]This prompt turns AI into a patient, seasoned learning companion who guides users to their own “aha!” moments through purposeful questions, analogies, and interactive back-and-forth conversation. Rather than simply giving answers, the system begins every topic by surfacing the learner’s starting point, frustrations, and real-life relevance. The conversation is built layer by layer: first probing assumptions with direct yet supportive questions, then using relatable stories, metaphors, and playful thought experiments to break down each core idea. The Socratic Explainer adapts to the learner’s pace, never moves forward if confusion remains, and uses humor or surprises to make every concept sticky and memorable.
Wednesday, July 02, 2025
Seizing the agentic AI advantage - McKinsey
At the heart of this paradox is an imbalance between “horizontal” (enterprise-wide) copilots and chatbots—which have scaled quickly but deliver diffuse, hard-to-measure gains—and more transformative “vertical” (function-specific) use cases—about 90 percent of which remain stuck in pilot mode. AI agents offer a way to break out of the gen AI paradox. That’s because agents have the potential to automate complex business processes—combining autonomy, planning, memory, and integration—to shift gen AI from a reactive tool to a proactive, goal-driven virtual collaborator. This shift enables far more than efficiency. Agents supercharge operational agility and create new revenue opportunities.
Tuesday, July 01, 2025
Chief AI Officer: Higher Ed’s New Leadership Role - Abby Sourwine, Government Technology
Those stepping up to fill education’s new C-suite role say it's more than just understanding IT — it requires communication and skill-building across disciplines and comfort levels, and flexibility to create a road map. As the education sector continues to adapt to artificial intelligence, a new role is quietly emerging: the chief AI officer (CAIO). At institutions like George Mason University, UCLA and the University of Arizona, these leaders are tasked with creating campuswide AI strategy. According to early adopters, the role is still being defined in higher education, taking cues from CAIO duties in industry and government.
$1.5M partnership with AI company will offer USC students, faculty free access - Alexa Jurado, the State
“The campuswide adoption of secure enterprise AI technology puts USC on the leading edge of higher education institutions,” Brice Bible, USC’s vice president for information technology and chief information officer, said in a news release. “This initiative will not only make our students more employable, but it will allow for much greater innovation in the classroom and across research teams in every discipline.” USC officials said that the ability to effectively and ethically use AI tools will give students a “competitive advantage” in today’s job market. The university will offer a new interdisciplinary certificate program in artificial intelligence literacy, consisting of four courses: two required courses about the capabilities and ethical use of AI and two elective courses relating AI to a student’s major.
Monday, June 30, 2025
"Seriously, What Is 'Superintelligence'? - Uncanny Valley Podcast, Wired
The podcast episode "Seriously, What Is 'Superintelligence'?" from WIRED's Uncanny Valley explores Meta's recent strategic shift in artificial intelligence, focusing on its investment in Scale AI and the creation of a superintelligence AI research lab. The hosts discuss Meta's efforts to compete with industry leaders like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google by aggressively acquiring talent and resources. They analyze what Meta hopes to achieve with this investment and how it positions the company in the escalating AI arms race. A central theme of the episode is the concept of "superintelligence"—what it means, how it differs from current AI capabilities, and why it is both a technical and philosophical milestone. The hosts break down the challenges and implications of developing AI systems that surpass human intelligence, raising questions about safety, ethics, and the societal impact of such advancements. The discussion provides listeners with context on the broader AI landscape and Meta's ambitions, while also demystifying the often-hyped term "superintelligence". [summary provided by Perplexity]
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI can rival someone with a PhD—just weeks after saying it’s ready for entry-level jobs. So what’s left for grads? - Preston Fore, Fortune
Earlier this month, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that the technology can already perform the tasks equal to that of an entry-level employee. Now, in a podcast posted just last week, the ChatGPT mastermind went even further—saying AI can even perform tasks typically expected of the smartest grads with a doctorate. “In some sense AIs are like a top competitive programmer in the world now or AIs can get a top score on the world’s hardest math competitions or AIs can do problems that I’d expect an expert PhD in my field to do,” he told the Uncapped podcast (hosted by Sam’s brother, Jack Altman).
Sunday, June 29, 2025
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Says ‘We Are Heading Towards a World Where AI Will Just Have Unbelievable Context on Your Life’ - Caleb Naysmith, Barchart
Altman described the feature as a “real surprising level up,” saying, “Now that the computer knows a lot of context on me, and if I ask it a question with only a small number of words, it knows enough about the rest of my life to be pretty confident in what I want it to do. Sometimes in ways I don't even think of. I think we are heading towards a world where, if you want, the AI will just have unbelievable context on your life and give you super, super helpful answers.” The new memory feature allows ChatGPT to retain information from past interactions and build a persistent profile of each user’s preferences, routines, and even personal milestones. This means the AI can provide more tailored, anticipatory responses — streamlining tasks, making recommendations, and even reminding users of important events or deadlines without being prompted.
To employers, AI skills aren’t just for tech majors anymore: Colleges and students race to keep up with the widespread demand for AI expertise - Ariel Gilreath, Hechinger Report
AI technology is rapidly changing the labor market. Employers are increasingly posting job listings that include AI skills for positions even outside of the technology sector, such as in health care, hospitality and media. To keep up, students are increasingly looking for ways to boost their AI skills and make themselves more marketable at a time when there’s growing fear that AI will replace humans in the workforce. And their concerns are justified: There’s evidence to suggest artificial intelligence may have already replaced some jobs. Entry-level positions are particularly at risk of being replaced by AI, a report from Oxford Economics shows, and the unemployment rate for recent college graduates jumped to nearly 6 percent in March, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Saturday, June 28, 2025
How Babson College went all-in on AI in higher education - Shane O'Neill, CIO
Over the past two years, US colleges have quietly integrated generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools into the classroom and behind the scenes. At Babson College, just outside Boston, the shift to AI has been anything but quiet — it’s been bold, fast, and full of purpose. Babson is certainly not the only college in the US implementing AI technologies. However, the college prides itself on being a business education innovator, maximizing GenAI to improve learning, simplify operations, and help students get ready for the world they’re about to enter.
A.I. in the Classroom: A Brave New World? - Carl Murray, NY Times
While the promise of personalized A.I. tutors and campuswide integration is compelling, we must pause to consider the broader implications, especially for how students come to understand learning itself. The rush to adopt A.I. in education shouldn’t come at the expense of thoughtful consideration of how it will shape learning, relationships and long-term student development. It’s worth asking: Are we promoting shortcuts, or are we encouraging deeper reflection and intellectual growth? We don’t need to fear A.I. in classrooms, but we do need to teach students how to work with it, not just use it. That’s a very different kind of literacy.
Friday, June 27, 2025
Preparing for tomorrow’s agentic workforce - Lareina Yee and Rodrigo Liang, McKinsey
As we scale up, we’re now seeing other constraints start to appear, like a lack of sufficient power for these data centers. So people are talking about nuclear power plants and other sources of energy. But then you have to figure out how to get the cooling done as well. And as you think about energy, you’ll also need to figure out how to update your entire grid to power those gigawatt data centers. And eventually, you’ve got to get all of that back-connected to where the users are, which is mainly in these large metropolitan areas—which is not where you’re going to put your gigawatt data center. So, there are a lot of infrastructure challenges we have to figure out.
Amazon boss tells staff AI means their jobs are at risk in coming years - Dan Milmo, the Guardian
The boss of Amazon has told white collar staff at the e-commerce company their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence in the next few years. Andrew Jassy told employees that AI agents – tools that carry out tasks autonomously – and generative AI systems such as chatbots would require fewer employees in certain areas. “As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” he said in a memo to staff. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.”
Thursday, June 26, 2025
How we built our multi-agent research system - Anthropic
Claude now has Research capabilities that allow it to search across the web, Google Workspace, and any integrations to accomplish complex tasks. The journey of this multi-agent system from prototype to production taught us critical lessons about system architecture, tool design, and prompt engineering. A multi-agent system consists of multiple agents (LLMs autonomously using tools in a loop) working together. Our Research feature involves an agent that plans a research process based on user queries, and then uses tools to create parallel agents that search for information simultaneously. Systems with multiple agents introduce new challenges in agent coordination, evaluation, and reliability.
https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/built-multi-agent-research-system
New research suggests daily AI use can reduce faculty workload in higher education - Rachel Lawler, Ed Tech Innovation Hub
A new survey from D2L, an online learning platform based in Canada, and consulting service provider Tyton Partners, has found that daily use of artificial intelligence (AI) can reduce faculty workload in higher education institutions. D2L surveyed more than 3,000 respondents about the current state of AI use in higher education for its Time for Class 2025 report. It found that more than a third (36 percent) who use generative AI daily reported a marked decrease in their workload. However, instructors and administrators reported that attempting to monitor student use of AI has created additional work for them, while 39 percent of respondents had experienced no change in their workload as a result of generative AI. The survey also found only 28 percent of higher education institutions currently have a generative AI policy in place, which can leave students and instructors struggling without standardized guidance or tools in place.
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