Sam Altman is in the process of co-founding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs and raising funds for it with the capital possibly coming largely from OpenAI’s ventures team, unnamed sources told the Financial Times. The startup is expected to be valued at $850 million. A source familiar with the deal tells TechCrunch that talks are still early and OpenAI has not yet committed to participation, so terms could change. Merge Labs is also reportedly working with Alex Blania, who runs Tools for Humanity (formerly World) — Altman’s eye-scanning digital ID project that “allows anyone to verify their humanness,” as the company describes.
Friday, August 22, 2025
Google Pledges $1 Billion to Bring AI Training and Tools to US Colleges - CDO Magazine
Google has committed $1 billion over the next three years to equip U.S. higher education institutions and nonprofits with artificial intelligence training, research resources, and advanced tools. More than 100 universities, including major public systems like Texas A&M and the University of North Carolina, have already joined the initiative. Participating schools may receive direct funding, cloud computing credits, and free access to Google’s advanced Gemini chatbot for students. The investment—which covers both cash support and the value of Google’s paid AI services—aims to eventually reach every accredited nonprofit college in the U.S., with similar programs under discussion abroad, Senior Vice President James Manyika said.
Thursday, August 21, 2025
MIT's new AI can teach itself to control robots by watching the world through their eyes — it only needs a single camera News - Tristan Greene, Live Science
Scientists at MIT have developed a novel vision-based artificial intelligence (AI) system that can teach itself how to control virtually any robot without the use of sensors or pretraining. The system gathers data about a given robot’s architecture using cameras, in much the same way that humans use their eyes to learn about themselves as they move. This allows the AI controller to develop a self-learning model for operating any robot — essentially giving machines a humanlike sense of physical self-awareness.
Gemini just got two of ChatGPT's best features - and they're free - Sabrina Ortiz, ZDnet
Gemini can now remember chat context for personalized answers. Users can use Temporary Chat for added privacy. Google also added new data control settings you'll want to look at now. You can now reference your past chats with Google's Gemini AI chatbot for more personalized responses, the company said Wednesday. Google also added a Temporary Chat feature and new data control settings. Everyone, including free users, can take advantage of the features in the Gemini app. While every major AI company is constantly racing to release the latest and greatest AI models, sometimes the most impactful updates are actually the less flashy features that improve the chatbot using experience. These new Gemini features aim to make users' lives easier in ways ChatGPT already has.
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
Indiana U to Launch GenAI 101 Course for Students, Staff - Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed
A new, self-paced course at Indiana University teaches students, faculty and staff generative AI skills and expertise. As generative artificial intelligence skills have become more in demand among employers, colleges and universities have expanded opportunities for students to engage with the tools. Indiana University is no exception. It’s developed a free, online course for campus community members to gain a basic understanding of generative AI and how the tools could fit into their daily lives and work. GenAI 101 is available to anyone with a campus login and comes with a certificate of in-demand skills for people who complete it.
Artificial Intelligence Literacy in Higher Education: Theory and Practice from a European Perspective - Imre Fekete, JSTOR
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been gaining undeniable momentum in education. While not an entirely new phenomenon, its rapid popularisation and growing presence have sparked both excitement and unease among instructors and learners alike. AI systems, from generative chatbots to adaptive learning tools, are influencing classrooms and shaping how we approach teaching and learning. AI technologies challenge us both as educators guiding the next generation and as lifelong learners of an increasingly digital world to reconsider the skills and knowledge necessary for success.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
Goodbye, $165,000 Tech Jobs. Student Coders Seek Work at Chipotle. - Natasha Singer, NY Times
Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively, according to a report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. That is more than double the unemployment rate among recent biology and art history graduates, which is just 3 percent. “I’m very concerned,” said Jeff Forbes, a former program director for computer science education and workforce development at the National Science Foundation. “Computer science students who graduated three or four years ago would have been fighting off offers from top firms — and now that same student would be struggling to get a job from anyone.”
Sydney Uni students will use ChatGPT, so let’s teach them how - Adam Bridgeman and Danny Liu, Financial Review
We now have a “two-lane approach” to assessments. Lane 1 assessments are secure and measure students’ capabilities in live, in-person environments, such as interactive oral assessments, Q&As or demonstrations, skills observations or, yes, sometimes exams. When these assessments are well-designed and executed, with AI use reliably controlled, they safeguard academic integrity and measure whether learning has happened. We’ll also have “open” lane 2 assessments that allow the use of all available and relevant tools, including generative AI. In these assessments, we have essentially banned the banning of AI because (apart from the fact that restricting AI is unenforceable when students are not in front of us) we want to ensure our students can learn, prosper and contribute in the contemporary business and wider world. We’ll assume students are using AI, and they won’t get in trouble for doing so in open lane 2 assessments, as long as they acknowledge how they’ve used it.
Monday, August 18, 2025
Why Faculty Hold The Keys To Higher Ed’s AI Digital Transformation - Aviva Legatt, Forbes
If the 20th century belonged to the textbook, the 21st belongs to the prompt. In lecture halls from Toronto to San Diego to Ho Chi Minh City, students are already co-writing their education with algorithms. Nearly 80% of undergraduates worldwide are already using generative AI, often daily. What’s missing is not adoption—it’s alignment. While students are busy teaching themselves AI, most universities remain frozen between prohibition and pilot. Eighty percent of students report that they have no structured AI support for teaching or learning, even as employers accelerate toward AI-mandatory job descriptions. This is more than a skills gap. It’s pedagogical infrastructure debt—every semester without faculty readiness compounds the cost and complexity of catching up.
10 Things GPT-5 Changes - The AI Daily Brief
10 Things GPT-5 Changes - The AI Daily Brief
In the podcast "10 Things GPT-5 Changes," the host discusses the significant impact of the GPT-5 model on the AI landscape, focusing on ten key areas of change. The video emphasizes a shift from raw AI capabilities to how these models interact with the real world through tools. It also highlights a potential plateau in the current pre-training paradigm, with future advancements focusing on reasoning and new scaling approaches. The podcast suggests that GPT-5 will empower the average user by making advanced AI more accessible and reducing the need for users to select specific models. Other key takeaways include the rise of "vibe coding," where non-developers can generate code, and the increasing consumerization of OpenAI's products. The video also touches upon the competitive landscape, with opportunities for other AI labs to emerge, and the growing importance of the "app layer" and multi-agent systems in the future of AI. [summary provided in part by Gemini 2.5 Pro]
Sunday, August 17, 2025
4 Steps to Responsible AI Implementation in Education - Rhea Kelly, THE Journal
Researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Innovation, Design & Digital Learning (CIDDL) have published a new framework for the responsible implementation of artificial intelligence at all levels of education, from preschool through higher education. Developed under a cooperative agreement with the United States Department of Education, the framework "is intended to provide guidance on how schools can incorporate AI into its daily operations and curriculum," the university said in a news announcement. The document offers four key recommendations.
How AI Supports Student Mental Health in Higher Education - Erin Brereton, EdTech
Students’ awareness of campus mental health services has grown in recent years, according to research from the Steve Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the emotional well-being of young people of color. Yet, taking advantage of these resources isn’t always easy, as 40% of college students say they’ve found it challenging to access mental health services. In a separate survey conducted by EDUCAUSE, students mentioned that even though their school has introduced additional technology-driven care options, they still face long wait times, says researcher Nicole Muscanell, who co-authored the 2025 EDUCAUSE Students and Technology Report.
Saturday, August 16, 2025
The Precision Learning Companion - There Is An AI For That (TAAFT) Notion Site
This prompt turns AI into an ultra-detailed, dynamic personal tutor that doesn’t just quiz, it teaches deeply, layer by layer, until the user genuinely masters the material. It’s built to adapt in real time, constantly diagnosing knowledge gaps, and never moving forward without full comprehension. Every answer, right or wrong, triggers a structured, narrative-style breakdown explaining the what, why, how, and broader context, ensuring true understanding. The AI is designed to feel like having a supportive but meticulous mentor who scaffolds learning: progressively challenging the user if they perform well, slowing down and simplifying if they struggle, and always reinforcing psychological safety through encouragement. It uses textually described visual aids, memory tricks, real-world examples, and step-by-step remediation when needed. Mastery, not speed, is the goal.
OpenAI, Google and Anthropic Win US Approval for Civilian AI Contracts - Bloomberg
The US government’s central purchasing arm is adding OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Anthropic to a list of approved artificial intelligence vendors, opening the door to widespread adoption of the technology across civilian federal agencies. The move by the General Services Administration, to be announced Tuesday, will speed up the adoption of AI tools in the federal government by making them available through its Multiple Award Schedule, a federal contracting platform with contract terms already set. Without that flexibility, agencies would ordinarily spend months negotiating their own terms for use of the technology. GSA officials said the models from the three companies — OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude — were evaluated by several performance and security measures.
Friday, August 15, 2025
Google Releases Most Realistic AI World Model to Date - Scarlett Evans, AI Business
The Genie 3 model is said to be Google’s most realistic to date, generating lifelike training simulations for robots and AI agents. Google has launched a new AI model that lets robots and AI systems interact with and learn from realistic simulations of the world. Genie 3 is a general purpose model that Google says is a significant step towards achieving artificial general intelligence, meaning a stage where AI can carry out tasks at the same level as humans. Unlike previous AI systems that focused on narrow tasks, Genie 3 simulates entire environments for training autonomous robots and vehicles.
These College Professors Will Not Bow Down to A.I. - Jessica Grose, NY Times
Where does this leave college students? Gen Z is not giving up on the arts or the pleasures of reading and thinking for themselves. As A.I. creates chaos and uncertainty in the market for entry-level jobs, more students may react by following their passion for the humanities; why begrudgingly major in tech or business if it doesn’t even lead to employment? There’s some evidence that humanities departments are rebounding after a long period of decline. U.C. Berkeley, which is considered one of the best public universities in the country, has seen a nearly 50 percent increase in majors in their arts and humanities division over the past four years.
Thursday, August 14, 2025
Self-adaptive reasoning for science - Newman Cheng, et al; Microsoft
Unlocking self-adaptive cognitive behavior that is more controllable and explainable than reasoning models in challenging scientific domains. Long-running LLM agents equipped with strong reasoning, planning, and execution skills have the potential to transform scientific discovery with high-impact advancements, such as developing new materials or pharmaceuticals. As these agents become more autonomous, ensuring effective human oversight and clear accountability becomes increasingly important, presenting challenges that must be addressed to unlock their full transformative power. Today’s approaches to long-term reasoning are established during the post-training phase, prior to end-user deployment and typically by the model provider. As a result, the expected actions of these agents are pre-baked by the model developer, offering little to no control from the end user.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/self-adaptive-reasoning-for-science/
Bringing the best of AI to college students for free - Sundar Pichai, The Google Keyword Blog
Starting today, students (ages 18+) in the U.S. as well as in Japan, Indonesia, Korea and Brazil can sign-up for a 12 month Google AI Pro plan for free. Here’s what they’ll get:
- Expanded access to Gemini 2.5 Pro: Ask any question and upload images. Our most capable model provides quick homework and writing help.
- Deep Research: Save time with custom research reports, providing in-depth information from hundreds of sites across the web with higher access to Deep Research on 2.5 Pro.
- NotebookLM: A one-of-a-kind thinking companion that helps you organize your thoughts, now with five times more audio and video overviews.
- Veo 3: Transform text or a photo into a 8-second video with sound using Veo 3
- Higher limits when using Jules, our asynchronous AI coding agent that can fix bugs and build new features for your coding projects.
- 2 TB of storage: tons of space for all your notes, projects, photos and papers on Google Photos, Drive and Gmail
- https://blog.google/products/gemini/google-ai-pro-students-learning/
Wednesday, August 13, 2025
OpenAI Announces Massive US Government Partnership - Joe Schiffer and Will Knight, Wired
OpenAI is partnering with the US government to make its leading frontier models available to federal employees. Under the agreement, federal agencies can access OpenAI’s models for $1 for the next year, per a Wednesday announcement from the company and the General Services Administration (GSA). The partnership is the culmination of months of effort on the part of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives, who have been cozying up to the Trump administration since before President Donald Trump retook the White House in January. In a statement emailed to WIRED, Altman said: “One of the best ways to make sure AI works for everyone is to put it in the hands of the people serving the country.
AI Skills Needed in Many Postgrad Careers—Not Just Tech - Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed
More companies are seeking employees with experience using artificial intelligence tools outside of traditional computer science or IT fields, according to a recent report. As artificial intelligence tools continue to develop, more industries are seeking workers who possess AI skills, creating opportunities for higher education to better prepare students. A recent report from Lightcast found that job postings requiring generative AI skills for non–computer science or information technology roles grew ninefold between 2022 and 2024, with over 80,000 postings seeking those skills. In addition to a fast-growing emphasis on AI aptitude, job postings continue to require soft skills including communication, leadership, research and customer service—skills that report authors wrote are necessary for workers to have lasting careers.
Tuesday, August 12, 2025
U.S. Continuing Education Market to Surpass USD 95.98 Billion by 2030, Growing at 6.2% CAGR as AI and Micro-Credentials Reshape Learning - Arizton, the Globe and Mail
According to Arizton’s latest report, the U.S. continuing education market is projected to grow from USD 66.91 billion in 2024 to USD 95.98 billion by 2030, expanding at a CAGR of 6.20% during the forecast period. The continuing education market is accelerating its digital transformation as AI becomes a core growth catalyst. Providers are adopting Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS), adaptive learning platforms, and real-time analytics to deliver personalized, flexible, and scalable upskilling solutions. This shift aligns with surging global demand for future-ready skills in high-impact areas like data analytics, automation, and machine learning. By modernizing delivery models with AI, institutions can increase learner engagement, reduce delivery costs, and expand their addressable market across diverse workforce segments.
College students can get Google's AI Pro plan for free now. Here's how - Sabrina Ortiz, ZDnet
- Students ages 18+ get the Google AI Pro plan for free for 12 months.
- Plan includes access to Deep Research, Veo 3, Jules, and more.
- Part of a larger $1 billion investment in AI education and job training.
As AI tools continue to develop, they expand beyond the standard question-and-answer loop and offer more meaningful assistance for students. Google, for instance, has tools that can create podcasts for users from their notes, debug code, and create in-depth reports in seconds. Now, students can access all these tools for free.
Monday, August 11, 2025
What we’re optimizing ChatGPT for - OpenAI
This is what a helpful ChatGPT experience could look like:
“Help me prepare for a tough conversation with my boss.” ChatGPT tunes into what you need to feel at your best, with resources like practice scenarios or a tailored pep talk so you can walk in feeling grounded and confident.
“I need to understand my lab results.” It explains the numbers and helps you ask the right questions of your doctor, so you and your doctor can personalize your care with more information.
“I’m feeling stuck—help me untangle my thoughts.” It acts as a sounding board while empowering you with tools of thought so you can think more clearly.
The Quantum-AI Convergence Changes Everything - Click Future, Youtube
Quantum-enhanced AI can solve problems impossible for classical systems, excelling in areas like optimization, pattern recognition, and complex system modeling. It can learn from smaller datasets and has demonstrated creativity and insight beyond classical AI. The podcast highlights rapid advancements in this field and outlines practical applications across various industries, including drug discovery, material science, climate science, finance, and space exploration. [summary provided in part by Gemini 2.5 Flash]
Sunday, August 10, 2025
CSU Faculty Projects Test AI for Creative Majors, Design - Abby Sourwine, GovTech
Sixty-three projects funded by the California State University system are experimenting with generative AI, from single-course pilots to full program overhauls, and producing open resources for others to consult. In classrooms across the California State University (CSU) system, faculty are looking to turn generative artificial intelligence from a disrupter into a teaching tool. From musical theater production to departmentwide curriculum redesigns, instructors are testing how generative AI can support creativity and critical thinking. The experiments are part of 63 faculty-led projects launched in the CSU system this summer as part of a push to bring AI into curricula. Funded through CSU’s inaugural AI Educational Innovations Challenge, the projects range from arts and humanities pilots to general education reforms and full program overhauls.
An AI-Enhanced Education - Allison Elliott, Columbia Engineering
While Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around for decades, the entry of ChatGPT in 2022 marked the beginning of a new era in AI. Institutions of higher education were particularly impacted by the explosion in AI use and are now navigating how to incorporate these technologies in a way that can improve educational models and help students to become ethical and responsible users. Columbia Engineering has worked to encourage faculty to think critically and broadly about how AI can be incorporated into various aspects of the student learning experience. This past spring, a call for teaching proposals was issued in the area of generative AI to inspire creative ideas from faculty. Winning proposals emphasized going beyond efficiency and automation to improve learning and assessment and to prepare students for a rapidly evolving professional landscape in the age of AI.
Saturday, August 09, 2025
99% of People Are Using ChatGPT Wrong (Do This Instead) - There's An AI For That
This podcast explains how to use ChatGPT more effectively through various prompt engineering techniques. It highlights the importance of crafting precise instructions for optimal output. Key techniques discussed include:
Role Prompting: Assigning ChatGPT a specific persona (e.g., career coach, finance professor) to influence the style and quality of its responses [00:43].Chain of Thought Prompting: Guiding ChatGPT to solve problems step-by-step to improve accuracy and clarity [03:29].Specifying Format and Constraints: Directing ChatGPT on how to format its answers (e.g., bullet points, word count, tone) for better readability [04:42].Few-Shot Prompting: Providing examples to help ChatGPT match a desired style or tone [06:38].Iterative Prompting: Breaking down complex requests into smaller, sequential steps [07:22].
The podcast emphasizes the iterative nature of prompt engineering, encouraging users to refine their prompts until the desired results are achieved and to save successful prompts for future use [08:24].
Friday, August 08, 2025
GPT-5 is here: Expert intelligence for everyone - OpenAI
Our smartest, fastest, and most useful model yet, with thinking built in. Available to everyone. Expert intelligence for everyone. GPT‑5 is smarter across the board, providing more useful responses across math, science, finance, law, and more. It's like having a team of experts on call for whatever you want to know. The best response, every time. Great at coding. An expressive writing partner. Create clearer, more compelling messaging for everything from stories to speeches and beyond. More useful health answers. Safer and more accurate.
AI literacy: What it is, what it isn’t, who needs it and why it’s hard to define - Daniel Schiff, et al; the Conversation
The implications of AI literacy, or lack thereof, are far-reaching. They extend beyond national ambitions to remain “a global leader in this technological revolution” or even prepare an “AI-skilled workforce,” as the executive order states. Without basic literacy, citizens and consumers are not well equipped to understand the algorithmic platforms and decisions that affect so many domains of their lives: government services, privacy, lending, health care, news recommendations and more. And the lack of AI literacy risks ceding important aspects of society’s future to a handful of multinational companies.
Thursday, August 07, 2025
Timeline for AGI: 2030 with 50% chance: Demis Hassabis and Lex Fridman - Lex Clips
This podcast discusses the timeline and definition of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Demis Hassabis estimates a 50% chance of achieving AGI by 2030, defining it as matching the cognitive functions of the human brain, emphasizing its general and consistent intelligence across various tasks, unlike current systems which have "jagged intelligence." He believes true AGI should possess capabilities like invention and creativity, and suggests testing methods like a "brute force test" involving tens of thousands of cognitive tasks, or having top experts test the system. He also looks for "lighthouse moments" such as inventing a new scientific conjecture or a game as deep and elegant as Go. The podcast also touches on AGI's self-improvement, noting that while current systems are good at incremental improvements on specific tasks, they struggle with vague, high-level instructions.
GPT-5 is here: Expert intelligence for everyone - OpenAI
Our smartest, fastest, and most useful model yet, with thinking built in. Available to everyone. Expert intelligence for everyone. GPT‑5 is smarter across the board, providing more useful responses across math, science, finance, law, and more. It's like having a team of experts on call for whatever you want to know. The best response, every time. Great at coding. An expressive writing partner. Create clearer, more compelling messaging for everything from stories to speeches and beyond. More useful health answers. Safer and more accurate.
Wednesday, August 06, 2025
AI in the University: From Generative Assistant to Autonomous Agent This Fall - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Education
We have become accustomed to generative artificial intelligence in the past couple of years. That will not go away, but increasingly, it will serve in support of agents. “Where generative AI creates, agentic AI acts.” That’s how my trusted assistant, Gemini 2.5 Pro deep research, describes the difference. By the way, I commonly use Gemini 2.5 Pro as one of my research tools, as I have in this column, however, it is I who writes the column. Agents, unlike generative tools, create and perform multistep goals with minimal human supervision. The essential difference is found in its proactive nature. Rather than waiting for a specific, step-by-step command, agentic systems take a high-level objective and independently create and execute a plan to achieve that goal. This triggers a continuous, iterative workflow that is much like a cognitive loop.
Marketing and enrollment surge to gain AI’s competitive edge - Alcino Donadel, University Business
As AI tools prove more effective in the workplace, higher education marketing and enrollment management offices face mounting pressure to adopt new technologies, or risk falling behind. That’s according to the latest annual survey from Education Dynamics and the Online and Professional Education Association, two organizations that support adult and online learners. Respondents specialized in marketing, enrollment management, student success services and admissions. Nearly two-thirds used AI or other emerging technology in 2025, up 15 percentage points from last year. Institutional adoption increased at a similar rate.
Tuesday, August 05, 2025
"Superintelligence is Near! Three innovations that prove it! (I think Fast Takeoff just started!!)" - David Shapiro, YouTube
This podcast discusses the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, suggesting that we are on the cusp of superintelligence. The speaker highlights three key recent developments: a hierarchical reasoning model paper, Google DeepMind and OpenAI winning gold at the International Mathematical Olympiad, and breakthroughs in AI model architecture discovery. The speaker believes these advancements indicate the "bootstrapping of a new class of primitives" in AI, particularly leveraging reinforcement learning in ways that are not solely dependent on massive datasets. He emphasizes that progress is not hitting a wall; instead, new scaling laws and approaches are continually being discovered. The mastery of mathematics by AI is highlighted as crucial, as math underpins many other scientific and technological fields. The speaker posits that we are moving beyond Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) towards Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), which will be capable of solving problems intractable or even unsolvable for humans, predicting that models might achieve ASI thresholds very soon.
"AlphaGo Moment" For Self Improving AI... can this be real? - Wes Roth, YouTube
This podcast discusses a new research paper from China titled "AlphaGo Moment for model architecture discovery" [00:05]. The paper introduces ASIArch, an AI system that autonomously innovates its own architecture, claiming that humans are the bottleneck in AI research [01:12, 01:21]. ASIArch reportedly conducted almost 2,000 autonomous experiments, discovering 106 innovative linear attention architectures, and the researchers claim to have established the first empirical scaling law for scientific discovery, suggesting that increased computation can lead to better architectures and more innovation [02:54, 03:31]. The research found that a small number of approaches yielded the majority of breakthroughs, with a significant contribution from the AI's own experience [08:29, 09:42]. While the implications are significant, some experts have expressed skepticism regarding the methodology [15:30, 15:56]. The research is open source, and the general trend of self-improving AI research is growing [17:18, 17:32]. [Gemini 2.5 Flash assisted with generating the summary of the podcast]
https://youtu.be/QGeql15rcLo?
Monday, August 04, 2025
Researchers create ‘virtual scientists’ to solve complex biological problems - Hanae Armitage, Stanford
Stanford Medicine researchers created a team of virtual scientists backed by artificial intelligence to help solve problems in their real-world lab. There may be a new artificial intelligence-driven tool to turbocharge scientific discovery: virtual labs. Modeled after a well-established Stanford School of Medicine research group, the virtual lab is complete with an AI principal investigator and seasoned scientists. “Good science happens when we have deep, interdisciplinary collaborations where people from different backgrounds work together, and often that’s one of the main bottlenecks and challenging parts of research,” said James Zou, PhD, associate professor of biomedical data science who led a study detailing the development of the virtual lab. “In parallel, we’ve seen this tremendous advance in AI agents, which, in a nutshell, are AI systems based on language models that are able to take more proactive actions.”
Six Tactics to Get Better Results From AI - Ethan Mollick, et al; Knowledge at Wharton
Achieving valuable results from AI is as much about the quality of your prompts as the capabilities of the tool. You can be a more effective “human in the loop” by refining your ability to formulate clear, specific, and context-rich queries, and obtain more useful solutions and actionable insights as a result. Here are six key tactics — grounded in Wharton research — to help you create more effective AI prompts for business applications.
Sunday, August 03, 2025
Zuckerberg says Meta will build data center the size of Manhattan in latest AI push - the Guardian
Mark Zuckerberg proclaimed that Meta would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on developing artificial intelligence products in the near future and, to that end, construct a data center planned to be nearly the size of Manhattan. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is among the large tech companies that have struck high-profile deals, and doled out multimillion-dollar pay packages to AI researchers in recent months – some as high as $100m – to fast-track work on machines that could outthink humans on many tasks, a concept known as “super-intelligence” or “artificial general intelligence”.
The learning organization: How to accelerate AI adoption - Bob Sternfels and Yuval Atsmon, McKinsey
The rapid rise of gen AI highlights a workplace reality: Front lines often embrace new tech much faster than managers do. Here’s how to overcome organizational blocks to transformative ideas. The dizzying speed at which AI technology is evolving makes it nearly impossible to keep up with the many new ways that it could transform how people work. Yet for most organizations, the gap between what’s possible and what’s implemented is steadily widening. A 2024 McKinsey Global Survey found that nine in ten employees used gen AI for their work, and 21 percent of them were heavy users.1 But while employee enthusiasm was high, the formal adoption of AI tools across most organizations lagged behind: Only 13 percent of surveyed employees considered their organization to be an early adopter.
Saturday, August 02, 2025
Americans Recognize Nuances of Higher Ed’s Value - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed
New data shows that confidence in higher education is on the rise and most Americans, regardless of party affiliation, share a similar vision for what colleges should prioritize. A group of university students are seen from behind walking outside on campus as they make their way to class. Most Democrats and Republicans believe higher ed should equip students to become informed citizens and critical thinkers. “Increasingly, higher ed is being cast as elite, expensive and not connected with everyday Americans,” said Sophie Nguyen, senior policy manager with the higher education team at New America, the left-leaning think tank that published its annual Varying Degrees survey on Wednesday. “There’s a significant disconnect in the narrative about what higher ed is” and how it’s perceived.
Mapping the AI economy: Which regions are ready for the next technology leap - Mark Muro and Shriya Methkupally, Brookings
Artificial intelligence is transforming the U.S. economy, yet regional disparities in talent development, research capacity, and enterprise adoption are stark, and not yet fully understood. AI activity remains highly concentrated, with the Bay Area alone accounting for 13% of all AI-related job postings. However, the recent boom in generative AI and agentic systems is beginning to widen the geography of AI activity to a broader set of emerging metro areas. To fully harness the power of AI, the U.S. should combine supportive national strategy with “bottom–up” economic development by regions.
Friday, August 01, 2025
ChatGPT launches study mode to encourage ‘responsible’ academic use - the Guardian
ChatGPT is launching a “study mode” to encourage responsible academic use of the chatbot, amid rising cases of misuse of artificial intelligence tools at universities. The feature, which can be accessed via the chatbot’s tools button, can walk users through complex subjects in a step-by-step format akin to an unfolding academic lesson. In one example released by ChatGPT’s developer, OpenAI, the chatbot responds to a prompt asking for help with understanding Bayes’ theorem – a mathematical formula – by asking the user what level of maths they are comfortable with and what their goal is.
The Impact of ChatGPT on Students' Academic Achievement: A Meta-Analysis - Zhiwei Liu, Haode Zuo, Yongjing Lu; JCAL
\The findings reveal that ChatGPT has a moderately positive impact on students' academic achievement, with an overall effect size of g = 0.577 (95% CI [0.395, 0.759], p < 0.001). Further analysis of moderating variables indicates that no significant differences are observed across educational levels, role-setting, or learning approaches. A greater effect is observed in the social sciences compared to other disciplines; an intervention duration of 5–10 weeks has a larger impact on academic achievement compared to other durations; sample sizes ranging from 21 to 40 participants exhibit a larger impact on academic achievement than other sample sizes; ChatGPT is more effective in supporting the learning of declarative knowledge compared to procedural knowledge; the combination of traditional classrooms with ChatGPT is more effective than using ChatGPT in a flipped classroom; compared to generating code, using ChatGPT to generate text has better academic achievement.
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