In their blog post explaining what went wrong, OpenAI described “ChatGPT’s default personality” and its “behavior”—terms typically reserved for humans, suggesting a degree of anthropomorphization. OpenAI isn’t alone in this: humans often describe AI as “understanding” or “knowing” things, largely because media coverage has consistently framed it that way—incorrectly. AI doesn’t possess knowledge or a brain, and some argue it never will (though that view is disputed). Still, talk of sentience, personality, and humanlike qualities in AI appears to be growing. Last month, OpenAI competitor Anthropic—founded by former OpenAI employees—published a blog post expressing concern about developing AI that benefits human welfare. “But as we build those AI systems, and as they begin to approximate or surpass many human qualities, another question arises,” the firm wrote. “Should we also be concerned about the potential consciousness and experiences of the models themselves? Should we be concerned about model welfare, too?”
Friday, May 16, 2025
The Future of Education with AI Agents: How Conversational Agents Will Replace Classrooms - Thomas Frey, Futurist Speaker
What we’re witnessing isn’t just a better form of education—it’s the emergence of a new learning paradigm altogether. AI agents are dissolving the rigid structures of grade levels, semesters, and standardized tests. In their place, we see flexible, lifelong learning partnerships that evolve with us, helping us adapt to new roles, industries, and technologies throughout our lives. The promise is staggering: a world where anyone, anywhere, can unlock their full potential without being limited by geography, socioeconomic status, or outdated institutions. Education becomes a continuous journey, not a stage of life. A conversation, not a lecture. And for the first time, it’s a system designed around the learner—not the institution. As AI continues to evolve, so too does our understanding of human capability. The future of education isn’t just digital—it’s dynamic, personalized, and relentlessly practical. And it’s already here.
Thursday, May 15, 2025
Visa and Mastercard unveil AI-powered shopping - Mary Ann Azevedo, Tech Crunch
Artificial intelligence is not just infiltrating the startup world. Now credit card giants Visa and Mastercard are getting into the AI game. Visa announced on Wednesday “Intelligent Commerce,” which it says enables AI “to find and buy.” AI agents will be able to shop and make purchases on behalf of consumers, based on preselected preferences. In a statement, Visa chief product and strategy officer Jack Forestell said: “Each consumer sets the limits, and Visa helps manage the rest.” Visa says that it is collaborating with a mix of tech giants and startups to develop AI-powered shopping experiences that are “more personal, more secure, and more convenient.” Those companies include Anthropic, IBM, Microsoft, Mistral AI, OpenAI, Perplexity, Samsung, and Stripe, among others.
Former Google CEO-Backed Startup Builds AI Agents for Science - Scarlett Evans, AI Business
FutureHouse, a nonprofit backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, has launched a new AI platform to help scientists navigate vast amounts of data and accelerate new discoveries. The platform uses what FutureHouse calls the first “superintelligent scientific agents,” outperforming human workers in tasks such as reviewing literature and distinguishing between reliable and unreliable sources. Agents for hypothesis generation and experimental planning are also set for launch. Four of these specialized AI agents are being included in the platform’s launch, each designed to target a different element of scientific discovery.
Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Want a job at Duolingo? Better know how to use AI - Tech Crunch
Duolingo has announced it’s becoming an AI-first company. In a message shared with staff and later posted online, CEO Luis von Ahn said the shift will change how the business runs, from hiring to content creation. While it’s not about cutting jobs, von Ahn made it clear that new roles will only be added when automation genuinely can’t do the work. Rather than tweaking what’s already in place, Duolingo is rethinking how things are done, with AI built in from the ground up. Contractors will be phased out where AI tools are a better fit, and employees are being encouraged to use AI to work smarter. The idea is to remove the repetitive tasks and give people more space to focus on creative, high-impact work.
https://www.theverge.com/news/657594/duolingo-ai-first-replace-contract-workers
Google’s AI Mode gets expanded access and additional functionality - Aisha Malik, Tech Crunch
Google is expanding access to AI Mode, its experimental feature that allows users to ask complex, multi-part questions and follow-ups to dig deeper on a topic directly within Search. The tech giant is also adding more functionality to the feature, including the ability to pick up where you left off on a search. Google launched AI Mode back in March as a way to take on popular services like Perplexity AI and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Search. The updates announced today are designed to allow AI Mode to better compete with the aforementioned services.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025
A New Quantum Algorithm Speeds Up Solving a Huge Class of Problems - Stephen Ornes, Wired
Meta launches a stand-alone AI app to compete with ChatGPT - Amanda Silberling, Tech Crunch
After integrating Meta AI into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, Meta is rolling out a stand-alone AI app. Unveiled at Meta’s LlamaCon event on Tuesday, this app allows users to access Meta AI in an app, similar to the ChatGPT app and other AI assistant apps. To win over users, Meta is trying to leverage what makes it different from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic — Meta already has a sense of who you are, what you like, and who you hang out with based on years of data that you’ve likely shared on Facebook or Instagram.
Monday, May 12, 2025
‘This is what employers need within their organization,’ Coursera exec says after new finding on micro-credentials - Lucy Buchholz, Unleash
Coursera, which generated a total revenue of $179.2 million in 2024, has recently released its Micro-Credentials Impact Report 2025. The report unearths the key micro-credentials needed within today’s workplace, while highlighting why these should be a focus for hiring managers. Nikolaz Foucaud, Managing Director EMEA at Coursera, spoke exclusively to UNLEASH to share which micro-credential should be at the top of HR leaders’ radar.
Something Alarming Is Happening to the Job Market: A new sign that AI is competing with college grads - Derek Thompson, the Atlantic
Something strange, and potentially alarming, is happening to the job market for young, educated workers. According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have “deteriorated noticeably” in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work. Meanwhile, law-school applications are surging—an ominous echo of when young people used graduate school to bunker down during the great financial crisis.
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/job-market-youth/682641/
Sunday, May 11, 2025
Alibaba unveils Qwen3, a family of ‘hybrid’ AI reasoning models - Kyle Wiggers, Tech Crunch
Microsoft CEO: "Agents Will Replace ALL Software” - Matthew Berman, YouTube
This podcast discusses the potential decline of the traditional Software as a Service (SaaS) model, as predicted by Microsoft's CEO [00:16]. The future may involve agents that handle application logic, interacting directly with databases and various APIs, effectively abstracting away the underlying technologies for the user [02:26, 04:18]. This shift could significantly impact hiring, with a focus on the agents and workflows individuals have created, similar to how data analysts use spreadsheets [08:22, 09:06]. The rise of these agents, predicted to gain prominence around 2025 [10:41], presents challenges like agent onboarding within organizations [09:30]. These agents, including potential "super agents" from OpenAI [11:41], are expected to tackle complex problems by synthesizing information [12:56]. This technological evolution might enhance productivity for software engineers or potentially lead to job displacement, as suggested by trends like Salesforce's hiring freeze following AI-driven productivity gains [13:32, 14:09]. [Summary provided in part by Gemini 2.5 Pro]
Saturday, May 10, 2025
AI in Education - Ethan Mollick, LinkedIn
One way to make AI do good things in areas like education is to actively experiment in creating good things and share the results (whether they work or not) so others can build on those. Mitigating bad outcomes are important, but good outcomes are not automatic either, and will take collective work. Just waiting for the AI labs to develop their own ideas is not enough. Mollick goes on to share a paper titled "AI Tutoring Outperforms Active Learning" authored by Harvard faculty.
An AI-generated radio host in Australia went unnoticed for months - Emma Roth, the Verge
For months, a popular Australian radio station has used an AI-generated DJ to host one of its segments — and no one seemed to notice, as reported by the Australian Financial Review and The Sydney Morning Herald. The show, called Workdays with Thy, offers a four-hour mix of hip hop, R&B, and pop, with no indication that the voice of its host, Thy, is AI-generated. Workdays with Thy is broadcast on the Sydney radio station CADA. Its owner, ARN Media, confirmed to the Financial Review that while Thy is AI-generated, the host’s voice and likeness are modeled after an actual employee in the company’s financial department. Thy’s voice was created with the AI voice generator ElevenLabs, as first reported by the newsletter The Carpet.
Friday, May 09, 2025
IBM Uses Agentic AI for Autonomous Security Operations: RSAC 2025 - Liz Hughes, AI Business
How the U.S. Public and AI Experts View Artificial Intelligence - Colleen McClean, et al; Pew Research
Experts are far more positive and enthusiastic about AI than the public. For example, the AI experts we surveyed are far more likely than Americans overall to believe AI will have a very or somewhat positive impact on the United States over the next 20 years (56% vs. 17%). And while 47% of experts surveyed say they are more excited than concerned about the increased use of AI in daily life, that share drops to 11% among the public. By contrast, U.S. adults as a whole – whose concerns over AI have grown since 2021 – are more inclined than experts to say they’re more concerned than excited (51% vs. 15% among experts).
Thursday, May 08, 2025
The world’s nicest chatbot is eating up energy - Matt V, Mindstream
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently shared that using polite language with Chatgpt, like saying “please” and “thank you”, actually costs the company tens of millions in electricity. That’s because tools like ChatGPT rely on massive data centres powered by energy-hungry GPUs. Even a single AI response, like a short message, can use around 0.14 kWh of electricity, the same as keeping 14 LED bulbs on for an hour.
Quantum computing gears up for its 'ChatGPT Moment' — and a potential talent shortage - Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert, Tech Insider
The AI field faces a significant talent shortage, with too few skilled workers to fuel the industry. Quantum computing startups have noticed and are trying to avoid the same problem. Some quantum companies are funding certificate programs and university courses to train new talent. Quantum computing companies are learning from missteps made during the artificial intelligence boom and are investing heavily in training programs to ensure the fledgling industry maintains its momentum.
Wednesday, May 07, 2025
AI in Higher Education Expert University of Pennsylvania Professor Ethan Mollick's Wisdom - LinkedIn Posting
I don’t mean to be a broken record but AI development could stop at the o3/Gemini 2.5 level and we would have a decade of major changes across entire professions & industries (medicine, law, education, coding…) as we figure out how to actually use it & adapt our systems and organizations to what it can do.
Sleep Time Compute - AI That "Thinks" 24/7 (Breakthrough) - Matthew Berman, YouTube
This podcast discusses a research paper introducing "sleeptime compute," a concept aimed at allowing AI to anticipate and answer questions more efficiently [00:05, 00:41]. It contrasts this with current "test time compute" methods, where AI processes information only after receiving a prompt, leading to higher latency and cost [01:09, 02:12]. Sleeptime compute involves pre-processing context and generating potential inferences during idle periods, making the AI ready to answer anticipated questions quickly [05:07, 07:22]. The key benefit of sleeptime compute is its potential to match or exceed the quality of test time compute while using fewer resources and reducing costs, especially when multiple questions relate to the same context [08:16, 09:02]. The research shows performance gains, particularly with lower test time budgets, and highlights its effectiveness when future questions are predictable based on the initial context [09:29, 16:55]. Future work might explore dynamically allocating resources between these two compute methods [18:25]. (summary provided by Gemini 2.5 Pro)
Tuesday, May 06, 2025
OpenAI seeks to make its upcoming ‘open’ AI model best-in-class - Kyle Wiggers, Tech Crunch
OpenAI is exploring a highly permissive license for the model with few usage or commercial restrictions, the sources said. Open models like Llama and Google’s Gemma have been criticized by some in the community for imposing onerous requirements — criticisms that OpenAI is seemingly seeking to avoid. The ChatGPT maker is facing increasing pressure from rivals, such as Chinese AI lab DeepSeek, that have adopted an open approach to launching models. In contrast to OpenAI’s strategy, these “open” competitors make their models available to the AI community for experimentation and, in some cases, commercialization.
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/23/openai-seeks-to-make-its-upcoming-open-ai-model-best-in-class/
Boston Consulting Group Unveils AI Science Institute to Drive Research - Scarlett Evans, AI Business
BCG X, the tech division of Boston Consulting Group, has launched an AI Science Institute to help companies develop and commercialize scientific innovations. The institute is supported by a team of more than 3,000 people and is designed to work collaboratively with universities, industry experts and research and development teams from across industries. In a press release, BCG said the institute will be a “groundbreaking hub” that brings together advancements in AI with the latest scientific innovations.
Monday, May 05, 2025
Microsoft thinks AI colleagues are coming soon - Jessica Bursztynsky, Fast Company
These so-called Frontier Firms will be built around “on-demand intelligence and powered by ‘hybrid’ teams of humans + agents, these companies scale rapidly, operate with agility, and generate value faster,” according to the report. Microsoft argued that within the next two to five years, every company will be on the journey to becoming one. Microsoft said that 82% of leaders responded that this is a “pivotal” year to rethink key strategy and operations, while 81% said they expect agents to be “moderately or extensively” integrated into their AI strategies in the next 12 to 18 months. The results are a culmination of survey data from 31,000 workers across 31 countries, LinkedIn hiring and labor market trends, trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals, and conversations with experts, and AI-native startups.
Ethically trained AI startup Pleias releases new small reasoning models optimized for RAG with built-in citations - Carl Franzen, Venture Beat
French AI startup Pleias made waves late last year with the launch of its ethically trained Pleias 1.0 family of small language models — among the first and only to date to be built entirely on scraping “open” data, that is, data explicitly labeled as public domain, open source, or unlicensed and not copyrighted. Now the company has announced the release of two open source small-scale reasoning models designed specifically for retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), citation synthesis, and structured multilingual output. The launch includes two core models — Pleias-RAG-350M and Pleias-RAG-1B — each also available in CPU-optimized GGUF format, making a total of four deployment-ready variants. They are all based on Pleias 1.0, and can be used independently or in conjunction with other LLMs that the organization may already or plan to deploy. All appear to be available under a permissive Apache 2.0 open source license, meaning they are eligible for organizations to take, modify and deploy for commercial use cases.
Sunday, May 04, 2025
Exploring model welfare - Anthropic
Human welfare is at the heart of our work at Anthropic: our mission is to make sure that increasingly capable and sophisticated AI systems remain beneficial to humanity. But as we build those AI systems, and as they begin to approximate or surpass many human qualities, another question arises. Should we also be concerned about the potential consciousness and experiences of the models themselves? Should we be concerned about model welfare, too? This is an open question, and one that’s both philosophically and scientifically difficult. But now that models can communicate, relate, plan, problem-solve, and pursue goals—along with very many more characteristics we associate with people—we think it’s time to address it.
Bot Traffic Surpasses Humans Online—Driven by AI and Criminal Innovation - Kevin Townsend, Security Week
AI is helping internet bot herders with greater scale, lower costs, and more sophisticated evasion techniques. Bots on the internet now surpass human activity, with 51% of all internet traffic being automated (bot) traffic. Thirty-seven percent of this is malicious (bad bots), while only 14% are good bots. Much of the current expansion is fueled by criminal use of AI, which is likely to increase. Within the bad bots there has been a noticeable growth in simple, but high volume bot attacks. This again shows the influence of AI, allowing less sophisticated actors to generate new bots, and use AI power to launch them. This follows the common trajectory of criminal use of AI: simple as the actors learn how to use their new capability, followed by more sophisticated use as their AI skills evolve. This shows the likely future of the bot threat: advanced bots being produced at the speed and delivery of simple bots. The bad bot threat will likely increase.
Saturday, May 03, 2025
I Tested 5 AI Assistants—and What I Found Was Surprising - Carmine Gallo, Inc.
Agentic AI Adoption Blueprint Released by Salesforce - Scarlett Evans, AI Business
Salesforce has released what it calls a blueprint for businesses operating in the agentic AI era.The Agentic Maturity Model highlights four key areas for advancement, helping companies move from early deployment of AI tools such as chatbots, to truly autonomous agents that can work collaboratively with humans. The four levels of agentic maturity outlined in the report include chatbots and co-pilots, information retrieval agents, simple orchestration and single domain, complex orchestration and multiple domain, and multi-agent orchestration.
Friday, May 02, 2025
Using AI to predict student success in higher education - Denisa Gándara and Hadis Anahideh, Brookings
As AI becomes more accessible, higher education is increasingly turning to prediction algorithms to inform decisions and target support services. Prediction algorithms can underestimate success for Black and Hispanic students, disproportionately predicting failure erroneously, even when those students ultimately graduate. Bias-mitigation techniques built into model training are more effective than those applied to the data beforehand, but no single method eliminates disparities.
OpenAI says newest AI model can ‘think with images,’ understanding diagrams and sketches - Hayden Field, CNBC
OpenAI released its newest AI model that it said can understand uploaded images like whiteboards, sketches and diagrams, even if they’re low quality. The company called o3 its most advanced model yet and also released a smaller model called o4-mini. OpenAI is racing to stay ahead in generative AI as competitors including Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI ramp up development.
Thursday, May 01, 2025
Introducing: The world's fastest Conversational Video Interface for developers - Julia Szatar, Tavus
At Tavus, our mission is to make digital experiences as immersive as human face-to-face interactions by empowering people to leverage their likeness at scale online. Back in March, we launched our breakthrough Digital Replica model, Phoenix, and Video Generation on our developer platform. Today, we’re thrilled to announce: the Conversational Video Interface. Developers can now build rich, realistic, real-time conversational experiences with digital twins on the Tavus platform. Try talking to Carter in our live demo on our homepage.
"The Industry Reacts to o3 and o4!" - Matthew Berman, YouTube
The video discusses the industry's reaction to the release of O3 and O4 AI models:
- O3's High Intelligence: O3 is highlighted for achieving a near-genius level IQ score (136), surpassing competitors like Gemini 2.5 Pro. It shows strong capabilities in iterative tool use and discovering new information [00:09, 01:05].
- O4 Mini's Tool Use: O4 mini demonstrates advanced reasoning by incorporating tool calls (like writing and executing Python code) directly into its problem-solving process [02:58].
- Significant Innovation: O3 is considered a major advancement in AI, comparable in impact to ChatGPT, especially regarding its utility and ability to handle complex tasks [03:37].
- Overall: The release represents a significant step forward in AI, showcasing impressive reasoning, tool use, and problem-solving skills, although some limitations remain [15:03].
(summary provided in part by Gemni 2.5 Pro)
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Who is the assistant-human or artificial intelligence? - State-Times
In today’s time, every industry is using AI extensively so that their work becomes easier and it is happening but is it really for the well-being of humans because AI has taken over the work of many people? According to research from America, about 37% of US adults believe that AI will result in fewer opportunities, while older generations express pessimism and worry about potential skill replacement. They are more inclined to embrace AI as a collaborative partner rather than viewing it as a threat. AI is a big concern. It potentially impacts job security in every industry and will primarily replace entry-level jobs. To avoid this job-eating disaster, institutions should adequately prepare students for the challenges and opportunities presented by AI. Institutions should incorporate more training on AI and its implications into their curriculum because we should make AI our assistant and not become its assistant.
A guide to navigating growing economic uncertainty - McKinsey
Tariffs and trade barriers are expanding rapidly, ushering in the first major global economic shock since the COVID-19 pandemic. Combined with inflationary pressures, recession risks, and volatile macroeconomic cycles, the current landscape is anything but predictable. “Given the web of interdependencies that govern global trade, business leaders realize that they can’t define and prepare for the path forward using traditional forecasting and planning methods,” write McKinsey’s Cindy Levy, Mihir Mysore, Shubham Singhal, and Varun Marya. “A nerve center can help companies move from a focus on immediate tactical responses to more comprehensive plans balanced across time frames.” Explore these insights to help make sense of the growing economic complexity—and chart a more confident path forward.
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
We tried the ChatGPT 'reverse location search' trend, and it's scary - Tim Marcin, Mashable
ChatGPT users have discovered that the popular AI chatbot can serve as a reverse-location search tool. In other words, you can show ChatGPT a picture, and it can pretty reliably tell you where it was taken. The trend is inspired by the online game Geoguessr, where folks try to figure out a location from a simple web image. We decided to put this new ChatGPT trend to the test, and the results were downright scary. Mashable tech reporters prompted ChatGPT to play a geo-guessing game and uploaded a series of photos. Even when ChatGPT identified the wrong location, it still got pretty close (such as identifying a rooftop hotel in Buffalo instead of Rochester). In other cases, it suggested specific addresses.
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash introduces ‘thinking budgets’ that cut AI costs by 600% when turned down - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
Google has launched Gemini 2.5 Flash, a major upgrade to its AI lineup that gives businesses and developers unprecedented control over how much “thinking” their AI performs. The new model, released today in preview through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, represents a strategic effort to deliver improved reasoning capabilities while maintaining competitive pricing in the increasingly crowded AI market. The model introduces what Google calls a “thinking budget” — a mechanism that allows developers to specify how much computational power should be allocated to reasoning through complex problems before generating a response. This approach aims to address a fundamental tension in today’s AI marketplace: more sophisticated reasoning typically comes at the cost of higher latency and pricing.
Monday, April 28, 2025
AI has grown beyond human knowledge, says Google's DeepMind unit - Tiernan Ray, ZDnet
"Incredible new capabilities will arise once the full potential of experiential learning is harnessed," write DeepMind scholars David Silver and Richard Sutton in the paper, Welcome to the Era of Experience.The two scholars are legends in the field. Silver most famously led the research that resulted in AlphaZero, DeepMind's AI model that beat humans in games of Chess and Go. Sutton is one of two Turing Award-winning developers of an AI approach called reinforcement learning that Silver and his team used to create AlphaZero. The approach the two scholars advocate builds upon reinforcement learning and the lessons of AlphaZero. It's called "streams" and is meant to remedy the shortcomings of today's large language models (LLMs), which are developed solely to answer human questions.
How Tech Giants Are Tackling AGI Safety Risks - Forward Future AI
In a world where the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly blurred, we are on the cusp of a technological revolution that could fundamentally change our lives. Artificial General Intelligence—AI systems that are at least as capable as humans in almost all cognitive areas or, depending on the definition, an autonomous AI agent that can generate $100b in profit—could become a reality in the coming years. According to Google DeepMind, “equipped with agentic capabilities, it could enable AI to understand, think, plan and act autonomously.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Workforce 2025: Power Shifts -The shifting dynamics between employer control and employee expectations are powering up the future of work - Korn Ferry
When companies need to cut labor costs, middle managers are often the first in line for layoffs. And that tactic seems to be affecting many workers this year. In our 2025 Korn Ferry Workforce survey, 41% of employees told us that their organization has slashed management layers. 43% of employees say their leaders aren't aligned, and 37% say the lack of managers has left them feeling directionless. The impact is more than just a slimmed-down organizational chart with fewer managers. Losing that management layer can quickly lead to employee confusion and dissatisfaction, ultimately affecting productivity. 43% of employees say their leaders aren't aligned, and 37% say the lack of managers has left them feeling directionless.
Developers can now start building with Gemini 2.5 Flash. - Google Keyword
We’re excited to roll out an early version of Gemini 2.5 Flash today in preview in the Gemini API via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. Building upon the popular foundation of 2.0 Flash, this new version delivers a major upgrade in reasoning capabilities, while still prioritizing speed and cost. Our new 2.5 Flash model has an amazing performance to cost ratio, putting it on the pareto frontier. It is our first fully hybrid reasoning model, allowing developers to turn thinking on or off, and set thinking budgets to optimize the balance between quality, cost, and latency. Even with thinking off, developers can maintain the speed of 2.0 Flash and improve performance. We can’t wait to see how you put Gemini 2.5 Flash to work in your apps, and to get your feedback. Gemini 2.5 Flash is also available to everyone in the Gemini app, and can be used with new features like Canvas, an interactive space for refining your documents and code.
Saturday, April 26, 2025
OpenAI launches o3 and o4-mini, AI models that ‘think with images’ and use tools autonomously - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
OpenAI launched two groundbreaking AI models today that can reason with images and use tools independently, representing what experts call a step change in artificial intelligence capabilities. The San Francisco-based company introduced o3 and o4-mini, the latest in its “o-series” of reasoning models, which it claims are its most intelligent and capable models to date. These systems can integrate images directly into their reasoning process, search the web, run code, analyze files, and even generate images within a single task flow.
Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud - Jagmeet Singh, TechCrunch
Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend a “vast majority” of ad accounts before they ever served an ad. Last year, Google launched over 50 LLM enhancements to improve its safety enforcement mechanisms across all its platforms.
Friday, April 25, 2025
Pilots, Principles, and Pop-Ins: A Practical Path to Campus AI - Jill Forrester, Dave Weil, Cynthia Golden and Jack Suess, EDUCAUSE Review
This podcast features a discussion with Dave Wild from Ithaca College and Jill Forester from Dickinson College about leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) in smaller higher education institutions. They share their backgrounds [
Introducing OpenAI o3 and o4-mini: Our smartest and most capable models to date with full tool access - OpenAI
Today, we’re releasing OpenAI o3 and o4-mini, the latest in our o-series of models trained to think for longer before responding. These are the smartest models we’ve released to date, representing a step change in ChatGPT's capabilities for everyone from curious users to advanced researchers. For the first time, our reasoning models can agentically use and combine every tool within ChatGPT—this includes searching the web, analyzing uploaded files and other data with Python, reasoning deeply about visual inputs, and even generating images. Critically, these models are trained to reason about when and how to use tools to produce detailed and thoughtful answers in the right output formats, typically in under a minute, to solve more complex problems.
Thursday, April 24, 2025
I took Google’s 9-hour prompt engineering course: Here’s everything I learned in 5 minutes - Bijin Jose, Indian Express
Prompting is simply the way we communicate with an AI model, or how we ask these systems to generate desired outputs. I too have felt overwhelmed in the beginning, but ever since, it has been a journey of learning. Over the weekend I decided to take up Google’s Prompting Essentials course, a nine-hour-long programme to help one understand the most effective ways to communicate with AI tools. I sat through the course, and I have boiled it down to a quick read with insights, frameworks, and some hands-on tips.
Sam Altman at TED 2025: Inside the most uncomfortable — and important — AI interview of the year - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed that his company has grown to 800 million weekly active users and is experiencing “unbelievable” growth rates, during a sometimes tense interview at the TED 2025 conference in Vancouver last week. “I have never seen growth in any company, one that I’ve been involved with or not, like this,” Altman told TED head Chris Anderson during their on-stage conversation. “The growth of ChatGPT — it is really fun. I feel deeply honored. But it is crazy to live through, and our teams are exhausted and stressed.” The interview, which closed out the final day of TED 2025: Humanity Reimagined, showcased not just OpenAI’s skyrocketing success but also the increasing scrutiny the company faces as its technology transforms society at a pace that alarms even some of its supporters.
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Promoting AI-Enhanced Performance in the Online Classroom - Amy Winger, Faculty Focus
One way that online instructors can use AI in the classroom is to become a digital master and use generative AI, such as ChatGPT, to develop deeper content ideas or analyze student contributions within discussion (Mora and Semingson 2023, 57). Such tailored discussions add depth and rigor to courses, captivating students and bringing forth relevant and dynamic topics. Furthermore, a second way to further improve engagement is through the development of AI developed feedback for formative assessments (Perry 2023, 78). Timely and personalized feedback plays an essential role in engaging students and motivating them (Wang and Lehman 2021, 571); AI can aid in streamlining and fast-tracking feedback. In deeply engaging students in an immersive and individualized way, students are more motivated to learn and more satisfied with educational outcomes.
OpenAI's Sam Altman Talks the Future of AI, Safety and Power — Live at TED2025
Tuesday, April 22, 2025
How An AI Tutor Could Level The Playing Field For Students Worldwide - David Prosser, Forbes
Khan Academy’s Framework for Responsible AI in Education - Khan Academy
Khan Academy developed a framework for responsible AI in education following the launch of their AI learning tool, Khanmigo. This framework adapts principles from The Institute for Ethical AI in Education, focusing on using AI to achieve educational goals, improve assessments, increase efficiency, promote equity, empower learners, balance data privacy with utility, maintain transparency, foster participation, and ensure ethical design. They use this framework alongside the NIST Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework to guide their AI development. To apply the framework, Khan Academy identifies and rates potential risks for new features and implements mitigation strategies. For instance, with Khanmigo, they addressed risks of misuse through moderation tools, community support, and clear terms of service. This responsible AI approach is integrated into their product development via a dedicated steering group, working groups, and continuous evaluation and communication. (summary provided by Gemini 2.5 Pro)
Monday, April 21, 2025
Kishwaukee College creates AI guidelines for use in higher education - Dekalb County Daily Chronicle
“The AI Implementation Playbook is a responsive and evolving resource that reflects Kishwaukee College’s commitment to innovation and excellence in education,” Kishwaukee College president Laurie Borowicz said in a news release. “This plan is very adaptable and will be updated to address changes in technology and the needs of our students,” The college developed the artificial intelligence playbook with industry leaders, organizations and colleges. Kishwaukee College outlined a four-step approach to implement artificial intelligence. The steps include tracking artificial intelligence-related activities; researching industry best practices; developing a technology integration and product development process; and fostering an experimentation, awareness, literacy and adoption culture.
What Students Really Think of Technology and AI - EDUCAUSE
This podcast discusses how students are integrating technology and AI into their education [00:06, 00:12]. Students utilize interactive platforms, like live quiz software, finding them engaging and effective for demonstrating learning compared to traditional methods [01:13, 01:46]. However, challenges arise from outdated systems and faculty lacking training [02:15], and even good platforms can be difficult if not well-organized by instructors [02:24]. Some technologies are perceived as unhelpful, particularly if instructors are unfamiliar with them [02:38]. The role of AI in education is a major topic [02:50], though some students don't find it very useful in their classes [03:24]. Faculty opinions on AI are divided, with some viewing it as a helpful tool and others as a threat to academic honesty [03:30]. A lack of clear guidelines on the ethical use of AI in coursework is also noted [03:53]. Ultimately, the podcast emphasizes the importance for students to understand and effectively use evolving technology [04:28]. (summary by Gemini 2.5 Pro)
Sunday, April 20, 2025
How gen AI can take customer [read that as students and prospective students] personalization to the next level - McKinsey
The way customers interact with retailers and brands is evolving. To maintain an edge, companies should reevaluate their existing strategies and explore new avenues for growth. Consider, for instance, the transformative potential of personalization through gen AI. "To reach consumers where they are and how they want to be met, marketers can embrace two powerful innovations: AI-driven targeted promotions, and the use of gen AI to create and scale highly relevant messages with bespoke tone, imagery, copy, and experiences at high volume and speed,” write McKinsey Senior Partner Kelsey Robinson and coauthors. Check out these insights on how to leverage technology and AI to address specific customer needs and set your organization apart.
11+ Real-World AI Agent Examples - Martina Bretous, HubSpot
AI agents are like the backstage crew at the concerts we attend: Operating independently on the backend to deliver a smooth experience on the user end. They power many of the tech we use – and have for a while – but haven’t gotten that visibility until recently. In this article, we’ll break down real-world examples of how AI agents are used across industries.
Saturday, April 19, 2025
AI Passes the Turing Test: What this really means - Julia McCoy, YouTube
This podcast discusses a significant development in artificial intelligence: AI passing the Turing test in a controlled scientific study for the first time [00:00]. The Turing test evaluates a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human's [01:30]. In this instance, the AI model GPT 4.5 successfully convinced human judges it was a person 73% of the time, which was a higher rate than actual humans achieved in the same test [00:08]. The podcast explains that this breakthrough highlights AI's advanced capability to simulate human-like conversation, including using natural language, expressing opinions, and even showing humor [03:15]. Factors contributing to this success include larger model parameters, extensive training data, sophisticated prompting techniques, learning from human feedback, and models specifically designed for conversation [04:22]. The discussion also touches upon the potential future implications, such as economic impacts, the need for methods to identify AI, and the increasingly blurred lines between human and machine communication [05:31]. (summary provided by Gemini 2.5 Pro)
ChatGPT became the most downloaded app globally in March - Sarah Perez, Tech Crunch
Friday, April 18, 2025
ChatGPT will remember everything you tell it now - like a real personal assistant - Sabrina Ortiz, ZDnet
ChatGPT has proven itself capable of helping with everyday tasks such as writing, coding, and researching. The chatbot's latest feature builds on that foundation and could even make it a more effective personal assistant. On Thursday, OpenAI unveiled an update to the memory feature in ChatGPT: it can now reference all of your past conversations to better inform responses going forward. This expansion builds on the feature's original abilities, which allowed the chatbot to remember basic user information you share in conversations, such as your profession, pets, preferences, and more.
Morehouse College Unveils AI Teaching Assistants - Eric Glick, Ed Tech
In what is being hailed as a significant technological leap forward, Morehouse College is offering 3D avatars that can stand in for teaching assistants. These humanlike figures can answer student questions 24 hours a day. The school, regarded as a higher education innovator in immersive learning, notes that the artificial intelligence-powered instructors are trained from teachers’ lectures and course notes. They are designed to offer students a more personalized alternative to chatbots. AI has been hailed a potentially powerful tool in higher education’s arsenal, particularly when it comes to supplemental teaching aids. Morehouse’s latest implementation sets a new standard for education. Morehouse does not currently employ teaching assistants, so the avatars may represent a constructive addition to students' overall learning experience.
Thursday, April 17, 2025
Home Innovation Artificial Intelligence The top 20 AI tools of 2025 - and the #1 thing to remember when you use them - David Gerwirtz, ZDnet
What is an AI agent? - McKinsey
An AI agent is a software component that has the agency to act on behaMlf of a user or a system to perform tasks. Users can organize agents into systems that can orchestrate complex workflows, coordinate activities among multiple agents, apply logic to thorny problems, and evaluate answers to user queries. If you’ve ever interacted with a customer service chatbot or asked a gen AI model to write you a sonnet, then you’re likely already familiar with a rudimentary version of AI agents. And if you’ve noticed improvements in gen AI’s performance since it went mainstream with ChatGPT, you’re not wrong. While versions of AI agents have existed for years, the natural-language-processing capabilities of today’s gen AI models have unleashed a host of new possibilities, which are enabling systems of agents to plan, collaborate, and complete tasks—and even learn to improve their own performance.
Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Artificial intelligence in educational leadership: a comprehensive taxonomy and future directions - Martin Sposato, International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education
Through a systematic literature review and inductive analysis of publications from 2017 to 2024, the research synthesizes diverse AI applications into ten distinct domains: Administrative Efficiency, Personalized Learning, Enhancing Teaching Practices, Decision-Making and Policy Formulation, Student Support Services, Organizational Leadership and Strategic Planning, Governance and Compliance, Community Engagement and Communication, Ethical AI Leadership, and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Initiatives. The resulting taxonomy, validated across various higher education contexts, provides educational leaders with a structured framework for understanding, evaluating, and implementing AI solutions in their institutions. This study contributes to the field by offering a common language and conceptual framework for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, while also identifying critical areas for future research.
The Disruptive Future of Society as AI Dominates the Workplace - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
Generative AI’s rapid evolution has generated fear and anxiety among some observers and enthusiasm among others. The enthusiasm is for the many ways in AI will improve the lives of people and other life on Earth. The fear is generated by the awesome power and influence this technology may have over our very existence as it addresses such conditions as hunger, poverty and climate change, at the same time it enhances efficiency and effectiveness across the full spectrum of industry, business and commerce. As reported in Venture Beat, one leader in the field has predicted that AI will be ready to replace an entire country of Ph.D.s as early as next year: “AI will match the collective intelligence of ‘a country of geniuses’ within two years, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned in a sharp critique of that week’s AI Action Summit in Paris. His timeline—targeting 2026 or 2027—marks one of the most specific predictions yet from a major AI leader about the technology’s advancement toward superintelligence.”
Tuesday, April 15, 2025
This AI Clones Itself 999 Times Creating an AI Swarm Army! (9999% Faster)" - AI Revolultion, YouTube
This podcast introduces Lindy AI's "agent swarms" feature, which is designed for their no-code automation platform [00:10, 00:29]. This feature allows a single AI workflow agent to clone itself, creating potentially hundreds of agents that can simultaneously handle large lists of tasks in parallel, such as researching conference attendees, preparing for meetings, conducting competitive analysis, or personalizing sales outreach [00:59, 02:15]. Lindy AI integrates with over 5,000 applications and uses 4,000 web scrapers, allowing swarms to be triggered by events in tools like Google Sheets, email, or Drive [02:37, 02:54]. The platform also offers features for customer support, email automation, and even phone/SMS automation [04:22, 05:58]. It combines a chat interface with a workflow builder to help automate tasks and save time, offering both free and paid plans starting at $50/month after a trial [03:32, 06:36]. (Summary by Gemini 2.5 Pro)
Revolutionize Your Work with Claude AI - Hubspot
Transform your workflow and unlock unprecedented productivity with AI. Learn how to harness Claude's powerful capabilities for content creation, data analysis, and strategic planning. This comprehensive guide shows you exactly how to integrate AI seamlessly into your daily operations for maximum impact. Upgrade Your Workflow with AI. Join forward-thinking professionals who are already using Claude to transform their daily work. This comprehensive guide equips you with frameworks, strategies, and practical tips to harness AI's full potential. Whether you're streamlining tasks, creating content, or analyzing data, learn how to make Claude your indispensable partner for professional excellence. Download now to stay ahead of the curve and unlock new levels of productivity with AI-powered insights that drive results.
Monday, April 14, 2025
One step closer to the Intelligence Explosion... - Matthew Berman, YouTube
Matthew BermanThis podcast discusses a recent OpenAI paper demonstrating that AI agents can replicate cutting-edge AI research, suggesting potential for self-improvement [00:00]. The core of this capability is the Paperbench framework, which allows AI agents equipped with tools like web Browse and coding environments to tackle the complex process of understanding a research paper, developing code, and running experiments – tasks that often take human experts days but which agents can complete in hours [01:04, 01:54]. The framework utilizes a benchmark of recent machine learning papers and employs an LLM-based judge for efficient grading, comparing results against expert-created rubrics [02:22, 03:26]. In tests, Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet model showed the best performance, indicating that while raw model intelligence is important, agentic frameworks are key for accomplishing complex real-world tasks [06:20]. Although limitations like dataset size and cost exist, the rapid progress highlighted in the paper points towards an approaching "intelligence explosion" in AI capabilities [18:20, 23:28]. (summary provided by Gemini 2.5)
Large Language Models Pass the Turing Test - Cameron R. Jones, Benjamin K. Bergen, arXiv
We evaluated 4 systems (ELIZA, GPT-4o, LLaMa-3.1-405B, and GPT-4.5) in two randomised, controlled, and pre-registered Turing tests on independent populations. Participants had 5 minute conversations simultaneously with another human participant and one of these systems before judging which conversational partner they thought was human. When prompted to adopt a humanlike persona, GPT-4.5 was judged to be the human 73% of the time: significantly more often than interrogators selected the real human participant. LLaMa-3.1, with the same prompt, was judged to be the human 56% of the time -- not significantly more or less often than the humans they were being compared to -- while baseline models (ELIZA and GPT-4o) achieved win rates significantly below chance (23% and 21% respectively). The results constitute the first empirical evidence that any artificial system passes a standard three-party Turing test.
Sunday, April 13, 2025
Swarms of AI Agents JUST Got Unleashed... - Wes Roth, YouTube
Anthropic launches an AI chatbot plan for colleges and universities - Maxwell Zeff, TechCrunch
Anthropic announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new Claude for Education tier, an answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT Edu plan. The new tier is aimed at higher education, and gives students, faculty, and other staff access to Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, with a few additional capabilities. One piece of Claude for Education is “Learning Mode,” a new feature within Claude Projects to help students develop their own critical thinking skills, rather than simply obtain answers to questions. With Learning Mode enabled, Claude will ask questions to test understanding, highlight fundamental principles behind specific problems, and provide potentially useful templates for research papers, outlines, and study guides.
Saturday, April 12, 2025
Devin 2.0 is here: Cognition slashes price of AI software engineer to $20 per month from $500 - Carl Franzen, Venture Beat
If Anthropic Succeeds, a Nation of Benevolent AI Geniuses Could Be Born - Steve Levy, Wired
When Dario Amodei gets excited about AI—which is nearly always—he moves. The cofounder and CEO springs from a seat in a conference room and darts over to a whiteboard. He scrawls charts with swooping hockey-stick curves that show how machine intelligence is bending toward the infinite. His hand rises to his curly mop of hair, as if he’s caressing his neurons to forestall a system crash. You can almost feel his bones vibrate as he explains how his company, Anthropic, is unlike other AI model builders. He’s trying to create an artificial general intelligence—or as he calls it, “powerful AI”—that will never go rogue. It’ll be a good guy, an usher of utopia. And while Amodei is vital to Anthropic, he comes in second to the company’s most important contributor. Like other extraordinary beings (Beyoncé, Cher, Pelé), the latter goes by a single name, in this case a pedestrian one, reflecting its pliancy and comity. Oh, and it’s an AI model. Hi, Claude!
Friday, April 11, 2025
AI Literacy in Higher Education: Preparing Students for the Future Workforce - Jaspreet Bindra, Best Colleges India
AI literacy is essential for students as industries embrace artificial intelligence, making its integration into higher education crucial for future job readiness. The rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) are transforming industries worldwide, making AI literacy an essential skill for students entering the workforce. As AI continues to disrupt traditional job roles, higher education institutions must integrate AI literacy into their curricula to equip students with the knowledge and skills needed for the evolving job market. This article explores the importance of AI literacy in higher education, key components of AI education, and strategies for preparing students for an AI-driven workforce.
Emergence AI’s new system automatically creates AI agents rapidly in realtime based on the work at hand - Carl Franzen, Venture Beat
Another day, another announcement about AI agents. Hailed by various market research reports as the big tech trend in 2025 — especially in the enterprise — it seems we can’t go more than 12 hours or so without the debut of another way to make, orchestrate (link together), or otherwise optimize purpose-built AI tools and workflows designed to handle routine white collar work. Yet Emergence AI, a startup founded by former IBM Research veterans and which late last year debuted its own, cross-platform AI agent orchestration framework, is out with something novel from all the rest: a new AI agent creation platform that lets the human user specify what work they are trying to accomplish via text prompts, and then turns it over to AI models to create the agents they believe are necessary to accomplish said work. This new system is literally a no code, natural language, AI-powered multi-agent builder, and it works in real time.
Thursday, April 10, 2025
First Therapy Chatbot Trial Yields Mental Health Benefits - Morgan Kelly, Dartmouth
Dartmouth researchers conducted the first-ever clinical trial of a generative AI-powered therapy chatbot and found that the software resulted in significant improvements in participants’ symptoms, according to results published March 27 in NEJM AI. People in the study also reported they could trust and communicate with the system, known as Therabot, to a degree that is comparable to working with a mental-health professional. The trial consisted of 106 people from across the United States diagnosed with major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or an eating disorder. Participants interacted with Therabot through a smartphone app by typing out responses to prompts about how they were feeling or initiating conversations when they needed to talk. People diagnosed with depression experienced a 51% average reduction in symptoms, leading to clinically significant improvements in mood and overall well-being, the researchers report. Participants with generalized anxiety reported an average reduction in symptoms of 31%, with many shifting from moderate to mild anxiety, or from mild anxiety to below the clinical threshold for diagnosis.
Chicagoland Vies for a Quantum Leap in Computing - Joseph S. Pete, Inc.
Wednesday, April 09, 2025
AMD is powering AI success with smarter, right-sized compute - Venture Beat
Modernizing existing data centers is an essential first step to removing bottlenecks to AI innovation. This frees up space and power, improves efficiency and greens the data center, all of which helps the organization stay nimble enough to adapt to the changing AI environment.“You can upgrade your existing data center from a three-generation-old, Intel Xeon 8280 CPU, to the latest generation of AMD EPYC CPU and save up to 68% on energy while using 87% fewer servers3,” Balasubramanian says. “It’s not just a smart and efficient way of upgrading an existing data center, it opens up options for the next steps in upgrading a company’s compute power.”
OpenAI to release open-source model as AI economics force strategic shift - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
Tuesday, April 08, 2025
These 5 new AI tools can help you do everything fro managing tasks to improving your public speaking - Jeremy Caplan, Wonder Tools (reprinted in Fast Company)
Realistic AI voices, smart job coaching, automatic task runners—these tools are free, powerful, and ready to help. Hundreds of AI tools emerge every week. I’ve picked five new ones worth exploring. They’re free to try, easy to use, and signal new directions for useful AI.
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro is the smartest model you’re not using – and 4 reasons it matters for enterprise AI - Matt Marshall, Venture Beat
Gemini 2.5 Pro marks a significant leap forward for Google in the foundational model race—not just in benchmarks but also in usability. Based on early experiments, benchmark data and hands-on developer reactions, it’s a model worth serious attention from enterprise technical decision-makers, particularly those who’ve historically defaulted to OpenAI or Claude for production-grade reasoning.
Monday, April 07, 2025
Age of AI: The augmented mind in the university classroom - James Yoonil Auh, University World News
Today, we are surrounded – indeed, immersed – in a world of digital devices quietly powered by artificial intelligence. Whether through Microsoft’s Copilot, Google’s predictive search, Grammarly’s real-time editing, or the invisible algorithms guiding us through traffic and daily decisions, we are engaged in a kind of ambient co-thinking with machines. Most of the time, we are unaware of the extent to which our thoughts are being shaped, streamlined or scaffolded by these tools. Use is no longer a matter of conscious choice; it is the architecture of our environment.
Tracing the thoughts of a large language model - Anthropic
Language models like Claude aren't programmed directly by humans—instead, they‘re trained on large amounts of data. During that training process, they learn their own strategies to solve problems. These strategies are encoded in the billions of computations a model performs for every word it writes. They arrive inscrutable to us, the model’s developers. This means that we don’t understand how models do most of the things they do. Knowing how models like Claude think would allow us to have a better understanding of their abilities, as well as help us ensure that they’re doing what we intend them to.
Sunday, April 06, 2025
Investing in the Future: Preparing Students for the AI Revolution - Teaching and Learning Services, Carleton
In a world where technology is rapidly evolving, artificial intelligence (AI) is seemingly everywhere, transforming many aspects of our daily lives. From using smart thermostats or robot vacuums in our homes, to offering virtual reality simulations in university courses, to automating tasks in the workplace, AI is changing the way we live, learn and work. To help prepare students for this new wave of technology, Teaching and Learning Services has launched online learning experiences that foster knowledge, skills and confidence in AI and digital literacy. These new modules are part of FUSION, an initiative that aims to bridge academic and employability skills. They will teach students how to identify accurate information online, manage their digital footprint and use AI effectively and ethically.
Key Considerations for AI and Accessibility in Higher Education - Emily Cook, Every Learner Everywhere
Every Learner Everywhere and Teach Access have partnered to publish a new resource titled Where AI Meets Accessibility: Considerations for Higher Education, to support educators and administrators in higher education in exploring the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and accessibility, with a particular focus on the needs of people with disabilities (PWD). Created through collaboration with experts from academia, industry, and the disability community, this resource aims to help educators and institutional administrators discover innovative ways to foster access and opportunity in higher education for PWD. As AI becomes increasingly embedded into educational settings and practices, it offers both opportunities and challenges. This comprehensive resource will help navigate both aspects— demonstrating how AI can help overcome technology barriers and highlighting areas where it may inadvertently create new obstacles for PWD. It is also a practical toolkit for incorporating accessible AI in higher education, complete with example activities, discussion questions, and reading lists.
Saturday, April 05, 2025
Which LLM Should You Use for Your Business? [Pros and Cons] - Nathan Lands and Matt Wolfe, Hubspot
Choosing the right large language model can feel overwhelming with so many options out there, especially if you’re not exactly living and breathing AI. But as we’ve worked through each one, we’ve gotten a real sense of what they’re good at (and where they fall short). So, let’s talk about what to use, when.
Gemini 2.5: Our most intelligent AI model - Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google
Gemini 2.5 is a thinking model, designed to tackle increasingly complex problems. Our first 2.5 model, Gemini 2.5 Pro Experimental, leads common benchmarks by meaningful margins and showcases strong reasoning and code capabilities. Gemini 2.5 models are thinking models, capable of reasoning through their thoughts before responding, resulting in enhanced performance and improved accuracy. In the field of AI, a system’s capacity for “reasoning” refers to more than just classification and prediction. It refers to its ability to analyze information, draw logical conclusions, incorporate context and nuance, and make informed decisions. For a long time, we’ve explored ways of making AI smarter and more capable of reasoning through techniques like reinforcement learning and chain-of-thought prompting. Building on this, we recently introduced our first thinking model, Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking.
Friday, April 04, 2025
Amplified Humanity: How AI Can Expand Our Capacity to Do Good and Be Good - Tawnya Means, University of Illinois Assistant Dean for Educational Innovation, via LinkedIn
In an era where headlines about artificial intelligence swing between utopian promises and dystopian warnings, we're missing perhaps the most profound opportunity of all: using AI to help us become better humans. This isn't about outsourcing our humanity. It's about leveraging technology to amplify our uniquely human capacities for care, support, learning, engagement, and love. As AI systems grow more capable, our ability to be deeply, authentically human becomes not just valuable; it becomes imperative.
SUPERAGENCY: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future" - Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato, Superagency
Superagency, by Reid Hoffman and Greg Beato, presents an optimistic view of AI's future, focusing on its potential to amplify human capabilities and improve society. Rather than dwelling on dystopian scenarios, the book explores how AI can enhance individual agency, enabling people to achieve more in areas like education, healthcare, and problem-solving. It advocates for an inclusive and adaptive approach to AI, emphasizing its role as a tool for positive change and encouraging readers to actively participate in shaping a future where human ingenuity and AI work in synergy. (summary by Gemini 2.0 Flash)
Thursday, April 03, 2025
New Auburn Engineering research center combines expertise in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity - Joe McAdory, Auburn University
Innovation and Collaboration in Higher Education During Challenging Times - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
Wednesday, April 02, 2025
AI's Moore's Law: Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Tasks
We propose measuring AI performance in terms of the length of tasks AI agents can complete. We show that this metric has been consistently exponentially increasing over the past 6 years, with a doubling time of around 7 months. Extrapolating this trend predicts that, in under five years, we will see AI agents that can independently complete a large fraction of software tasks that currently take humans days or weeks.
Artificial Intelligence in Medical Education: Transforming Learning and Practice - Aadhitya Sriram, et al; Cureus
Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping medical education by enhancing learning strategies, improving training efficiency, and offering personalized educational experiences. Traditional teaching methods, such as classroom lectures and clinical apprenticeships, face numerous challenges, including information overload, teaching quality variability, and standardisation difficulties. AI presents innovative, data-driven, and adaptive solutions to overcome these limitations, making medical training more effective and engaging. This study explores how AI can be applied in the field of medical education, also focusing on personalized learning, virtual simulations, assessment methods, and curriculum development.