Disclaimer: This workshop was conducted prior to Ohio State acquiring an AI chatbot tool for use at the university: Microsoft Copilot with data protection. Other tools referenced in this recording are not currently approved for university-related work. Please see Approved AI Tools for Teaching and Learning for an up-to-date list of approved AI tools.
Workshop Summary
The Center for Digital Learning and Innovation (CDLI) invites you to the next installment of our Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Education workshop series: AI in Everyday Work. Join us for a lively chat on using AI in everyday work! We will walk you through real AI use cases – from crafting smart emails to organizing tasks. Learn to write AI prompts, download a list of tools to try, and see how AI can make your workday smoother.
The following is a recording of the workshop that took place on February, 22 2024 via Zoom (webinar).
Read the video transcript
0:01
[Channell Walker] OK, hello everyone.
0:04
Welcome to AI In Everyday Work.
0:07
I’m Channell Walker.
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I’m an instructional designer for DELD and CDLI.
0:13
So we’ve done these AI sessions before and I am super happy to be here with all
0:22
of you.
0:22
This is being recorded just to let you all know.
0:29
OK so AI has become did you hear that the Thunder?
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I was not expecting that in February but OK.
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Welcome to AI in everyday.
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Oh sorry now I’m confused.
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AI has become a hot topic in the past year with the popularity of ChatGPT.
0:56
I myself
0:58
use it pretty much every day and I have found a whole bunch of uses for it in my
1:07
work tasks.
1:08
So I’ve used it for all of these things and more.
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So e-mail tone.
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You can take a look at all of these, but as you can see I use
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I’ve been able to use ChatGPT for things ranging from writing emails to more
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specific instructional design tasks like aligning objectives to assignments.
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Each one of these hyperlinks go to ChatGPT conversation threads from my
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account.
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So I’m going to drop in the chat for all of you, the PowerPoint,
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the link to the PowerPoint, and you can and you can open up the
2:00
PowerPoint.
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You could check out all of the hyperlinks that I’ve included in this presentation.
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So you can see all of the ways I use ChatGPT.
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And I want you to keep that in mind as inspiration for what you can also use AI
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to do.
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And I want to thank the people who answered the extra questions in the form
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because I see that I saw that most of the people who answered that question were
2:37
looking for writing emails using AI.
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It’s still on the title screen.
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So you don’t see, OK, let me adjust my sharing.
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There we go.
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Now everybody sees the uses for ChatGPT.
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OK, All right, so I had the wrong PowerPoint one.
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OK, so you can see all of my different uses
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for ChatGPT.
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You are able to click on the hyperlinks using the link in the chat to take a look
4:01
at the different conversation threads.
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That is going backwards.
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OK, so since many of you wanted to answer the
4:16
question that you wanted to find out more about writing emails,
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I am going to dive into that.
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So is that still the case?
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Is that still the case?
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I’m not sure who answered that they wanted to do emails,
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but I can adjust based on the people present.
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OK, I’ll just keep going.
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OK, so writing prompts, this is kind of a a big part of using any
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of the ChatGPT or chat bot tools.
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So when writing prompts for any chat bot, you need to create detailed prompts to
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get the results you’re looking for.
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You want to start broad and then add details.
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So that’s number one, if you go into and if you go into yeah,
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if you go into a chat bot and type a generic request,
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then you will receive an off the wall response that is nowhere close to what
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you are looking for.
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So you so we’re going to move on to the next step, which is provide context.
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Give context for your request and go beyond the go beyond the generic request
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and give a “why”.
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So when you’re typing in typing in your request,
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give your why for why for why do you want this request.
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And this will help personalize your results. #3 ask open-ended questions.
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This is more so for using chat chat chat bots in general.
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Based on your requests you want to give, you want to avoid a yes or no question
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more the free versions of chat bots will give you just basically like a yes I can
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do this or no, I cannot do this.
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And ChatGPT 4 will provide you with a longer answer,
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but it probably won’t be what you’re looking for.
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So you want to avoid yes or no questions. #4 clarify desired format.
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Tell the chatbot or AI generator, and I’m saying this for image generators,
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presentation generators, exactly what you’re looking for,
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whether it is a work memo, professional e-mail, e-mail template,
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or even a 300-word explanation.
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Because these details will help get you closer to what you want.
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#5 anticipate potential ambiguities.
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So with generic requests, you leave a wide a wide gap for a chat
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bot to fill with misinformation.
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By providing the details, facts, data, etcetera in your request,
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the chat bot will craft better sentences using that information.
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The best part about using a chat bot is that it makes your words better and you
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don’t want it to change your factual information.
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I I have posted into chat bots posted into ChatGPT up to 6 pages of text to use
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it for extracting various information or to alter what I’ve written.
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So don’t be afraid to have long detailed requests, OK?
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And number six, use examples.
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So most, mostly I use most of my examples when I’m
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using ChatGPT comes from original text that I’ve created.
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I’m taking my very brief, very blunt responses and pasting them
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into ChatGPT to create longer responses.
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But you can also use examples in terms of styles.
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So you can say write like a celebrity or character, create a marketing campaign,
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like a specific brand, write like a specific job,
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like a newscaster.
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And for ethics, for ethics, I like to use, I like to ask ChatGPT to give me an
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analysis of that style.
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Instead of saying write a song like Beyoncé,
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I would say give me an analysis of Beyoncé’s most popular songs,
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like what is that right, that songwriting style.
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And then I would take that explanation and say, write a song,
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paste in that analysis explanation.
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And then it will generate something along those lines rather than say write like
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Beyoncé.
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OK, so now let’s take a look at e-mail
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prompts for for general emails, general work emails,
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you’re probably going to go with something very simple.
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And so we’re going to start off Broad.
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So you would probably want to put in hey, convert the following text into an e-mail
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and you would copy and paste in your original e-mail text.
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If you do that, it’ll give you a whatever it feels like
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giving you.
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If you go in and you say, hey, convert the following text into a super
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friendly e-mail response, then it’s going to take your response and
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give it a tone, which is super helpful for me.
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So it’ll take a very blunt e-mail and it will fill in all of that friendly,
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those friendly phrases and words that that you didn’t originally have in there.
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But it will keep your, the information that you provide and then
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for and then you would provide context.
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So I have an example here to write a super friendly e-mail response to the
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following e-mail.
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Please inform the reader that the team, there’s a whole bunch of information here.
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And then I would paste my original e-mail text or I would paste the original e-mail
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to respond to it.
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So you can do that as well and it’ll give you a much better response then the then
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the short blunt one.
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So I saw a lot of responses saying they wanted longer emails,
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and ChatGPT in particular just provides longer emails in general,
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but you want to tailor it to what you want.
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Now for I saw that somebody wanted e-mail templates.
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So we’re going to start off at step #1, which is start broad.
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And then I’m going to take you into a more detailed prompt for this e-mail
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template.
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So start off broad.
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You could say, Create an e-mail template.
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It’s just going to spit out whatever you can add your details.
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Create an e-mail template to promote our Course Design Institute workshop.
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Now it has a little bit of information to work off of,
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but it’s still going to print out whatever it feels like.
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It’s just going to plug in Course Design Institute Workshop, provide context.
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So we’ve, we’ve told it to create a, a template to promote our CDI.
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Now we’re giving it the details for CDI.
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So we have, we have what it is, it’s a virtual workshop.
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We have the dates, we have what’s included in the workshop.
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And you can see here that I have brackets that say insert name because you have to
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be careful with providing specific information,
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university information into this chat bot.
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So I I redact department names, course names, people names.
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I redact that kind of information and I put it in brackets that say insert URL,
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insert, insert the URL, insert the department name,
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insert person’s name.
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And that way when you get your response, those brackets with insert name stay
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there and all you have to do is replace it with the information that you need to
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plug in. Clarify desired format.
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So I’ve gone in and added to the information that I have,
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which is create a marketing e-mail.
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It’s going to give it a different tone than what I was looking for before.
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Anticipate potential ambiguities.
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So you have all of this information.
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You have the dates, you have the, you have the dates, you have the format,
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and then you can go in and put in more information.
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Use casual language.
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That way it doesn’t sound like it was created by an AI chat bot.
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Use casual language.
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You want it to entice people through this marketing.
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Yes, you’ve already said, hey, create a marketing e-mail,
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but you want it to have a focal point and that’s something that you need to point
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out to the chat bot and you want people to register for this.
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So you want to have an action item in your in your e-mail.
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And then you also want to create something that highlights the benefits of
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joining this.
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So you don’t want just a marketing e-mail.
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It’ll give you one, but it might not give you the points that
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you’re looking for.
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So you want to say you want to highlight these particular points in your e-mail.
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And then I specifically like to do no hashtags or emojis because I just want to
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copy it and paste it into my document and edit it from there.
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I do not want to have to go through and delete every emoji that ChatGPT decides
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to plug into my text ’cause it will do a lot.
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It’ll it will include hashtags because you used because you say use casual
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language, it will include hashtags, it will include emojis.
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So give it specific directions to not do that.
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Otherwise it most definitely will.
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So I’m going to check out the chat now because we’re going to move on to the
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different generators.
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OK.
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Are there any questions?
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Does anybody want to unmute themselves and ask questions before I move on to the
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generators?
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There was a question in chat I’ll just share,
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Channell. Tracy asked about shortening for brevity.
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Like what kind of prompts you might use to ask it to to shorten its response or
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be brief.
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Yes, yes it can.
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It can do that.
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And specifically, you can say how brief you want it because
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you can say, hey, make this shorter, but what is short for ChatGPT may not be
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short for you.
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It may even spit out something longer.
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If you say, hey, shorten this. I have done that before.
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I’m like, make it shorter.
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And then it’ll just produce something that’s even longer.
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I was like, that’s, that’s not what short means.
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So you can say things like, hey, make this 100 words,
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make this 140 characters.
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Make this.
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Don’t say, don’t say that one.
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Don’t say make it 2 sentences because two sentences for ChatGPT,
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it might be longer than what you’re looking for.
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Don’t say that.
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But you can go by character number.
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You can go by word number to shorten it.
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And you can also say, hey, use only use only 80 words and highlight
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these three points in your 80 words.
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So you do want to give them as much direction as possible.
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OK, any any more questions about prompts
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before I move into the generators?
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OK, so AI generators you can explore your
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options.
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So first up we have Microsoft Copilot and this is the university supported chatbot.
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It works with Microsoft’s tools like Excel, PowerPoint and Word.
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I have not seen the option in my PowerPoint app on the desktop or the
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browser to use Copilot yet.
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I don’t know if it’s just a me thing or if it’s a university thing,
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but if you do see the button to include Copilot in your PowerPoint,
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give it a try to generate your slides to help you with your documents or help you
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with your spreadsheets.
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And I think it works with other tools too.
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But so far, I’ve only been able to use it as the same
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way I would use ChatGPT in the browser as a chat bot.
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That’s for me.
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I don’t know if everybody else has been able to do other stuff.
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The good thing is that it reads responses out loud,
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so for people who were looking for accessibility,
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that is about as accessible
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as it as it gets as far as chat bots, ChatGPT does not read its responses out
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loud.
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So that’s a plus in the Copilot department I guess.
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And it’s the I think the contract involved is to purposely to protect the
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university data.
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So if that is your chat bot of choice, it it comes highly recommended by the
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university.
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And now we’re on to my favorite, which is ChatGPT.
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I’ve been using it since February of last year.
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I’ve used it almost every day since February of last year.
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I’ve logged in, I logged in about 100 hours in the first
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month.
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I did not sleep very much.
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I did not.
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I got kicked off for time limits is like you’ve generated too much in this hour.
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You are kicked off and you have to wait an hour.
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And then my brain was going off in all these different directions of how to use
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this tool.
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So I did not sleep for like the first two weeks of access to ChatGPT ’cause I was
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using it for so many.
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I was like, what can it do this and can it do that?
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It was, it was ridiculous, it was bad.
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I do not recommend losing sleep over this.
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It’s not a good addiction.
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It’s not, but ChatGPT 4, which is paid, provides better quality responses than
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the other tools including ChatGPT 3.5.
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So the 3.5 version is free.
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Both versions have a cap on how many response generations it gives.
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I have reached the cap on both of them multiple times.
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So it does stop you and tell you hey, you can’t generate any more until a
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specific time.
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So that be careful with that. ChatGPT includes plugins to add
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functionality and it also has a store for specific conversation threads and it
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includes an image generator in the paid version.
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So if you take a look at the PowerPoint, you have links to take a look at all of
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these different tools that I’m talking about.
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Google Gemini,
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I was part of the beta for it when it was called Bard.
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It is now Gemini.
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It comes with four different versions.
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It comes with the Gemini free version, It comes with paid versions and it comes
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with nano for devices.
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It is only text, so it doesn’t come with the image
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generator even if it’s the paid version and it works with Google Workspace tools,
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which is a paid subscription.
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Mid journey I’m going to skip through so I could give you all time for your
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questions because I think I’m over.
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Mid journey is the popular image generator tool.
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It’s a competitor to Open AI or Open AI’s DALL-E and you use it through the Discord
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app, which is a chat room app and it is a paid
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subscription as well.
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Adobe butter, not butterfly.
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Adobe Firefly is also a image generator.
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It’s the newest image generator out of the ones that I’ve mentioned.
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So you can do DALL-E with Open with ChatGPT and you can do Mid Journey and
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then you can do Adobe Firefly.
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And there’s another one that I’m going to bring up too.
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It’s free for now.
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Beautiful.AI
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I know some people wanted to learn about creating PowerPoint slides.
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So Beautiful.AI is one of them.
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It is popular.
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It is they they say that other companies use it.
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My experience was like, eh, I don’t really need this,
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but it is good for brainstorming.
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I would say that. You can take your text and you can
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convert it into slides.
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It’s not easy to edit those slides, but it’s great if you wanted to think of
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your PowerPoint slides in a different way.
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And then there’s Canva.
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This is the last one, I promise.
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This one is free to use.
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And it also comes with an image generator.
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I would put this very low on the list of image generators.
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It’s not that good.
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It’s, it’s, it’s not that good, but if you don’t care,
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you can go in and play around with it and see if you like the images that are
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generated.
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But it’s very low on the list for me.
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And you can also use it to create presentations and you can use it to
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create content for various tasks.
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I saw on the questions, the on the form that somebody mentioned
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they wanted to create content.
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They were looking for content creation advice.
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So Canva is a good place to do all kinds of different things.
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Yeah.
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And there’s a link on that slide with all of my different uses where I ask ChatGPT
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to analyze the terms of use for Canva to make sure that you own everything that
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you create on Canva.
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So I’ve already asked the AI if you can keep it.
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OK, questions.
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Are there any questions about using AI that I can answer?
26:38
Because we still I do have that whole list of things that I’ve used it for.
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I think I saw in the chat something about blogs.
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OK, Yeah, yeah, yes, you can actually use it for blogs.
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OK, So what I like to do, I use it for my personal blog.
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Let me change my sharing.
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Where did it go?
28:18
OK, here we go.
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So I have used this to write blogs for my personal blog,
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but for my example I hope you can you can see the align goals engage learning
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screen.
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OK so for a particular blog you can go in and do as a detailed prompt.
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The the prompts for for that I walked you through can be used for anything,
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including blog posts.
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A great thing that you could do with blog posts is limit it by word.
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So you could say 750 word blog post or you could do a general request like the
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one that I have here where I say write a blog post on the importance of aligning
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course goals to assignments and assessments,
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not just an online courses but in person courses as well.
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Also encourage faculty to work with instructional designers for help.
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So there’s a focal point that I want, I want it to be about online courses and
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in person courses.
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Basically this is just syllabus information.
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And then encourage faculty to work with an instructional designer for aligning
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their courses.
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So it’s the it’s the same as walking through the e-mail template,
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just being detailed.
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Does that work?
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If you have data that you specifically want to use in generating your blog post,
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include that.
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Cause all ChatGPT is going to do is write around your data.
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If you’re using it for blog post and you want to create blog posts regularly,
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the ChatGPT 4 version, the paid version provides better quality
30:19
blog posts than the 3.5.
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I’ve used 3. 5 and 4 for both and it requires less
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editing on my end to use ChatGPT 4.
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So it’s it saves, it saves some time because 3.
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5 there’s a lot, there’s a lot that needs to be changed.
30:47
Any more questions, brainstorming ideas?
30:53
If you do have any more questions for me, you can e-mail me at Walker dot.
30:59
What is it?
31:00
I don’t remember.
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I just know muscle memory for typing it Walker .2680.
31:08
So you can e-mail me or you can send questions to our general e-mail account,
31:17
EHE Dash distance Ed at osu.edu.
31:21
So thank you for joining me today.
31:26
So can I say one, one thing too, while we have a captive audience, if,
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if you haven’t already, please join our AI community that we have
31:35
in teams.
31:36
So we share resources out there frequently.
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You know, when we’re working, when we find a new resource,
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Chanel’s sharing stuff all the time.
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All of us are just out there kind of sharing and,
31:47
and having conversations about AI stuff.
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So in our follow up e-mail today, you’ll get a link to join that that teams
31:54
group.
31:54
If you’re not already part of it, if you are a part of it,
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we’d love to hear from you and engage in those conversations because we,
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like I said, we just.
32:01
Keep sharing ideas and use cases and and tools that we’re playing around with and
32:06
how we’re using them in our work and, and beyond.
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So please join us out there.
32:15
Thank you.