Their approaches may differ but their motivations are the same: Employers are, at breakneck speed, increasingly asking for graduates who know how to effectively use AI. It’s called AI fluency, said Ray Schroeder, a senior fellow at the online and professional education association UPCEA, and it “can be a decisive factor between getting a job and not, especially at entry level,” he said. “Corporate HR departments who do the hiring are requiring or evaluating how much experience and ability applicants have in [AI], and it’s very important to those corporations because AI is becoming very important in their day-to-day operations,” he added. As of March, more than a third—35 percent—of entry-level jobs require AI skills, up from 13 percent six months prior, according to the most recent job outlook survey from the National Association of
Friday, August 28, 2026
Organizational AI Adoption Jumps Six Points - Andy Kemp, Gallup
Reported organizational adoption of AI grew sharply in Q2 2026. Forty-seven percent of U.S. employees now say their organization has integrated AI tools to improve productivity, efficiency or quality, up from 41% in the last quarter. One in five employees remain unsure as to whether their organization has integrated AI tools, unchanged from prior quarters. AI users most often use AI for writing, research and problem-solving. Meanwhile, coding and automation users report the largest productivity gains.
Thursday, August 27, 2026
UC introduces AI Buddy Program for staff amid learning, privacy concerns - Andrew Ramiro Diaz, Daily Bruin
The UC launched a new initiative in July that encourages staff to learn more about how to use artificial intelligence tools. The AI Buddy Program pairs UC Office of the President staff at differing levels of AI expertise to meet once or twice a week and learn from each other. The program sign-up form allows participants to select any AI tool they are interested in learning, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. However, UCLA professors said they are concerned about the UC’s use of AI, including its impacts on teaching and learning, privacy and data protection. The University advised staff on its website to speak to their supervisors before participating in the program. Tobias Higbie, the chair of external relations for the Council of UC Faculty Associations, said he believes the UC should be cautious when implementing AI tools because they can risk students’ data security.
Worker Anxiety Over AI Is Growing, and Employers Aren't Preparing Employees for What's Next, New Survey Finds - JFF.org
In a marked shift from a year ago, workers are now more likely to say AI is a net-negative than a net-positive when it comes to finding jobs, building wealth, and securing their quality of life, according to a new national survey released today by national nonprofit Jobs for the Future (JFF). The survey, conducted by AudienceNet in late 2025, also found that early-career workers are more likely to feel AI’s impact on their jobs compared to those with more experience. In addition, just over one-third of workers say employers are providing the training, guidance, or opportunities they need to use AI in their jobs, a drop of almost 10 percentage points. The new research builds on a 2024 JFF survey, which found that a plurality of workers—defined as anyone employed—said AI did more good than harm across society. In the new survey, the sentiment flipped; more workers now say AI does more harm than good. Optimism about AI’s impact on workers also fell by 10 percentage points. In the 2024 survey, nearly half of respondents felt somewhat or very optimistic about the impact of AI on workers. In the new survey, only about one-third of workers (39%) say they feel optimistic.
Wednesday, August 26, 2026
The latest issue of ESS Journal explores the use of generative AI in teaching and research - UNESCO
Volume 37, Issue 2, of the UNESCO IESALC journal Higher Education and Society (ESS) is now available to the academic and research community. The issue’s thematic dossier contains sixteen research articles; a bilingual article in the section dedicated to the academic community of indigenous peoples in Latin America and the Caribbean; and, in the general section, seven articles addressing various issues in higher education, its stakeholders, and institutions. The thematic section entitled “Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) in Teaching and Research: Best Practices, Challenges, and Future Prospects” examines the integration of GAI from multiple perspectives. In the words of Borhene Chakroun, director of UNESCO IESALC: Drawing on evidence and experiences from across Latin America and the Caribbean, the authors explore the pedagogical potential of artificial intelligence, its impact on student learning and the professional development of faculty, emerging institutional policies, as well as the ethical and governance challenges associated with its adoption. Taken together, these studies offer a nuanced understanding of how higher education institutions are responding to the opportunities and risks posed by this technology.
Anthropic sees AI risks rising, no plan to release stronger "Model 2" - Madison Mills, Axios
Anthropic does not plan to release an internal model they're calling "Model 2" that appears to be more powerful than top-of-the-line Mythos, but the company is not slowing development broadly, according to its latest risk report. Why it matters: Anthropic says the risks of the most serious harms from its models are still low — but not as low as the last time it issued a report.The big picture: Anthropic raised its broad estimate of the risk of misalignment in high-stakes situations to "low" from "very low," citing recent cybersecurity incidents. The company also said it is seeing signs of acceleration in models' ability to conduct automated research and development — which could advance technical progress but also be misused in the wrong hands.
"As part of our standard R&D process, we internally train and evaluate many different exploratory versions of models that we don't intend to release. Model 2 is one of these," the company told Axios.
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
AI agents are sitting through students’ online courses, and colleges are struggling to stop them - Varun Mirchandani, Digital Trends
AI cheating has already gone from asking a chatbot to write an essay to using tools that can make that AI-written work look human. We’ve previously talked about AI tools designed to help students cheat and the growing problem of AI detectors struggling to keep up, as well as how commonly students are already using AI for homework. Now the technology isn’t merely helpiing students do the work. In some cases, it can effectively be the student. Just tell the AI to take the class. According to a New York Times report by Dana Goldstein and Alan Blinder, students can take things a step further and hand an entire online course over to an AI agent. As per the report, AI agents can be given simple instructions such as “log in and complete my quiz” and then operate inside online learning platforms. They can watch prerecorded lectures, take tests, write papers, and even participate in discussions with classmates.
Opinion: Why Universities Need AI Accountability, Not Bans - Marcel Folaron, GovTech
The question facing colleges is no longer whether students will use artificial intelligence, but whether they will use it responsibly. A 2025 EDUCAUSE survey found that 42 percent of students were already turning to generative AI at least weekly. As these tools become more common in both education and the workplace, students need to know how to evaluate the answers they receive. Universities initially focused on defining acceptable use and detecting AI-generated work. The next challenge is accuracy. Detection may show that AI contributed to an assignment, but it cannot determine whether the student understood the material or verified the evidence. That matters because AI can hallucinate and invent a journal article, distort a study’s findings, or cite a source that doesn’t exist, all with convincing authority. With that in mind, higher-education institutions should now focus on building accountability into AI use.
Monday, August 24, 2026
Using AI to create the practice opportunities online students need - Kathy Miller Perkins, Times Higher Education
For disciplines that depend on interpersonal skills such as communication, leadership, negotiation and mediation, AI can provide elusive experiential learning, particularly in asynchronous environments. For years, I faced a challenge familiar to many instructors who teach asynchronously online. My students were learning the concepts, reflecting deeply and developing new perspectives, but they weren’t getting enough opportunities to practise the interpersonal skills they would need in their careers. As a psychologist by training who teaches leadership and conflict resolution in sustainability-focused programmes, much of my work centres on helping students navigate complex environmental challenges.
The AI Literacy Test Higher Education Must Not Fail” Op-Ed Featured in Washington Examiner - Cornerstone University
“To be literate in AI is not merely to know how to type a good prompt,” Dr. Moreno-Riaño said. “It is to know when to trust an output, when to verify it, and when to reject it . . . [and] to understand the moral ramifications of the choices we make with these systems and to act in harmony with what is genuinely good for us as human beings.” The op-ed follows President Moreno-Riaño’s recent Fox News interview, which featured Cornerstone’s commitment to preparing graduates with the knowledge, wisdom, judgment and character to remain irreplaceable in an AI-driven world. President Moreno-Riaño points to two recent national polls showing that Americans see AI as both a major opportunity and a technology that requires safeguards. At the same time, according to Pew Research Center, approximately 70% of U.S. adults are already using various AI tools. Students, workers, patients and voters are interacting with AI every day, yet few have been formally taught how to evaluate what it tells them.
Sunday, August 23, 2026
AI in Nebraska education: Higher ed looks to human-centric approach to integrate artificial intelligence - Jolie Peal, Nebraska Public Media News
“The University of Nebraska is vast,” Adrian Wisnicki, co-director of the AI institute and a professor in English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said. “There are 50,000 students, 10,000 faculty and staff, and so, as much as possible, [the executive vice president and provost] wanted to, in the leadership of the institute, represent the diversity of that and create a leadership that could engage with and speak to and support that diversity.” About 90% of students in higher education use AI occasionally in class, according to a survey from Instructure, the company that launched the education platform Canvas, and about 60% of college educators say they use AI. With this rise of AI use in higher education, the NU system launched a task force to look at how the university should respond to the new technology. One part of that task force’s recommendations was to launch the AI Institute.
Here’s how to show students what responsible AI use looks like - Andrew Firr and Alex Fenton, Times Higher Education
To support, we ask students to paste part of the assignment brief into a GenAI tool and request a plain English explanation, then to compare it with the official brief. They must consider what the tool clarifies and which requirements need to be checked against the marking criteria. This approach positions AI use as part of assessment literacy while highlighting the authority of the official brief and marking criteria.
Spotlight guide: Critical thinking in teaching and research
Spotlight guide: AI and assessment in higher education
Can academics tell the difference between AI-generated and human-authored content?
Saturday, August 22, 2026
AI and Enrollment Pressures Are Reshaping Higher Education - Amy McIntosh, EdTech
Higher education is at an inflection point. The 2026 EDUCAUSE Horizon Report identifies the forces most likely to reshape teaching and learning over the next decade — and the picture is complex. As artificial intelligence continues to evolve, it’s changing relationships across campus. Institutions also continue to face mounting enrollment challenges. And emerging risks related to cybersecurity, policy reform and sustainability are compounding institutional strain. According to the report, AI is redefining instructional design and how faculty teach. As institutions continue to shape their policies around AI use, it’s impacting student-teacher relationships in the classroom. The report notes that AI is also changing how people decide what information to trust, leading some faculty to shift the way they monitor and assess student work.
AI fluency: The next foundation of US economic competitiveness - Alexis Krivkovich, Brooke Weddle, and Maurice Obeid; McKinsey
AI is advancing faster than organizations can adapt. Reaching the next productivity frontier will depend on workers across the economy acquiring the needed habits and skills. Today, AI fluency is rapidly becoming the common language of work and a prerequisite for the next chapter of competitiveness. Workers’ practical ability to use and manage AI in their day-to-day, integrate it into workflows, evaluate its outputs critically, and, increasingly, create with it is transforming how work gets done. Unlike many earlier technological capabilities (such as cloud computing) that were relevant mainly to specialists, the demand for AI fluency is spreading across all types of workers, industries, and wage groups. What began as a technical skill is becoming a must-have capability for knowledge workers, blue-collar workers, managers, students, and everyday citizens.
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