June 2024

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 22 jun 2024

Jenifer Morgan, global editions editor at Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), says, 'Social innovation isn't just a Western phenomenon.' Nicholas Jackson, Editor-in-Chief of SSIR, explains and cites expamples to put forward a point that local inovation at one place can become a change agent at other places with similar issues and challenges. He tells about SSIR's international partnerships and collaborations for spread of knowledge and social research. He says, 'I encourage you to read widely and to look for solutions and inspiration everywhere, even in unlikely places.' He cites SSIR article 'Who Knows Agroforestry Best?' (Authors: Evelyn R. Nimmo; André E. B. Lacerda; Leandro Bonfim; Joel Bothello), that provides example of Brazilian nonprofit organization CEDErva (Center for the Development and Education of Traditional Erva-Mate Systems) that promotes traditional practices for tending to - and harvesting - the land, as the conventional approaches to sustainable agriculture were not working. Learning from this, other countries such as Bolivia, Laos, Nicaragua, the Democratic Republic of the Congo etc, that are rapidly losing tree cover, can adopt and adapt the CEDErva approahcs to find solutions to their own challenges. Other social innovation examples include - A New Zealand social enterprize 'Take2' is offering job training during periods of incarceration and other paths to job security as a form of rehabilitation; A global team in Czech Republic has brought about a new life for old brick and other building materials, which are being turned into 'green concrete' and used in the development of sustainable architecture. Read on...

Stanford Social Innovation Review: Social Innovation Isn't Just a Western Phenomenon
Author: Nicholas Jackson

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 21 jun 2024

Prof. Fadel M. Megahed of Farmer School Information Systems and Analytics (ISA) at Miami University (USA), is the lead author of two papers on artificial intelligence (AI), 'Introducing ChatSQC: Enhancing Statistical Quality Control with Augmented AI' (aug 2023, arxiv.org) (Authors: Fadel M. Megahed of Miami University; Ying-Ju Chen of University of Dayton; Inez Zwetsloot of University of Amsterdam; Sven Knoth of Helmut Schmidt University; Douglas C. Montgomery of Arizona State University; L. Allison Jones-Farmer of Miami University) and 'How generative AI models such as ChatGPT can be (mis)used in SPC practice, education, and research? An exploratory study' (jun 2023, tandfonline.com) (Authors: Fadel M. Megahed of Miami University; Ying-Ju Chen of University of Dayton; Joshua A. Ferris of Miami University; Sven Knoth of Helmut Schmidt University; L. Allison Jones-Farmer of Miami University). He has brought AI into his classroom teaching for business analytics students. He says, 'There was a lot of research that talked about how AI could be used in education, that AI can play many roles in the classroom...As an ISA student, learning to use AI is an emerging skill that would benefit your career. That being said, you should be aware of the limits of such tools: (a) the use of AI tools may not be useful in all applications, so use them with caution; (b) prompt engineering matters, so you will need to craft a good prompt to get higher quality answers; (c) the answers you get may be wrong, e.g., ChatGPT is often confident but wrong; and (d) if you use such a tool in an assignment/exam, you will need to provide your prompt and the AI's answer (which may require tweaking to work correctly).' Regarding the ChatISA tool, Prof. Megahed says, 'I wanted to provide a free tool for students to be more inclusive, a tool where the students' prompts and responses are not used for model training. And I wanted to incorporate state-of-the-art recommendations about context setting and prompt engineering to enhance the outputs our students would get from the same request...Students in my class have mentioned that depending on the instructor, when they have the option to use these AI tools, they use it also for other classes.' Read on...

Miami University FSB News: FSB professor creates AI chatbot to assist business analytics students
Author: NA