BIP AI – AI for organisation and communication

See Blended Intensive Programmes for background and context.

Other presentations I was involved in during this BIP for AI in education and research:

• Artificial intelligence in higher education: Opportunities and challenges.
• Artificial intelligence in research: Opportunities and challenges.
• Workshop 1: AI fundamentals and prompting.

---

Workshop title – AI for personal organisation and communication

Download the presentation.

In this workshop (13 May 2024) as part of the BIP for AI in education and research, Antonio Lopes, Hugo Santos, and I discuss the use of generative AI for personal organisation and professional communication.

The integration of generative AI tools into personal and professional workflows offers transformative potential for enhancing productivity and organisation. This workshop explores the landscape of AI-powered chatbots, virtual assistants, note-taking tools, content creation platforms, language utilities, and meeting assistants.

Natural language processing allows these AI applications to understand and respond to user prompts, automate repetitive tasks, and provide customised solutions to common problems for academics. During the session participants evaluated the capabilities of generative AI, highlighting their human-like traits of bias, hallucination, and contextual framing through prompts. And we discussed how structured prompting techniques establish effective contexts.

We discussed the recent advances in generative AI, covering expanded context windows, retrieval augmentation for increased accuracy, emerging AI agents, open-source model developments, and multimodal competencies. And we emphasise best practices, cautioning against sharing personal data and recognising hallucination risks, while leveraging AI capabilities through strategic prompting.

Practical use cases demonstrated how generative AI can streamline workflows, from constructing evidence-based professional development activities and lecture outlines to drafting emails, troubleshooting issues, and exploring creative ideas. The workshop facilitates hands-on engagement, guiding participants to optimise daily tasks using AI tools and evaluate their impact on efficiency.

This workshop explored the transformative potential of generative AI, while providing a balanced perspective on risks and ethical considerations. And participants learned how to integrated AI into personal organisation and communication practices.