The new bargaining frontier: AI and academic labour - James Yoonil Auh, University World News

 What happens when AI begins to perform work that universities have historically employed people to do? At that point, AI ceases to be merely an educational technology and becomes a labour technology.

 Once AI enters the employment relationship, questions arise that an information technology office alone cannot resolve. Who decides whether AI may perform work previously assigned to faculty? Can AI change staffing requirements? Who owns academic materials used to develop AI systems? Can algorithmic analysis influence faculty evaluations? If AI makes academic work faster, who benefits from the time saved? If supervising AI creates new work, where does that labour appear in workload calculations? These questions are no longer hypothetical. They are increasingly appearing in collective agreements, memoranda of understanding and union policies.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260911122628764

Anthropic C.E.O. Calls for A.I. Slowdown - Mike Isaac, NY Times

The chief executive of Anthropic called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development in a 3,800-word essay on Saturday, just days after one of the company’s employees quit over concerns about the safety of the technology. Dario Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic to focus on securely and carefully building A.I., wrote that while he believed the technology could bring many benefits, it was advancing at too quick a pace for researchers to continue safely. “Over the last few months, I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up,” Mr. Amodei said. “We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of A.I. models. Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/12/technology/anthropic-dario-amodei-ai-slowdown.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AlE.ZCrR.hyMmfBv2E8Yu&smid=nytcore-android-share

USF president shares student successes and plans for AI college during fall address - Emma Brisko, WUSF

USF reached a record-breaking $750 million in research funding in fiscal 2025. Some of that money is being invested in the planned Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing. Limayem shared new renderings of the building, which will be located near the entrance of the Tampa campus, at Leroy Collins Boulevard and USF Alumni Drive. No construction date has been set, but $35 million in state money has been committed to the project. “This is an important piece of USF's future,” Limayem said. “We envision a place designed for students, faculty, research and collaboration in fields that are reshaping nearly every part of our lives – and protecting our digital spaces.”

https://www.wusf.org/university-beat/2026-09-09/usf-president-limayem-shares-student-successes-and-plans-for-new-ai-college-during-fall-address

Are Colleges Ready To Support the AI Workforce? - Grace Alexis, EdTech

For decades, colleges prepared students for a predictable workforce. Students chose a major, learned a defined set of skills and entered a career path that changed slowly over time. Artificial intelligence has ended that arrangement. Every few weeks, another report warns that AI will eliminate jobs. A recent Graduate Management Admission Council survey of more than 600 corporate recruiters found that one-third of employers are already replacing some entry-level roles with AI. In technology, that number rises to 40%. Yet the same survey named proficiency with AI tools the single most valuable skill employers expect to prize five years from now — and one of the skills graduates are least prepared to demonstrate. That gap is an education problem, and it belongs to us.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2026/09/are-colleges-ready-support-ai-workforce

Americans Use Artificial Intelligence, but They Don’t Want It in Charge - Rutgers

A survey led by Rutgers researchers finds AI use is surging, but Americans still prefer humans making consequential decisions. Artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming part of everyday life in the U.S., but Americans are far less comfortable when it shifts from something they use to something that makes decisions about them, according to a new survey led by Rutgers researchers. Nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults (72%) have used at least one major AI tool, up from 50% in November 2024, when researchers conducted an earlier survey of 4,767 people. The findings come from the latest report from the National AI Opinion Monitor, a project led by Rutgers researchers that tracks public attitudes toward AI. More than a quarter of Americans (27%) use AI every day, yet fewer than one in 10 would allow it to make the final call without human supervision on hiring, loans, college admission, parole or priority for a medical procedure. Between 45% and 54% say AI shouldn’t be used at all in those decisions.

https://www.rutgers.edu/news/americans-use-artificial-intelligence-they-dont-want-it-charge

University of North Texas to Open College of AI, Analytics - Milla Surjadi, The Dallas Morning News

The University of North Texas will establish a college of artificial intelligence and advanced analytics after receiving a $20 million gift, it announced Tuesday. The philanthropic investment comes from Vikas Sinha, a UNT alumnus and vice president of the mainframe software division at Broadcom, a semiconductor and infrastructure manufacturer, and his wife, Anuradha. As UNT looks to strengthen its artificial intelligence education, the new college will help advance research and better prepare students for a changing workforce, university officials said in a release.

https://www.govtech.com/artificial-intelligence/university-of-north-texas-to-open-college-of-ai-analytics

Productive Friction: What Universities Must Protect in the Age of AI - Vladimir Bratic, Faculty Focus

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. 

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/teaching-and-learning/productive-friction-what-universities-must-protect-in-the-age-of-ai/

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.” 

https://hechingerreport.org/business-government-and-education-leaders-try-to-reinvent-college-from-scratch/

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.

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/09/nx-s1-5961443/ai-anthropic-economy

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.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/science/openai-proof-millennium-problem.html?unlocked_article_code=1._1A.RlR4.YmOv66gBq82J&smid=url-share

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.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20260819181847784

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.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/20/1134438/openai-is-throwing-everything-into-building-a-fully-automated-researcher/

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.

https://www.phillytrib.com/news/local_news/how-ai-policies-are-reshaping-college-learning-and-sowing-confusion/article_9852c38c-b668-4405-a488-4565d74e9908.html

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.  

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/themes/the-human-skills-at-a-premium-in-the-age-of-ai