Following the inaugural Duke AI Summit in 2024, Provost Alec D. Gallimore launched the AI at Duke initiative and charged its steering committee with identifying opportunities for elevating the university’s leadership in AI’s development, application and responsible oversight. The committee was co-chaired by Joseph Salem, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and vice provost for library affairs; Tracy Futhey, vice president and chief information officer; and Ricardo Henao, associate professor of biostatistics and bioinformatics. Deliberating from June 2025 to January 2026, the steering committee worked closely with faculty-led advisory committees focused on four pillars – Life with AI, Advancing Discovery in the Age of AI, Sustainability in AI, and Trustworthy & Responsible AI – to develop the report. The recommendations aim to support Duke’s core missions of research and teaching by building technical capacity for AI development while advancing applications of AI that keep humans at the forefront of innovation.
Saturday, March 28, 2026
All Jobs Gone within 18 Months: Microsoft’s AI Chief Terrifying Prediction Explained - AIGrid
This podcast discusses the imminent impact of AI on the white-collar workforce, highlighting predictions from Microsoft’s AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei that most professional tasks could be automated within the next 12 to 18 months [00:00]. It explores the "quiet" nature of current job displacement, where data shows a significant drop in white-collar job openings since 2015 [03:22], and notes a 16% fall in employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in AI-exposed fields [11:18]. The video also covers legislative efforts to protect professions like law and medicine by banning AI from providing substantive professional advice [06:30]. The discussion further details a "chaotic" transition period predicted by Gartner, where companies may prematurely replace staff with AI only to rehire humans later due to service quality collapses [13:18]. As AI literacy becomes a formal credential, the labor market is expected to shift toward requiring "AI-free" skills assessments to verify human critical thinking [14:53]. While some firms like Klarna have already moved toward AI-first models, the podcast suggests the displacement will not be a straight line but a messy cycle of experimentation and correction [14:25]. [Summary facilitated by Gemini 3 Fast]
Friday, March 27, 2026
Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework - Ryan Burnell & Oran Kelly, the Keyword, Google
Our framework draws on decades of research from psychology, neuroscience and cognitive science to develop a cognitive taxonomy. It identifies 10 key cognitive abilities that we hypothesize will be important for general intelligence in AI systems:
Perception: extracting and processing sensory information from the environment
Generation: producing outputs such as text, speech and actions
Attention: focusing cognitive resources on what matters
Learning: acquiring new knowledge through experience and instruction
Memory: storing and retrieving information over time
Reasoning: drawing valid conclusions through logical inference
Metacognition: knowledge and monitoring of one's own cognitive processes
Executive functions: planning, inhibition and cognitive flexibility
Problem solving: finding effective solutions to domain-specific problems
Social cognition: processing and interpreting social information and responding appropriately in social situations
Sovereign AI: Building ecosystems for strategic resilience and impact - McKinsey
Sovereign AI is achievable only through an ecosystem effort that connects energy, compute, data, models, platforms, and applications across multiple actors. Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s or organization’s ability to develop and control its own AI capabilities to ensure strategic independence and alignment with domestic values and laws. That said, sovereign AI does not have a single definition; rather, it is the result of the interaction between four distinct components:
territorial: where data and compute physically reside
operational: who manages and secures data and compute
technological: who owns the underlying stack and intellectual property
legal: which jurisdiction governs access and compliance
Thursday, March 26, 2026
Robot dogs are protecting data centers. Operators are seeing payoffs. - Lloyd Lee, Business Insider
AI is driving a historic buildout of massive data centers spanning dozens of acres. Boston Dynamics and Ghost Robotics see an opportunity to provide mobile security with robot dogs. Boston Dynamics said customers can see a payoff within 2 years. It's not just humans. The robots are coming for dogs, too
— and they could enter the red-hot space of securing AI data centers. Robot dogs have already been deployed by first responders, the military, and in other industrial sectors such as oil and mining. But the rapid pace of data center buildouts is creating another niche for the mechanical quadrupeds.
Why universities should anchor state quantum computing initiatives - Nate Gemelke, University Business
The universities that helped shape the AI revolution did not wait for the technology to mature. They built programs, recruited faculty, and secured funding while the field was still taking shape. Quantum computing is entering a similar inflection point. While the underlying physics is unfamiliar to many, the institutional question is one universities have faced before: how to position themselves, and their regions, during the early stages of a major technological transition. For much of the past decade, quantum computing has been discussed primarily as a long-term research prospect. That framing is now changing. Early systems are operating today, federal agencies are funding large-scale programs, and private companies are beginning to integrate quantum resources into broader high-performance computing environments.
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Women in tech and AI in Europe: Can the region close its gender gap? - Anna Lieser, et al; McKinsey
he tech industry around the world is in transition, with AI reshaping both organizations and the very nature of tech work. For Europe, the implications extend beyond productivity and innovation and touch economic growth, competitiveness, and inclusion. McKinsey analysis estimates that sovereign AI could add more than €480 billion in annual value to Europe’s economy by 2030. Yet the region continues to trail the United States, which is defining the pace and scale of global AI innovation.1
Online learning gains momentum as students reconsider studying abroad - JB, The St.Kitts/Nevis Observer
A regional educator is of the opinion that online learning is becoming an increasingly attractive option for Caribbean students, as uncertainty surrounding overseas study — particularly in the United States — leads more people to pursue higher education from home. According Wendy Williams, the Deputy Dean of Academic Affairs at Academix School of Learning, an educational institution here, many students are now reconsidering traditional study-abroad routes due to concerns about student visa approvals and the risk of investing time and money without certainty of being able to travel. “We have always had our eyes on the United States as a pathway to higher education,” Williams said. “But the reality now is that students are worried about whether their visas will be approved and whether they will be able to travel after investing so much in the process.”
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
When Harvey Met Elle: How AI Tutors Transformed Learning in My Law Class - Wayland Chau, Faculty Focus
This past fall, I taught a business law course to all second year students in the Bachelor of Commerce program at Dalhousie University. I had 343 students across three sections of 109 to 120 students in each. The course covers foundational areas of Canadian business law and requires students to apply that law with a structured legal analysis. Even with active learning approaches in class and clear instructional structures, it was apparent that students needed individualized, on-demand support that traditional office hours and T.A. tutorials could not fully satisfy. To address this, I created and deployed two custom AI tutors, Harvey and Elle, built as custom GPTs in the ChatGPT platform. The aim was to offer scalable, digital learning companions that aligned directly with course learning outcomes and pedagogical needs. What emerged was an effective model for AI-supported instruction that helped students better understand legal concepts, improve their analytical skills, and engage more confidently with course material.
Virginia Tech Libraries embrace AI - Lindsey Kudriavetz, Collegiate Times
Virginia Tech Libraries are working to be an artificial intelligence global model for higher education despite research and ethical concerns. “The old tag line for Virginia Tech is to invent the future,” said Tyler Walters, dean of University Libraries. “I think that attitude is still very imbued in the university … so we are looking at how we take this technology and incorporate it.” Virginia Tech Libraries’ digital archives have been implementing AI for approximately five years, according to Walters. The primary use of AI in the physical library is as a consolidation and organization tool. Generative AI is also being used as a tool for summarization of articles and papers. “(AI) saves us months and months of time just sitting there and manually reading and typing,” Walters said.
Monday, March 23, 2026
Why learning AI skills is no longer optional for job seekers | Opinion - Kimberly K. Estep, the Leaf
Proficiency in AI is no longer just an optional skill for job seekers. My organization recently surveyed over 3,000 employers around the country and found that more than half are testing new applicants for AI skills, and 25% are prioritizing candidates with some measure of AI fluency. And as time goes on, this seems to be only the beginning of the trend. AI has made a significant impact on the business world and has cooled the job market for many looking to find careers. It is a time of uncertainty.
OpenAI rolls out new ChatGPT workspace analytics for Enterprise and Edu users - ETIH
OpenAI has introduced an upgraded Workspace Analytics experience for ChatGPT Enterprise and ChatGPT Edu, giving administrators and organizational leaders new tools to track adoption, engagement, and usage trends across their AI deployments. The company announced the update on LinkedIn, saying the new analytics dashboard is designed to help organizations understand how ChatGPT usage is developing across teams and identify where additional training or enablement may be needed. The rollout reflects growing demand from schools, universities, and enterprises for clearer data on how generative AI tools are being used inside organizations.
Sunday, March 22, 2026
AI has exposed age-old problems with university coursework - Nafisa Baba-Ahmed, the Guardian
The frustration many academics are expressing about artificial intelligence and critical thinking is understandable (‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI, 10 March). But from my experience working with students on academic writing, blaming AI risks masking a problem that universities have lived with for years. In my work with students, I have long seen the ways in which thinking can be outsourced when assessment allows it: essay mills, shared past papers, model essays passed between cohorts, or heavy reliance on tutors and friends to structure assignments. Artificial intelligence did not invent this behaviour. It has simply industrialised a shortcut that already existed.
Supersonic Tsunami: The Next 6 Months: What's Coming, What It Means, and What You Need to Do - Peter H. Diamandis, Metatrends
If You’re an Entrepreneur: Stop designing for 2024 scarcity. Design for 2030 Abundance. Assume intelligence is free, energy is unlimited, robotic labor costs pennies. What becomes possible that’s impossible today? Your competitive advantage isn’t better execution, it’s imagination about tomorrow’s possibilities. If You’re an Investor: Own the infrastructure. AI chips, fusion energy, launch vehicles, robotics platforms. When the industry deploys a trillion dollars in AI infrastructure, that’s where generational wealth gets made. Jensen Huang just put $40 billion into Anthropic and OpenAI – follow the smart money. Position yourself before the inflection point becomes obvious to everyone. If You’re a CEO: Your industry is about to be stress-tested. Ask: What would our business look like if compute was free, energy unlimited, robotic labor scalable? If You’re a Student: Don’t compete with AI – collaborate with it.
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