AI has now become a part of everyday life on college campuses and I have embraced it in all my classes at every level. I now encourage my students to use NotebookLM when the text becomes dense or incomprehensible. I encourage the students to upload assigned text to create timelines, flashcards for studying and video summaries of their reading. Students can now process text faster, research more effectively and edit their work without having to go to the writing center. These gains are substantial and any serious conversation about AI in education must begin with acknowledging the benefits of AI.
Saturday, September 19, 2026
Business, government and education leaders try to reinvent college from scratch - Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report
Called the Greenway Institute — “green” as in new — the project will adopt instructional methods proven to work well, such as real-world training under the supervision of faculty mentors, while stripping away the frills, distractions and layers of bureaucracy that make college in America so expensive. “It’s not fancy. It’s a place where you do have a meaningful relationship with your faculty members. But you also take out your own trash,” said Mark Somerville, the founding president. Even more unexpected than the location of this startup is the timing. Other colleges and universities are closing or at risk of closing. In Vermont alone, seven private colleges have shut down in the last 10 years. But Somerville, the former provost of Olin College of Engineering, said this “moment of mass extinction” makes it clearer than ever that “we need new models in higher ed.”
Friday, September 18, 2026
A new Anthropic model seeks to test how AI could impact the U.S. economy. - Scott Horsley, NPR
Will artificial intelligence light a fire under the U.S. economy in the coming years? That's been a big question in the field of economics, and now Anthropic — the company behind the popular Claude AI assistant — is taking a stab at helping people find their own answers. The company has created an interactive tool that lets users test their assumptions about how productive — or disruptive — the AI boom might be. In one scenario, artificial intelligence provides a gentle boost to the economy, lifting growth rates with little effect on workers. At the other extreme, GDP soars, but so does unemployment, with nearly 14% of workers losing their jobs to AI and less than half of them finding new ones.
OpenAI Says It Has Cracked One of Math’s ‘Millennium Problems’ - Cade Metz, NY Times
OpenAI said on Tuesday that its newest artificial intelligence technology had solved one of the “Millennium Problems,” a collection of important unanswered math questions meant to push the world’s leading mathematicians to new heights. The announcement is another clear sign that A.I. is fundamentally changing the upper reaches of mathematics, which have long been viewed as a pinnacle of human achievement. The change has excited some mathematicians, while stirring concern among others. Over the past year, A.I. systems successfully solved a wide range of problems that have bedeviled mathematicians for decades. But these problems were not as complex, nor as closely watched, as the one that OpenAI’s technology has solved over the past several days. The Millennium Problems are among the most heavily researched in the field.
Thursday, September 17, 2026
Can AI lead us from industrial to ecological intelligence? - James Yoonil Auh, University World News
AI is not inherently ecological. It is a civilisational amplifier. Attached to an extractive economy, it will accelerate extraction. Directed towards regeneration, it could help societies understand and coordinate environmental relationships previously too complex or fast-moving for human institutions to manage. Its distinctive ecological promise is not that AI is ‘green’. It is that AI can shorten the distance between an ecological signal and an institutional response. The decisive question, therefore, is not whether AI is environmentally good or bad. It is whether we can change the purpose for which intelligence itself is organised.
OpenAI is throwing everything into building a fully automated researcher - Technology Review
But OpenAI is also training its systems to work by themselves for longer by feeding them specific samples of complex tasks, such as hard puzzles taken from math and coding contests, which force the models to learn how to do things like keep track of very large chunks of text and split problems up into (and then manage) multiple subtasks. The aim isn’t to build models that just win math competitions. “That lets you prove that the technology works before you connect it to the real world,” says Pachocki. “If we really wanted to, we could build an amazing automated mathematician. We have all the tools, and I think it would be relatively easy. But it’s not something we’re going to prioritize now because, you know, at the point where you believe you can do it, there’s much more urgent things to do.” “We are much more focused now on research that’s relevant in the real world,” he adds.
Wednesday, September 16, 2026
How AI policies are reshaping college learning and sowing confusion - Leah Duffy, Philadelphia Tribune
In one college classroom, using ChatGPT might be considered as cheating. In another, it can be part of the assignment. For students navigating artificial intelligence in college, the difference can come down to a single syllabus — and who wrote it. At some area universities, students are expected to follow rules established by their individual instructors when using generative AI tools such as ChatGPT. But the instructors differ in how they frame those rules, leaving many students confused. For some, the decision over which instructors will allow AI and those who will not has created confusion over where the line falls between AI as an academic tool or as a violation of academic integrity.
The human skills at a premium in the age of AI - McKinsey
As AI takes rote tasks off employees’ plates, the work that remains can require greater judgment and critical thinking—and be more cognitively demanding. “The rise of AI doesn’t mean we all suddenly delegate our responsibilities for quality control and critical thinking,” says Kate Smaje, McKinsey senior partner and global leader of technology and AI, in a recent episode of McKinsey Talks Talent. “There’s a premium on those capabilities now.” Smaje, coauthor of the recent book Rewired, joins Senior Partner Brooke Weddle and Partner Bryan Hancock to explore what it takes to manage a workforce of people and AI agents—from reimagining roles and workflows to managing the performance of digital workers.
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
AI transformations run on trust - Aaron De Smet, Bonnie Dowling, Holly Price, and Ignacio Fantaguzzi; McKinsey
rganizations have spent the past several years racing to deploy AI. Understandably, much of this activity has focused on technology, governance, and new operating models. Yet a crucial ingredient of successful AI transformation has received far less attention: trust. If leaders truly want to transform their organizations with tech and AI, they will need their people to make it happen. Unlike many previous technology transformations, AI can’t be deployed solely from the top down. Real value emerges as employees experiment with new ways of working, identify high-value use cases, redesign workflows, and continually refine how AI is applied in their daily work.
How CEOs are leading through the AI shift - McKinsey
Across industries, AI is changing how companies operate, make decisions, and grow. Through a series of podcast conversations, Senior Partner Eric Kutcher talks with CEOs about how they are navigating that shift and connecting AI to the broader priorities of their businesses. At Invesco, President and CEO Andrew Schlossberg is taking both a top-down and bottom-up approach to AI. The company has put the tools in every employee’s hands, allowing ideas to emerge from people rethinking how they work. The leadership challenge is finding the right balance. “You have to resist the urge to make it completely top down and controlled,” Schlossberg says, “and also resist the urge to make it completely bottom up and entrepreneurial.”
Monday, September 14, 2026
The ‘AI and Future of Work’ Series — How the University is preparing students for what is next - Lidia Zur Muhlen. Cavalier Daily
Questions about the relationship between AI, higher education and the job market have become increasingly relevant to students preparing to enter the workforce. But the effects of AI vary considerably across professions, making it difficult to draw conclusions about what the technology will mean for students pursuing different fields. At the School of Law, professors are making an effort to incorporate AI into legal education while emphasizing that students still need to develop traditional skills such as legal reasoning, judgement and communication. Similarly, at U.Va. Health, AI is already being used to assist with clinical documentation, hospital operations and research, while the system also highlights the importance of human oversight, safety, privacy and ethics as it expands the technology’s use.
University of Glasgow’s new teaching toolkit asks educators when to use AI technology - EdTech Innovation Hub
The University of Glasgow’s School of Education has released a free toolkit designed to help teachers make more deliberate decisions about digital and AI technology, including whether it belongs in a lesson at all. The 92-page Toolkit for Reflecting on the Use of Digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies in Learning and Teaching was developed by Dr Mark Peart, Dr Gabriella Rodolico and Leon Robinson, with input from educators, teacher educators, students, education leaders, policymakers and partner organizations. Rather than offering a list of recommended AI tools or prescribing how teachers should use them, the resource takes educators through a structured process of examining their own assumptions, analyzing teaching scenarios, designing technology-supported lessons and eventually carrying out practitioner enquiry into their own practice.
Sunday, September 13, 2026
Why I Let My Students Use AI - Rod Naquin, the Free Press
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last four years, you’ve encountered the debate about AI in education. You’ve seen headlines from researchers who claim that using a chatbot is akin to outsourcing your mind to a machine. You’ve heard warnings about cognitive off-loading, cognitive debt, cognitive decline. A few weeks back, I read a commentator describe AI use as “cognitive cancer.” You’ve heard the hand-wringing about how students no longer do their homework (they used to?), no longer write their own essays (they were good at this?), and no longer read their assigned texts (haven’t they been using SparkNotes for years?). If I were living under that rock, and I peered out at this discourse, I might just climb back down and take my chances with the grubs. The problem is, the naysayers have it all wrong. I am a high school English teacher in Louisiana, and I’m here to tell you that while the concerns about the effects of AI on students’ learning are real, to a point, they are also dramatically overstated.
UC Irvine to Establish National Research Center on AI in Writing - GovTech
The Institute of Education Sciences is giving the University of California, Irvine $10 million to conduct research on AI writing tools and test the efficacy of the school’s own PapyrusAI. With $10 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, UCI will establish a national hub for information on available AI tools, frameworks for assessing their effectiveness and a research base that measures cause and effect, according to the award announcement. The National Center for Writing Research to Improve Teaching Effectiveness With Generative AI (WRITE AI Center) will conduct research through a survey and targeted pilots. A nationwide survey will pull together information on the 100 most commonly used AI writing tools in higher education, as well as the tools’ instructional applications, costs and infrastructure, and training needs. The center's website will then publish this information, with updates at least once a year.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)