, that's kind of interesting. Yeah, I want to, I know I'm in, I'm curious about that. I feel like that's an interesting opportunity.
I wonder if anyone's done that, if anyone's done that chime in somewhere, leave us a note.
There are so many interesting applications and that's part of the beauty of conversation as you begin to see the possibilities. And I think that AI has a ton of possibilities and I would suggest for all of our learning and development folks or anyone else who is listening to jump in, give it a try. Don't be afraid.
You definitely need to just start using it. You can't mess anything up. That would be my suggestion for folks is just to get in there and start using it and seeing what kind of experience they have. Yeah,
I agree.
I agree. Just writing in simple things like maybe think of something that you did today or did this week that you spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to troubleshoot. And if, , chat GPT or Leonardo, whatever is most appropriate for you.
Just try it and just see if Chat GPT could have made your life a little bit easier, saved you that hour that you could have been doing something else. I definitely encourage that.
And I think it's a good point to remember that the beginning may take longer because you, you and Chat GPT or AI in general are both still learning each other.
Um, and so you're in the dating phase. Um, and so don't be surprised if it takes time in the beginning and you're maybe not as fast or efficient as you hope to be, but know that as you continue to use it, you'll, you'll get stronger quicker and it'll be more natural. Well, this has been a great conversation. I thank you so much for your time today and our listeners time. If you came on and listen, thank you for spending time with us. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe, and join us next time for Explore L& D with the Learning Guides. We hope to see you then. Take care.
