We are thrilled to announce our latest effort in utilizing generative AI for good: AI Explain, a new video series launched on our YouTube channel. We plan to use “AI Explain” as an umbrella for future exploration of any aspect of the universe which might excite curiosity and engagement in children—science, history, geography,… We are kicking off this effort with a series on Inventions and Discoveries, starting with the most fundamental building blocks of our civilization: we have launched with videos on the wheel, language, the printing press, and timekeeping. Please check out these videos below!
You might remember that we started releasing short videos in a YouTube playlist called AI Tails last year: narrated non-fiction about animals aimed at young children, with text, audio and imagery all generated by AI. The goal, as discussed in a prior blog post, was to explore the efficacy of such generative AI tools for our mission of promoting early literacy, while sidestepping well-known pitfalls in these technologies. Thanks to our awesome intern Tamara Basbuyuk, we were able to quickly produce videos such as “How Wolves Became Dogs,” “The Amazing Octopus,” “Big Elephants, Big Families,” and others. If you haven’t yet, please check out AI Tails as well and let us know your thoughts!
Generative AI technology, of course, kept advancing rapidly during this time, which led us to ask how to push further in utilizing it for our mission. Which is when we reconnected with the multi-talented Rhys Muirhead. We first got to know Rhys as a visual artist, when he created beautiful illustrations for “The Lion and the Mouse” and “The Fox and the Crow,” among the very first illustrated audiobooks that we produced. But he also has a background in architecture and in the use of sophisticated software tools for 3D modeling and rendering, which has inevitably led him towards exploring the limits of what is possible with genAI. Given our common interests in science and engineering, AI Explain: Inventions and Discoveries was the natural next step in our genAI journey.
We hope that you enjoy watching these videos as much as we’ve enjoyed making them! Behind them is a story of many iterations and many discarded efforts. We plan to write another blog post telling this story: getting to truly high quality content with genAI requires artistry, expertise and patience!
We also note that ours is a contrarian use of AI: instead of the current trend of personalization via AI, we are using it to create freely accessible learning content which we hope has universal appeal. The reasons for our choices are hinted at in our earlier blog post, but we plan to continue discussing our perspective on safe, productive uses of AI for our mission in future posts.
In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you on what you think of AI Explain…please reach out to us via info@glenworld.org with your comments and feedback.
As always, we are grateful for your support. If you like our work, please consider a donation.
The GLEN World Team
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