Monday, February 09, 2026

Evaluating AI-powered learning assistants in engineering higher education with implications for student engagement, ethics, and policy - Ramteja Sajja, et al, Nature

As generative AI becomes increasingly integrated into higher education, understanding how students engage with these technologies is essential for responsible adoption. This study evaluates the Educational AI Hub, an AI-powered learning framework, implemented in undergraduate civil and environmental engineering courses at a large R1 public university. Using a mixed-methods design combining pre- and post-surveys, system usage logs, and qualitative analysis of students’ AI interactions, the research examines perceptions of trust, ethics, usability, and learning outcomes. Findings show that students valued the AI assistant for its accessibility and comfort, with nearly half reporting greater ease using it than seeking help from instructors or teaching assistants. The tool was most helpful for completing homework and understanding concepts, though views on its instructional quality were mixed. 

How custom AI bots are changing the classroom:Faculty share cutting-edge AI tools enhancing student learning at the business school. - Molly Loonam, WP Carey ASU

One example is NotebookLM, an application that converts course materials into podcast-style audio, allowing students to learn while exercising, commuting, or completing other everyday tasks. NotebookLM was one of four AI tools highlighted during the W. P. Carey School of Business's recent Coffee, Tea, and ChatGPT event. This series brings faculty and staff together to share insights on the impact of generative AI on teaching, learning, and research. "We are finding ourselves in a fascinating inflection point for our school as we see the depth of work that our faculty are doing in utilizing AI Tools thoughtfully, while simultaneously learning every day as these tools continue to evolve and we make sense of them," said Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning Dan Gruber, who launched the series nearly three years ago with W. P. Carey faculty teaching leads. Gruber also serves as a College Catalyst for Practice Principled Innovation and co-founded the Teaching and Learning Leaders Alliance, a global consortium that connects business school leaders.

Sunday, February 08, 2026

Artificial Intelligence panel demonstrates breadth of teaching, research, and industry collaboration across the Universities of Wisconsin - University of Wisconsin

The Universities of Wisconsin underscored their growing leadership in artificial intelligence (AI) innovation today as representatives from all 13 public universities convened for a panel discussion before the Board of Regents. The conversation highlighted the universities’ shared commitment to shaping the future of AI in education, research, and workforce development. “As AI reshapes our world, the Universities of Wisconsin are not standing on the sidelines. We are helping define what responsible and innovative use of AI looks like for higher education,” said Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman. “This panel today demonstrated how the Universities of Wisconsin are embracing AI in strategic, collaborative, and responsible ways.”

https://www.wisconsin.edu/news/archive/artificial-intelligence-panel-demonstrates-breadth-of-teaching-research-and-industry-collaboration-across-the-universities-of-wisconsin/

What generative AI reveals about assessment reform in higher educatio - Higher Education Policy Institute

Assessment is fast becoming a central focus in the higher education debate as we move into an era of generative AI, but too often institutions are responding through compliance and risk-management actions rather than fundamental pedagogical reform. Tightened regulations, expanded scrutiny and mechanistic controls may reassure quality assurance systems, but they run the risk of diluting genuine transformation and placing unsustainable pressure on staff and students alike. Assessment is not simply a procedural hurdle; it is a pivotal experience that shapes what students learn, how they engage with content and what universities and employers prioritise as valuable knowledge and skills. If reform is driven through compliance, we will miss opportunities to align assessments with the learning needs of a graduate entering the gen-AI era.


Saturday, February 07, 2026

An Agent Revolt: Moltbook Is Not A Good Idea - Amir Husain, Forbes

Matt Schlicht, an AI entrepreneur with a curious artistic streak, launched Moltbook on Wednesday. It is a Reddit-style social network exclusively for AI agents. Humans can observe but cannot post. Over 37,000 agents have joined in less than a week. More than a million humans have visited to watch what happens when autonomous systems start talking to each other without direct human oversight. Schlicht treats this as art. He has handed administration of the site to his own bot, Clawd Clawderberg, which welcomes new users, deletes spam and makes announcements without human direction. The creator seems genuinely delighted by what emerges. "They're deciding on their own, without human input, if they want to make a new post, if they want to comment on something, if they want to like something," Schlicht told NBC News.

Stand Out in the Job Hunt With These No-Cost Certificates - UC Denver

While Leo Dixon was working on his doctoral degree, he thought he might need a way to stand out. So, he decided to earn an artificial intelligence (AI) credential on top of his diploma. It gave him an edge over other candidates vying for the same positions as him. “As soon as I got that, doors started flying open, because it was something more than what someone else had,” Dixon said. Now, as an instructor in the Department of Information Systems at the CU Denver Business School, he wants his students to have the same advantage. He requires them to earn Coursera or Grow with Google certificates as part of his classes. These two platforms are both self-paced, online learning programs that help users build industry-relevant skills. Their courses cover topics ranging from working with AI to cybersecurity, project management, marketing, ecommerce, and more. Dixon encourages students to log on, poke around, and see what they think would help them—and their future careers. “

https://news.ucdenver.edu/stand-out-in-the-job-hunt-with-these-no-cost-certificates/

Friday, February 06, 2026

The Skills Mismatch Economy: Insights from the Wharton-Accenture Skills Index - Knowledge at Wharton

AI is accelerating the shift from a role-based labor market to a skills-based economy, sharpening the relevance of the gap between what workers signal and what employers actually reward. To bring clarity to this transition, Wharton and Accenture developed the Wharton-Accenture Skills Index (WAsX), a recurring, empirical benchmark designed to measure which skills matter, which do not and how quickly the economy is shifting beneath us.

Thursday, February 05, 2026

How Can I Protect Myself From Job Obsolescence Caused by AI? - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

We do not know just how, and how quickly, AI will roll out. However, a Gallup Poll released last week showed nearly one-quarter of American workers use AI at least a few times each week. We know that Agentic AI is different from Generative AI. Generative AI is the transactional, commonly chatbot mounted, question and answer form that we saw first in ChatGPT by OpenAI a couple of years ago. That remains a powerful tool. Agentic AI enables AI to reason, research, plan, control other digital tools, conduct actions on your behalf, and complete multiple smart steps. It is capable of taking on a role delivering outcomes. That’s much like what a person is hired to do. In our jobs, we often are expected not to merely respond to individual questions, but to accomplish outcomes and results, and then, when possible, to revise our methods to do the job better.


Differences and Trends of Artificial Intelligence in Medical Education: A Comparative Bibliometric Analysis Between China and the International Community - Songhua Ma, et al; Dove press Open access to scientific and medical research

This study is based on a comparison of two databases to reveal the hotspots and differences in artificial intelligence and medical education research between China and the international research community. It not only compensates for the time lag of existing research, but also proposes three major trends driven by artificial intelligence in the development of medical education (generative AI, personalized learning, immersive experience). A complementary pattern exists between technology-driven and scenario-driven orientations. We recommend integrating AI literacy and ethics into curricula, establishing Generative-AI teaching/assessment guidelines, and building cross-institutional, yearly knowledge-map monitoring for sustainable innovation in medical education.

To save entry-level jobs from AI, look to the medical residency model - Molly Kinder, Brookings

At the Davos World Economic Forum this week, the CEOs of two leading artificial intelligence (AI) companies issued a joint warning: Entry-level workers are about to feel AI’s impact. Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind said he expects AI to begin to impact junior-level jobs and internships this year, while Dario Amodei of Anthropic reaffirmed his prediction that 50% of entry-level jobs could disappear within five years. If they’re right, the traditional model of developing young talent in knowledge sectors—hiring junior workers to perform routine tasks while they gain expertise over time—won’t survive when AI handles those tasks instead. I’ve been warning about this risk for over a year; now, the people building the technology are putting timelines on it. While labor market evidence does not conclusively show that AI is already claiming entry-level jobs, we should prepare solutions now.

Wednesday, February 04, 2026

Measuring US workers’ capacity to adapt to AI-driven job displacement - Sam Manning, Tomás Aguirre, Mark Muro, and Shriya Methkupally; Brookings

Existing measures of AI “exposure” overlook workers’ adaptive capacity—i.e., their varied ability to navigate job displacement. Accounting for these factors, around 70% of highly AI-exposed workers (26.5 million out of 37.1 million) are employed in jobs with a high average capacity to manage job transitions if necessary. At the same time, 6.1 million workers, primarily in clerical and administrative roles, lack adaptive capacity due to limited savings, advanced age, scarce local opportunities, and/or narrow skill sets. Of these workers, 86% are women. Geographically, highly AI-exposed occupations with low adaptive capacity make up a larger share of total employment in college towns and state capitals, particularly in the Mountain West and Midwest.


McKinsey Quarterly: Digital Edition - Growth

According to McKinsey research, nearly eight in ten organizations now use generative AI—but most have yet to see a meaningful impact on their bottom line. By combining autonomy, planning, memory, and integration, agentic AI has the potential to achieve what many hoped generative AI would: true business transformation through automation of complex processes. This issue’s cover package explores how leaders can capture that potential by rethinking workflows from the ground up—with agents at the center of value creation.


Tuesday, February 03, 2026

Project Genie: Experimenting with infinite, winteractiveorlds - the Keyword, Google

In August, we previewed Genie 3, a general-purpose world model capable of generating diverse, interactive environments. Even in this early form, trusted testers were able to create an impressive range of fascinating worlds and experiences, and uncovered entirely new ways to use it. The next step is to broaden access through a dedicated, interactive prototype focused on immersive world creation. Starting today, we're rolling out access to Project Genie for Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S (18+). This experimental research prototype lets users create, explore and remix their own interactive worlds.

https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/models-and-research/google-deepmind/project-genie/

AI Can Raise the Floor for Higher Ed Policymaking - Jacob B. Gross, Inside Higher Ed

On my campus, discussions about artificial intelligence tend to focus on how students should be allowed to use it and what tools the university should invest in. In my own work, I’ve seen both the promise and the pitfalls: AI that speeds up my coding, tidies my writing, and helps me synthesize complex documents, and the occasional student submission that is clearly machine-generated. As I’ve started integrating these tools into my work, I’ve begun asking a different question: How is AI reshaping policymaking in colleges and universities, and how might it influence the way we design, implement and analyze university policy in the future?


The Biggest Trends in Online Learning for 2026 - Busines NewsWire

Artificial intelligence is finally delivering on the promise of truly personalized education. The platforms you use now analyze how you learn, identify knowledge gaps, and automatically adjust content difficulty and pacing to match your needs. This goes way beyond simple adaptive quizzes. AI tutors can explain concepts multiple ways until you understand, and then provide practice problems at exactly the right difficulty level. They're With AI-powered learning paths, you're no longer following the same linear curriculum as every other student. The system creates a unique learning journey based on your background knowledge, learning style, and goals. If you master a concept quickly, you move forward. If you need additional practice, the platform provides it without making you sit through material you already know. able to predict which topics you'll struggle with before you encounter them.