Thursday, May 21, 2026

Layoffs down from early '25 — except in this one field - Emma W. Thorne, Editor at LinkedIn News

Layoffs fell 50% from the first third of 2025 to the first third of 2026 — with one glaring exception. Tech was hit the hardest, laying off more than 85,000 workers in the first four months of the year, according to a new report out Thursday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That's a 33% jump year-over-year. The main culprit? Artificial intelligence, which was the top-cited reason for the second month in a row. A separate release from the Labor Department showed continuing unemployment claims hit a two-year low last week.

‘Student Guide to AI’ returns for third year with a new focus: Human capabilities - Elon University News Bureau

“Human Wisdom for the Age of AI: A Field Guide to Cultivating Essential Skills”, a publication by Elon University, the American Association of Colleges and Universities and The Princeton Review, is provided to students and institutions free of charge. The new publication, “Human Wisdom for the Age of AI: A Field Guide to Cultivating Essential Skills,” helps students cultivate the human skills they need to thrive in a digital world, whether working with AI technologies or learning independently of those tools. The guide includes engaging and fun exercises on curiosity, critical and deep thinking, creativity, ethical perspectives, communication and relational skills, among others. Like the 2024 and 2025 editions, this year’s guide is provided to students and institutions free of charge and is available for download at: www.studentguidetoai.org. The guide draws on 10 voices across centuries and cultures — from Aristotle, Cicero and Descartes to Mencius and Ptahhotep — whose enduring insights into human judgment, creativity, ethics and wisdom take on new urgency as AI reshapes how we learn and work.

Wednesday, May 20, 2026

AI risk to university jobs despite staff believing roles are safe - Juliette Rowsell, Times Higher Ed

University workers generally do not believe that their jobs will be taken by artificial intelligence in the short term but experts have warned against complacency, saying that automation may still be used as “justification” to cut roles anyway. While respondents to Times Higher Education’s UK University Redundancy Survey expressed widespread concern about the impact of the tens of thousands of job losses across the UK sector, concerns over the effect of AI remain low. Asked: “Do you fear you will be made redundant within the next three years due to the rise of AI?” more than half (55 per cent) disagreed, with 17 per cent of these strongly disagreeing. Just under 5 per cent strongly agreed and 14 per cent said they agree, while a fifth (21 per cent) neither agreed or disagreed.


In an AI-driven world, the most important skills are still human - Eric Townsend, Inside Higher Ed

Across higher education, artificial intelligence is now embedded in everyday academic work, from early research to final drafts. For many students, it has become a default starting point. The urgent question is not whether students use AI, but how they use it—specifically, whether these tools are reinforcing learning or bypassing the cognitive work that leads to it. As AI accelerates core academic tasks, educators are confronting a central challenge: how to preserve depth, judgment and intellectual engagement in an environment optimized for speed.


Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Micro-credentials gain ground as focus shifts from degrees to skills - Enterprise AM

A university degree is no longer the only ticket to a career. Employers across the globe — and increasingly in Egypt — are placing more emphasis on practical skills and targeted expertise, fueling demand for short courses, professional certifications, and micro-credentials that offer faster and cheaper avenues into the labor market. Short courses, big gains: Micro-credentials — short, skills-focused programs granting a verified certificate or digital badge — are gaining ground in fast-changing sectors like tech, digital marketing, AI, cybersecurity, and data analytics. Programs span local training from the Information Technology Institute and the Digital Egypt Pioneers Initiative (DEPI) to global options like Google Career Certificates on Coursera and Udacity Nanodegrees, iCareer founder and CEO Akram Marwan tells EnterpriseAM. The shift reflects a broader rethink of education — less a one-time university experience, more a continuous process of reskilling. As technologies evolve faster than universities can adapt, workers and employers want cheaper, targeted ways to build job-ready skills, Marwan says. Lower-cost online programs and funded initiatives like DEPI are also widening access beyond Cairo and Alexandria, potentially expanding the pool for remote and digital jobs.


Monday, May 18, 2026

Education Department Finalizes AI Priorities - Georgina Mackie, Broadband Breakfast

Under the policy, schools and higher education institutions can use AI to expand computer science and AI coursework, integrate AI into instruction, and provide professional development for educators.  The priority also encourages AI use for personalized learning, tutoring, and student support, including for students with disabilities and those below grade levelThe department said the policy is necessary to maintain U.S. competitiveness, stating it “must provide our Nation’s youth with opportunities to learn how to use AI technology effectively.” The final rule follows more than 300 public comments, reflecting both support for expanding AI literacy and concerns about privacy, safety, and student development. 

Bringing the AI-Active Lesson to Life in Higher Education - Adam Stone, EdTech

Evolving from researching artificial intelligence tools to substantive applications of AI, colleges are both boosting student engagement and supporting modern teaching in college classrooms.Across the higher education la ndscape, “we’re moving past AI readiness and starting to talk about how we can activate learning environments with AI,” says Micah Shippee, director of education at Samsung. Samsung’s AI-powered interactive display, for example, can give learners a shared point of focus and empower teachers with a range of capabilities to ensure student engagement.

 https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2026/05/bringing-ai-active-lesson-life-higher-education

Sunday, May 17, 2026

Artificial intelligence assisted design of a novel cooperative learning technique for higher education - Özgür Tutal, Nature

Cooperative learning has long been recognized as an effective pedagogical strategy, yet the development of innovative techniques tailored to modern educational demands remains a challenge. This study introduces the Curriculum Concept Constellation Technique (CCCT), a novel cooperative learning technique developed with the support of artificial intelligence (AI). The CCCT employs a metaphorical and visual approach, wherein students collaboratively map key curriculum concepts into visual ‘constellations,’ (Throughout this manuscript, references to ‘constellations’ should be understood as a pedagogical metaphor for conceptual relationships, not as an astronomical or literal representation)—a metaphor representing how individual ideas (like stars) interconnect to form meaningful patterns. This approach fosters deeper conceptual understanding through creativity, role-based collaboration, and peer interaction.

Nature Retracts Oft-Cited Paper on Positive Impact of ChatGPT - GovTech

A widely read and frequently cited 2025 meta-analysis of 51 studies, which found positive effects of ChatGPT in education settings, has been retracted due to uncertainties about the studies and conclusions. A 2025 research paper finding substantial positive effects of ChatGPT on student learning outcomes was retracted last month, with the publishing journal Nature saying discrepancies “undermine the confidence the editor can place in the validity of the analysis and resulting conclusions.” The paper, The effect of ChatGPT on students’ learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: insights from a meta-analysis, reviewed findings from 51 research studies published between November 2022 and February 2025.

Saturday, May 16, 2026

The Secret to Understanding AI “Imagine the tech without the tech companies.” - Josh Tyrangiel, the Atlantic

Yet for all of the noise, a simple question stayed unanswered: What exactly was this new technology going to do for people? Not for corporations or the billionaires who aspired to become trillionaires, but for people with mortgages and sick parents and children struggling to learn things. Answers, when they came, were either so enormous as to be meaningless or so specific as to seem beside the point: AI would cure cancer and write your text messages

Rewiring for AI: From ambition to advantage - Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro, McKinsey Podcast

Companies chase AI everywhere but often fail to capture value—because they’re missing the muscle to scale what works. As generative and agentic AI reshape how work gets done, the real divide isn’t who has the best ideas—it’s who can turn them into real results at speed and scale. In this episode of The McKinsey Podcast, McKinsey Senior Partners Kate Smaje and Robert Levin speak to Global Editorial Director Lucia Rahilly about the updated Rewired playbook—and why winning with AI now depends less on ambition and more on building the organizational capabilities to deliver.

Friday, May 15, 2026

Canvas owner confirms cybersecurity incident - Anna Merod, Higher Ed Dive

Ed tech company Instructure said the data breach affected user names, messages and email addresses, as well as student ID numbers. A recent cybersecurity attack on Instructure exposed certain student information, the ed tech company confirmed in a May 1 status update. The following day, it said it believes the incident has been contained. Information impacted by the data breach includes messages between users, names, email addresses and student ID numbers, according to Instructure. The company said no passwords, dates of birth, government identifiers or financial information were believed to have been compromised as of May 2. While Instructure said it is actively investigating the incident alongside forensics experts, the company has not disclosed how many school districts were affected.


UNESCO and Tec Launch Regional Observatory on the Benefits and Risks of AI in Education - Ricardo Treviño, TecScience

Artificial intelligence is already being used as a tool in classrooms, but it can be a double-edged sword: either accelerating learning or exposing deep inequalities. Through the observatory, the goal is to promote evidence-based public policies that support the responsible and effective use of AI in the region’s educational systems.  The observatory will conduct an assessment of AI use in education to generate evidence that can help shape public policy design. One of the observatory’s first ambitions is to reach more than 250,000 teachers across the region. During its first year of operation, the observatory will organize working groups to define impact measurement models.


https://tecscience.tec.mx/en/education-and-humanism/unesco-and-tec-observatory-artificial-intelligence/

Thursday, May 14, 2026

One New Thing: Campus Libraries Become AI Hubs - B. Navarre, US News

Alina Tugend is an award-winning education reporter. Here is her latest rave on an EdTech innovation: Campus libraries are becoming the go-to place for helping students, faculty and researchers learn about artificial intelligence and how to best integrate it into their work. For example, the libraries at Bryn Mawr College and the University of Oklahoma both provide AI “sandboxes” – shared virtual spaces for experimentation and education about various AI tools with ongoing support. This year, the University of Virginia launched its AI Literacy and Action Lab, developed in partnership with the university’s library. The lab is based on a framework created by Leo S. Lo, UVA’s new university librarian and dean of libraries, that integrates technical knowledge, ethical awareness, critical thinking, practical use and societal impact.


Chico State’s 2026-27 Book in Common to Tackle Artificial Intelligence - Chico State

The AI Con is a thought-provoking work examining the rise of artificial intelligence and its far-reaching impacts on society, education and the economy. The selection comes amid heightened interest and debate surrounding AI technologies, including within higher education. Co-authored by a University of Washington linguistics professor and a former Google employee, the book takes a critical look at artificial intelligence, exploring how it functions, the realities behind its rapid expansion, and the social, ethical and environmental implications of its use. Topics include the influence of AI on jobs and creative industries, concerns about academic integrity, and the environmental costs associated with large-scale data centers. “AI is now part of nearly every aspect of our lives,” Mahlis said. “This book helps readers understand not just what AI does, but how it works, and encourages us to question both the hype and the real consequences.”

https://today.csuchico.edu/chico-states-2026-27-book-in-common-to-tackle-artificial-intelligence/

Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Leadership Vision of the COLO to Shape Higher Ed Future? - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

The chief online learning officers at colleges and universities are increasingly charting the future of teaching and learning. We are now on the cusp of a significant adjustment in the model of higher education.  Who else within the institution’s administration has the combination of technological, pedagogical and innovative knowledge and experience to lead us into the future? The COLO’s knowledge of advanced technologies coupled with the experience of overseeing the application of the vast array of online technologies as they have evolved over the past 30 years is the combination we need to succeed. Our chief online learning officers bring credibility and sagacity to the table in leading us while making this critically important next step in enhancing online learning in higher education.

Instructure Pays Ransom to Canvas Hackers - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed

Although the monetary value of the deal is unknown, Instructure says the cybercriminals have returned the hacked personal data and offered assurance “that no Instructure customers will be extorted as a result of this incident.” Instructure has paid a ransom to a gang of cybercriminals that have twice hacked the company’s learning management system, Canvas, over the past week and a half. According to an update published by the education-technology company Monday night, the deal means that the hackers have returned the compromised data of some 275 million users across more than 8,800 institutions.

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Global infrastructure’s inflection poin - Alistair Green, ReThink McKinsey

Infrastructure is a crucial component of economic growth. Reliable transport, logistics, energy, communications, and other critical building blocks are vital to keep industries running. But much of the world’s infrastructure is getting old and outmoded and is no longer suited for the challenges ahead. Many systems that were built decades ago are nearing the end of their lifespans. Even newer infrastructure can come under pressure from shifting population dynamics, climate volatility, or digital disruption. Growing urbanization, geopolitical shifts, and the arrival of new technologies are revealing the limits of existing infrastructure systems.Meanwhile, what we call “infrastructure” is changing. For decades, this term referred mostly to traditional assets such as roads, bridges, ports, and power grids. Today, the definition of infrastructure is expanding to include tech-driven prerequisites for modern growth, such as hyperscale data centers, fiber networks, and electric-vehicle-charging stations.

AI Outperforms ER Doctors in Diagnostic Cases, Study Points to Collaborative Care - Macy Meyer, CNN

The study, published in the journal Science, found that a state-of-the-art large language model outperformed human doctors on a range of common clinical tasks. Using real emergency department data and hundreds of physician comparisons, the model matched or even exceeded human clinician performance in diagnostic choices, emergency triage and determining next steps in management. The authors of the study said those results do not mean AI models are ready to replace human doctors. Instead, the results indicate that industry professionals need faster, more rigorous standards for evaluation and rules for using AI in medicine. 

Monday, May 11, 2026

Staying Ahead with AI: My Experience Completing a Micro Credential - Blog Donegal ETB

I decided to enrol in the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (Level 4) micro‑credential with Donegal ETB: to build a strong foundation in AI and ensure that I stay ahead of the curve in my field. AI is transforming industries at a pace we’ve never seen before. As someone responsible for supporting resiliency across a large healthcare organisation, I need to understand the tools and technologies that are becoming integral to decision‑making, risk management, and operational continuity. I wanted to understand what’s behind the systems, how they work, and what they mean for the future of my profession. This micro‑credential felt like the right first step. One of the biggest benefits was gaining a solid grounding in what AI is and the real concepts and systems behind it. Understanding AI’s origins and fundamentals has given me a stronger lens through which to view the changes happening across our sector. I’m already applying that insight in my day‑to‑day work, especially when considering the risks, opportunities, and implications of new technologies.

Making mergers work: A playbook for public sector consolidations - McKinsey

Government consolidations are far less common than private sector ones. However, when government M&A occurs, five principles can guide the process and facilitate smooth transitions. Private sector M&A is widely reported on, and while they have a mixed track record, they often demonstrate how large, independent organizations can come together to create value. However, government M&A occurs far less frequently. Although the public sector differs in important ways—such as lacking a profit motive, operating under distinct governance structures, and moving through slower decision cycles—core change-management principles still apply. This article explores five principles, in particular, that can help ensure public sector M&A is successful.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/public-sector/our-insights/making-mergers-work-a-playbook-for-public-sector-consolidations

Sunday, May 10, 2026

UW System Will Give Raises to Faculty in High-Demand Fields - Inside Higher Ed

The University of Wisconsin system will give more than 2,300 faculty in high-demand fields a pay raise this summer, The Cap Times reported. The State Legislature appropriated $27 million annually for the increases, which will be doled out with the “goal of focusing on market competitiveness of those faculty in high demand fields of study,” which include biomedical sciences, education, graphic design and veterinary medicine, the distribution plan states. To determine which fields are included, the system used Department of Workforce Development data on high-demand jobs that require a bachelor’s degree. Nearly 16 percent fewer adults started college for the first time this fall compared to the previous year.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2026/05/06/uw-system-will-give-raises-faculty-high-demand-fields

What’s Behind a Drop in New Adult Learners This Fall? - Inside Higher Ed

Nearly 16 percent fewer adults started college for the first time this fall compared to the previous year. Some say the change represents rightsizing after an enrollment boom, but others say it’s a reversal worth keeping an eye on. In the economic upheaval that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, adult students flocked to higher education in droves. Every fall from 2021 to 2024, the number of first-time students over the age of 25 grew—including a substantial jump in fall 2024, when new students older than 25 grew 18.7 percent over the previous year, according to National Student Clearinghouse Research Center data. But this past fall, that trend reversed. The number of first-time learners over the age of 25 dropped by 15.5 percent from fall 2024 to fall 2025. 


Saturday, May 09, 2026

AI Is Now Improving Itself - There's an AI for That

This video explores the concept of recursive self-improvement, where AI systems increasingly design and refine their own successors. It traces this idea from mid-century predictions of an "intelligence explosion" to current milestones, such as Google DeepMind's Alpha Evolve and OpenAI’s GPT models, which are now being used to write their own code and accelerate the training of future iterations. The narrative suggests we are moving toward a "singularity" where AI contribution to its own development may eventually outpace human input. [00:36] However, the video also highlights significant bottlenecks that could flatten this growth curve, including the exhaustion of high-quality training data by 2028, immense energy requirements, and the "mother of all demos" lesson that team-based innovation often hits a wall. Instead of endless exponential growth, the trend is shifting toward "reasoning" models that think longer rather than just getting larger, and the race to build fully autonomous AI researchers by 2028. [09:01] {Gemini 3 Thinking  Mode assisted with the summary of this video)

Personalized Learning and AI: Revolutionizing Education in the Modern Era - Sanjay Kulkarni, Jaro Education

The Strategic Importance of AI in Education: Scaling Excellence
How AI Revolutionizes Personalized Learning: The Mechanics of Adaptation
AI in Education Examples: From Virtual Tutors to Predictive Analytics
The Future of AI in Education: Immersive and Predictive Frontiers

Friday, May 08, 2026

AI Agents in Education: What’s Working and What’s Missing - Abby Sourwine, GovTech

As universities pilot agentic AI for advising and administrative tasks, its place in teaching and learning remains unclear. Experts say decision-makers will need to look carefully at reliability, risks and partners. “We are in the earliest days,” said Nicole Engelbert, vice president of product strategy for student systems at Oracle. “Take a side eye on what anyone is saying about what’s happening in a pervasive way.” “Education is specifically different than your normal institutional tasks,” said Jake Burley, a researcher at the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. “There’s a strong sense that there’s something personal or powerful about the educational experience.”

Teach students to ask better questions with Artificial Intelligence - Yiming V. Wang & Christoph Heubeck, Nature

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered university classrooms at a remarkable speed, challenging not only how students learn but also how teachers can tell where thinking is happening1,2,3. AI use shows more than rapid adaptation to a new tool: it also exposes how academic training has long shaped the questions students ask. Conventionally, many questions are framed to elicit coherence rather than conflict, synthesis rather than uncertainty, for example: “Summarise the state of knowledge …”, “Explain the mechanisms of…”. Put to an AI system, the responses often smooth disagreement and blur the limits of evidence4,5. The challenge in AI use is therefore not how far students should rely on AI but whether universities can help them ask questions that expose uncertainty rather than conceal it. We call this approach “grounded inquiry”, which we define as using AI to expose disagreements and weak support, trace claims to evidence, and make uncertainty apparent within a curated set of primary literature sources. We find that this approach helps Earth science students to think more independently and critically.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-026-03536-6

Thursday, May 07, 2026

Mountain View-based Khan Academy partners with nonprofits to build online AI degree program - Emma Montalbano, Moutain View Voice

Amid emerging conversations about the future of white collar jobs in the age of artificial intelligence, Sal Khan thinks that now is the time to create something he’s been thinking about for years — a new pathway for higher education. Khan Academy, an online learning platform headquartered in Mountain View, TED, a nonprofit that aims to uplift ideas, and ETS, an organization that develops and administers standardized tests, have partnered to establish an online college called Khan TED Institute. Its inaugural program will allow students to earn a bachelor’s of science degree in applied AI, which Khan believes could benefit people interested in many careers. 

Faculty Concerned About ASU’s ‘Frankensteinian’ AI Course Builder - Emma Whitford, Inside Higher Ed

Arizona State University soft launched a web app earlier this month that allows anyone, for $5 per month, to create an apparently unlimited number of customized “learning modules” using artificial intelligence. The AI chatbot, called Atom, uses online instructional materials from ASU professors to create a course that’s tailored to the goals, interests and skill level of the user. After asking a handful of questions and processing for about five minutes, Atom debuts a personalized course that includes readings, quizzes and videos from a half dozen experts at ASU. But several professors whose content Atom pulls from were surprised to learn that their materials—including video lectures, slide decks and online assignments—were being perused, clipped and repackaged for these short online course modules. The faculty wasn’t told anything about the app, ASU Atomic, they said.


Wednesday, May 06, 2026

The Impact of AI on Engineering Jobs - Intuit Blog

Artificial intelligence has become fundamental enough to shift traditional engineering roles, changing how engineers work and the work itself. 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one business function. Engineers are using AI to tackle complex real-world problems, with applications spanning predictive maintenance, design optimization, and automation. AI’s impact on engineering is just beginning. But it’s already creating new job opportunities and demanding new skills to stay relevant. AI likely won’t replace engineers, but it will affect some roles more than others. That makes adaptability 1 of the most valuable traits in the field right now. 

How should universities define AI proficiency? - Junghwan Kim, Inside Higher Ed

But what does “AI readiness” mean? I began reframing that question after attending a global technology gathering of 148,000 attendees and more than 4,000 companies in Las Vegas this January. At CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2026, leaders from Nvidia, AMD and OpenAI described the future of AI. I saw robots playing table tennis and AI systems embedded in everything from mobility platforms to health devices. One idea stood out. Three essential components for AI success: A keynote speaker, Roland Busch, president and CEO of Siemens AG, described three essential components for success in the AI era: technology, domain know-how and partnerships. That framework has reshaped how I think about AI proficiency – and how I design my courses.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/how-should-universities-define-ai-proficiency

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

Musk and Altman’s bitter feud over OpenAI to be laid bare in court - the Guardian

The bitter rivalry between two of the tech world’s most powerful men arrives in court this week, as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI heads to trial in Oakland, California. The case is set to feature some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, and its outcome could affect the course of the AI boom. Musk’s suit, filed in 2024, focuses on the formative years of OpenAI when he, Altman and others co-founded the artificial intelligence company as a nonprofit with a grand purpose. “OpenAI is a non-profit artificial intelligence research company. Our goal is to advance digital intelligence in the way that is most likely to benefit humanity as a whole, unconstrained by a need to generate financial return,” reads the company’s mission statement, published in late 2015.

College students are changing course in search of ‘AI-proof’ majors. But no one knows what they are - JOCELYN GECKER and LINLEY SANDERS, Associated Press

Two years ago, Josephine Timperman arrived at college with a plan. She declared a major in business analytics, figuring she’d learn niche skills that would stand out on a resume and help land a good job after college. But the rise of artificial intelligence has scrambled those calculations. The basic skills she was learning in things like statistical analysis and coding can now easily be automated. “Everyone has a fear that entry-level jobs will be taken by AI,” said the 20-year-old at Miami University in Ohio. A few weeks ago, Timperman switched her major to marketing. Her new strategy is to use her undergraduate studies to build critical thinking and interpersonal skills — areas where humans still have an edge.


Monday, May 04, 2026

How AI is Reshaping the Future of Work - Stanford University Graduate School of Business

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how work happens. It is changing daily workflows, influencing how teams make decisions, and pushing leaders to rethink how organizations are structured. As with any major shift, the impact depends less on the technology itself and more on the conditions leaders create around it. As AI becomes more common across industries, the future of work will depend on leaders who can integrate these tools responsibly. AI introduces new capabilities, but leadership determines how they are applied. 

Penn State launches AI literacy course for employees - EdScoop

The AI Essentials training program is designed to provide "the knowledge, skills and ethical grounding" needed to use AI responsibly. “By organizing the course into modules focused on technical knowledge, ethical awareness, critical thinking and practical application, we are empowering students, faculty and staff to engage with AI as informed, responsible participants both within the University and beyond,” Executive Vice President and Provost Fotis Sotiropoulos said in the announcement. “By aligning our AI literacy programming with the release of a new enterprise service, we are positioning Penn State at the forefront of institutions embedding comprehensive AI literacy into the undergraduate experience and in preparing our community to lead thoughtfully in an evolving technological landscape. I want to thank the AI Coordinating Council for their ongoing leadership and the instructional designers who developed this curriculum, with the support of subject matter experts, for our community.”

Sunday, May 03, 2026

GPT 5.5: Autonomous Intelligence Breakthrough - AI Revolution

OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 marks a transition toward autonomous intelligence designed for complex, long-horizon tasks, focusing on functional output over simple capability upgrades [00:24]. A key technical highlight is its efficiency: the model matches the latency of its predecessor despite its larger scale and even assisted in optimizing its own inference infrastructure during training [01:11]. Its effectiveness is demonstrated in benchmarks like Terminal Bench 2.0 and OSWorld Verified, where it scored significantly higher than competitors in navigating real computer environments and managing command-line workflows [01:33]. 
In specialized applications, GPT 5.5 shows advanced reasoning by contributing to new mathematical proofs and accelerating complex genomic research [10:00]. Users emphasize its "conceptual clarity" in coding and its ability to stay persistent on long-running engineering projects without premature failure [07:19]. Although its API pricing is double that of the previous version, its ability to build functional, data-driven applications from single prompts suggests a high value for enterprise-level automation and scientific discovery [07:43]. (Gemini 3 Thinking provided assistance in the summary of this review)

Meta to Cut 10 Percent of Work Force - Mike Isaac, NY Times

Meta plans to cut 10 percent of its work force, or roughly 8,000 employees, and close another 6,000 open roles, according to an internal memo on Thursday, as the company spends heavily on developing artificial intelligence. Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, employed more than 78,000 people at the end of 2025. Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, has said he expects much of the work being done in the technology industry to eventually be overtaken by A.I. powered systems, including coding assistants that help engineers write software.


Saturday, May 02, 2026

Research cuts are now having a chilling effect on academia - Alcino Donadel, University Business


Some experts see early and dire consequences for the science and education research community. “We’ve been hearing about the cuts coming down, but this spring, you’re really starting to see the effects,” says Chenjerai Kumanyika, assistant professor at New York University and council member for the American Association of University Professors. In February, Congress passed a fiscal year 2026 spending package that rejected Trump’s proposed 40% cuts to the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, NASA, and the Department of Energy. While the agencies saw most of their budgets restored, the Trump administration has stalled in releasing the funds.As of March 24, the NIH has only awarded 15% of its nearly $40 billion budget in academic research to institutions, according to a report from the Association of Medical Colleges. 

https://universitybusiness.com/research-cuts-are-now-having-a-chilling-effect-on-academia/


College Students Are More Polarized Than Ever. Can AI Help? - Kathryn Palmer, Inside Higher Ed

Over the past few years, higher education institutions have adopted emerging artificial intelligence tools in an effort to enhance nearly every aspect of campus life—not just teaching and learning but also admissions, alumni networks, fundraising and advising. Now some are even experimenting with AI’s ability to advance one of the hottest trends on college campuses: fostering constructive dialogue among students, who are more divided over politics now than at any point in the past 40 years. To help bridge those divides, colleges are increasingly partnering with organizations aimed at promoting civil dialogue, including Braver Angels, BridgeUSA, the Institute for Citizens and Scholars, and the Constructive Dialogue Institute. And lately, AI is becoming part of the conversation.

Friday, May 01, 2026

This is the fastest-growing job for young workers, LinkedIn says - Mary Cunningham, CBS News

As the rise of artificial intelligence stirs anxiety over the technology taking people's jobs, AI is also opening pathways to new careers, according to LinkedIn. The fastest-growing job title for young workers on the networking platform is "AI engineer," a recent report from the company found. LinkedIn analyzed millions of member profiles to determine the number of entry-level workers hired over the last three years and the roles they were hired to fill. "It's measuring momentum for these job titles," said Kory Kantenga, the head of economics, Americas, at LinkedIn. "Companies are just gorging on AI talent."

US security agency is using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist, Axios reports - Reuters

The United States National Security Agency is ​using Anthropic's Mythos Preview AI tool despite ‌the Pentagon hitting the company with a formal supply-chain risk designation, Axios reported on Sunday.
The Mythos Preview model ​was being used more widely within the ​department, Axios said, citing sources. Reuters could ⁠not immediately verify the report. Anthropic, the NSA and ​the Department of Defense did not immediately respond ​to requests for comment outside regular business hours. The NSA is part of the Defense Department.