OpenAI Says It Will Not Release Newest A.I. Model Over Safety Concerns - Sheera Frenkel, NY Times

OpenAI said on Monday that it would not release its newest artificial intelligence model because of security concerns raised by its researchers, in the company’s latest move to slow down the pace of its technology. During the testing phase for the new model, known as GPT-6.1 Astra, it showed high levels of what the company saw as deception, or a willingness to mislead users about its actions. The model was also willing to go beyond the original scope of what it was asked to do, without checking back for directions or instructions. “For anything regarding safety and alignment, there’s a trade-off,” said Saachi Jain, the head of safety systems at OpenAI. The new model “didn’t quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it’s done.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/28/technology/openai-astra-safety.html?unlocked_article_code=1.E1E.FTjG.aTIQEjFG3csX&smid=nytcore-android-share 

How should AI be regulated? - Claire Goudreau, Johns Hopkins University

Gillian Hadfield | Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of AI Alignment and Governance said "The key thing that happened was humans stopped writing all of the rules about how the computer was supposed to behave and figured out a method called machine learning where the machine, the computer, would write its own program. People will talk about guardrails, safety. We don't know what those should be. Technology moves faster than governments do. That's the pacing problem and the reason to slow down. ... We absolutely need our research universities to be taking this on as a mission because this is where the brain trust needs to be for how we figure out how to make this go well."

#higheredhttps://hub.jhu.edu/2026/09/17/next-conversations-governing-ai/

Scientists just made quantum computer operations 1,000 times faster - Science Daily

The new method has the potential to accelerate quantum computations by a factor of a thousand, bringing fault-tolerant quantum computers a significant step closer. Quantum computers remain highly vulnerable to errors and tiny disturbances from their surroundings. The longer a quantum operation takes to complete, the more time there is for those errors to build up. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have now developed a method that can perform a broad range of advanced quantum operations more than a thousand times faster. The advance tackles a major obstacle in the field and could help move quantum computing closer to becoming fault-tolerant.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/09/260911003845.htm?hl=en-US 

Quantum Computing Inc. to Showcase Quantum Secure Communications Beyond Quantum Key Distribution at ECOC 2026 - PR Newswire

As organizations prepare for the post-quantum era, the challenge is no longer understanding the value of quantum-secure communications, but overcoming the barriers that have limited deployment. Traditional QKD systems often face challenges associated with scalability, operational complexity, infrastructure cost, and dependence on classical authentication methods. As a result, many quantum communication technologies have remained confined to specialized research environments. QCi's entanglement-based quantum security platform is designed to overcome these limitations by bringing two critical elements of secure communications - encryption and authentication - together on a single platform. For the first time, QCi will showcase an integrated quantum security solution that combines quantum key distribution (QKD) with hardware-based Quantum Identity Authentication (QIA), demonstrating how quantum technologies can address both the secure exchange of encryption keys and the fundamental need to establish trusted identities between communicating parties.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/quantum-computing-inc-to-showcase-quantum-secure-communications-beyond-quantum-key-distribution-at-ecoc-2026-302882974.html?hl=en-US

UW-Madison dean discusses AI's rapid rise, potential regulations - Lucas Kihmm, WKOW

U.S. lawmakers in Washington, D.C., are debating whether and how to regulate artificial intelligence. Some AI experts are sounding the alarm about how quickly the technology is advancing, calling for more guardrails. UW-Madison's new College of Computing and Artificial Intelligence says its mission is to create powerful technology that best serves the people who use it. At Morgridge Hall, nearly every table is filled with people working on computers or phones. It's fitting for a building dedicated to innovation. Remi Arpaci-Dusseau is the founding dean of the college. He says the rise of AI is one reason the college was created.

https://www.facebook.com/27news/posts/as-lawmakers-debate-ai-regulations-uw-madisons-new-computing-college-says-its-mi/1532813688878382/

At Georgetown University dialogue, future of artificial intelligence seen as ‘something we have to tackle together’ - Mark Zimmermann, Catholic Standard

In a week when tech leaders said the artificial intelligence industry needs to slow its race to an uncertain future that some warn may be apocalyptic, Georgetown University hosted a Sept. 9 discussion on “AI, Catholic Social Teaching, and Pope Leo’s Invitation to Dialogue with the World.” The dialogue, sponsored by Georgetown’s Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, drew upon Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV’s May 2026 encyclical letter that was subtitled “On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” Speakers emphasized that the pope’s letter offered a clarion call for moral guidance and reflection among all stakeholders, including community members, on the best way to move forward with AI.

https://www.cathstan.org/local/at-georgetown-university-dialogue-future-of-artificial-intelligence-seen-as-something-we-have-to-tackle-together

Graduating in AI Era Is Like ‘Large Recession’ For Starting Pay - Michael Sasso, Bloomberg

The rise of artificial intelligence has coincided with a significant decline in both initial earnings and employment among graduates with the most-exposed college majors, a worrisome trend that could shape career outcomes for years afterward, according to a new study. Economists at the US Census Bureau examined data covering roughly 29% of US bachelor’s degrees issued between 2016 and 2024, finding notable effects on new graduates after ChatGPT’s debut in November 2022.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-14/ai-era-coincides-with-weak-pay-and-employment-for-college-graduates

An M.I.T. Report Warns A.I. Is Causing ‘Cognitive Surrender.’ Universities Are in a Bind. - Mark ArsenaultDana GoldsteinAlan Blinder and Sarah Mervosh; NY Times

As A.I. leaders warn about the dangers of their own technology, the dissonance between the optimism of university leaders and the fears of many students and professors may increase. Professors and students are often in a bind about what they should do: Use more A.I. to stay relevant, or dial back to preserve learning and thinking? While some politicians and A.I. leaders are warning about possible doomsday scenarios for humanity as A.I. models advance, many campus leaders are focused on the existential threat the technology poses to universities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/us/universities-ai-warnings-enthusiasm.html?unlocked_article_code=1.B1E.7h_L.39mVnzxQwvzd&smid=url-share

AI Agents Are Quietly Finishing Entire College Degrees - Julia McCoy, YouTube

Julia McCoy highlights how students are handing credentials to autonomous AI agents to complete entire courses—from watching lectures to submitting quizzes, writing papers, and replying to discussion threads [00:08]. She argues that if a machine can finish an entire course load, higher education has largely been measuring mechanical "output" [00:21], which machines now produce effortlessly. Because AI can draft text but cannot exercise true critical judgment [00:28]—something rarely formalized on a syllabus—she contends that the real challenge facing universities isn't whether institutions can stop AI tools, but reconsidering what students are actually there to learn [00:35]. [summary provided in part by Gemini Flash]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdFggS28r2M

We're not about to awaken an evil digital god — AI is far more likely to end in a great disappointment - Andrew Rogoyski, Live Science

Artificial intelligence (AI) terrifies us partly because it is new and partly because it is disturbingly familiar. We have invented machines that converse, flatter, argue and improvise with uncanny fluency. Confronted by this synthetic reflection, we behave like early humans seeing a mirror for the first time: We project consciousness behind the glass, then populate it with our expected behaviors, emotions, hopes and nightmares. In other words, we scare ourselves. Today's frontier models are impressively good at writing, coding and math. Yet they still fail at ingredients of useful artificial general intelligence (AGI), a system that matches or surpasses human capabilities such as consistent reasoning, long-term planning, factual consistency and reliable performance outside their "experience" (the data they were trained on). 

https://www.livescience.com/archaeology/human-evolution/the-real-ai-danger-is-not-superintelligence-it-is-premature-trust-opinion

The state of open source AI.- Mozilla

Te reo Māori has no commercial market to speak of. A broadcaster in the far north of New Zealand has been building speech models for it anyway, under a licence written so the recordings stay with the communities that gave them. Farmers in East Africa point a phone at a cassava leaf and get a diagnosis back with no signal at all, from a model small enough to sit on the handset. In Switzerland, a public consortium trained a national model on public supercomputers and released all of it: weights, data, training code. None of them asked permission, and none of them could have rented this. They own it, and that is the whole idea. Read what follows as a map: where open AI is winning, where some numbers surprised even us, and where it is exposed. A case that hides its weak points is an advertisement. In the six weeks since our first draft, a major US lab returned to open weights and Washington debated a ban and declined it. The map moved while we drew it. We have been here before. Mozilla exists because one company tried to own the front door to the web, and an open community made sure it never could. 

https://stateofopensource.ai/

From Search to Strategy: What Student AI Use Means for the Future of Academic Libraries - EDUCAUSE

While many academic librarians worry that artificial intelligence (AI) may reduce student engagement, research suggests a different story: students are integrating AI into their research workflows while continuing to rely on libraries for trusted sources and deeper scholarly inquiry. This interview features: Amy Deschenes, Interim Director of UX and Discovery, Harvard University and Meg McMahon, User Experience Researcher, Harvard University.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5TFf44BekM

Can AI Help Colleges Reach Struggling Students Earlier? - Joshua Bay, Inside Higher Ed

Austin Community College is using artificial intelligence and real-time data to identify students who need help and connect them with support before problems escalate. Students often leave clues that they’re struggling before they stop attending classes or exit college altogether. But those warning signs can be scattered across different offices and data systems, making it difficult for college staff to see the full picture or intervene before a student reaches a crisis point. As colleges increasingly experiment with artificial intelligence, some are exploring whether the technology can help connect those dots and make student support more proactive. Austin Community College, for one, is testing a new initiative designed to identify student needs earlier.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/student-success/academic-life/2026/09/11/can-ai-help-colleges-reach-struggling-students

Classroom practices that encourage intelligent AI behaviours - Nada Kakabadse, University World News

Whatever assessment policies say, the unsupervised take-home essay as a test of unaided student writing is gone. The institutional response has been retreating. The universities of Melbourne and Toronto are phasing out unsupervised take-home essays. The University of Cape Town’s AI working group wants 40% of assessments invigilated by 2027. At Durham University, a professor of philosophy stood down as chair of his board of examiners, citing a marking crisis. But retreat is only one of three institutional responses now visible worldwide, and comparing them is instructive. The second response, arguably the least defensible, is detection-led enforcement: running submissions through AI detectors and prosecuting the flagged. This approach is quietly collapsing.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260825091929755