“The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary,” Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.
Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer.
“I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle,” Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.
But now, the spread of A.I. programming tools, which can quickly generate thousands of lines of computer code — combined with layoffs at companies like Amazon, Intel, Meta and Microsoft — is dimming prospects in a field that tech leaders promoted for years as a golden career ticket. The turnabout is derailing the employment dreams of many new computing grads and sending them scrambling for other work.
“Where generative AI creates, agentic AI acts.” That’s how my trusted assistant, Gemini 2.5 Pro deep research, describes the difference.
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Agents, unlike generative tools, create and perform multistep goals with minimal human supervision. The essential difference is found in its proactive nature. Rather than waiting for a specific, step-by-step command, agentic systems take a high-level objective and independently create and execute a plan to achieve that goal. This triggers a continuous, iterative workflow that is much like a cognitive loop. The typical agentic process involves six key steps, as described by Nvidia:
Our 2025 national survey of over 650 respondents across 49 states and Puerto Rico reveals both encouraging trends and important challenges. While AI adoption and optimism are growing, concerns about cheating, privacy, and the need for training persist.
Despite these challenges, I’m inspired by the resilience and adaptability of educators. You are the true game-changers in your students’ growth, and we’re honored to support this vital work.
This report reflects both where we are today and where we’re headed with AI. More importantly, it reflects your experiences, insights, and leadership in shaping the future of education.
This groundbreaking collaboration represents a transformative step forward in education technology and will begin with, but is not limited to, an effort between Instructure and OpenAI to enhance the Canvas experience by embedding OpenAI’s next-generation AI technology into the platform.
IgniteAI announced earlier today, establishes Instructure’s future-ready, open ecosystem with agentic support as the AI landscape continues to evolve. This partnership with OpenAI exemplifies this bold vision for AI in education. Instructure’s strategic approach to AI emphasizes the enhancement of connections within an educational ecosystem comprising over 1,100 edtech partners and leading LLM providers.
“We’re committed to delivering next-generation LMS technologies designed with an open ecosystem that empowers educators and learners to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing world,” said Steve Daly, CEO of Instructure. “This collaboration with OpenAI showcases our ambitious vision: creating a future-ready ecosystem that fosters meaningful learning and achievement at every stage of education. This is a significant step forward for the education community as we continuously amplify the learning experience and improve student outcomes.”
Faculty Latest Targets of Big Tech’s AI-ification of Higher Ed— from insidehighered.com by Kathryn Palmer A new partnership between OpenAI and Instructure will embed generative AI in Canvas. It may make grading easier, but faculty are skeptical it will enhance teaching and learning.
The two companies, which have not disclosed the value of the deal, are also working together to embed large language models into Canvas through a feature called IgniteAI. It will work with an institution’s existing enterprise subscription to LLMs such as Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, allowing instructors to create custom LLM-enabled assignments. They’ll be able to tell the model how to interact with students—and even evaluate those interactions—and what it should look for to assess student learning. According to Instructure, any student information submitted through Canvas will remain private and won’t be shared with OpenAI.
… Faculty Unsurprised, Skeptical
Few faculty were surprised by the Canvas-OpenAI partnership announcement, though many are reserving judgment until they see how the first year of using it works in practice.
A new study measuring the use of generative artificial intelligence in different professions has just gone public, and its main message to people working in some fields is harsh. It suggests translators, historians, text writers, sales representatives, and customer service agents might want to consider new careers as pile driver or dredge operators, railroad track layers, hardwood floor sanders, or maids — if, that is, they want to lower the threat of AI apps pushing them out of their current jobs.
From DSC: Unfortunately, this is where the hyperscalers are going to get their ROI from all of the capital expenditures that they are making. Companies are going to use their services in order to reduce headcount at their organizations. CEOs are even beginning to brag about the savings that are realized by the use of AI-based technologies: (or so they claim.)
“As a CEO myself, I can tell you, I’m extremely excited about it. I’ve laid off employees myself because of AI. AI doesn’t go on strike. It doesn’t ask for a pay raise. These things that you don’t have to deal with as a CEO.”
My first position out of college was being a Customer Service Representative at Baxter Healthcare. It was my most impactful job, as it taught me the value of a customer. From then on, whoever I was trying to assist was my customer — whether they were internal or external to the organization that I was working for. Those kinds of jobs are so important. If they evaporate, what then? How will young people/graduates get their start?
Alex’s take: We’re seeing browsers fundamentally transition from search engines ? answer engines ? action engines. Gone are the days of having to trawl through pages of search results. Commands are the future. They are the direct input to arrive at the outcomes we sought in the first place, such as booking a hotel or ordering food. I’m interested in watching Microsoft’s bet develop as browsers become collaborative (and proactive) assistants.
Amazon just invested in an AI that can create full TV episodes—and it wants you to star in them.
Remember when everyone lost their minds over AI generating a few seconds of video? Well, Amazon just invested in a company called Fable Studio whose system called Showrunner can generates entire 22-minute TV episodes.
… Where does this go from here? Imagine asking AI to rewrite the ending of Game of Thrones, or creating a sitcom where you and your friends are the main characters. This type of tech could create personalized entertainment experiences just like that.
Our take: Without question, we’re moving toward a world where every piece of media can be customized to you personally. Your Netflix could soon generate episodes where you’re the protagonist, with storylines tailored to your interests and sense of humor.
And if this technology scales, the entire entertainment industry could flip upside down. The pitch goes: why watch someone else’s story when you can generate your own?
The End of Work as We Know It — from gizmodo.com by Luc Olinga CEOs call it a revolution in efficiency. The workers powering it call it a “new era in forced labor.” I spoke to the people on the front lines of the AI takeover.
Yet, even in this vision of a more pleasant workplace, the specter of displacement looms large. Miscovich acknowledges that companies are planning for a future where headcount could be “reduced by 40%.” And Clark is even more direct. “A lot of CEOs are saying that, knowing that they’re going to come up in the next six months to a year and start laying people off,” he says. “They’re looking for ways to save money at every single company that exists.”
But we do not have much time. As Clark told me bluntly: “I am hired by CEOs to figure out how to use AI to cut jobs. Not in ten years. Right now.”
Faced with mounting backlash, OpenAI removed a controversial ChatGPT feature that caused some users to unintentionally allow their private—and highly personal—chats to appear in search results.
Fast Company exposed the privacy issue on Wednesday, reporting that thousands of ChatGPT conversations were found in Google search results and likely only represented a sample of chats “visible to millions.” While the indexing did not include identifying information about the ChatGPT users, some of their chats did share personal details—like highly specific descriptions of interpersonal relationships with friends and family members—perhaps making it possible to identify them, Fast Company found.
Today, we’re dropping the world’s first AI-native social feed.
Feed from Character.AI is a dynamic, scrollable content platform that connects users with the latest Characters, Scenes, Streams, and creator-driven videos in one place.
This is a milestone in the evolution of online entertainment.
For the last 10 years, social platforms have been all about passive consumption. The Character.AI Feed breaks that paradigm and turns content into a creative playground. Every post is an invitation to interact, remix, and build on what others have made. Want to rewrite a storyline? Make yourself the main character? Take a Character you just met in someone else’s Scene and pop it into a roast battle or a debate? Now it’s easy. Every story can have a billion endings, and every piece of content can change and evolve with one tap.
Tech Layoffs 2025: Why AI is Behind the Rising Job Cuts — from finalroundai.com by Kaustubh Saini, Jaya Muvania, and Kaivan Dave; via George Siemens 507 tech workers lose their jobs to AI every day in 2025. Complete breakdown of 94,000 job losses across Microsoft, Tesla, IBM, and Meta – plus which positions are next. .
Amid all the talk about the state of our economy, little noticed and even less discussed was June’s employment data. It showed that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates stood at 5.8%, topping the national level for the first and only time in its 45-year historical record.
It’s an alarming number that needs to be considered in the context of a recent warning from Dario Amodei, CEO of AI juggernaut Anthropic, who predicted artificial intelligence could wipe out half of all entry-level, white-collar-jobs and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years.
The upshot: our college graduates’ woes could be just the tip of the spear.
But as I thought about it, it just didn’t feel right. Replying to people sharing real gratitude with a copy-paste message seemed like a terribly inauthentic thing to do. I realized that when you optimize the most human parts of your business, you risk removing the very reason people connect with you in the first place.
For today’s chief learning officer, the days of just rolling out compliance training are long gone. In 2025, learning and development leaders are architects of innovation, crafting ecosystems that are agile, automated and AI-infused. This quarter’s Tech Check invites us to pause, assess and get strategic about where tech is taking us. Because the goal isn’t more tools—it’s smarter, more human learning systems that scale with the business.
Sections include:
The state of AI in L&D: Hype vs. reality
AI in design: From static content to dynamic experiences
AI in development: Redefining production workflows
NEW YORK – The AFT, alongside the United Federation of Teachers and lead partner Microsoft Corp., founding partner OpenAI, and Anthropic, announced the launch of the National Academy for AI Instruction today. The groundbreaking $23 million education initiative will provide access to free AI training and curriculum for all 1.8 million members of the AFT, starting with K-12 educators. It will be based at a state-of-the-art bricks-and-mortar Manhattan facility designed to transform how artificial intelligence is taught and integrated into classrooms across the United States.
The academy will help address the gap in structured, accessible AI training and provide a national model for AI-integrated curriculum and teaching that puts educators in the driver’s seat.
In an era when the college-going rate of high school graduates has dropped from an all-time high of 70 percent in 2016 to roughly 62 percent now, AI seems to be heightening the anxieties about the value of college.
According to the survey, two-thirds of parents say AI is impacting their view of the value of college. Thirty-seven percent of parents indicate they are now scrutinizing college’s “career-placement outcomes”; 36 percent say they are looking at a college’s “AI-skills curriculum,” while 35 percent respond that a “human-skills emphasis” is important to them.
This echoes what I increasingly hear from college leadership: Parents and students demand to see a difference between what they are getting from a college and what they could be “learning from AI.”
Culture matters here. Organizations that foster psychological safety—where experimentation is welcomed and mistakes are treated as learning—are making the most progress. When leaders model curiosity, share what they’re trying, and invite open dialogue, teams follow suit. Small tests become shared wins. Shared wins build momentum.
Career development must be part of this equation. As roles evolve, people will need pathways forward. Some will shift into new specialties. Others may leave familiar roles for entirely new ones. Making space for that evolution—through upskilling, mobility, and mentorship—shows your people that you’re not just investing in AI, you’re investing in them.
And above all, people need transparency. Teams don’t expect perfection. But they do need clarity. They need to understand what’s changing, why it matters, and how they’ll be supported through it. That kind of trust-building communication is the foundation for any successful change.
These shifts may play out differently across sectors—but the core leadership questions will likely be similar.
AI marks a turning point—not just for technology, but for how we prepare our people to lead through disruption and shape the future of learning.
LinkedIn is taking a multi-agent approach, using what Agarwal described as a collection of agents collaborating to get the job done. A supervisor agent orchestrates all the tasks among other agents, including intake and sourcing agents that are “good at one and only one job.”
All communication occurs through the supervisor agent, which receives input from human users regarding role qualifications and other details. That agent then provides context to a sourcing agent, which culls through recruiter search stacks and sources candidates along with descriptions on why they might be a good fit for the job. That information is then returned to the supervisor agent, which begins actively interacting with the human user.
“Then you can collaborate with it, right?” said Agarwal. “You can modify it. No longer do you have to talk to the platform in keywords. You can talk to the platform in natural language, and it’s going to answer you back, it’s going to have a conversation with you.”
Here are some incredibly powerful numbers from Mary Meeker’s AI Trends report, which showcase how artificial intelligence as a tech is unlike any other the world has ever seen.
AI took only three years to reach 50% user adoption in the US; mobile internet took six years, desktop internet took 12 years, while PCs took 20 years.
ChatGPT reached 800 million users in 17 months and 100 million in only two months, vis-à-vis Netflix’s 100 million (10 years), Instagram (2.5 years) and TikTok (nine months).
ChatGPT hit 365 billion annual searches in two years (2024) vs. Google’s 11 years (2009)—ChatGPT 5.5x faster than Google.
Above via Mary Meeker’s AI Trend-Analysis — from getsuperintel.com by Kim “Chubby” Isenberg How AI’s rapid rise, efficiency race, and talent shifts are reshaping the future.
The TLDR
Mary Meeker’s new AI trends report highlights an explosive rise in global AI usage, surging model efficiency, and mounting pressure on infrastructure and talent. The shift is clear: AI is no longer experimental—it’s becoming foundational, and those who optimize for speed, scale, and specialization will lead the next wave of innovation.
The Rundown: Meta aims to release tools that eliminate humans from the advertising process by 2026, according to a report from the WSJ — developing an AI that can create ads for Facebook and Instagram using just a product image and budget.
The details:
Companies would submit product images and budgets, letting AI craft the text and visuals, select target audiences, and manage campaign placement.
The system will be able to create personalized ads that can adapt in real-time, like a car spot featuring mountains vs. an urban street based on user location.
The push would target smaller companies lacking dedicated marketing staff, promising professional-grade advertising without agency fees or skillset.
Advertising is a core part of Mark Zuckerberg’s AI strategy and already accounts for 97% of Meta’s annual revenue.
Why it matters: We’re already seeing AI transform advertising through image, video, and text, but Zuck’s vision takes the process entirely out of human hands. With so much marketing flowing through FB and IG, a successful system would be a major disruptor — particularly for small brands that just want results without the hassle.
Anthropic’s “Prompt Engineering Overview” is a free masterclass that’s worth its weight in gold. Their “constitutional AI prompting” section helped us create a content filter that actually works—unlike the one that kept flagging our coffee bean reviews as “inappropriate.” Apparently “rich body” triggered something…
OpenAI’s “Cookbook” is like having a Michelin-star chef explain cooking—simple for beginners, but packed with pro techniques. Their JSON formatting examples saved us 3 hours of debugging last week…
Google’s “Prompt Design Strategies” breaks down complex concepts with clear examples. Their before/after gallery showing how slight prompt tweaks improve results made us rethink everything we knew about getting quality outputs.
Pro tip: Save these guides as PDFs before they disappear behind paywalls. The best AI users keep libraries of these resources for quick reference. .
“To address this, organizations should consider building a sustainable AI governance model, prioritizing transparency, and tackling the complex challenge of AI-fueled imposter syndrome through reinvention. Employers who fail to approach innovation with empathy and provide employees with autonomy run the risk of losing valuable staff and negatively impacting employee productivity.”
Key findings from the report include the following:
Employees are keeping their productivity gains a secret from their employers. …
In-office employees may still log in remotely after hours. …
Younger workers are more likely to switch jobs to gain more flexibility.
AI discovers new math algorithms— from by Zach Mink & Rowan Cheung PLUS: Anthropic reportedly set to launch new Sonnet, Opus models
The Rundown: Google just debuted AlphaEvolve, a coding agent that harnesses Gemini and evolutionary strategies to craft algorithms for scientific and computational challenges — driving efficiency inside Google and solving historic math problems.
… Why it matters: Yesterday, we had OpenAI’s Jakub Pachocki saying AI has shown “significant evidence” of being capable of novel insights, and today Google has taken that a step further. Math plays a role in nearly every aspect of life, and AI’s pattern and algorithmic strengths look ready to uncover a whole new world of scientific discovery.
At the recent HR Executive and Future Talent Council event at Bentley University near Boston, I talked with Top 100 HR Tech Influencer Joey Price about what he’s hearing from HR leaders. Price is president and CEO of Jumpstart HR and executive analyst at Aspect43, Jumpstart HR’s HR?tech research division, and author of a valuable new book, The Power of HR: How to Make an Organizational Impact as a People?Professional.
This puts him solidly at the center of HR’s most relevant conversations. Price described the curiosity he’s hearing from many HR leaders about AI agents, which have become increasingly prominent in recent months.
.Get the 2025 Student Guide to Artificial Intelligence — from studentguidetoai.org This guide is made available under a Creative Commons license by Elon University and the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). .
Agentic AI is taking these already huge strides even further. Rather than simply asking a question and receiving an answer, an AI agent can assess your current level of understanding and tailor a reply to help you learn. They can also help you come up with a timetable and personalized lesson plan to make you feel as though you have a one-on-one instructor walking you through the process. If your goal is to learn to speak a new language, for example, an agent might map out a plan starting with basic vocabulary and pronunciation exercises, then progress to simple conversations, grammar rules and finally, real-world listening and speaking practice.
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For instance, if you’re an entrepreneur looking to sharpen your leadership skills, an AI agent might suggest a mix of foundational books, insightful TED Talks and case studies on high-performing executives. If you’re aiming to master data analysis, it might point you toward hands-on coding exercises, interactive tutorials and real-world datasets to practice with.
The beauty of AI-driven learning is that it’s adaptive. As you gain proficiency, your AI coach can shift its recommendations, challenge you with new concepts and even simulate real-world scenarios to deepen your understanding.
Ironically, the very technology feared by workers can also be leveraged to help them. Rather than requiring expensive external training programs or lengthy in-person workshops, AI agents can deliver personalized, on-demand learning paths tailored to each employee’s role, skill level, and career aspirations. Given that 68% of employees find today’s workplace training to be overly “one-size-fits-all,” an AI-driven approach will not only cut costs and save time but will be more effective.
This is one reason why I don’t see AI-embedded classrooms and AI-free classrooms as opposite poles. The bone of contention, here, is not whether we can cultivate AI-free moments in the classroom, but for how long those moments are actually sustainable.
Can we sustain those AI-free moments for an hour? A class session? Longer?
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Here’s what I think will happen. As AI becomes embedded in society at large, the sustainability of imposed AI-free learning spaces will get tested. Hard. I think it’ll become more and more difficult (though maybe not impossible) to impose AI-free learning spaces on students.
However, consensual and hybrid AI-free learning spaces will continue to have a lot of value. I can imagine classes where students opt into an AI-free space. Or they’ll even create and maintain those spaces.
Duolingo’s AI Revolution — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman What 148 AI-Generated Courses Tell Us About the Future of Instructional Design & Human Learning
Last week, Duolingo announced an unprecedented expansion: 148 new language courses created using generative AI, effectively doubling their content library in just one year. This represents a seismic shift in how learning content is created — a process that previously took the company 12 years for their first 100 courses.
As CEO Luis von Ahn stated in the announcement, “This is a great example of how generative AI can directly benefit our learners… allowing us to scale at unprecedented speed and quality.”
In this week’s blog, I’ll dissect exactly how Duolingo has reimagined instructional design through AI, what this means for the learner experience, and most importantly, what it tells us about the future of our profession.
Medical education is experiencing a quiet revolution—one that’s not taking place in lecture theatres or textbooks, but with headsets and holograms. At the heart of this revolution are Mixed Reality (MR) AI Agents, a new generation of devices that combine the immersive depth of mixed reality with the flexibility of artificial intelligence. These technologies are not mere flashy gadgets; they’re revolutionising the way medical students interact with complicated content, rehearse clinical skills, and prepare for real-world situations. By combining digital simulations with the physical world, MR AI Agents are redefining what it means to learn medicine in the 21st century.
4 Reasons To Use Claude AI to Teach — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang Features that make Claude AI appealing to educators include a focus on privacy and conversational style.
After experimenting using Claude AI on various teaching exercises, from generating quizzes to tutoring and offering writing suggestions, I found that it’s not perfect, but I think it behaves favorably compared to other AI tools in general, with an easy-to-use interface and some unique features that make it particularly suited for use in education.
So this edition is simple: a quick, practical guide to the major generative AI models available in 2025 so far. What they’re good at, what to use them for, and where they might fit into your legal work—from document summarization to client communication to research support.
From DSC: This comprehensive, highly informational posting lists what the model is, its strengths, the best legal use cases for it, and responsible use tips as well.
Of course AI will continue to make waves, but what other important legal technologies do you need to be aware of in 2025? Dennis and Tom give an overview of legal tech tools—both new and old—you should be using for successful, modernized legal workflows in your practice. They recommend solutions for task management, collaboration, calendars, projects, legal research, and more.
Later, the guys answer a listener’s question about online prompt libraries. Are there reputable, useful prompts available freely on the internet? They discuss their suggestions for prompt resources and share why these libraries tend to quickly become outdated.
If you follow legal tech at all, you would be justified in suspecting that Tom Martin has figured out how to use artificial intelligence to clone himself.
While running LawDroid, his legal tech company, the Vancouver-based Martin also still manages a law practice in California, oversees an annual legal tech awards program, teaches a law school course on generative AI, runs an annual AI conference, hosts a podcast, and recently launched a legal tech consultancy.
In January 2023, less than two months after ChatGPT first launched, Martin’s company was one of the first to launch a gen AI assistant specifically for lawyers, called LawDroid Copilot. He has since also launched LawDroid Builder, a no-code platform for creating custom AI agents.
In a profession that’s actively contemplating its future in the face of AI, legal organization leaders who demonstrate a genuine desire to invest in the next generation of legal professionals will undoubtedly set themselves apart
Artificial intelligence (AI) is here. And it’s already reshaping the way law firms operate. Whether automating repetitive tasks, improving risk management, or boosting efficiency, AI presents a genuine opportunity for forward-thinking legal practices. But with new opportunities come new responsibilities. And as firms explore AI tools, it’s essential they consider how to govern them safely and ethically. That’s where an AI policy becomes indispensable.
So, what can AI actually do for your firm right now? Let’s take a closer look.
DC: THIS could unfortunately be the ROI companies will get from large investments in #AI — reduced headcount/employees/contract workers. https://t.co/zEWlqCSWzI
Duolingo will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle,” according to an all-hands email sent by cofounder and CEO Luis von Ahn announcing that the company will be “AI-first.” The email was posted on Duolingo’s LinkedIn account.
According to von Ahn, being “AI-first” means the company will “need to rethink much of how we work” and that “making minor tweaks to systems designed for humans won’t get us there.” As part of the shift, the company will roll out “a few constructive constraints,” including the changes to how it works with contractors, looking for AI use in hiring and in performance reviews, and that “headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work.”
Something strange, and potentially alarming, is happening to the job market for young, educated workers.
According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have “deteriorated noticeably” in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work. Meanwhile, law-school applications are surging—an ominous echo of when young people used graduate school to bunker down during the great financial crisis.
What’s going on? I see three plausible explanations, and each might be a little bit true.
The new workplace trend is not employee friendly. Artificial intelligence and automation technologies are advancing at blazing speed. A growing number of companies are using AI to streamline operations, cut costs, and boost productivity. Consequently, human workers are facing facing layoffs, replaced by AI. Like it or not, companies need to make tough decisions, including layoffs to remain competitive.
Corporations including Klarna, UPS, Duolingo, Intuit and Cisco are replacing laid-off workers with AI and automation. While these technologies enhance productivity, they raise serious concerns about future job security. For many workers, there is a big concern over whether or not their jobs will be impacted.
Key takeaway: Career navigation has remained largely unchanged for decades, relying on personal networks and static job boards. The advent of AI is changing this, offering personalised career pathways, better job matching, democratised job application support, democratised access to career advice/coaching, and tailored skill development to help you get to where you need to be.Hundreds of millions of people start new jobs every year, this transformation opens up a multi-billion dollar opportunity for innovation in the global career navigation market.
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A.4 How will AI disrupt this segment? Personalised recommendations: AI can consume a vast amount of information (skills, education, career history, even youtube history, and x/twitter feeds), standardise this data at scale, and then use data models to match candidate characteristics to relevant careers and jobs. In theory, solutions could then go layers deeper, helping you position yourself for those future roles. Currently based in Amsterdam, and working in Strategy at Uber and want to work in a Product role in the future? Here are X,Y,Z specific things YOU can do in your role today to align yourself perfectly. E.g. find opportunities to manage cross functional projects in your current remit, reach out to Joe Bloggs also at Uber in Amsterdam who did Strategy and moved to Product, etc.
No matter the school, no matter the location, when I deliver an AI workshop to a group of teachers, there are always at least a few colleagues thinking (and sometimes voicing), “Do I really need to use AI?”
Nearly three years after ChatGPT 3.5 landed in our lives and disrupted workflows in ways we’re still unpacking, most schools are swiftly catching up. Training sessions, like the ones I lead, are springing up everywhere, with principals and administrators trying to answer the same questions: Which tools should we use? How do we use them responsibly? How do we design learning in this new landscape?
But here’s what surprises me most: despite all the advances in AI technology, the questions and concerns from teachers remain strikingly consistent.
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In this article, I want to pull back the curtain on those conversations. These concerns aren’t signs of reluctance – they reflect sincere feelings. And they deserve thoughtful, honest answers.
This week, in advance of major announcements from us and other vendors, I give you a good overview of the AI Agent market, and discuss the new role of AI governance platforms, AI agent development tools, AI agent vendors, and how AI agents will actually manifest and redefine what we call an “application.”
I discuss ServiceNow, Microsoft, SAP, Workday, Paradox, Maki People, and other vendors. My goal today is to “demystify” this space and explain the market, the trends, and why and how your IT department is going to be building a lot of the agents you need. And prepare for our announcements next week!
DeepSeek has quietly launched Prover V2, an open-source model built to solve math problems using Lean 4 assistant, which ensures every step of a proof is rigorously verified.
What’s impressive about it?
Massive scale: Based on DeepSeek-V3 with 671B parameters using a mixture-of-experts (MoE) architecture, which activates only parts of the model at a time to reduce compute costs.
Theorem solving: Uses long context windows (32K+ tokens) to generate detailed, step-by-step formal proofs for a wide range of math problems — from basic algebra to advanced calculus theorems.
Research grade: Assists mathematicians in testing new theorems automatically and helps students understand formal logic by generating both Lean 4 code and readable explanations.
New benchmark: Introduces ProverBench, a new 325-question benchmark set featuring problems from recent AIME exams and curated academic sources to evaluate mathematical reasoning.
The need for deep student engagement became clear at Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine when a potential academic-integrity issue revealed gaps in its initial approach to artificial intelligence use in the classroom, leading to significant revisions to ensure equitable learning and assessment.
From George Siemens “SAIL: Transmutation, Assessment, Robots e-newsletter on 5/2/25
All indications are that AI, even if it stops advancing, has the capacity to dramatically change knowledge work. Knowing things matters less than being able to navigate and make sense of complex environments. Put another way, sensemaking, meaningmaking, and wayfinding (with their yet to be defined subelements) will be the foundation for being knowledgeable going forward.
That will require being able to personalize learning to each individual learner so that who they are (not what our content is) forms the pedagogical entry point to learning.(DSC: And I would add WHAT THEY WANT to ACHIEVE.)LLMs are particularly good and transmutation. Want to explain AI to a farmer? A sentence or two in a system prompt achieves that. Know that a learner has ADHD? A few small prompt changes and it’s reflected in the way the LLM engages with learning. Talk like a pirate. Speak in the language of Shakespeare. Language changes. All a matter of a small meta comment send to the LLM. I’m convinced that this capability to change, transmute, information will become a central part of how LLMS and AI are adopted in education.
… Speaking of Duolingo– it took them 12 years to develop 100 courses. In the last year, they developed an additional 148. AI is an accelerant with an impact in education that is hard to overstate. “Instead of taking years to build a single course with humans the company now builds a base course and uses AI to quickly customize it for dozens of different languages.”
FutureHouse is launching our platform, bringing the first publicly available superintelligent scientific agents to scientists everywhere via a web interface and API. Try it out for free at https://platform.futurehouse.org.
We are entering a new reality—one in which AI can reason and solve problems in remarkable ways. This intelligence on tap will rewrite the rules of business and transform knowledge work as we know it. Organizations today must navigate the challenge of preparing for an AI-enhanced future, where AI agents will gain increasing levels of capability over time that humans will need to harness as they redesign their business. Human ambition, creativity, and ingenuity will continue to create new economic value and opportunity as we redefine work and workflows.
As a result, a new organizational blueprint is emerging, one that blends machine intelligence with human judgment, building systems that are AI-operated but human-led. Like the Industrial Revolution and the internet era, this transformation will take decades to reach its full promise and involve broad technological, societal, and economic change.
To help leaders understand how knowledge work will evolve, Microsoft analyzed survey data from 31,000 workers across 31 countries, LinkedIn labor market trends, and trillions of Microsoft 365 productivity signals. We also spoke with AI-native startups, academics, economists, scientists, and thought leaders to explore what work could become. The data and insights point to the emergence of an entirely new organization, a Frontier Firm that looks markedly different from those we know today. Structured around on-demand intelligence and powered by “hybrid” teams of humans + agents, these companies scale rapidly, operate with agility, and generate value faster.
Frontier Firms are already taking shape, and within the next 2–5 years we expect that every organization will be on their journey to becoming one. 82% of leaders say this is a pivotal year to rethink key aspects of strategy and operations, and 81% say they expect agents to be moderately or extensively integrated into their company’s AI strategy in the next 12–18 months. Adoption is accelerating: 24% of leaders say their companies have already deployed AI organization-wide, while just 12% remain in pilot mode.
The time to act is now. The question for every leader and employee is: how will you adapt?
Anthropic expects AI-powered virtual employees to begin roaming corporate networks in the next year, the company’s top security leader told Axios in an interview this week.
Why it matters: Managing those AI identities will require companies to reassess their cybersecurity strategies or risk exposing their networks to major security breaches.
The big picture: Virtual employees could be the next AI innovation hotbed, Jason Clinton, the company’s chief information security officer, told Axios.
What if the key to better legal work isn’t just smarter tools but more inclusive ones? Susan Tanner, Associate Professor at the University of Louisville Brandeis School of Law, joins Zack Glaser to explore how AI and universal design can improve legal education and law firm operations. Susan shares how tools like generative AI can support neurodiverse thinkers, enhance client communication, and reduce anxiety for students and professionals alike. They also discuss the importance of inclusive design in legal tech and how law firms can better support their teams by embracing different ways of thinking to build a more accessible, future-ready practice. The conversation emphasizes the need for educators and legal professionals to adapt to the evolving landscape of AI, ensuring that they leverage its capabilities to better serve their clients and students.
Copilot is a powerful tool for lawyers, but are you making the most of it within your Microsoft apps? Tom Mighell is flying solo at ABA TECHSHOW 2025 and welcomes Microsoft’s own Ben Schorr to the podcast. Ben shares expert insights into how lawyers can implement Copilot’s AI-assistance to work smarter, not harder. From drafting documents to analyzing spreadsheets to streamlining communication, Copilot can handle the tedious tasks so you can focus on what really matters. Ben shares numerous use-cases and capabilities for attorneys and later gives a sneak peek at Copilot’s coming enhancements.
From DSC: Look out Google, Amazon, and others! Nvidia is putting the pedal to the metal in terms of being innovative and visionary! They are leaving the likes of Apple in the dust.
The top talent out there is likely to go to Nvidia for a while. Engineers, programmers/software architects, network architects, product designers, data specialists, AI researchers, developers of robotics and autonomous vehicles, R&D specialists, computer vision specialists, natural language processing experts, and many more types of positions will be flocking to Nvidia to work for a company that has already changed the world and will likely continue to do so for years to come.
NVIDIA just shook the AI and Robotic world at NVIDIA GTC 2025.
CEO Jensen Huang announced jaw-dropping breakthroughs.
Here are the top 11 key highlights you can’t afford to miss: (wait till you see no 3) pic.twitter.com/domejuVdw5
For enterprises, NVIDIA unveiled DGX Spark and DGX Station—Jensen’s vision of AI-era computing, bringing NVIDIA’s powerful Blackwell chip directly to your desk.
Nvidia Bets Big on Synthetic Data — from wired.com by Lauren Goode Nvidia has acquired synthetic data startup Gretel to bolster the AI training data used by the chip maker’s customers and developers.
Nvidia, xAI to Join BlackRock and Microsoft’s $30 Billion AI Infrastructure Fund — from investopedia.com by Aaron McDade Nvidia and xAI are joining BlackRock and Microsoft in an AI infrastructure group seeking $30 billion in funding. The group was first announced in September as BlackRock and Microsoft sought to fund new data centers to power AI products.
AI Super Bowl. Hi everyone. This week, 20,000 engineers, scientists, industry executives, and yours truly descended upon San Jose, Calif. for Nvidia’s annual GTC developers’ conference, which has been dubbed the “Super Bowl of AI.”