EP 35: How Students Can Use AI to Solve Everyday Problems
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This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. How should students be using AI? Are they only using ChatGPT and really not even getting at the tip of the iceberg?

That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. My name is Jordan Wilson. I'm your host. We're going to be talking about a lot of things that have to do with using AI, not just in the classroom, but how students could be using it in general. But before we do, let's run down the news real quick, everything that's going on in the world of AI. And as a reminder, go to youreverydayai.com, sign up for our newsletter. So not only do we have a live stream going on right now where you can ask questions,

myself and the guest questions. But we have a podcast on Spotify, Apple Music, everything else, and the daily newsletter. So make sure you go check that out. So let's quickly dive in and talk about what's happening in the world of AI news.

So, 60 Minutes last night had Google CEO Sundar Pichai on. Side note, I'm a big 60 Minutes fan and I haven't watched the full episode yet. I'm going to get to it. But very interesting, you know, reading the recap of what they were talking about, just saying, is AI advancing too quickly? And talking about Google's impact on jobs. So we're going to be linking that in the newsletter today. However...

Here's my take. Is AI advancing too quickly? Yes and no. I think it's moving quickly, but I don't think that, especially here in the US, we should be slowing it down because I think right now it's something that's really powering our economy. If you look at our economy over the last six months, a lot of the growth has been driven by companies like Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, the ones who are actually pushing AI.

So kind of the next story to dive into here quick is a CNET article talking about how AI is just changing the game for job seekers. So it's talking about how now the job application process is completely different than it's been in years past. So really talking about how to leverage AI in automation and just understanding what the job application process is like. So it's

you know, saying, how do we even compete with kind of the rise of robots? And are we even applying to humans? It's very, very interesting. So we're going to share more in the newsletter. Here's what I'd say. I'd say for a long time in the job application process, you know, you haven't always been applying to humans anyways. You know, companies, you know, big,

recruiting firms have been using a lot of kind of AI, but different processes that you aren't even really applying to a human off the bat. I think job seekers know this. So more in the newsletter. And kind of the third kind of top AI story that we wanted to talk about today, kind of a fun one. So we're going to share about this. Make sure to check out these images. Very cool. So an artist kind of shared this. I think this originated on Twitter.

Over the weekend. So imagining celebrity kids using AI. So very, very interesting and kind of fascinating.

like if you look at it, it is shocking. Um, you know, so taking any two random celebrities and asking a mid journey, um, using a prompt to say, Hey, what would it look like if these two celebrities had a kid? So it kind of set the internet slightly on fire over the weekend. Um, this, this thing was trending all over the place. So we're going to share some of the best results, um, in the, in the newsletter today. So, um, as a reminder, we do have, um,

a guest today. But before we bring our guests on, make sure if you have a comment, if you want to talk about how we're using AI in universities, make sure to drop a comment. So with that, we're going to bring on our guest for today. So Nikunj Tyagi is a sophomore student at the University of Illinois here in Champaign. This show kind of originates from Chicago. So we have a kind of local guy in Nikunj. Nikunj, thank you for joining the show.

Yeah. Hey, Jordan. How's it going? Thanks for having me on. All right. I'm excited. I'm excited. So let's dive into it. So let's start at the top. AI, are students using it how you think they should be? Yeah. So mainly, ChadGVT is being used, as you know, to write essays, to get through quick homeworks. But no, I don't think it's being used to its full extent how it should be. A lot of kids can be, first of all, making a lot of money with AI.

launching cool businesses, cool projects. And I think it can be used to learn a lot faster than it is being used right now, rather than being used to kind of cheat and power through homework assignments. I think it can be used a lot better in like how to learn quickly and how to have something else do the like quick stuff for you, but you learning the big picture and like the conceptual things that are kind of tough to grasp sometimes.

Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I just had a comment actually had a man on the show Friday. You know, she said she's excited and waiting for new perspectives. I think the coups you have it. But first, let's let's talk about like what's what's your major? Because I want to talk about that and kind of translate what that means for other college students. So what's what's kind of your major and what are you hoping to kind of get to in the long run after college?

Yeah, so I'm majoring in computer science and I'm hoping to get more into the AI entrepreneurship space in the future. And I'm doing a lot of experimentation right now, working on projects and just like talking to different people and hopefully get there one day. But yeah, I'm just kind of building the skill set and trying to work my way up towards that goal.

Yeah. So I think, I think Nakunj, like when people think computer science, right. And people might be hearing you talk about all these different projects that you're working on and they're saying, oh, of course this makes sense because you're a computer science person. Right. So they just assume that it's, it's, you know, all these things are highly technical and advanced and hard for the everyday person to, to, to kind of take advantage of. Do you think it's like that? Do you, do you, do you think a student can, you know, maybe who's not a

computer science background, or maybe they aren't highly technical, can they still really tap into the power of AI? Yeah. So that's one of the great things about things like ChatGPT now. I'm seeing a lot of... I'm taking a few innovation classes and CS classes. I'm seeing a bunch of artists getting in on that. And the reason is because you don't need UI UX engineers, like software engineers to work on things like apps anymore. You can have...

have like graphic designers that know how to use Adobe Photoshop and illustrate to like work on like the overall design of your app and AI can write the code for you. Like if you can go onto a chat GBT and put in the image of your figmas or whatever, and say, write out the code for this and it'll do it like almost perfectly. Um,

So I think that's a really big space in AI that's not being tapped right now. Using ChatGPT to make things like apps, to make websites, to make cool Web3 products. It's all possible using AI. And students really need to get in on this now.

Yeah. Kind of, uh, Iman just left a comment saying she uses it to summarize, uh, notes to outline reports. That's a great use case. Um, uh, Nakuj, what would you, so, you know, you kind of referenced, you know, making apps. And I think that people who aren't very technical, they think of that as a very, uh,

A very technical project, but you just kind of outlined it's not. You can use ChatGPT and very beginner-friendly programs like Figma to get an app off the ground. And that's something that you and some of your friends are doing. So talk a little bit kind of about the app that you're even building right now.

Yeah, so me and our friends, we started this app a few months ago at the beginning of the last semester. And what we're kind of doing is we're kind of finding a way for college students to find the best events every night on campus. And right now it's in colleges. Soon we hope to be in cities and stuff. But when we started building this app, we had no experience in app development whatsoever. Like we're computer science students that know how to code. App development is a different monster altogether.

So we kind of get in, we're watching a bunch of YouTube videos, trying to familiarize ourselves with the concepts. But learning a whole new language and interface and like Xcode, Swift, all this was like so new to us. So what we started doing is we'd watch videos and write our own code. And then we'd find ourselves with a bunch of errors that we had no idea how to tackle. So we'd put into ChatGPT and we'd say, here's our code, here's our errors. Can you help me to fix it?

And ChatGPT would give really detailed responses on what the issue was exactly, how we can tackle it, and how we can avoid this error next time. So using ChatGPT, we not only started making the brief outline of our app, and we not only started to kind of build the foundation of our app, but we also started to learn how to properly use Xcode and Swift. And now I can say for sure that I'm very fluent in Swift. I can use Xcode. I can

If you give me a prompt for an app, I'm like 100% certain that I can build it now. And this is because of how helpful ChatGPT has been in helping me learn kind of like the foundational elements of Swift and Xcode. And I'm certain that I can do this for anything like Flutter, Android Studio, any app development platform. It can help you with that.

Here's a question I wasn't thinking of, but just came up on my mind. Do you think that, I mean, maybe not now, but maybe in the future, do you think that tools like ChatGPT, like Google's BARD, do you think that these are going to become as important or maybe even more important than college tools?

Uh, maybe not as much as college. Cause in college, what's happening is, uh, you're taking a lot of classes that a lot of people say are useless. You know, like, uh, like I just took a computer architecture class, like diving deep into like the fundamentals of how the insides of the computer are wired and built. Uh,

And it seems like you're not going to need that in a job. But the point of it is to really give you a deep understanding of what your exact major is. So when you're met with like a foundational question, you know how to work from the ground up. So I think chat GPT is a good way for you to learn the basics of something quick and something that like like Xcode. You don't need to know all of computer science for that. You need to know how to use Xcode and use Swift.

So it can help with things like that. But I think what's revolutionary about it is at first, what was revolutionary was just knowing how to talk to a machine, like writing like a very difficult code sequence in like in machine code, like assembly code, like MIPS or something and having a computer just understand what that means. Then after that, it was really revolutionary to have languages like C++ where you can compile and actually have code that comes out and like see what you're building. Right.

And now what's going to start happening using AI is we're going to be able to write code, build apps, build projects without even needing code. We're going to be able to put in prompts like build me an app that does so-and-so and you'll see the app come up without you having to write a single line of code.

And that's what's going to start happening. Maybe the future generations aren't going to have to even understand code. They're just going to need to think about what to create. So I think the faster we can get in on chat GPT and use that with our university and college learning, the faster we can get to building revolutionary products that help humanity and get people to living faster and more comfortable lives.

Yeah, I love that. So let's talk a little bit to hit rewind there about 20 seconds. So even just talking about how AI or chat GPT, whatever you want to say, is being used in universities across the country right now. So it sounds like at least U of I is offering a lot of AI immersion, kind of like what we talked about before the show, getting you guys plugged in all over the place. But

Outside of that, how do you think just across the country, maybe I'm sure you are talking to your friends that go to other colleges is how is AI being presented in the university setting? Is it, hey, don't use it. Hey, only use it under these circumstances. What's it like now for a student?

Yeah, so Mark Andreessen actually recently published an article in which he compared the use of AI to be and like that being taught to students like Prometheus bringing fire to the humans, you know, like it's a very dangerous thing. Fire can it can build really cool things. It can also destroy.

And AI is being presented just like that in many universities around the world. And U of I is really picking up on this. So like U of I is one of the schools that's bringing a lot of software engineers to Silicon Valley and bringing a lot of entrepreneurs as well. And AI is being taught to us at a freshman, sophomore level. So I just took a class. It was my freshman year last year. And I took a class in which we were able to build an MRI brain tumor detector.

And we learned the foundations of machine learning using a Python, different Python libraries to, and we were able to take in brain MRI scans and it would output with a 93% accuracy, whether the brain MRI had a tumor or not. And that was a really cool project to work on. It was very difficult, but we had some great guidance and we have great classes that build up on that, which I didn't even think was possible, but yeah, we have cool intro to machine learning AI and

And then AI ethics as well, which is very important. It's doing a really good job on not just teaching like how it can be used, but teaching us how to be AI literate and teaching us how like the actual math behind it. And then how the code that we write after the math is, is outputting like the stuff that we know about, not just like us, like knowing a few, like a few terms from library and being able to output that using like strategy. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's that's a great analogy. Right. So talking about AI kind of being fire and it can do great good or great, you know, can be destructive. How would you how would you encourage other students, maybe those that don't have as technical of a background as you? How would you encourage them to better use AI to kind of solve problems in their everyday life?

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Yeah, so I'd say anytime you have a question, anytime you have a foundational question about anything that you're interested in, go to ChadGPT. Whether it's like you're in a rabbit hole about like deep space physics or something, just go to ChadGPT and ask it as many questions as possible because it's like the teacher that you don't have standing right next to you, right? Like you have so much knowledge infused in one website or whatever. So you can really use that to its full extent. And I'd say beyond that, start working on passion projects.

Because now more than ever, like, yes, internships and making money are important. But you also have the opportunity to work on cool projects that either make you money or teach you a lot more about a certain subject. Use ChatGVT for that. Use it to teach you how to build something, how to scale it, whether it's a podcast, whether it's an app. Try using ChatGVT and seeing how far it gets you. And then from there, even if it doesn't work out, at least you'll have learned a skill that not many other students are doing right now.

Yeah, that's such good advice. Like I hope, I hope so many students, uh, are listening to, to, to what Nakunj is, is talking about here. So a couple, a couple of comments and questions. I want to get it to, uh, Ellington just saying great work. Thank you. Uh, Jupiter just, uh, saying teaching us to be AI literate. That's, that's such a good, um,

Nakunj, I love how you said it. You're either literate or not in AI. And it's not hard to take the steps. Professor Muhammad, just saying, keep it up. Thank you. Yeah.

Iman, actually, Iman had a good question here. So let's tackle this. And again, if you're listening and if you have a question for Neku, just talking about how AI is being used in universities, please drop a question here. So there's a lot of questions. Let's just tackle the first half. So Iman is asking, but how will people without knowledge of tech and app development keep up?

with all these changing trends? It's a great question because Nakush, I'm sure people, maybe even some of your classmates are hearing this and they're like, oh, this is great, great idea, but I'm not highly technical. So how can students who aren't very technical use kind of AI outside of just how they're using it, which is to write papers? How can they do that?

Yeah. So I think what's great about the structure of universities and colleges, a lot of people have said this before, but I'll say it again just for the sake of like how it fits in. It's paying a lot more than the knowledge you're paying for a great network and connections. And these are buzzwords I know, but I'm really seeing after my first year at U of I, how many cool people I've met. I,

I've met like really cool people that are working within like quant firms or like AI spaces or blockchain. And all these people have one thing that is similar. They all go out of their way to meet cool people. And from these cool people, you can learn things and you can get in on things. Suppose there's someone else building an app in your college and you're a graphic designer. You can go up to that person, say, here's the cool stuff I've made. If you want, I can help you with your app. I can

I can help like draw up the Figma UI UX designs. And then from there, we can work on something really cool together. And then using that network that you have, you can build some really cool things with people. And without having that technical literacy at the start, you can start developing that just by talking to people, just by working with them. And I think a lot of colleges have this, but U of I is one that really does this at a high level. They have a Silicon Valley trip.

which is where you meet the alumni of your college that are working in Silicon Valley, either as CEOs, either as high-end C-suite executives. But I had a chance to go on that, and I met some really, really cool people, and I met some really cool alumni, too. We met Tom Siebel, who's the CEO of C3.ai.

We went to CTO of scale AI, which are two huge AI firms. And each of them were driving home on, on the, on the, on a very similar topics. Number one, understand how to use AI and passion projects, work on really cool stuff that not other students that not many other students are working on, read a lot of AI books and finally understand AI ethics and just talk with people, have debates, get on podcasts and, and,

discuss how AI can be, uh, used in the right direction. Because if we do not talk about this now, it might end up being the destruction, destructive version of fire that the gods warned Prometheus about. Yeah. Yeah. Students or anyone, if you're just looking to learn, like you should just literally be taking notes of what Nekunj is saying right now. He like coming from someone on the other side, right? Like I've been, I've been out of school for a very long time. Um,

But the advice and the practical steps that you're laying out for can be so beneficial for students right now. It's crazy. So make sure that you're listening to this. Write down what Nakush is saying. But I do have one more question. And if anyone else listening has any questions, please, please leave a comment. But my kind of last question is this, Nakush. So we talk about – I think there's –

different levels that students can be using AI, right? And I think you laid out ones that aren't even very difficult, you know, even in terms of like, hey, it's not technically that hard to get an app off the ground. You know, if you can collaborate and take advantage of all these resources that your college probably has. But,

I'm going to hit rewind because we know that probably every single student is using ChatGPT. So maybe what's one or two kind of new or exciting use cases for ChatGPT that maybe the everyday student can use outside of just, hey, write my paper. Maybe things that can really help them in their everyday life that

that don't really have to do with anything, you know, developing an app or, you know, creating software or something like that. What would those, you know, one or two pieces of advice be?

Yeah, so I think one really cool thing is you can have it help you build discipline in your everyday life. So a lot of things college students struggle with is like something like getting up early, having a fit schedule where like you're allocating time to learning, like developing and spending time with friends. So if you put in a list of every single thing that you're doing, like,

And then like you say, I want to wake up at this time. I want to go to bed at this time. It'll give you a nice like hour by hour schedule. I'm like when to fit in food, when to fit in classes, when to fit in this, that, which I think is really cool. And I think another really cool thing that it can help you with is if you ask it to like

like in your in your classes uh that you're taking so yes you can ask it to write you essays but you can also ask it to write you essays help you learn so if you're if you're uh like you're like suppose you're in physics and you're um you're trying to learn a specific way to do a problem you can put in like the exact uh question uh like that that is being asked you and and you can ask it teach me the fundamental basics of this problem and a step-by-step approach on

on how I can solve it. And it gives you a very technical and detailed approach. And with chat GPT 3.5, the answer is not always correct, but you can use the steps on how to get there, which is usually correct. But with GPT-4, actually, I found that the answer is almost always correct. Like it's frightening how like in two seconds, it'll literally give you the right answer to a very difficult problem, which is really cool.

Yeah, that's amazing. It's amazing advice because yeah, I think a lot of students, you know, whether it's when they first step on a college campus or when their kind of schedule starts, starts to ramp up, it becomes, it can become hard, but yeah, like, like Nakuna said, you can literally copy and paste your schedule, say, here's what's going well for me. Here's my struggles, you know, help me on a day-to-day basis. And yeah, chat GPT can literally just be a kind of a life tutor. So a couple, a couple of questions here that we'll get to. So yeah,

Iman is asking, what ethical considerations should students be aware of when using AI for everyday problems? What would you say are some ethical considerations, Nakunj?

So one thing I've been thinking about a lot recently is how much do I want AI to do for me? Because a lot of times you can get into like a flow state where you're just like doing something and you're like, you put into chatGVT and then you just like output it and then you work on the next thing. And then while chatGVT is like generating the other problem that you're working on. So I think

You need to find ways to become independent of chat DBT and independent of AI and have AI become dependent on us. So everything that AI is creating, everything it's doing needs to be based on prompts that it might not have seen before. So it's like you're using it to do things that are repetitive and boring for you that you already know how to do. And you're working on tackling harder things that you may not know about.

Because if you use it to write like all of your code, if you use it to write all of your essays, then you're getting to a space where you're not really learning anything yourself. And in a few years, like you may not realize it now, but in a few years, you might find that you don't have the skills. You don't have any value compared to any other like student, like at any other university. Right. So we need to use ChagiVT to learn. We need to use it to create, but we should not use it to become us.

Otherwise, we're in a very dangerous space where students aren't as important anymore and Chad UBT does all of the work needed for us. Yeah, that's deep, right? You almost want to be able to use it in almost every aspect of your life when you see the output and how powerful it can be. But that's a great point. At what point –

do you need to hit pause on that or just take an extra couple of minutes, an extra couple of hours to really ingest it and to make sure that you're actually soaking it up and not just regurgitating, not just copy and pasting. So our last question here, so what are some future possibilities for AI in education that students should be aware of? Great question. Interesting.

So I think some future possibilities for AI in education would be that teachers are actually going to start using AI as well, whether it's going to be AI detectors to check if you're cheating or not, or whether it's going to be like creating curriculums and having like classes, like being framed out by AI, which means that if teachers start doing this, if projects are like kind of being introduced by AI,

then you're going to have everybody using the same framework to teach a concept, which in some ways can be really helpful actually because everything that you're teaching is like the teachers teaching it using AI and the students are learning it also using AI. So that can be really cool. And I think we can also start seeing a really cool emergence of classes, which haven't been thought of before.

like using AI to like navigate social media or something, like being able to like create viral videos with AI and or viral, like using photography with AI, right? Because Photoshop has some really cool things right now where you can like kind of like highlight an element and then you can use AI to like fix it completely for you instead of having to go through the rigorous task in Adobe Photoshop to actually go through and like

like correct every little blemish. So I think just having like different fields, like subfields talk about AI is really cool. I know a friend who's doing bioengineering at U of I right now. They're talking a lot about AI in their like ECE class, like electrical engineering classes and talking about how different chips in biotechnology right now

are being used to integrate AI within like things like prosthetic limbs. So like it senses like the neural like messages that you're sending to your body and using that, it can like raise a finger on the prosthetic machine or something. These technologies have been out for a while, but now that AI is something that is so easy to use, people are really working on teaching that and we should work on learning that.

Yeah, love that. And as we wrap things up here, Jupiter, great comment. AI will help creatives be more creative. Yeah, I think even what Nekunj is saying, I think it's just going to help students become better students if you can actually use it and leverage it. And that's what this show is all about. Nekunj, we had so many questions, so many thoughts, so many hot takes. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you for having me, Jordan. It was awesome. Awesome.

All right. So just as a reminder, go to youreverydayai.com, sign up for the newsletter. We're going to be sharing some links and some more information about some of the things that Nakunj was talking about. And we do this every single day. So we're going to have a lot of guests for the rest of the week. And make sure to, if you are watching this live, check out the podcast, subscribe, all that good stuff. Can't wait to see you all back

tomorrow and every day on Everyday AI. Thank you. Yep. See ya. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit youreverydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.