Apple Sauce

The ‘sauce’ - or overview - on AI tools you may find useful.

Today’s apple: ChatPDF

I recently enrolled my child in a new school. The school director emailed me a 22-page Parent Handbook.

As a responsible parent, I definitely read through all 22 pages of dense text immediately 👀 

Fast forward, to the night before my child’s first day of school.

• What supplies do I need to prepare?

• Which foods are not allowed due to allergies?

• How will I communicate with the teachers during the school day?

I didn’t have the time or patience to go through the Parent Handbook again, so I turned to ChatPDF — an AI tool that lets you chat with your documents!

AI to talk to your documents

With ChatPDF, you simply upload a PDF document, and the app will process it. Then, using a chat bot-type experience, you can ask questions about your document.

The app uses GPT-3.5, the same AI model that powers ChatGPT, to process your question, retrieve the document’s relevant paragraph(s), and generate an answer!

I know what you’re thinking: there is no way this is free. I’m happy to share that it is! ChatPDF is free with 2 PDFs daily, each up to 120 pages.

Although ChatPDF does not share your files with anyone, you should avoid uploading confidential or personal information in the app.

Planting the Seed

Explore AI topics and headlines in simple language.

Soup of the Day: Foundation Models

If you’re joining us this week, we’ve been enjoying a multi-course alphabet soup tasting menu to understand common acronyms in the Artificial Intelligence world.

Here’s a quick recap of the last few posts:

• AI is Artificial Intelligence. You can read about it here.

• If you’re familiar with the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, you can learn about the meaning of GPT here. 

• GPT is a type of AI model called a Large Language Model, or LLM. Learn more about LLMs here.

Now, on to today’s meal.

The hottest dish in AI: Google’s new Gemini model

In the past week, several ammi.ai friends sent me this demonstration of Google’s newly introduced AI model called Gemini:

In this demo, a man interacts with Google’s new AI model through visuals (images) and natural language (English speech).

The Gemini model processes the man’s instructions, or prompts, and carries out many tasks including:

• Describing and commenting on the man’s drawing of a duck

• Creating a guessing game about geography

• Suggesting crochet projects given an image of 2 balls of yarn

• Predicting what might happen when a cat jumps off a table

• Correctly identifying the Gemini constellation, and more!

We previously talked about LLMs, or Large Language Models, that can process text, like instructions in plain English, and generate text answers.

Gemini can process and generate text, as well as images and audio. This kind of model is called a Foundation Model, or a Multimodal Model, because it can process data in multiple modes, or formats.

Why does this matter?

In one year, we went from AI that generates meal plans to AI that can verbally and visually guide you through cooking an omelet. AI innovation is moving fast.

I’m excited for AI to help me prepare dinner or learn new skills, but I wonder about the impact on my kids. Will they overly rely on AI and stop seeing, hearing, and thinking for themselves?

Every major technological breakthrough is accompanied by legitimate concerns.

• Will the automobile transform civilization or destroy the environment?

• Will the internet make information accessible or invade our privacy?

• Will social media connect people or fuel hatred and misinformation?

Like everything else, it all comes down to balance.

How do you feel about Gemini? What would you ask Gemini to help you with? Let me know by replying to this email!

Fruitful Harvest

Fresh AI fruits from the community garden.

Community Garden

This week, after several weeks of dormancy, our ammi.ai Instagram finally sprouted! Join the Insta-garden for some extra nutritious AI tips and behind-the-scenes tidbits that don’t make it into the newsletter 🙂 

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