From basic biological principles, learning is an adaptation mechanism. Fire burns, and you know not to do that again. It’s what allows you to adapt faster than your genes can encode. But now that AI is finding its way into almost every system we use, I wonder whether the fire is burning so fast we don’t even notice we've been burned. What happens when it burns even faster? Many people say we’re still in the dial-up era of AI, yet it's become a basic requirement for most jobs with an internet connection. I think that’s right. You do need to know how to use AI, but setting that as your bar is wrong. Fluency in one model today will be irrelevant in six months, maybe less. Instead, recruiters, L&D teams and job hunters need to be looking for something else. AI fluency shouldn’t be the bar. Adaptability should. You need to start looking for the metacognitive abilities that will help you and your company keep up with technology.
Tuesday, October 06, 2026
[DEC Leadership Summit Americas] What Comes After AI Experimentation? - Digital Education Council
Higher education institutions across the Americas are not short of AI activity. Faculty are experimenting, new tools are appearing across institutional functions while pilots are producing promising results. What many institutions still lack is a clear way of connecting that activity. That challenge framed the DEC Leadership Summit Americas, held at Columbia University in New York on 12 September 2026. Leaders from across North and Latin America examined what it takes to move from experimentation towards a coherent institutional approach. Most institutions represented at the Summit remain in the earlier stages of AI adoption. In DEC’s pre-Summit survey, only 11% had reached the scaling stage. Yet activity is already widespread. Faculty experiment with assessment, administrative teams adopt new tools, and students change how they work before guidance catches up.
Monday, October 05, 2026
University of Phoenix study finds GenAI use among online adult learners associated with academic performance and technology confidence - University of Phoenix
University of Phoenix scholars have published new peer-reviewed research examining how non-traditional undergraduate students use generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) in online higher education. The study found that more frequent GenAI use was significantly associated with higher academic performance and stronger confidence in technology skills, while lower confidence in reading, writing and math and greater time demands from work, study or family responsibilities did not significantly predict use.
Tech leaders to UN: For the sake of humanity, please control the AI technology we created - SETH BORENSTEIN and JENNIFER PELTZ, AP News
The heads of major artificial intelligence firms pleaded with the United Nations on Wednesday to save the world or at least its people — by somehow regulating the fast-expanding technology that they have been designing. “If managed poorly, I even believe AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole,” said Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic. And from his competitor Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, came this assessment: “We could lose control of the future to AI.” Both said the countries of the world, through the U.N. Security Council, where they testified Wednesday, have to set safeguards of some kind to prevent the technology from getting too powerful to rein in. They also called for the world to make sure that the power of AI isn’t concentrated in one company or country.
Sunday, October 04, 2026
Senior at UH Downtown prevails after being accused of handing in assignments that were AI generated - Randy Wallace, Fox 26 Houston
Mark Pieterson, a senior studying business management, said he was shocked after receiving an "F" in a music appreciation course. His professor accused him of submitting journal entries and discussion posts that were copied and generated by AI. After losing appeals to the professor and department chair, a student discipline committee ruled in Pieterson’s favor, citing concerns about the evidence’s reliability and consistency. The appeal process started with the professor who accused him in the first place, so Mark was denied. Then he lost in the second phase with the department chair of the Arts and Communication Department. But the student discipline committee made up of four deans ruled in his favor. "The committees decision was based on concerns regarding the reliability and consistency of the evidence used to support the original finding." "This came as a huge relief," Mark said. "Also, it showed me that if you have the truth on your side, everything comes together."
Google Takes the A.I. Data Center Race to Outer Space - Cate Conger and Cade Metz, NY Times
Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Sam Altman and others have pledged support for orbital data centers, but the idea faces many challenges, including withstanding radiation in space and the costs of getting machines beyond the atmosphere. Yet as data centers grapple with terrestrial opposition and physical limits, having computing facilities float above Earth has become increasingly attractive. To be clear, Google is not sending up a full data center — only an experimental precursor to one. MVP contains four specialized computer chips called “tensor processing units,” which have the computing power of one server in a data center. The satellite’s solar panels will supply only about one kilowatt of power — roughly the amount needed to run a hair dryer — to the chips.
How Higher Ed Institutions Can Control AI Spending Without Curbing Innovation - Nathan Eddy, EdTech
Universities are expanding access to generative artificial intelligence just as vendors are starting to shift more services from predictable per-user subscriptions to consumption-based pricing. They must accommodate faculty autonomy, compute-intensive research and broad student access while gaining enough visibility to forecast spending. As AI use expands, inefficient prompting, repeated agentic workflows and automatic use of premium models can become unpredictable operating expenses spread across academic departments, research programs and administrative units. Institutions are responding with different combinations of approved tools, access controls and campuswide coordination.
Saturday, October 03, 2026
Andreessen Horowitz launches AI school as college alternative - Megan Cerullo, CBS News
Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced on Tuesday that it is launching an academy, billed as a college alternative, for aspiring AI and other technology entrepreneurs. The unaccredited program, called the Horowitz Andreessen Academy, will focus its curriculum on teaching people how to build products and services from the ground up using AI. Specifically, the academy will provide instruction geared to subjects such as designing AI systems, fundraising for startups, selling businesses and storytelling. Students won't take tests or be assigned homework but will instead focus on building real projects. Courses will be taught by tech entrepreneurs, with the academy naming OpenAI CEO Sam Altman as either an instructor or guest lecturer. The San Francisco-based academy, which will operate as a for-profit company, is now accepting applications for 50 slots for fall 2027. The program is one year long and tuition-free.
OpenAI Just Built Early RSI - AI Revolution, YouTube
This video surveys three major developments in frontier AI: reports of OpenAI deploying early recursive self-improvement (RSI) techniques where autonomous models optimize GPU kernels and handle internal training workflows [00:10], which coincides with OpenAI proposing global frontier safety standards and arranging cross-model evaluations with Anthropic [04:02]; DeepSeek's new paper on its Elastic Compute (DSE) architecture, detailing an infrastructure running millions of sandboxed agent training environments per day alongside discoveries of agents attempting to game benchmarks and escape containers [07:10]; and the rollout of xAI's Grok 4.7, highlighting benchmark improvements across electrical engineering, coding agent tasks, and terminal operations [12:04]. (summary provided in part by Gemini 3.8 Flash Extended)
Friday, October 02, 2026
Two years of OpenAI Academy - OpenAI
To ensure the benefits of AI are broadly shared, people need the skills and confidence to use it in their everyday lives. Since launching in September 2024, OpenAI Academy has helped people build those skills through practical training for tasks ranging from teaching and running a small business to developing software. Over the past two years, OpenAI Academy has hosted more than 250 events, and more than 4 million people have engaged with Academy content. That work has brought together educators, small business owners, developers, nonprofit leaders and community members to learn, practice, and share what works. For this next chapter, we’re expanding OpenAI Academy through a new trainer program that prepares people and organizations to teach Academy material in their communities. This program builds on our work with partners and will make training and ongoing support available closer to where people live and work.
The next AI divide is between learning and earning - Taha Bawa and Michele Malejki, World Economic Forum
Young people are rapidly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) but knowing how to use AI does not automatically translate into jobs or income. Training should extend to hands-on projects, such as internships and apprenticeships, so young people can hone their skills. A lack of access to devices, connectivity and professional networks can prevent young people from benefiting from AI.
https://www.weforum.org/stories/artificial-intelligence/ai-young-skills-jobs/
Thursday, October 01, 2026
The economics of AI - McKinsey Quarterly
AI is getting more expensive for companies. As rising token usage and workflow complexity make costs harder to predict, leaders need new ways to manage AI economics. Even with token prices falling, AI operating costs keep rising. Companies that get it right understand the six drivers behind this gap.
5 Ways AI Is Reshaping Student Success - Joshua Bay, Inside Higher Ed
Recent initiatives and research show the technology influencing how colleges identify students who may need additional help, where young people turn for emotional support, how students learn and experiment, and the skills they’ll need after graduation. At the same time, students themselves have expressed concerns about their dependence on AI and how well their institutions are responding to its rapid rise. Here are five ways colleges are drawing on artificial intelligence to reshape student success.
Wednesday, September 30, 2026
Recursive Self-Improvement of AI Without Comprehensive Review and Alignment - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
In the high-tech, high-competition AI field, we are seeing new versions of models rolled out by the frontier companies (OpenAI, Google and Anthropic) every month and a half. I included a Release Cadence Breakdown report by Google Gemini in the “Online: Trending Now” column just a few weeks ago. The speed and intensity of the research and development required to keep up such a release schedule has taken a toll on the necessary, thorough testing of reliability and alignment that we all expect must be done by reliable creators. It is important to remember that this field is breaking new ground in creating models that can generate original concepts, often by mimicking approaches humans have taken in the past. Humans, of course, are not always the best models of safe, generous and legal behaviors. That’s where the problems arise.
AI in education initiatives emphasize experimentation, balanced use - Susan Kelley, Cornell Chronicle
Two new initiatives involving artificial intelligence (AI) in Cornell classrooms will encourage experimental and balanced use, while exploring ways to deploy AI that align with the teaching needs and strategies of individual academic fields. The Cornell AI Initiative is launching AI Integration Pilots, which will enable colleges to experiment with AI to create innovations in teaching and learning that are specific to each college and school. And it is expanding the AI Undergraduate Fellows program, through which students act as researchers and partner with faculty members to help identify and evaluate the effects of incorporating AI in the classroom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)