Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES)

Have you voted yet?

Johns Hopkins launches dashboard to track campaign spending Millions of campaign finance records are available through the new dashboard, which deploys machine learning across six million expenditure records reported by the nation's two main political parties

Esteemed IDIES member Tinglong Dai weighs in on potential affects from the Key Bridge collapse.

"I don't see any lasting, major impact on the economy, whether it's local, regional, or national. Unless, of course, the recovery is relentlessly slow. It's not a forecasting problem; it's a decision problem. Every decision we make at the federal level, in the state of Maryland, in Baltimore, in local businesses, in global businesses, will affect the future of our economy. It's up to us."

Supply chains could feel ripple effects from Baltimore's Key Bridge collapse Operations management expert Tinglong Dai discusses the impact of the collapse for consumers, suppliers, and the economy

Our biggest congratulations to Johns Hopkins University, Class of 2023!

May all your hard work pave the way for your journey forward, wherever it leads you.

Please join us in extending our most enthusiastic Congratulations to Prof. Alex Szalay on this momentous achievement.

IDIES Director Alex Szalay elected to National Academy of Sciences IDIES Director Alex Szalay was among the 120 scientists elected as a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences for 2023.

Did you catch this week's HUB coverage of our recent ChatGPT event?

You can find it here:

'An inflection point rather than a crisis': ChatGPT's implications for higher ed As the new tech makes waves in education, scholars from Hopkins and UPenn discuss promising applications—and potential pitfalls

📌ICYMI: Our highly anticipated virtual discussion panel—ChatGPT, AI, and the Future of Higher Education—took place this past Thursday.

If you missed out, you can watch a recording of the event on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZOBS_rMLF4 📺

Don't have the time for the complete 90-minute segment? We've asked our new friend, ChatGPT, to generate a summary of the video transcript on our behalf. Please enjoy and let us know what you think! 🤖

Johns Hopkins Institute of Data Intensive Engineering and Science (IDIES) and Carey Business School hosted a discussion panel on ChatGPT and its impact on higher education as part of Love Data Week 2023. The event was co-hosted by Pete Lawson from the Sheridan Library and moderated by Charles Meneveau and Tinglong Dai. The panel discussed the potential impact of AI-generated technologies like ChatGPT on student and faculty experiences. The event included talks by Christian Terwiesch and Jared Kaplan and two panels focusing on faculty and student experiences. Terwiesch presented his experience with using ChatGPT for exam questions and shared his views on the topic. The event was part of an international celebration of data hosted by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Christian Terwiesch, a Wharton School professor, wrote a white paper about AI's ability to take business school exams after his children sparked a discussion about the topic. He fed a typical exam question on process analysis into an AI model called Chat GPT and gave it other examples such as working capital calculations, which the AI model answered perfectly. The model had difficulty with more complex questions such as the National Cranberry case but performed well when given hints. The speaker suggests that, as AI technology advances, educators need to think more about what they teach and not how they teach it, and that AI could be used to enhance rather than replace teaching.

Jared Kaplan, a physics professor and co-founder of the AI safety and research company Anthropic, spoke about the broader trend of AI and its implications on society. He explained how AI models are becoming more powerful due to the predictable trend that the more computation and data we put into training them, the better they perform. This trend will likely continue with companies investing billions of dollars into training larger and more powerful models. Kaplan believes that this trend will be much more transformational than the current state of AI and will have a significant impact on society. He also expressed his belief that there will be more areas where AI can do things that are comparable or even exceed what humans can do, which can be both exciting and scary. The implications of this trend on higher education and society are yet to be fully understood.

The panel discussion focused on the impact of generative AI on faculty life. Christian, Jared, Jenna and Tom were the panelists. Christian expressed optimism and believed that the stimulation that generative AI provides is ethically sound and simple to implement. Jared believed that generative AI could be useful for interactive learning and could be developed further to provide specialized models that can work as tutors. Jenna emphasized the importance of information literacy and the need for higher education to help students differentiate between reliable and unreliable information generated by AI. Tom was taken by surprise at how quickly generative AI has become a reality and believes that it can help in making aggregate decisions and provide a broad picture of things that humans are not good at. Overall, the panelists discussed the potential impact of generative AI on research, design, writing, peer review, editorial decisions and teaching.

The panel discussed the potential impact of generative AI on faculty life, both in terms of research and teaching. The speakers shared their perspectives on how AI can be incorporated into daily workflows, such as using AI to stimulate new ideas, but also cautioned about the need for information literacy and ethical considerations. The panel also discussed the potential for specialized AI models to act as tutors and engage with students in interesting ways. Overall, the speakers had varying degrees of optimism and concern about the impact of generative AI on faculty life, but agreed that it is important to stay informed and adapt to the changing technological landscape.

The panel discussion then switched the conversation to the impact of GPT on students and education. With the increased use of GPT in student assessments, the panelists suggested that there could be a shift towards project-based learning, which involves various forms of interpretation and reflection of information. When asked about how GPT could address challenges faced by students with diverse learning needs, the panelists believed that GPT could be an opportunity to bridge the gap in access to resources and address the inequities in education. However, it is important to ensure that GPT is not used to amplify such inequalities. The panelists also discussed the need for educators to question the reason for testing and teaching methods to adapt to the use of GPT.

The use of ChatGPT in education and its potential impact on marginalized communities was also discussed. The panelists talked about the need for critical thinking in the use of ChatGPT and how educators can address concerns over the representation of underrepresented groups. The fine-tuning process of ChatGPT through feedback was explained, and while it helps address some concerns over harmful content, it doesn't necessarily address bias. The uniformity of answers provided by ChatGPT compared to a Google search was also discussed, raising the issue of the need for more diverse and robust problems. Finally, the panelists emphasized the need for context and critical thinking in the use of ChatGPT in education.

Just in time for the weekend: Yesterdays's webinar discussion panel on Chatgpt, generative AI, and the future of higher education is now available to watch on Youtube.

A giant thank-you goes out to our collaborators at Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University and Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School.

Let us know what topics you're interested in us exploring on future events in our Data-Intensive Social Science speaker series!

ChatGPT, AI, and the Future of Higher Education: Johns Hopkins Panel Discussion Join us for a thought-provoking panel discussion on the future of higher education and the implications of ChatGPT. Our expert speakers, including Christian ...

If you missed yesterday's "ChatGPT, AI, and the Future of Higher Education" virtual discussion panel, we've got you covered! A recording will be made available on our youtube channel later today.

In the meantime, you can catch panel moderator, and IDIES member/collaborator, Tinglong Dai at noon today (Friday, February 17th, 12pm EST) on WYPR—Baltimore's NPR affiliate. Tinglong will be appearing as a guest on the program "Midday with Tom Hall" to further discuss the impacts of generative AI on day-to-day life. Don't miss it!

https://www.wypr.org/show/midday
https://www.youtube.com//video

Big data can cause big frustrations, but we can help!

Learn how to use the SciServer online science platform to search through, visualize, and analyze Petabytes of data quickly and easily. Bring the analysis to the data to run quick, effortless cross-comparisons among our many available public datasets—or even your own data. Visualize data, explore patterns, and fit models with powerful computational tools in Python, R, Matlab, or Julia. Share your data and analysis scripts with colleagues and students.

In this free online workshop hosted with our partners at Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University's Data Services, we will show you how to do all this and so much more with hands-on experience using the tools of SciServer.

Register today: https://jhu.libcal.com/event/10344851

www.sciserver.org

Join us on Zoom Thursday, February 16th, 2023, 2–3:30pm EST for a special event: ChatGPT, AI, and the Future of Higher Education, organized with our collaborators at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, Johns Hopkins University (Data Services) and the Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School.

Speakers and panelists will draw from their unique perspectives to discuss the potential academic implications attached to the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and generative AI.

Registration is required and open to the public.

More Information: https://www.idies.jhu.edu/event/chatgpt-ai-and-the-future-of-higher-education/

Registration page: https://bit.ly/chatgpt-jhu