HUMS 204: AI Literacy, which debuted this semester, brings together ideas from the humanities, sciences and social sciences while also introducing students to VCU’s own AI tools and guidelines. Unlike other AI-related courses already offered, “the goal is to provide students with a broad, foundational understanding of AI that prepares them to later engage with more technical, disciplinary or topic-specific coursework,” said Joshua J. Smith, Ph.D., the founder and chair of the Media + AI Initiative at VCU. “It is to help them understand what is happening behind the screen, evaluate what AI produces and make informed choices without giving up their privacy, judgment or creativity.” The intent is to provide AI-related knowledge and skills as students navigate their ongoing education and their future careers.
Friday, September 04, 2026
The turbulent AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical. - Bill Gates, linkedIn Pulse
We need a plan to ensure that the good outweighs the bad.
- The transition to the AI era will be one of the most turbulent times in human history.
- Right now, we are not preparing adequately for that transition.
- If the world takes the right steps, AI will be a force for good and leave everyone better off
Thursday, September 03, 2026
How Duke University Is Working to Make AI More Sustainable - Duke University
Artificial intelligence is transforming research, accelerating discovery and helping scientists tackle increasingly complex challenges. But as the data centers that house the AI models become larger and more powerful, they can consume vast amounts of electricity and water, raising critical questions: Can AI become more sustainable? Could it actually help address climate change? At Duke University, researchers are investigating both of those challenges. Across disciplines, faculty are developing more energy-efficient AI technologies while using AI to improve climate modeling, strengthen weather forecasting, protect oceans and modernize energy systems. The university is expanding its AI infrastructure with a small GPU center expected to open in 2027, which will be designed to minimize power and water consumption and carbon emissions through energy-efficient practices.
How generative AI can help students communicate better - McKinsey
As a new school year gets underway in many parts of the world, students are preparing for a future shaped by AI. But succeeding will take more than technical know-how. As AI transforms how work gets done, distinctly human skills—like clear, confident communication—matter more than ever. Yet high-quality communication coaching remains out of reach for many. JA Worldwide, a nonprofit that prepares young people for entrepreneurship, work readiness, and financial health, partnered with McKinsey to change that. Through the firm’s AI for Social Good program and QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, the team developed JA Pitch Master, a gen-AI-powered communication coach that helps young people around the world refine pitch presentations through personalized, practical feedback. The tool demonstrates how AI can be used to complement and strengthen the human skills that are increasingly valuable in the workplace. “When thoughtfully designed and responsibly deployed,” says Stacie Fieth, vice president of education at JA Worldwide, “generative AI can fundamentally strengthen how young people practice, reflect, and grow.”
Wednesday, September 02, 2026
Now Is the Time to Plan and Prepare Your Students and Colleagues on Workplace AI - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
If ever there was a most important era in which we must emphasize discourse with our students, it is today. We are in the midst of major changes in our culture and society as a whole. How, then, do we prepare our learners to enter a job market where the primary tools are making huge advances two or three times within the span of a single semester? First, we, ourselves, must become AI fluent. Through professional development either at our own institution or online via short courses, we need to master the foundations. Then, we must build regular update readings into our weekly schedules. There are scores of high-quality blogs, podcasts and YouTube series designed to keep readers and viewers up to speed. For example, I publish a free and open daily reading list on “AI in Higher Education by UPCEA.” There are several steps in the process that we should consider applying across our curricula to ensure our graduates and certificate holders are best prepared for job interviews and ensuing careers in the rapidly changing workplace.
Building a Quantum Computer, One Fragile Qubit at a Time - Ben Brubaker, Quantum Magazine
Quantum computers have the potential to process information in new and more powerful ways beyond mere 1s and 0s, and to solve certain problems that are too hard for their ordinary “classical” cousins. But building a machine powerful enough to fulfill that promise remains a formidable challenge. Quantum computing hasn’t yet had its transistor moment, and researchers are still exploring many different approaches to developing quantum hardware. Current approaches differ first and foremost in which physical systems they use as qubits, the elementary building blocks of quantum computers. Unlike circuits that store classical bits, qubits can exhibit strange phenomena like superposition and entanglement that give them extra computational power. But these quantum effects are also very fragile, easily disrupted by stray interactions between qubits and the surrounding environment. Each proposed qubit technology tries to reconcile two properties that are hard to achieve simultaneously: Qubits must be isolated from outside disturbances, but easy for researchers to manipulate.
Tuesday, September 01, 2026
Don’t ban AI use in college essays. Change the prompt instead. - Arush Chandna, University Business
An admissions advisor recently told me that she noticed the same phrase—“tears streaming down my face”—showing up in multiple college essays. It didn’t take long to figure out why: students are using AI to write these essays despite clear instructions not to do so. This concerned me for two reasons. Writing the college essay is an exercise in reflection and intellectual development. By outsourcing this to AI, students lose out on the opportunity to understand themselves at a deeper level. Secondly, the college essay differentiates applicants in a sea of perfect GPAs, impressive extracurriculars, and high standardized test scores. With a higher number of AI-generated essays, admissions officers can’t fully scoop out a student’s authentic voice. A blanket ban on using AI to write college essays won’t fix the problem. The real issue is the prompt.
Pew: Young Americans grow more wary of AI as job fears rise - Gabriel Tynes, Courthouse News Service
For the first time, a majority of young adults in the U.S. say artificial intelligence leaves them more worried than enthusiastic. According to the Pew Research Center in a survey released Tuesday, 55% of adults ages 18 to 29 are now more concerned than excited over the increasing use of AI in daily life. That’s up from 47% last year and just 31% in 2021, when Pew first started asking the question. Only about one in 10 young adults say they feel more excited than worried. The shift is striking because younger people tend to use AI tools more often than older adults, yet their enthusiasm has cooled the most. Five years ago, a quarter of adults under 30 said they were more excited than concerned. Today that number has dropped to 11%.
Monday, August 31, 2026
This may be the first academic profession to see its work taken over by AI - Miriam Waldvogel, Washington Post
In early August, top mathematicians gathered at the offices of ChatGPT maker OpenAI in San Francisco for a summit on an existential question: What will be left for human math experts to do if artificial intelligence soon leaves them all behind? “I think there’s a chance that we end up in a world where there’s no high-quality mathematics research, and human expertise in mathematics is totally lost,” said Daniel Litt,mLitt’s presentation at the day-long meeting sketched out a worst-case scenario in which AI churned out advanced research in such quantities that there was little incentive to keep human math experts around. He considers that extreme outcome unlikely but said mathematicians urgently need to adapt. “It’s important we actually do something,” Litt said.
Sunday, August 30, 2026
The AI Boom Is Testing America’s Power Grid - Serguei Netessine, Knowledge at Wharton
Serguei Netessine, Wharton’s senior vice dean for innovation and global initiatives, examines the unprecedented electricity demand created by AI data centers and hyperscalers. He explains how rapid growth in computing power is testing an aging grid, reshaping infrastructure investment, and raising urgent questions about energy policy. Netessine also explores the potential role of energy storage, flexible computing, utility regulation, and industrial electricity pricing. He considers what happens when data centers build their own power supply and why coordinated action is essential for the United States to remain competitive in AI.
Course design for a new age - Laura Ducket, Times Higher Ed
At a time when the value of a degree is being called into question, many argue that teaching subject knowledge is no longer enough. University courses must be flexible and embed work training and skills development to serve today’s students. This collection of resources is a guide to designing courses that respond to the evolving needs of both students and employers. England’s lifelong learning entitlement, which comes into force this year, invites a shift towards more episodic modes of learning and assessment. Courses must be designed to allow students to easily pick up where they left off and use digital infrastructure that removes barriers for time-poor students. By creating a seamless experience online and offline and setting expectations early, course designers can place flexibility at the heart of course design without sacrificing academic rigour.
Saturday, August 29, 2026
Opinion: Rethinking the Classroom of the Future - Jim A. Jorstad, GovTech
Certainly, our classrooms of the future will require us to carefully consider the role of AI. Recently I had the opportunity to interview George Otte, former chief academic officer of the School of Professional Studies at City University of New York, and a Senior Fellow for the Center for Digital Education. He noted, “The use of AI will radically accelerate and accentuate this reconfiguration of the classroom without displacing it. AI is superb not just at information mining but casting that in effective forms and formats. It is not as good at managing perspectives, especially opposing viewpoints or novel approaches and outlooks, and that's increasingly what's valuable.” In fact, AI is not so much of a design element in a digital classroom as a tool which can be used both in and outside of school. In a July 2023 article for the Harvard Graduate School of Education, "Embracing Artificial Intelligence in the Classroom," Elizabeth Ross suggested that educators “engage with generative AI tools with your students in person, when possible.
AI won’t replace the liberal arts. It may renew them. - Michael Brach, University Business
The most significant breakthroughs in higher education rarely happen within a single discipline. They happen at the intersection of disciplines. A conversation between engineering and philosophy; between biology and ethics; between economics and sociology; between computer science and theology.
The challenge is that these conversations have always been difficult to create. They require relationships, time, institutional support, and often a willingness to leave the comfort of one’s own expertise. Artificial intelligence may change that. Much has been written about AI replacing human work. Those concerns deserve serious attention. Glenn Richey’s guest colum, “How to Stop Agentic AI from Eroding Human Agency,” rightly warns us that if we allow AI to think for us, we risk losing the very capabilities higher education exists to cultivate—judgment, expertise, curiosity, and agency.
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