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Worldwide Coverage college students will probably be spending their careers in an AI-enabled world. We needed our college students to be ready for it. For this reason we’ve adopted and built-in AI in our Stanford nationwide safety coverage class – Expertise, Innovation and Nice Energy Competitors.
Right here’s what we did, how the scholars used it, and what they (and we) discovered.
Expertise, Innovation and Nice Energy Competitors is a global coverage class at Stanford (taught by me, Eric Volmar and Joe Felter.) The course gives future coverage and engineering leaders with an appreciation of the geopolitics of the U.S. strategic competitors with nice energy rivals and the function vital applied sciences are taking part in in figuring out the result.
This course contains all that you’d anticipate from a Stanford graduate-level class within the Masters in Worldwide Coverage – complete readings, visitor lectures from present and former senior coverage officers/specialists, and deliverables within the type of written coverage papers. What makes the category distinctive is that that is an experiential coverage class. College students kind small groups and embark on a quarter-long venture that bought them out of the classroom to:
- choose a precedence nationwide safety problem, after which …
- validate the issue and suggest an in depth resolution examined towards precise stakeholders within the expertise and nationwide safety ecosystem
The category combines a number of instructing instruments.
- Actual world – College students labored in groups on actual issues from authorities sponsors
- Experiential – They get out of the constructing to interview 50+ stakeholders
- Views – They get coverage context and insights from lectures by specialists
- And this 12 months… Utilizing AI to Speed up Studying
Rationale for AI
Utilizing this quarter to introduce AI we had three issues going for us: 1) By fall 2024 AI instruments have been good and getting exponentially higher, 2) Stanford had arrange an AI Playground enabling college students to make use of a wide range of AI Instruments (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, NotebookLM, Otter.ai, Mermaid, Stunning.ai, and many others.) and three) many college students have been utilizing AI in courses nevertheless it was often ambiguous about what they have been allowed to do.
Coverage college students should learn reams of paperwork weekly. Our hypotheses was that our pupil groups might use AI to ingest and summarize content material, determine key themes and ideas throughout the content material, present an in-depth evaluation of vital content material sections, after which synthesize and construction their key insights and apply their key insights to resolve their particular coverage drawback. They did all that, and far, a lot, extra.
Whereas Joe Felter and I had arm-waved “we have to add AI to the category” Eric Volmar was the true AI hero on the instructing workforce. As an AI energy person Eric was most frequently forward of our college students on AI expertise. He threw down a problem to the scholars to repeatedly use AI creatively and advised them that they’d be graded on it. He pushed them onerous on AI use in workplace hours all through the quarter. The outcomes beneath communicate for themselves.
In case you’re not conversant in these AI instruments in observe it’s value watching these one minute movies.
Staff OSC
Staff OSC was attempting to grasp what’s the acceptable stage of economic threat for the U.S. Division of Protection to offer loans or mortgage ensures in expertise industries?
The workforce began utilizing AI to do what we had anticipated, summarizing the stack of weekly coverage documentsusing Claude 3.5. And like all groups, the sudden use of AI was to create new leads for his or her stakeholder interviews. They discovered that they might ask AI to offer them an inventory of leaders that have been concerned in comparable applications, or that have been concerned of their program’s preliminary phases of growth.
See how Staff OSC summarized coverage papers right here:
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Claude was additionally in a position to create an inventory of leaders with the Division of Power Title17 credit score applications, Exim DFC, and different federal credit score applications that the workforce ought to interview. As well as, it created an inventory of leaders inside Congressional Price range Workplace and the Workplace of Administration and Price range that will have the ability to present insights. See the demo right here:
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The workforce additionally used AI to transcribe podcasts. They observed that key leaders of the organizations their drawback got here from had produced podcasts and YouTube movies. They used Otter.ai to transcribe these. That supplied further context for after they did interview them and allowed the workforce to ask insightful new questions.
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
Notice the ability of fusing AI with interviews. The interviews floor the data within the groups lived expertise.
The workforce got here up with a use case the instructing workforce hadn’t considered – utilizing AI to critique the workforce’s personal hypotheses. The AI not solely gave them criticism however supported it with hyperlinks from revealed students. See the demo right here:
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One other use the instructing workforce hadn’t thought was utilizing Mermaid AI to create graphics for his or her weekly shows. See the demo right here:
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The surprises from this workforce stored coming. Their final was that the workforce used Stunning.ai with a purpose to generate PowerPoint shows. See the demo right here:
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
For all groups, utilizing AI instruments was a studying/discovery course of all its personal. By and enormous, college students have been largely unfamiliar with most instruments on day 1.
Staff OSC recommended that college students ought to begin utilizing AI instruments early within the quarter and experiment with instruments like ChatGPT, Otter.ai. Instruments that which have steep studying curves, like Mermaid must be began on the very begin of the venture to coach their fashions.
Staff OSC AI instruments abstract: AI instruments will not be excellent, so be certain to cross examine summaries, insights and transcriptions for accuracy and relevancy. Be actually vital of their outputs. The largest takeaway is that AI works greatest when ready with human efforts.
Staff FAAST
The FAAST workforce was attempting to grasp how can the U.S. enhance and scale the DoE FASST program within the pressing context of nice energy competitors?
Staff FAAST began utilizing AI to do what we had anticipated, summarizing the stack of weekly coverage paperwork they have been assigned to learn and synthesizing interviews with stakeholders.
One of many options of ChatGPT this workforce appreciated, and vital for a nationwide safety class, was the short-term chat function – information they entered wouldn’t be used to coach the open AI fashions. See the demo beneath.
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
The workforce used AI do a number of new issues we didn’t anticipate – to generate emails to stakeholders and to create interview questions. Throughout the quarter the workforce used ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and NotebookLM. By the tip of the 10-week class they have been utilizing AI to do a number of extra issues we hadn’t anticipated. Their use of AI expanded to incorporate simulating interviews. They gave ChatGPT particular directions on who they needed it to behave like, and it supplied personalised and customized solutions. See the instance right here.
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
Studying-by-doing was a key a part of this experiential course. The large concept is that college students study each the strategy and the subject material collectively. By studying it collectively, you study each higher.
Lastly, they used AI to map stakeholders, get recommendation on their subsequent coverage transfer, and requested ChatGPT to evaluation their weekly slides (by screenshotting the slides and placing them into ChatGPT and asking for suggestions and recommendation.)
The FAAST workforce AI software abstract: ChatGPT was particularly good when utilizing photographs or screenshots, so in these multi-level duties, and while you needed to make use of type of extra customized directions, as we used for the stakeholder interviews. Claude was higher at extra conversational and human in writing, so used it when sending emails. Perplexity was higher for researchers as a result of it gives citations, so that you’re in a position to entry the net and really get directed to the supply that it’s citing. NotebookLM was one thing we tried out, nevertheless it was not as profitable. It was a cool software that allowed us to summarize particular coverage paperwork right into a podcast, however the summaries have been typically fairly obscure.
Staff NSC Power
Staff NSC Power was engaged on a Nationwide Safety Council drawback, “How can america generate adequate power to help compute/AI within the subsequent 5 years?”
At first of the category, the workforce started through the use of ChatGPT to summarize their coverage papers and generate tailor-made interview questions, whereas Claude was used to synthesize analysis for background understanding. As ChatGPT often hallucinated data, by the tip of the category they have been cross validating the summaries through Perplexity professional.
The workforce additionally used ChatGPT and Mermaid to arrange their ideas and decide who they needed to speak to. ChatGPT was used to generate code to place into the Mermaid flowchart organizer. Mermaid has its personal language, so ChatGPT was useful, so we didn’t should study all of the syntax for this language.
See the video of how Staff NSC Power used ChaptGPT and Mermaid right here:
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
Staff Alpha Technique
The Alpha Technique workforce was attempting to find whether or not the U.S. might use AI to create a whole-of-government decision-making manufacturing facility.
At first of sophistication, Staff Alpha Technique used ChatGPT.40 for coverage doc evaluation and abstract, as properly for stakeholder mapping. Nonetheless, they found going one after the other by means of the numerous numbers of articles was time consuming. So the workforce pivoted to utilizing Pocket book LM, for doc search and cross evaluation. See the video of how Staff Alpha Technique used Pocket book LM right here:
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
The opposite instruments the workforce used have been customized Gpts to construct stakeholder maps and diagrams and manage interview notes. There’s going to be all kinds of specialised Gpts. One which was actually useful, they stated, was a scholar GPT.
See the video of how Staff Alpha Technique used customized GPTs:
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Like different groups, Alpha Technique used ChatGPT to summarize their interview notes and to create move charts to stick into their weekly shows.
Staff Congress
The Congress workforce was exploring the query, “if the Division of Protection got financial devices of energy, which instruments can be only within the present techno-economic competitors with the Folks’s Republic of China?”
As different groups discovered, Staff Congress first used ChatGPT to extract key themes from tons of of pages of readings every week and from press releases, articles, and laws. Additionally they used for mapping and diagramming to determine potential relationships between stakeholders, or to creatively counsel alternate visualizations.
When Staff Congress weren’t in a position to attain their sponsor within the preliminary two weeks of the category, very similar to Staff OSC, they used AI instruments to faux to be their sponsor, a member of the protection modernization caucus. As soon as they realized its utility, they continued to do mock interviews utilizing AI function play.
The workforce additionally used custom-made fashions of ChatGPT however of their case discovered that this was restricted within the variety of paperwork they might add, as a result of that they had numerous content material. In order that they used retrieval augmented technology, which takes in a person’s question, and matches it with related sources of their data base, and fed that again out because the output. See the video of how Staff Congress used retrieval augmented technology right here:
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
Staff NavalX
The NavalX workforce was studying how the U.S. Navy might develop its capabilities in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) operations on basic maritime visitors.
Like all groups they used ChatGPT to summarize and extract from lengthy paperwork, organizing their interview notes, and defining technical phrases related to their venture. On this video, observe their use of prompting to information ChatGPT to format their notes.
See the video of how Staff NavalX used tailor-made prompts for formatting interview notes right here:
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Additionally they requested ChatGPT to function play a critic of our argument and resolution in order that we might discover the weaknesses. Additionally they started importing many interviews directly, and requested Claude to search out themes or concepts in widespread that they could have missed on their very own.
Right here’s how the NavalX workforce used Perplexity for analysis.
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
Like different groups, the NavalX workforce found you possibly can customise ChatGPT by telling it the way you need it to behave.
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
One other stunning perception from the workforce is that you should utilize ChatGPT to inform you learn how to write higher prompts for itself.
In case you can’t see the video click on right here
In abstract, Staff NavalX used Claude to translate texts from Mandarin, and located that ChatGPT was the most effective for writing duties, Perplexity the most effective for analysis duties, Claude the most effective for studying duties, and pocket book LM was the most effective for summarization.
Classes Discovered
- Integrating AI into this class took a devoted teacher with a mission to create a brand new option to educate utilizing AI instruments
- The end result was AI vastly enhanced and accelerated studying of all groups
- It acted as a useful collaborator
- Fusing AI with stakeholders interviews was particularly highly effective
- At first of the category college students have been conversant in a number of of those AI instruments
- By the tip of the category they have been fluent in lots of extra of them
- Most groups invented inventive use instances
- All Stanford courses we now educate – Hacking for Protection, Lean Launchpad, Entrepreneurship Inside Authorities – have AI built-in as a part of the course
- Subsequent 12 months’s AI instruments will probably be substantively higher
Filed underneath: Buyer Improvement, Gordian Knot Middle for Nationwide Safety Innovation, Nationwide Safety, Expertise Innovation and Nice Energy Competitors |
