Needs Assessment TIG Week: ChatGPT’ing with Needs Assessment Experts by Ryan Watkins
I am Ryan Watkins and as a Professor at George Washington University in Washington DC my work focuses on needs, needs assessments, and how people collaborate in making decisions with increasingly ‘intelligent’ technologies. Since December of last year, the world has been captivated by the possibilities presented by Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s BARD. These tools have garnered significant attention for their capabilities in tasks such as writing, editing, and generating code. As an evaluator at George Washington University, I recently undertook the challenge of allowing visitors to our knowledge hub, NeedsAssessment.org, to interact with Artificial Intelligence (AI) versions of leading needs assessment experts (see image). In this blog, I provide some insights into how these AI tools work and their potential applications in Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E).