1. Ethan Mollick has updated his guide to Which AI to Use Now: An Updated Opinionated Guide https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/which-ai-to-use-now-an-updated-opinionated

Every six months or so, I have written an opinionated guide for individual users of AI, not specializing in any one type of use, but as a general overview. Writing this is getting more challenging. AI models are gaining capabilities at an increasingly rapid rate, new companies are releasing new models, and nothing is well documented or well understood. In fact, in the few days I have been working on this draft, I had to add an entirely new model and update the chart below multiple times due to new releases. As a result, I may get something wrong, or you may disagree with my answers, but that is why I consider it an opinionated guide (though as a reminder, I take no money from AI labs, so it is my opinion!)

2. Mollick was quick off the mark in including DeepSeek, who launched only late last week and have since taken a staggering 600 billion dollars off the value of one of its main US competitors, Nvidia.

Here’s The New York Times take on DeepSeek from a business perspective, China’s A.I. Advances Spook Big Tech Investors on Wall Street https://tinyurl.com/bdd422b9

here’s their feature on DeepSeek, What to Know About DeepSeek and How It Is Upending A.I. https://tinyurl.com/4vhf9c6k

and you can sign up for yourself here! https://www.deepseek.com/

3. The next IATEFL monthly webinar, Bringing Linguistic Landscapes to the ELT Classroom, presented by Josianne Block, is this coming Saturday, 1^st February at 15:00 UK time. More info and registration here https://www.iatefl.org/events/655 Anyone can join the live event; only members of IATEFL get a certificate of attendance and access to the recording.

This webinar will delve into the pedagogical potential of linguistic landscapes. We will explore how everyday language found in private and public spaces can be used as an authentic resource to enhance language learning, awareness, and critical thinking.

4. Free to view for this week only on the Paris Review website, their ‘Art of Fiction’ interview with James Baldwin from 1984 https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2994/the-art-of-fiction-no-78-james-baldwin

This interview was conducted in the two places dearest to James Baldwin’s struggle as a writer. We met first in Paris, where he spent the first nine years of a burgeoning career and wrote his first two novels, ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain’ and ‘Giovanni’s Room’, along with his best-known collection of essays, ‘Notes of a Native Son’. It was in Paris, he says, that he was first able to come to grips with his explosive relationship with himself and America. Our second talks were held at Baldwin’s poutres-and-stone villa in St. Paul de Vence, where he has made his home for the past ten years.

5. And, finally, a fun film with which we can all emphasise, I’m not a Robot https://www.newyorker.com/culture/screening-room/a-woman-wonders-if-shes-human-in-im-not-a-robot