IT in HE

NVIDIA’s Apple moment?! — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman and Grant Harvey
PLUS: How to level up your AI workflows for 2025…

NVIDIA wants to put an AI supercomputer on your desk (and it only costs $3,000).
…
And last night at CES 2025, Jensen Huang announced phase two of this plan: Project DIGITS, a $3K personal AI supercomputer that runs 200B parameter models from your desk. Guess we now know why Apple recently developed an NVIDIA allergy…
…
But NVIDIA doesn’t just want its “Apple PC moment”… it also wants its OpenAI moment. NVIDIA also announced Cosmos, a platform for building physical AI (think: robots and self-driving cars)—which Jensen Huang calls “the ChatGPT moment for robotics.”

Jensen Huang’s latest CES speech: AI Agents are expected to become the next robotics industry, with a scale reaching trillions of dollars — from chaincatcher.com

NVIDIA is bringing AI from the cloud to personal devices and enterprises, covering all computing needs from developers to ordinary users.

At CES 2025, which opened this morning, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang delivered a milestone keynote speech, revealing the future of AI and computing. From the core token concept of generative AI to the launch of the new Blackwell architecture GPU, and the AI-driven digital future, this speech will profoundly impact the entire industry from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

Also see:

NVIDIA Project DIGITS: The World’s Smallest AI Supercomputer. — from nvidia.com
A Grace Blackwell AI Supercomputer on your desk.

From DSC:
I’m posting this next item (involving Samsung) as it relates to how TVs continue to change within our living rooms. AI is finding its way into our TVs…the ramifications of this remain to be seen.

OpenAI ‘now knows how to build AGI’ — from therundown.ai by Rowan Cheung
PLUS: AI phishing achieves alarming success rates

The Rundown: Samsung revealed its new “AI for All” tagline at CES 2025, introducing a comprehensive suite of new AI features and products across its entire ecosystem — including new AI-powered TVs, appliances, PCs, and more.

The details:

Vision AI brings features like real-time translation, the ability to adapt to user preferences, AI upscaling, and instant content summaries to Samsung TVs.
Several of Samsung’s new Smart TVs will also have Microsoft Copilot built in, while also teasing a potential AI partnership with Google.
Samsung also announced the new line of Galaxy Book5 AI PCs, with new capabilities like AI-powered search and photo editing.
AI is also being infused into Samsung’s laundry appliances, art frames, home security equipment, and other devices within its SmartThings ecosystem.

Why it matters: Samsung’s web of products are getting the AI treatment — and we’re about to be surrounded by AI-infused appliances in every aspect of our lives. The edge will be the ability to sync it all together under one central hub, which could position Samsung as the go-to for the inevitable transition from smart to AI-powered homes.

***

“Samsung sees TVs not as one-directional devices for passive consumption but as interactive, intelligent partners that adapt to your needs,” said SW Yong, President and Head of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung Vision AI, we’re reimagining what screens can do, connecting entertainment, personalization, and lifestyle solutions into one seamless experience to simplify your life.” — from Samsung

Understanding And Preparing For The 7 Levels Of AI Agents — from forbes.com by Douglas B. Laney

The following framework I offer for defining, understanding, and preparing for agentic AI blends foundational work in computer science with insights from cognitive psychology and speculative philosophy. Each of the seven levels represents a step-change in technology, capability, and autonomy. The framework expresses increasing opportunities to innovate, thrive, and transform in a data-fueled and AI-driven digital economy.

The Rise of AI Agents and Data-Driven Decisions — from devprojournal.com by Mike Monocello
Fueled by generative AI and machine learning advancements, we’re witnessing a paradigm shift in how businesses operate and make decisions.

AI Agents Enhance Generative AI’s Impact
Burley Kawasaki, Global VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at Creatio, predicts a significant leap forward in generative AI. “In 2025, AI agents will take generative AI to the next level by moving beyond content creation to active participation in daily business operations,” he says. “These agents, capable of partial or full autonomy, will handle tasks like scheduling, lead qualification, and customer follow-ups, seamlessly integrating into workflows. Rather than replacing generative AI, they will enhance its utility by transforming insights into immediate, actionable outcomes.”

Here’s what nobody is telling you about AI agents in 2025 — from aidisruptor.ai by Alex McFarland
What’s really coming (and how to prepare).

Everyone’s talking about the potential of AI agents in 2025 (and don’t get me wrong, it’s really significant), but there’s a crucial detail that keeps getting overlooked: the gap between current capabilities and practical reliability.

Here’s the reality check that most predictions miss: AI agents currently operate at about 80% accuracy (according to Microsoft’s AI CEO). Sounds impressive, right? But here’s the thing – for businesses and users to actually trust these systems with meaningful tasks, we need 99% reliability. That’s not just a 19% gap – it’s the difference between an interesting tech demo and a business-critical tool.

This matters because it completely changes how we should think about AI agents in 2025. While major players like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are pouring billions into development, they’re all facing the same fundamental challenge – making them work reliably enough that you can actually trust them with your business processes.

Think about it this way: Would you trust an assistant who gets things wrong 20% of the time? Probably not. But would you trust one who makes a mistake only 1% of the time, especially if they could handle repetitive tasks across your entire workflow? That’s a completely different conversation.

Why 2025 will be the year of AI orchestration — from venturebeat.com by Emilia David|

In the tech world, we like to label periods as the year of (insert milestone here). This past year (2024) was a year of broader experimentation in AI and, of course, agentic use cases.

As 2025 opens, VentureBeat spoke to industry analysts and IT decision-makers to see what the year might bring. For many, 2025 will be the year of agents, when all the pilot programs, experiments and new AI use cases converge into something resembling a return on investment.

In addition, the experts VentureBeat spoke to see 2025 as the year AI orchestration will play a bigger role in the enterprise. Organizations plan to make management of AI applications and agents much more straightforward.

Here are some themes we expect to see more in 2025.

Predictions For AI In 2025: Entrepreneurs Look Ahead — from forbes.com by Jodie Cook

AI agents take charge
Jérémy Grandillon, CEO of TC9 – AI Allbound Agency, said “Today, AI can do a lot, but we don’t trust it to take actions on our behalf. This will change in 2025. Be ready to ask your AI assistant to book a Uber ride for you.” Start small with one agent handling one task. Build up to an army.

“If 2024 was agents everywhere, then 2025 will be about bringing those agents together in networks and systems,” said Nicholas Holland, vice president of AI at Hubspot. “Micro agents working together to accomplish larger bodies of work, and marketplaces where humans can ‘hire’ agents to work alongside them in hybrid teams. Before long, we’ll be saying, ‘there’s an agent for that.'”
…
Voice becomes default
Stop typing and start talking. Adam Biddlecombe, head of brand at Mindstream, predicts a shift in how we interact with AI. “2025 will be the year that people start talking with AI,” he said. “The majority of people interact with ChatGPT and other tools in the text format, and a lot of emphasis is put on prompting skills.

Biddlecombe believes, “With Apple’s ChatGPT integration for Siri, millions of people will start talking to ChatGPT. This will make AI so much more accessible and people will start to use it for very simple queries.”

Get ready for the next wave of advancements in AI. AGI arrives early, AI agents take charge, and voice becomes the norm. Video creation gets easy, AI embeds everywhere, and one-person billion-dollar companies emerge.

These 4 graphs show where AI is already impacting jobs — from fastcompany.com by Brandon Tucker
With a 200% increase in two years, the data paints a vivid picture of how AI technology is reshaping the workforce.

To better understand the types of roles that AI is impacting, ZoomInfo’s research team looked to its proprietary database of professional contacts for answers. The platform, which detects more than 1.5 million personnel changes per day, revealed a dramatic increase in AI-related job titles since 2022. With a 200% increase in two years, the data paints a vivid picture of how AI technology is reshaping the workforce.

Why does this shift in AI titles matter for every industry?

AI educators are coming to this school [Hal Schwartz] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 01/07/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, research, society, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

AI educators are coming to this school – and it’s part of a trend — from techradar.com by Eric Hal Schwartz
Two hours of lessons, zero teachers

An Arizona charter school will use AI instead of human teachers for two hours a day on academic lessons.
The AI will customize lessons in real-time to match each student’s needs.
The company has only tested this idea at private schools before but claims it hugely increases student academic success.

One school in Arizona is trying out a new educational model built around AI and a two-hour school day. When Arizona’s Unbound Academy opens, the only teachers will be artificial intelligence algorithms in a perfect utopia or dystopia, depending on your point of view.

AI in Instructional Design: reflections on 2024 & predictions for 2025 — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
Aka, four new year’s resolutions for the AI-savvy instructional designer.

Debating About AI: A Free Comprehensive Guide to the Issues — from stefanbauschard.substack.com by Stefan Bauschard

In order to encourage and facilitate debate on key controversies related to AI, I put together this free 130+ page guide to the main arguments and ideas related to the controversies.

Universities need to step up their AGI game — from futureofbeinghuman.com by Andrew Maynard
As Sam Altman and others push toward a future where AI changes everything, universities need to decide if they’re going to be leaders or bystanders in helping society navigate advanced AI transitions

And because of this, I think there’s a unique opportunity for universities (research universities in particular) to up their game and play a leadership role in navigating the coming advanced AI transition.

Of course, there are already a number of respected university-based initiatives that are working on parts of the challenge. Stanford HAI (Human-centered Artificial Intelligence) is one that stands out, as does the Leverhulm Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, and the Center for Governance of AI at the University of Oxford. But these and other initiatives are barely scratching the surface of what is needed to help successfully navigate advanced AI transitions.

If universities are to be leaders rather than bystanders in ensuring human flourishing in an age of AI, there’s an urgent need for bolder and more creative forward-looking initiatives that support research, teaching, thought leadership, and knowledge mobilization, at the intersection of advanced AI and all aspects of what it means to thrive and grow as a species.

“5 Ways Teachers Can Use NotebookLM Today” [Burns} + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 12/29/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Australia, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, Open AI, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

How AI Is Changing Education: The Year’s Top 5 Stories — from edweek.org by Alyson Klein

Ever since a new revolutionary version of chat ChatGPT became operable in late 2022, educators have faced several complex challenges as they learn how to navigate artificial intelligence systems.
…
Education Week produced a significant amount of coverage in 2024 exploring these and other critical questions involving the understanding and use of AI.

Here are the five most popular stories that Education Week published in 2024 about AI in schools.

What’s next with AI in higher education? — from msn.com by Science X Staff

Dr. Lodge said there are five key areas the higher education sector needs to address to adapt to the use of AI:

1. Teach ‘people’ skills as well as tech skills
2. Help all students use new tech
3. Prepare students for the jobs of the future
4. Learn to make sense of complex information
5. Universities to lead the tech change

5 Ways Teachers Can Use NotebookLM Today — from classtechtips.com by Dr. Monica Burns

This is wild.

Hume AI just announced a new AI voice model.

It’s like ChatGPT Advanced Voice Mode, Elevenlabs Voice Design, and Google NotebookLM in one.

t can create a voice with a whole personality from a description or 5 second clip. And more.

8 wild examples: pic.twitter.com/XOA779jSiE

— Min Choi (@minchoi) December 23, 2024

AI in 2024: Insights From our 5 Million Readers — from linkedin.com by Generative AI

Checking the Pulse: The Impact of AI on Everyday Lives
So, what exactly did our users have to say about how AI transformed their lives this year?
.

Top 2024 Developments in AI

Video Generation…
AI Employees…
Open Source Advancements…

Getting ready for 2025: your AI team members (Gift lesson 3/3) — from flexos.com by Daan van Rossum

And that’s why today, I’ll tell you exactly which AI tools I’ve recommended for the top 5 use cases to almost 200 business leaders who took the Lead with AI course.

1. Email Management: Simplifying Communication with AI

Microsoft Copilot for Outlook. …
Gemini AI for Gmail. …
Grammarly. …

2. Meeting Management: Maximize Your Time

Otter.ai. …
Copilot for Microsoft Teams. …
Other AI Meeting Assistants. Zoom AI Companion, Granola, and Fathom

3. Research: Streamlining Information Gathering

ChatGPT. …
Perplexity. …
Consensus. …

…plus several more items and tools that were mentioned by Daan.

Tech Trends 2025 [Deloitte Insights]

On 12/21/2024, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, IT in HE, society, technology (general), trends, United States, by Daniel Christian

Tech Trends 2025 — from deloitte.com by Deloitte Insights
In Deloitte’s 16th annual Tech Trends report, AI is the common thread of nearly every trend. Moving forward, it will be part of the substructure of everything we do.

We propose that the future of technology isn’t so much about more AI as it is about ubiquitous AI. We expect that, going forward, AI will become so fundamentally woven into the fabric of our lives that it’s everywhere, and so foundational that we stop noticing it.

AI will eventually follow a similar path, becoming so ubiquitous that it will be a part of the unseen substructure of everything we do, and we eventually won’t even know it’s there. It will quietly hum along in the background, optimizing traffic in our cities, personalizing our health care, and creating adaptative and accessible learning paths in education. We won’t “use” AI. We’ll just experience a world where things work smarter, faster, and more intuitively—like magic, but grounded in algorithms. We expect that it will provide a foundation for business and personal growth while also adapting and sustaining itself over time.

Nowhere is this AI-infused future more evident than in this year’s Tech Trends report, which each year explores emerging trends across the six macro forces of information technology (figure 1). Half of the trends that we’ve chronicled are elevating forces—interaction, information, and computation—that underpin innovation and growth. The other half—the grounding forces of the business of technology, cyber and trust, and core modernization—help enterprises seamlessly operate while they grow.

“What Is Agentic AI?” [Nvidia’s Pounds] + other items re: AI in general

On 12/09/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Adobe, analytics, art, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, communications, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, creativity, data related items, design, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, Google, graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, marketing/social marketing, media/film, Microsoft, multimedia, music, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new media literacies, NVIDIA, online media, Open AI, platforms, podcasting, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, programming, skills, social media, strategy, student-related, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, United States, vendors, videoconferencing, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Where to start with AI agents: An introduction for COOs — from fortune.com by Ganesh Ayyar

Picture your enterprise as a living ecosystem, where surging market demand instantly informs staffing decisions, where a new vendor’s onboarding optimizes your emissions metrics, where rising customer engagement reveals product opportunities. Now imagine if your systems could see these connections too! This is the promise of AI agents — an intelligent network that thinks, learns, and works across your entire enterprise.

Today, organizations operate in artificial silos. Tomorrow, they could be fluid and responsive. The transformation has already begun. The question is: will your company lead it?

The journey to agent-enabled operations starts with clarity on business objectives. Leaders should begin by mapping their business’s critical processes. The most pressing opportunities often lie where cross-functional handoffs create friction or where high-value activities are slowed by system fragmentation. These pain points become the natural starting points for your agent deployment strategy.

Create podcasts in minutes — from elevenlabs.io by Eleven Labs
Now anyone can be a podcast producer

Top AI tools for business — from theneuron.ai

This week in AI: 3D from images, video tools, and more — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
From 3D worlds to consistent characters, explore this week’s AI trends

Another busy AI news week, so I organized it into categories:

Image to 3D
AI Video
AI Image Models & Tools
AI Assistants / LLMs
AI Creative Workflow: Luma AI Boards

Want to speak Italian? Microsoft AI can make it sound like you do. — this is a gifted article from The Washington Post;
A new AI-powered interpreter is expected to simulate speakers’ voices in different languages during Microsoft Teams meetings.

Artificial intelligence has already proved that it can sound like a human, impersonate individuals and even produce recordings of someone speaking different languages. Now, a new feature from Microsoft will allow video meeting attendees to hear speakers “talk” in a different language with help from AI.

What Is Agentic AI? — from blogs.nvidia.com by Erik Pounds
Agentic AI uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems.

The next frontier of artificial intelligence is agentic AI, which uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems. And it’s set to enhance productivity and operations across industries.

Agentic AI systems ingest vast amounts of data from multiple sources to independently analyze challenges, develop strategies and execute tasks like supply chain optimization, cybersecurity vulnerability analysis and helping doctors with time-consuming tasks.

“OpenAI wants to pair online courses with chatbots” [Wiggers] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosytems

On 12/07/2024, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Australia, business, career development, change, changing business models, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, new business models, online learning, Open AI, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, research, skills, society, sociology, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

What Students Are Saying About Teachers Using A.I. to Grade — from nytimes.com by The Learning Network; via Claire Zau
Teenagers and educators weigh in on a recent question from The Ethicist.

Is it unethical for teachers to use artificial intelligence to grade papers if they have forbidden their students from using it for their assignments?

That was the question a teacher asked Kwame Anthony Appiah in a recent edition of The Ethicist. We posed it to students to get their take on the debate, and asked them their thoughts on teachers using A.I. in general.

While our Student Opinion questions are usually reserved for teenagers, we also heard from a few educators about how they are — or aren’t — using A.I. in the classroom. We’ve included some of their answers, as well.

OpenAI wants to pair online courses with chatbots — from techcrunch.com by Kyle Wiggers; via James DeVaney on LinkedIn

If OpenAI has its way, the next online course you take might have a chatbot component.

Speaking at a fireside on Monday hosted by Coeus Collective, Siya Raj Purohit, a member of OpenAI’s go-to-market team for education, said that OpenAI might explore ways to let e-learning instructors create custom “GPTs” that tie into online curriculums.

“What I’m hoping is going to happen is that professors are going to create custom GPTs for the public and let people engage with content in a lifelong manner,” Purohit said. “It’s not part of the current work that we’re doing, but it’s definitely on the roadmap.”

15 Times to use AI, and 5 Not to — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Notes on the Practical Wisdom of AI Use

There are several types of work where AI can be particularly useful, given the current capabilities and limitations of LLMs. Though this list is based in science, it draws even more from experience. Like any form of wisdom, using AI well requires holding opposing ideas in mind: it can be transformative yet must be approached with skepticism, powerful yet prone to subtle failures, essential for some tasks yet actively harmful for others. I also want to caveat that you shouldn’t take this list too seriously except as inspiration – you know your own situation best, and local knowledge matters more than any general principles. With all that out of the way, below are several types of tasks where AI can be especially useful, given current capabilities—and some scenarios where you should remain wary.

Learning About Google Learn About: What Educators Need To Know — from techlearning.com by Ray Bendici
Google’s experimental Learn About platform is designed to create an AI-guided learning experience

Google Learn About is a new experimental AI-driven platform available that provides digestible and in-depth knowledge about various topics, but showcases it all in an educational context. Described by Google as a “conversational learning companion,” it is essentially a Wikipedia-style chatbot/search engine, and then some.

In addition to having a variety of already-created topics and leading questions (in areas such as history, arts, culture, biology, and physics) the tool allows you to enter prompts using either text or an image. It then provides a general overview/answer, and then suggests additional questions, topics, and more to explore in regard to the initial subject.

The idea is for student use is that the AI can help guide a deeper learning process rather than just provide static answers.

What OpenAI’s PD for Teachers Does—and Doesn’t—Do — from edweek.org by Olina Banerji
What’s the first thing that teachers dipping their toes into generative artificial intelligence should do?

They should start with the basics, according to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT and one of the world’s most prominent artificial intelligence research companies. Last month, the company launched an hour-long, self-paced online course for K-12 teachers about the definition, use, and harms of generative AI in the classroom. It was launched in collaboration with Common Sense Media, a national nonprofit that rates and reviews a wide range of digital content for its age appropriateness.

…the above article links to:

ChatGPT Foundations for K–12 Educators — from commonsense.org

This course introduces you to the basics of artificial intelligence, generative AI, ChatGPT, and how to use ChatGPT safely and effectively. From decoding the jargon to responsible use, this course will help you level up your understanding of AI and ChatGPT so that you can use tools like this safely and with a clear purpose.

Learning outcomes:

Understand what ChatGPT is and how it works.
Demonstrate ways to use ChatGPT to support your teaching practices.
Implement best practices for applying responsible AI principles in a school setting.

Takeaways From Google’s Learning in the AI Era Event — from edtechinsiders.substack.com by Sarah Morin, Alex Sarlin, and Ben Kornell
Highlights from Our Day at Google + Behind-the-Scenes Interviews Coming Soon!

NotebookLM: The Start of an AI Operating System
Google is Serious About AI and Learning
Google’s LearnLM Now Available in AI Studio
Collaboration is King
If You Give a Teacher a Ferrari

Rapid Responses to AI — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Top experts call for better data and more short-term training as tech transforms jobs.

AI could displace middle-skill workers and widen the wealth gap, says landmark study, which calls for better data and more investment in continuing education to help workers make career pivots.
…
Ensuring That AI Helps Workers
Artificial intelligence has emerged as a general purpose technology with sweeping implications for the workforce and education. While it’s impossible to precisely predict the scope and timing of looming changes to the labor market, the U.S. should build its capacity to rapidly detect and respond to AI developments.
That’s the big-ticket framing of a broad new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Congress requested the study, tapping an all-star committee of experts to assess the current and future impact of AI on the workforce.

“In contemplating what the future holds, one must approach predictions with humility,” the study says…

“AI could accelerate occupational polarization,” the committee said, “by automating more nonroutine tasks and increasing the demand for elite expertise while displacing middle-skill workers.”
…
The Kicker: “The education and workforce ecosystem has a responsibility to be intentional with how we value humans in an AI-powered world and design jobs and systems around that,” says Hsieh.

AI Predators: What Schools Should Know and Do — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
AI is increasingly be used by predators to connect with underage students online. Yasmin London, global online safety expert at Qoria and a former member of the New South Wales Police Force in Australia, shares steps educators can take to protect students.

The threat from AI for students goes well beyond cheating, says Yasmin London, global online safety expert at Qoria and a former member of the New South Wales Police Force in Australia.

Increasingly at U.S. schools and beyond, AI is being used by predators to manipulate children. Students are also using AI generate inappropriate images of other classmates or staff members. For a recent report, Qoria, a company that specializes in child digital safety and wellbeing products, surveyed 600 schools across North America, UK, Australia, and New Zealand.

Why We Undervalue Ideas and Overvalue Writing — from aiczar.blogspot.com by Alexander “Sasha” Sidorkin

A student submits a paper that fails to impress stylistically yet approaches a worn topic from an angle no one has tried before. The grade lands at B minus, and the student learns to be less original next time. This pattern reveals a deep bias in higher education: ideas lose to writing every time.

This bias carries serious equity implications. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including first-generation college students, English language learners, and those from under-resourced schools, often arrive with rich intellectual perspectives but struggle with academic writing conventions. Their ideas – shaped by unique life experiences and cultural viewpoints – get buried under red ink marking grammatical errors and awkward transitions. We systematically undervalue their intellectual contributions simply because they do not arrive in standard academic packaging.

Google Scholar’s New AI Outline Tool Explained By Its Founder — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Google Scholar PDF reader uses Gemini AI to read research papers. The AI model creates direct links to the paper’s citations and a digital outline that summarizes the different sections of the paper.

Google Scholar has entered the AI revolution. Google Scholar PDF reader now utilizes generative AI powered by Google’s Gemini AI tool to create interactive outlines of research papers and provide direct links to sources within the paper. This is designed to make reading the relevant parts of the research paper more efficient, says Anurag Acharya, who co-founded Google Scholar on November 18, 2004, twenty years ago last month.

The Four Most Powerful AI Use Cases in Instructional Design Right Now — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
Insights from ~300 instructional designers who have taken my AI & Learning Design bootcamp this year

AI-Powered Analysis: Creating Detailed Learner Personas…
AI-Powered Design: Optimising Instructional Strategies…
AI-Powered Development & Implementation: Quality Assurance…
AI-Powered Evaluation: Predictive Impact Assessment…

How Are New AI Tools Changing ‘Learning Analytics’? — from edsurge.com by Jeffrey R. Young
For a field that has been working to learn from the data trails students leave in online systems, generative AI brings new promises — and new challenges.

In other words, with just a few simple instructions to ChatGPT, the chatbot can classify vast amounts of student work and turn it into numbers that educators can quickly analyze.

Findings from learning analytics research is also being used to help train new generative AI-powered tutoring systems.
…
Another big application is in assessment, says Pardos, the Berkeley professor. Specifically, new AI tools can be used to improve how educators measure and grade a student’s progress through course materials. The hope is that new AI tools will allow for replacing many multiple-choice exercises in online textbooks with fill-in-the-blank or essay questions.

Increasing AI Fluency Among Enterprise Employees, Senior Management & Executives — from learningguild.com by Bill Brandon

This article attempts, in these early days, to provide some specific guidelines for AI curriculum planning in enterprise organizations.

The two reports identified in the first paragraph help to answer an important question. What can enterprise L&D teams do to improve AI fluency in their organizations?

You could be surprised how many software products have added AI features. Examples (to name a few) are productivity software (Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace); customer relationship management (Salesforce and Hubspot); human resources (Workday and Talentsoft); marketing and advertising (Adobe Marketing Cloud and Hootsuite); and communication and collaboration (Slack and Zoom). Look for more under those categories in software review sites.

Two items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 11/27/2024, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, research, skills, student-related, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Notebook LM continues to make waves…

The Edtech Insiders Generative AI Map — from edtechinsiders.substack.com by Ben Kornell, Alex Sarlin, Sarah Morin, and Laurence Holt
A market map and database featuring 60+ use cases for GenAI in education and 300+ GenAI powered education tools.

A Student’s Guide to Writing with ChatGPT— from openai.com

Used thoughtfully, ChatGPT can be a powerful tool to help students develop skills of rigorous thinking and clear writing, assisting them in thinking through ideas, mastering complex concepts, and getting feedback on drafts.

There are also ways to use ChatGPT that are counterproductive to learning—like generating an essay instead of writing it oneself, which deprives students of the opportunity to practice, improve their skills, and grapple with the material.

For students committed to becoming better writers and thinkers, here are some ways to use ChatGPT to engage more deeply with the learning process.

Community Colleges Are Rolling Out AI Programs—With a Boost from Big Tech — from workshift.org by Colleen Connolly

The Big Idea: As employers increasingly seek out applicants with AI skills, community colleges are well-positioned to train up the workforce. Partnerships with tech companies, like the AI Incubator Network, are helping some colleges get the resources and funding they need to overhaul programs and create new AI-focused ones.

Along these lines also see:

Practical AI Training — from the-job.beehiiv.com by Paul Fain
Community colleges get help from Big Tech to prepare students for applied AI roles at smaller companies.

Miami Dade and other two-year colleges try to be nimble by offering training for AI-related jobs while focusing on local employers. Also, Intel’s business struggles while the two-year sector wonders if Republicans will cut funds for semiconductor production.

Can One AI Agent Do Everything? How To Redesign Jobs for AI? HR Expertise And A Big Future for L&D. — from joshbersin.com by Josh Bersin

Here’s the AI summary, which is pretty good.

In this conversation, Josh Bersin discusses the evolving landscape of AI platforms, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s positioning and the challenges of creating a universal AI agent. He delves into the complexities of government efficiency, emphasizing the institutional challenges faced in re-engineering government operations.

The conversation also highlights the automation of work tasks and the need for businesses to decompose job functions for better efficiency.

Bersin stresses the importance of expertise in HR, advocating for a shift towards full stack professionals who possess a broad understanding of various HR functions.

Finally, he addresses the impending disruption in Learning and Development (L&D) due to AI advancements, predicting a significant transformation in how L&D professionals will manage knowledge and skills.

Using AI to brainstorm students own learning objectives [Potkalitsky] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 11/13/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, change, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, ethics, experimentation, faculty/staff, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, liberal arts, mathematics, morals/values, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, UK, United States, universities, vendors, youth, by Daniel Christian

“The Value of Doing Things: What AI Agents Mean for Teachers” — from nickpotkalitsky.substack.com by guest author Jason Gulya, Professor of English and Applied Media at Berkeley College in New York City

AI Agents make me nervous. Really nervous.

I wish they didn’t.

I wish I could write that the last two years have made me more confident, more self-assured that AI is here to augment workers rather than replace them.

But I can’t.

I wish I could write that I know where schools and colleges will end up. I wish I could say that AI Agents will help us get where we need to be.

But I can’t.

At this point, today, I’m at a loss. I’m not sure where the rise of AI agents will take us, in terms of how we work and learn. I’m in the question-asking part of my journey. I have few answers.

So, let’s talk about where (I think) AI Agents will take education. And who knows? Maybe as I write I’ll come up with something more concrete.

It’s worth a shot, right?

From DSC:
I completely agree with Jason’s following assertion:

A good portion of AI advancement will come down to employee replacement. And AI Agents push companies towards that.

THAT’s where/what the ROI will be for corporations. They will make their investments up in the headcount area, and likely in other areas as well (product design, marketing campaigns, engineering-related items, and more). But how much time it takes to get there is a big question mark.

One last quote here…it’s too good not to include:

Behind these questions lies a more abstract, more philosophical one: what is the relationship between thinking and doing in a world of AI Agents and other kinds of automation?

How Good are Claude, ChatGPT & Gemini at Instructional Design? — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
A test of AI’s Instruction Design skills in theory & in practice

By examining models across three AI families—Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini—I’ve started to identify each model’s strengths, limitations, and typical pitfalls.

Spoiler: my findings underscore that until we have specialised, fine-tuned AI copilots for instructional design, we should be cautious about relying on general-purpose models and ensure expert oversight in all ID tasks.

From DSC — I’m going to (have Nick) say this again:
I simply asked my students to use AI to brainstorm their own learning objectives. No restrictions. No predetermined pathways. Just pure exploration. The results? Astonishing.

Students began mapping out research directions I’d never considered. They created dialogue spaces with AI that looked more like intellectual partnerships than simple query-response patterns.

The Digital Literacy Quest: Become an AI Hero — from gamma.app

From DSC:
I have not gone through all of these online-based materials, but I like what they are trying to get at:

Confidence with AI
Students gain practical skills and confidence in using AI tools effectively.
Ethical Navigation
Learn to navigate the ethical landscape of AI with integrity and responsibility. Make informed decisions about AI usage.
Mastering Essential Skills
Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills in the context of AI.

Expanding access to the Gemini app for teen students in education — from workspaceupdates.googleblog.com

Google Workspace for Education admins can now turn on the Gemini app with added data protection as an additional service for their teen users (ages 13+ or the applicable age in your country) in the following languages and countries. With added data protection, chats are not reviewed by human reviewers or otherwise used to improve AI models. The Gemini app will be a core service in the coming weeks for Education Standard and Plus users, including teens,

5 Essential Questions Educators Have About AI — from edsurge.com by Annie Ning

Recently, I spoke with several teachers regarding their primary questions and reflections on using AI in teaching and learning. Their thought-provoking responses challenge us to consider not only what AI can do but what it means for meaningful and equitable learning environments. Keeping in mind these reflections, we can better understand how we move forward toward meaningful AI integration in education.

FrontierMath: A Benchmark for Evaluating Advanced Mathematical Reasoning in AI — from epoch.ai
FrontierMath presents hundreds of unpublished, expert-level mathematics problems that specialists spend days solving. It offers an ongoing measure of AI complex mathematical reasoning progress.

We’re introducing FrontierMath, a benchmark of hundreds of original, expert-crafted mathematics problems designed to evaluate advanced reasoning capabilities in AI systems. These problems span major branches of modern mathematics—from computational number theory to abstract algebraic geometry—and typically require hours or days for expert mathematicians to solve.

Rising demand for AI courses in UK universities shows 453% growth as students adapt to an AI-driven job market — from edtechinnovationhub.com

The demand for artificial intelligence courses in UK universities has surged dramatically over the past five years, with enrollments increasing by 453%, according to a recent study by Currys, a UK tech retailer.

The study, which analyzed UK university admissions data and surveyed current students and recent graduates, reveals how the growing influence of AI is shaping students’ educational choices and career paths.

This growth reflects the broader trend of AI integration across industries, creating new opportunities while transforming traditional roles. With AI’s influence on career prospects rising, students and graduates are increasingly drawn to AI-related courses to stay competitive in a rapidly changing job market.

2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Restoring Trust

On 10/29/2024, in adjunct faculty, business side of he, change, colleges, community colleges, higher education, IT in HE, leadership, strategy, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Restoring Trust — from educause.edu

Higher education has a trust problem. In the past ten years, the share of Americans who are confident in higher education has dropped from 57 percent to 36 percent.

Colleges and universities need to show that they understand and care about students, faculty, staff, and community members, AND they need to work efficiently and effectively.

Technology leaders can help. The 2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10 describes how higher education technology and data leaders and professionals can help to restore trust in the sector by building competent and caring institutions and, through radical collaboration, leverage the fulcrum of leadership to maintain balance between the two.

.

“AI-governed robots can easily be hacked” [Barsee], a new AI capability called “computer use” + numerous other items re: AI in general

On 10/23/2024, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, communications, communities of practice, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, creativity, data related items, digital video, emerging technologies, Google, health, innovation, IT in HE, media/film, Microsoft, multimedia, new media literacies, Open AI, pace of change, platforms, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, programming, research, robotics, society, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, United States, universities, vendors, writing, by Daniel Christian

AI-governed robots can easily be hacked — from theaivalley.com by Barsee
PLUS: Sam Altman’s new company “World” introduced…

In a groundbreaking study, researchers from Penn Engineering showed how AI-powered robots can be manipulated to ignore safety protocols, allowing them to perform harmful actions despite normally rejecting dangerous task requests.

What did they find ?

Researchers found previously unknown security vulnerabilities in AI-governed robots and are working to address these issues to ensure the safe use of large language models(LLMs) in robotics.
Their newly developed algorithm, RoboPAIR, reportedly achieved a 100% jailbreak rate by bypassing the safety protocols on three different AI robotic systems in a few days.
Using RoboPAIR, researchers were able to manipulate test robots into performing harmful actions, like bomb detonation and blocking emergency exits, simply by changing how they phrased their commands.

Why does it matter?

This research highlights the importance of spotting weaknesses in AI systems to improve their safety, allowing us to test and train them to prevent potential harm.

From DSC:
Great! Just what we wanted to hear. But does it surprise anyone? Even so…we move forward at warp speeds.

From DSC:
So, given the above item, does the next item make you a bit nervous as well? I saw someone on Twitter/X exclaim, “What could go wrong?” I can’t say I didn’t feel the same way.

Introducing computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku — from anthropic.com

We’re also introducing a groundbreaking new capability in public beta: computer use. Available today on the API, developers can direct Claude to use computers the way people do—by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the first frontier AI model to offer computer use in public beta. At this stage, it is still experimental—at times cumbersome and error-prone. We’re releasing computer use early for feedback from developers, and expect the capability to improve rapidly over time.

Per The Rundown AI:

The Rundown: Anthropic just introduced a new capability called ‘computer use’, alongside upgraded versions of its AI models, which enables Claude to interact with computers by viewing screens, typing, moving cursors, and executing commands.
…
Why it matters: While many hoped for Opus 3.5, Anthropic’s Sonnet and Haiku upgrades pack a serious punch. Plus, with the new computer use embedded right into its foundation models, Anthropic just sent a warning shot to tons of automation startups—even if the capabilities aren’t earth-shattering… yet.

Also related/see:

What is Anthropic’s AI Computer Use? — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer
Task automation, AI at the intersection of coding and AI agents take on new frenzied importance heading into 2025 for the commercialization of Generative AI.
New Claude, Who Dis? — from theneurondaily.com
Anthropic just dropped two new Claude models…oh, and Claude can now use your computer.
When you give a Claude a mouse — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick
Some quick impressions of an actual agent

Introducing Act-One — from runwayml.com
A new way to generate expressive character performances using simple video inputs.

Per Lore by Nathan Lands:

What makes Act-One special? It can capture the soul of an actor’s performance using nothing but a simple video recording. No fancy motion capture equipment, no complex face rigging, no army of animators required. Just point a camera at someone acting, and watch as their exact expressions, micro-movements, and emotional nuances get transferred to an AI-generated character.

Think about what this means for creators: you could shoot an entire movie with multiple characters using just one actor and a basic camera setup. The same performance can drive characters with completely different proportions and looks, while maintaining the authentic emotional delivery of the original performance. We’re witnessing the democratization of animation tools that used to require millions in budget and years of specialized training.

Also related/see:

Introducing, Act-One. A new way to generate expressive character performances inside Gen-3 Alpha using a single driving video and character image. No motion capture or rigging required.

Learn more about Act-One below.

(1/7) pic.twitter.com/p1Q8lR8K7G

— Runway (@runwayml) October 22, 2024

Google to buy nuclear power for AI datacentres in ‘world first’ deal — from theguardian.com
Tech company orders six or seven small nuclear reactors from California’s Kairos Power

Google has signed a “world first” deal to buy energy from a fleet of mini nuclear reactors to generate the power needed for the rise in use of artificial intelligence.

The US tech corporation has ordered six or seven small nuclear reactors (SMRs) from California’s Kairos Power, with the first due to be completed by 2030 and the remainder by 2035.

Related:

Three Mile Island nuclear plant will reopen to power Microsoft data centers — from npr.org

ChatGPT Topped 3 Billion Visits in September — from similarweb.com

After the extreme peak and summer slump of 2023, ChatGPT has been setting new traffic highs since May

ChatGPT has been topping its web traffic records for months now, with September 2024 traffic up 112% year-over-year (YoY) to 3.1 billion visits, according to Similarweb estimates. That’s a change from last year, when traffic to the site went through a boom-and-bust cycle.

Crazy “AI Army” — from aisecret.us

Also from aisecret.us, see World’s First Nuclear Power Deal For AI Data Centers

Google has made a historic agreement to buy energy from a group of small nuclear reactors (SMRs) from Kairos Power in California. This is the first nuclear power deal specifically for AI data centers in the world.

New updates to help creators build community, drive business, & express creativity on YouTube — from support.google.com

Hey creators!
Made on YouTube 2024 is here and we’ve announced a lot of updates that aim to give everyone the opportunity to build engaging communities, drive sustainable businesses, and express creativity on our platform.

Below is a roundup with key info – feel free to upvote the announcements that you’re most excited about and subscribe to this post to get updates on these features! We’re looking forward to another year of innovating with our global community it’s a future full of opportunities, and it’s all Made on YouTube!

New autonomous agents scale your team like never before — from blogs.microsoft.com

Today, we’re announcing new agentic capabilities that will accelerate these gains and bring AI-first business process to every organization.

First, the ability to create autonomous agents with Copilot Studio will be in public preview next month.
Second, we’re introducing ten new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 to build capacity for every sales, service, finance and supply chain team.

10 Daily AI Use Cases for Business Leaders— from flexos.work by Daan van Rossum
While AI is becoming more powerful by the day, business leaders still wonder why and where to apply today. I take you through 10 critical use cases where AI should take over your work or partner with you.

Multi-Modal AI: Video Creation Simplified — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper

Emerging Multi-Modal AI Video Creation Platforms
The rise of multi-modal AI platforms has revolutionized content creation, allowing users to research, write, and generate images in one app. Now, a new wave of platforms is extending these capabilities to video creation and editing.

Multi-modal video platforms combine various AI tools for tasks like writing, transcription, text-to-voice conversion, image-to-video generation, and lip-syncing. These platforms leverage open-source models like FLUX and LivePortrait, along with APIs from services such as ElevenLabs, Luma AI, and Gen-3.

AI Medical Imagery Model Offers Fast, Cost-Efficient Expert Analysis — from developer.nvidia.com/

The Tutoring Revolution [Korbey]

On 10/11/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, languages and translation, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, online learning, online media, personalized/customized learning, platforms, ubiquitous learning, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Tutoring Revolution — from educationnext.org by Holly Korbey
More families are seeking one-on-one help for their kids. What does that tell us about 21st-century education?

Recent research suggests that the number of students seeking help with academics is growing, and that over the last couple of decades, more families have been turning to tutoring for that help.
…

What the Future Holds
Digital tech has made private tutoring more accessible, more efficient, and more affordable. Students whose families can’t afford to pay $75 an hour at an in-person center can now log on from home to access a variety of online tutors, including Outschool, Wyzant, and Anchorbridge, and often find someone who can cater to their specific skills and needs—someone who can offer help in French to a student with ADHD, for example. Online tutoring is less expensive than in-person programs. Khan Academy’s Khanmigo chatbot can be a student’s virtual AI tutor, no Zoom meeting required, for $4 a month, and nonprofits like Learn to Be work with homeless shelters and community centers to give virtual reading and math tutoring free to kids who can’t afford it and often might need it the most.

Employers Say Students Need AI Skills. What If Students Don’t Want Them? — from insidehighered.com by Ashley Mowreader
Colleges and universities are considering new ways to incorporate generative AI into teaching and learning, but not every student is on board with the tech yet. Experts weigh in on the necessity of AI in career preparation and higher education’s role in preparing students for jobs of the future.

Among the 5,025-plus survey respondents, around 2 percent (n=93), provided free responses to the question on AI policy and use in the classroom. Over half (55) of those responses were flat-out refusal to engage with AI. A few said they don’t know how to use AI or are not familiar with the tool, which impacts their ability to apply appropriate use to coursework.

But as generative AI becomes more ingrained into the workplace and higher education, a growing number of professors and industry experts believe this will be something all students need, in their classes and in their lives beyond academia.

From DSC:
I used to teach a Foundations of Information Technology class. Some of the students didn’t want to be there as they began the class, as it was a required class for non-CS majors. But after seeing what various applications and technologies could do for them, a good portion of those same folks changed their minds. But not all. Some students (2% sounds about right) asserted that they would never use technologies in their futures. Good luck with that I thought to myself. There’s hardly a job out there that doesn’t use some sort of technology.

And I still think that today — if not more so. If students want good jobs, they will need to learn how to use AI-based tools and technologies. I’m not sure there’s much of a choice. And I don’t think there’s much of a choice for the rest of us either — whether we’re still working or not.

So in looking at the title of the article — “Employers Say Students Need AI Skills. What If Students Don’t Want Them?” — those of us who have spent any time working within the world of business already know the answer.

#Reinvent #Skills #StayingRelevant #Surviving #Workplace + several other categories/tags apply.

For those folks who have tried AI:

Skills: However, genAI may also be helpful in building skills to retain a job or secure a new one. People who had used genAI tools were more than twice as likely to think that these tools could help them learn new skills that may be useful at work or in locating a new job. Specifically, among those who had not used genAI tools, 23 percent believed that these tools might help them learn new skills, whereas 50 percent of those who had used the tools thought they might be helpful in acquiring useful skills (a highly statistically significant difference, after controlling for demographic traits).

Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York

“Google’s NotebookLM: A Game-Changer for Education and Beyond” [Spencer & Potkalitsky] + other items re: AI in our LE’s

On 09/25/2024, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, interaction design, interactivity, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, multimedia, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, workplace, by Daniel Christian

FlexOS’ Stay Ahead Edition #43 — from flexos.work

People started discussing what they could do with Notebook LM after Google launched the audio overview, where you can listen to 2 hosts talking in-depth about the documents you upload. Here are what it can do:

Summarization: Automatically generate summaries of uploaded documents, highlighting key topics and suggesting relevant questions.
Question Answering: Users can ask NotebookLM questions about their uploaded documents, and answers will be provided based on the information contained within them.
Idea Generation: NotebookLM can assist with brainstorming and developing new ideas.
Source Grounding: A big plus against AI chatbot hallucination, NotebookLM allows users to ground the responses in specific documents they choose.
…plus several other items

The posting also lists several ideas to try with NotebookLM such as:

Idea 2: Study Companion

Upload all your course materials and ask NotebookLM to turn them into Question-and-Answer format, a glossary, or a study guide.
Get a breakdown of the course materials to understand them better.

Google’s NotebookLM: A Game-Changer for Education and Beyond — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer and Nick Potkalitsky
AI Tools: Breaking down Google’s latest AI tool and its implications for education.

“Google’s AI note-taking app NotebookLM can now explain complex topics to you out loud”

With more immersive text-to-video and audio products soon available and the rise of apps like Suno AI, how we “experience” Generative AI is also changing from a chatbot of 2 years ago, to a more multi-modal educational journey. The AI tools on the research and curation side are also starting to reflect these advancements.

Meet Google NotebookLM: 10 things to know for educators — from ditchthattextbook.com by Matt Miller

1. Upload a variety of sources for NotebookLM to use.
You can use …

websites
PDF files
links to websites
any text you’ve copied
Google Docs and Slides
even Markdown

You can’t link it to YouTube videos, but you can copy/paste the transcript (and maybe type a little context about the YouTube video before pasting the transcript).

2. Ask it to create resources.
3. Create an audio summary.
4. Chat with your sources.
5. Save (almost) everything.

NotebookLM summarizes my dissertation — from darcynorman.net by D’Arcy Norman, PhD

I finally tried out Google’s newly-announced NotebookLM generative AI application. It provides a set of LLM-powered tools to summarize documents. I fed it my dissertation, and am surprised at how useful the output would be.

The most impressive tool creates a podcast episode, complete with dual hosts in conversation about the document. First – these are AI-generated hosts. Synthetic voices, speaking for synthetic hosts. And holy moly is it effective. Second – although I’d initially thought the conversational summary would be a dumb gimmick, it is surprisingly powerful.

4 Tips for Designing AI-Resistant Assessments — from techlearning.com by Steve Baule and Erin Carter
As AI continues to evolve, instructors must modify their approach by designing meaningful, rigorous assessments.

As instructors work through revising assessments to be resistant to generation by AI tools with little student input, they should consider the following principles:

Incorporate personal experiences and local content into assignments
Ask students for multi-modal deliverables
Assess the developmental benchmarks for assignments and transition assignments further up Bloom’s Taxonomy
Consider real-time and oral assignments

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announces $120M fund for global AI education — from techcrunch.com by Anthony Ha

He added that he wants to avoid a global “AI divide” and that Google is creating a $120 million Global AI Opportunity Fund through which it will “make AI education and training available in communities around the world” in partnership with local nonprofits and NGOs.

Educators discuss the state of creativity in an AI world — from gettingsmart.com by Joe & Kristin Merrill, LaKeshia Brooks, Dominique’ Harbour, Erika Sandstrom

Key Points

AI allows for a more personalized learning experience, enabling students to explore creative ideas without traditional classroom limitations.
The focus of technology integration should be on how the tool is used within lessons, not just the tool itself

Addendum on 9/27/24:

Google’s NotebookLM enhances AI note-taking with YouTube, audio file sources, sharable audio discussions — from techcrunch.com by Jagmeet Singh

Google on Thursday announced new updates to its AI note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, allowing users to get summaries of YouTube videos and audio files and even create sharable AI-generated audio discussions…

NotebookLM adds audio and YouTube support, plus easier sharing of Audio Overviews — from blog.google

Learning Ecosystems

2025 EDUCAUSE Top 10: Restoring Trust

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