trends

Reflections on “Are You Ready for the AI University? Everything is about to change.” [Latham]

On 04/10/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accreditation, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, Blockchain, bots, Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, culture, curriculum, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, Design Thinking, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, leadership, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, lifelong learning, MBA, Michigan, new business models, online learning, online media, online tutoring, organizational change, pace of change, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, reinvent, skills, society, staying relevant, strategy, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, United States, universities, usability, user experience (UX), virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

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Are You Ready for the AI University? Everything is about to change. — from chronicle.com by Scott Latham

Over the course of the next 10 years, AI-powered institutions will rise in the rankings. US News & World Report will factor a college’s AI capabilities into its calculations. Accrediting agencies will assess the degree of AI integration into pedagogy, research, and student life. Corporations will want to partner with universities that have demonstrated AI prowess. In short, we will see the emergence of the AI haves and have-nots.
…
What’s happening in higher education today has a name: creative destruction. The economist Joseph Schumpeter coined the term in 1942 to describe how innovation can transform industries. That typically happens when an industry has both a dysfunctional cost structure and a declining value proposition. Both are true of higher education.
…
Out of the gate, professors will work with technologists to get AI up to speed on specific disciplines and pedagogy. For example, AI could be “fed” course material on Greek history or finance and then, guided by human professors as they sort through the material, help AI understand the structure of the discipline, and then develop lectures, videos, supporting documentation, and assessments.
…
In the near future, if a student misses class, they will be able watch a recording that an AI bot captured. Or the AI bot will find a similar lecture from another professor at another accredited university. If you need tutoring, an AI bot will be ready to help any time, day or night. Similarly, if you are going on a trip and wish to take an exam on the plane, a student will be able to log on and complete the AI-designed and administered exam. Students will no longer be bound by a rigid class schedule. Instead, they will set the schedule that works for them.

Early and mid-career professors who hope to survive will need to adapt and learn how to work with AI. They will need to immerse themselves in research on AI and pedagogy and understand its effect on the classroom.

From DSC:
I had a very difficult time deciding which excerpts to include. There were so many more excerpts for us to think about with this solid article. While I don’t agree with several things in it, EVERY professor, president, dean, and administrator working within higher education today needs to read this article and seriously consider what Scott Latham is saying.

Change is already here, but according to Scott, we haven’t seen anything yet. I agree with him and, as a futurist, one has to consider the potential scenarios that Scott lays out for AI’s creative destruction of what higher education may look like. Scott asserts that some significant and upcoming impacts will be experienced by faculty members, doctoral students, and graduate/teaching assistants (and Teaching & Learning Centers and IT Departments, I would add). But he doesn’t stop there. He brings in presidents, deans, and other members of the leadership teams out there.

There are a few places where Scott and I differ.

The foremost one is the importance of the human element — i.e., the human faculty member and students’ learning preferences. I think many (most?) students and lifelong learners will want to learn from a human being. IBM abandoned their 5-year, $100M ed push last year and one of the key conclusions was that people want to learn from — and with — other people:

To be sure, AI can do sophisticated things such as generating quizzes from a class reading and editing student writing. But the idea that a machine or a chatbot can actually teach as a human can, he said, represents “a profound misunderstanding of what AI is actually capable of.”

Nitta, who still holds deep respect for the Watson lab, admits, “We missed something important. At the heart of education, at the heart of any learning, is engagement. And that’s kind of the Holy Grail.”

— Satya Nitta, a longtime computer researcher at
IBM’s Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, NY
.

By the way, it isn’t easy for me to write this. As I wanted AI and other related technologies to be able to do just what IBM was hoping that it would be able to do.

Also, I would use the term learning preferences where Scott uses the term learning styles.

Scott also mentions:

“In addition, faculty members will need to become technologists as much as scholars. They will need to train AI in how to help them build lectures, assessments, and fine-tune their classroom materials. Further training will be needed when AI first delivers a course.”

It has been my experience from working with faculty members for over 20 years that not all faculty members want to become technologists. They may not have the time, interest, and/or aptitude to become one (and vice versa for technologists).

That all said, Scott relays many things that I have reflected upon and relayed for years now via this Learning Ecosystems blog and also via The Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision — the use of AI to offer personalized learning and to bring down the costs of obtaining credentials, the rising costs of higher education, the need to provide new business models and emerging technologies that are devoted more to lifelong learning, plus several other things.

So this article is definitely worth your time to read — especially if you are working within higher education or are considering a career therein!

Addendum later on 4/10/25:

U-M’s Ross School of Business, Google Public Sector launch virtual teaching assistant pilot program — from news.umich.edu by Jeff Karoub; via Paul Fain

Google Public Sector and the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business have launched an advanced Virtual Teaching Assistant pilot program aimed at improving personalized learning and enlightening educators on artificial intelligence in the classroom.

The AI technology, aided by Google’s Gemini chatbot, provides students with all-hours access to support and self-directed learning. The Virtual TA represents the next generation of educational chatbots, serving as a sophisticated AI learning assistant that instructors can use to modify their specific lessons and teaching styles.

The Virtual TA facilitates self-paced learning for students, provides on-demand explanations of complex course concepts, guides them through problem-solving, and acts as a practice partner. It’s designed to foster critical thinking by never giving away answers, ensuring students actively work toward solutions.

The 2025 AI Index Report [Stanford University]

On 04/09/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Africa, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, bots, business, Canada, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, communities of practice, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, economics, education, education technology, emerging technologies, ethics, Europe, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, intelligent systems, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, mathematics, morals/values, platforms, policy, research, science, society, trends, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The 2025 AI Index Report — from Stanford University’s Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Lab (hai.stanford.edu); item via The Neuron

Top Takeaways

AI performance on demanding benchmarks continues to improve.
AI is increasingly embedded in everyday life.
Business is all in on AI, fueling record investment and usage, as research continues to show strong productivity impacts.
The U.S. still leads in producing top AI models—but China is closing the performance gap.
The responsible AI ecosystem evolves—unevenly.
Global AI optimism is rising—but deep regional divides remain.
…and several more

Also see:

12 Graphs That Explain the State of AI in 2025 — from by Eliza Strickland; item via The Neuron
Stanford’s AI Index tracks performance, investment, public opinion, and more

The Neuron’s take on this:

So, what should you do? You really need to start trying out these AI tools. They’re getting cheaper and better, and they can genuinely help save time or make work easier—ignoring them is like ignoring smartphones ten years ago.

Just keep two big things in mind:

Making the next super-smart AI costs a crazy amount of money and uses tons of power (seriously, they’re buying nuclear plants and pushing coal again!).
Companies are still figuring out how to make AI perfectly safe and fair—cause it still makes mistakes.

So, use the tools, find what helps you, but don’t trust them completely.

We’re building this plane mid-flight, and Stanford’s report card is just another confirmation that we desperately need better safety checks before we hit major turbulence.

“AI agents that can train thousands of employees simultaneously” [Nuñez], “Introducing Claude for Education” [Anthropic], + other items re: AI in our LEs

On 04/03/2025, in adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, chemistry, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, design, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, graphics, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, lifelong learning, mathematics, multimedia, Open AI, pedagogy, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Uplimit raises stakes in corporate learning with suite of AI agents that can train thousands of employees simultaneously — from venturebeat.com by Michael Nuñez|

Uplimit unveiled a suite of AI-powered learning agents today designed to help companies rapidly upskill employees while dramatically reducing administrative burdens traditionally associated with corporate training.

The San Francisco-based company announced three sets of purpose-built AI agents that promise to change how enterprises approach learning and development: skill-building agents, program management agents, and teaching assistant agents. The technology aims to address the growing skills gap as AI advances faster than most workforces can adapt.

“There is an unprecedented need for continuous learning—at a scale and speed traditional systems were never built to handle,” said Julia Stiglitz, CEO and co-founder of Uplimit, in an interview with VentureBeat. “The companies best positioned to thrive aren’t choosing between AI and their people—they’re investing in both.”

Introducing Claude for Education — from anthropic.com

Today we’re launching Claude for Education, a specialized version of Claude tailored for higher education institutions. This initiative equips universities to develop and implement AI-enabled approaches across teaching, learning, and administration—ensuring educators and students play a key role in actively shaping AI’s role in society.

As part of announcing Claude for Education, we’re introducing:

Learning mode: A new Claude experience that guides students’ reasoning process rather than providing answers, helping develop critical thinking skills
University-wide Claude availability: Full campus access agreements with Northeastern University, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and Champlain College, making Claude available to all students
Academic partnerships: Joining Internet2 and working with Instructure to embed AI into teaching & learning with Canvas LMS
Student programs: A new Claude Campus Ambassadors program along with an initiative offering API credits for student projects

A comment on this from The Rundown AI:

Why it matters: Education continues to grapple with AI, but Anthropic is flipping the script by making the tech a partner in developing critical thinking rather than an answer engine. While the controversy over its use likely isn’t going away, this generation of students will have access to the most personalized, high-quality learning tools ever.

Should College Graduates Be AI Literate? — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie (behind a paywall)
More institutions are saying yes. Persuading professors is only the first barrier they face.

Last fall one of Jacqueline Fajardo’s students came to her office, eager to tell her about an AI tool that was helping him learn general chemistry. Had she heard of Google NotebookLM? He had been using it for half a semester in her honors course. He confidently showed her how he could type in the learning outcomes she posted for each class and the tool would produce explanations and study guides. It even created a podcast based on an academic paper he had uploaded. He did not feel it was important to take detailed notes in class because the AI tool was able to summarize the key points of her lectures.

Showing Up for the Future: Why Educators Can’t Sit Out the AI Conversation — from marcwatkins.substack.com with a guest post from Lew Ludwig

The Risk of Disengagement
Let’s be honest: most of us aren’t jumping headfirst into AI. At many of our institutions, it’s not a gold rush—it’s a quiet standoff. But the group I worry most about isn’t the early adopters. It’s the faculty who’ve decided to opt out altogether.

That choice often comes from a place of care. Concerns about data privacy, climate impact, exploitative labor, and the ethics of using large language models are real—and important. But choosing not to engage at all, even on ethical grounds, doesn’t remove us from the system. It just removes our voices from the conversation.

And without those voices, we risk letting others—those with very different priorities—make the decisions that shape what AI looks like in our classrooms, on our campuses, and in our broader culture of learning.

Turbocharge Your Professional Development with AI — from learningguild.com by Dr. RK Prasad

You’ve just mastered a few new eLearning authoring tools, and now AI is knocking on the door, offering to do your job faster, smarter, and without needing coffee breaks. Should you be worried? Or excited?

If you’re a Learning and Development (L&D) professional today, AI is more than just a buzzword—it’s transforming the way we design, deliver, and measure corporate training. But here’s the good news: AI isn’t here to replace you. It’s here to make you better at what you do.

The challenge is to harness its potential to build digital-ready talent, not just within your organization but within yourself.

Let’s explore how AI is reshaping L&D strategies and how you can leverage it for professional development.

5 Recent AI Notables — from automatedteach.com by Graham Clay

1. OpenAI’s New Image Generator
What Happened: OpenAI integrated a much more powerful image generator directly into GPT-4o, making it the default image creator in ChatGPT. Unlike previous image models, this one excels at accurately rendering text in images, precise visualization of diagrams/charts, and multi-turn image refinement through conversation.

Why It’s Big: For educators, this represents a significant advancement in creating educational visuals, infographics, diagrams, and other instructional materials with unprecedented accuracy and control. It’s not perfect, but you can now quickly generate custom illustrations that accurately display mathematical equations, chemical formulas, or process workflows — previously a significant hurdle in digital content creation — without requiring graphic design expertise or expensive software. This capability dramatically reduces the time between conceptualizing a visual aid and implementing it in course materials.
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The 4 AI modes that will supercharge your workflow — from aiwithallie.beehiiv.com by Allie K. Miller
The framework most people and companies won’t discover until 2026

The Gen X Career Meltdown [Kurutz]

On 03/31/2025, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, changing business models, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, creativity, culture, design, digital photography, digital storytelling, economics, emerging technologies, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, graphics, internet, journalism, lifelong learning, love of learning, media/film, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, music, new business models, online media, photography, reinvent, skills, social learning / networks, society, sociology, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, technology (general), television, trends, United States, workplace, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

It’s the end of work as we knew it
and I feel…

powerless to fight the technology that we pioneered
nostalgic for a world that moved on without us
after decades of paying our dues
for a payday that never came
…so yeah
not exactly fine.

The Gen X Career Meltdown — from nytimes.com by Steeven Kurutz (DSC: This is a gifted article for you)
Just when they should be at their peak, experienced workers in creative fields find that their skills are all but obsolete.

If you entered media or image-making in the ’90s — magazine publishing, newspaper journalism, photography, graphic design, advertising, music, film, TV — there’s a good chance that you are now doing something else for work. That’s because those industries have shrunk or transformed themselves radically, shutting out those whose skills were once in high demand.

“I am having conversations every day with people whose careers are sort of over,” said Chris Wilcha, a 53-year-old film and TV director in Los Angeles.

Talk with people in their late 40s and 50s who once imagined they would be able to achieve great heights — or at least a solid career while flexing their creative muscles — and you are likely to hear about the photographer whose work dried up, the designer who can’t get hired or the magazine journalist who isn’t doing much of anything.

In the wake of the influencers comes another threat, artificial intelligence, which seems likely to replace many of the remaining Gen X copywriters, photographers and designers. By 2030, ad agencies in the United States will lose 32,000 jobs, or 7.5 percent of the industry’s work force, to the technology, according to the research firm Forrester.

From DSC:
This article reminds me of how tough it is to navigate change in our lives. For me, it was often due to the fact that I was working with technologies. Being a technologist can be difficult, especially as one gets older and faces age discrimination in a variety of industries. You need to pick the right technologies and the directions that will last (for me it was email, videoconferencing, the Internet, online-based education/training, discovering/implementing instructional technologies, and becoming a futurist).

For you younger folks out there — especially students within K-16 — aim to develop a perspective and a skillset that is all about adapting to change. You will likely need to reinvent yourself and/or pick up new skills over your working years. You are most assuredly required to be a lifelong learner now. That’s why I have been pushing for school systems to be more concerned with providing more choice and control to students — so that students actually like school and enjoy learning about new things.

AI in Education Survey: What UK and US Educators Think in 2025 — from twinkl.com
As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to shape the world around us, Twinkl conducted a large-scale survey between January 15th and January 22nd to explore its impact on the education sector, as well as the work lives of teachers across the UK and the USA.

Teachers’ use of AI for work continues to rise
Twinkl’s survey asked teachers whether they were currently using AI for work purposes. Comparing these findings to similar surveys over recent years shows the use of AI tools by teachers has seen a significant increase across both the UK and USA.

According to two UK surveys by the National Literacy Trust – 30% of teachers used generative AI in 2023 and nearly half (47.7%) in 2024. Twinkl’s survey indicates that AI adoption continues to rise rapidly, with 60% of UK educators currently integrating it into their work lives in 2025.
Similarly, with 62% of US teachers currently using AI for work, uptake appears to have risen greatly in the past 12 months, with just 25% saying they were leveraging the new technology in the 2023-24 school year according to a RAND report.
Teachers are using AI more for work than in their personal lives: In the UK, personal usage drops to 43% (from 60% at school). In the US, 52% are using AI for non-work purposes (versus 62% in education settings).

60% of UK teachers and 62% of US teachers use AI in their work life in 2025.

OpenAI opens OpenAI Academy — A free, online platform to help people gain AI literacy

On 03/28/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, curriculum, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, economics, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), informal learning, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning ecosystem, multimedia, new media literacies, online learning, online media, online tutoring, Open AI, open courseware and systems, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, skills, social learning / networks, society, staying relevant, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Students and folks looking for work may want to check out:

AI Career Prep: Resumes and Interviews

Also relevant/see:

OpenAI Launches OpenAI Academy: Free Guide To Understanding AI — from voi.id
OpenAI Launches OpenAI Academy to Drive AI Innovation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries — from startupsvibes.com by Emmaunel Daniji

Essential AI tools for better work — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
My favorite tactics for making the most of AI — a podcast conversation

AI tools I consistently rely on (areas covered mentioned below)

Research and analysis
Communication efficiency
Multimedia creation

AI tactics that work surprisingly well

1. Reverse interviews
Instead of just querying AI, have it interview you. Get the AI to interview you, rather than interviewing it. Give it a little context and what you’re focusing on and what you’re interested in, and then you ask it to interview you to elicit your own insights.”

This approach helps extract knowledge from yourself, not just from the AI. Sometimes we need that guide to pull ideas out of ourselves.

OpenAI’s Deep Research Agent Is Coming for White-Collar Work — from wired.com by Will Knight
The research-focused agent shows how a new generation of more capable AI models could automate some office tasks.

Isla Fulford, a researcher at OpenAI, had a hunch that Deep Research would be a hit even before it was released.

Fulford had helped build the artificial intelligence agent, which autonomously explores the web, deciding for itself what links to click, what to read, and what to collate into an in-depth report. OpenAI first made Deep Research available internally; whenever it went down, Fulford says, she was inundated with queries from colleagues eager to have it back. “The number of people who were DMing me made us pretty excited,” says Fulford.

Since going live to the public on February 2, Deep Research has proven to be a hit with many users outside the company too.

Nvidia to open quantum computing research center in Boston — from seekingalpha.com by Ravikash Bakolia

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) will open a quantum computing research lab in Boston which is expected to start operations later this year.

The Nvidia Accelerated Quantum Research Center, or NVAQC, will integrate leading quantum hardware with AI supercomputers, enabling what is known as accelerated quantum supercomputing, said the company in a March 18 press release.

Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang also made this announcement on Thursday at the company’s first-ever Quantum Day at its annual GTC event.

French quantum computer firm Pasqal links up with NVIDIA — from reuters.com

PARIS, March 21 (Reuters) – Pasqal, a fast-growing French quantum computer start-up company, announced on Friday a partnership with chip giant Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab whereby Pasqal’s customers would gain access to more tools to develop quantum applications.

Pasqal said it would connect its quantum computing units and cloud platform onto NVIDIA’s open-source platform called CUDA-Q.

Introducing next-generation audio models in the API — from openai.com
A new suite of audio models to power voice agents, now available to developers worldwide.

Today, we’re launching new speech-to-text and text-to-speech audio models in the API—making it possible to build more powerful, customizable, and intelligent voice agents that offer real value. Our latest speech-to-text models set a new state-of-the-art benchmark, outperforming existing solutions in accuracy and reliability—especially in challenging scenarios involving accents, noisy environments, and varying speech speeds. These improvements increase transcription reliability, making the models especially well-suited for use cases like customer call centers, meeting note transcription, and more.

“8 Weeks Left to Prepare Students for the AI-Enhanced Workplace” [Schroeder] + other items re: AI in our LEs

On 03/21/2025, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, assessment, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, curriculum, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, expectations, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, instructional design, intelligent systems, learning, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, new business models, online learning, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, research, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, teaching online, trends, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

8 Weeks Left to Prepare Students for the AI-Enhanced Workplace — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
We are down to the final weeks left to fully prepare students for entry into the AI-enhanced workplace. Are your students ready?

The urgent task facing those of us who teach and advise students, whether they be degree program or certificate seeking, is to ensure that they are prepared to enter (or re-enter) the workplace with skills and knowledge that are relevant to 2025 and beyond. One of the first skills to cultivate is an understanding of what kinds of services this emerging technology can provide to enhance the worker’s productivity and value to the institution or corporation.
…
Given that short period of time, coupled with the need to cover the scheduled information in the syllabus, I recommend that we consider merging AI use into authentic assignments and assessments, supplementary modules, and other resources to prepare for AI.

Learning Design in the Era of Agentic AI — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr Philippa Hardman
Aka, how to design online async learning experiences that learners can’t afford to delegate to AI agents

The point I put forward was that the problem is not AI’s ability to complete online async courses, but that online async courses courses deliver so little value to our learners that they delegate their completion to AI.

The harsh reality is that this is not an AI problem — it is a learning design problem.

However, this realisation presents us with an opportunity which we overall seem keen to embrace. Rather than seeking out ways to block AI agents, we seem largely to agree that we should use this as a moment to reimagine online async learning itself.

8 Schools Innovating With Google AI — Here’s What They’re Doing — from forbes.com by Dan Fitzpatrick

While fears of AI replacing educators swirl in the public consciousness, a cohort of pioneering institutions is demonstrating a far more nuanced reality. These eight universities and schools aren’t just experimenting with AI, they’re fundamentally reshaping their educational ecosystems. From personalized learning in K-12 to advanced research in higher education, these institutions are leveraging Google’s AI to empower students, enhance teaching, and streamline operations.

Essential AI tools for better work — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
My favorite tactics for making the most of AI — a podcast conversation

AI tools I consistently rely on (areas covered mentioned below)

Research and analysis
Communication efficiency
Multimedia creation

AI tactics that work surprisingly well

1. Reverse interviews
Instead of just querying AI, have it interview you. Get the AI to interview you, rather than interviewing it. Give it a little context and what you’re focusing on and what you’re interested in, and then you ask it to interview you to elicit your own insights.”

This approach helps extract knowledge from yourself, not just from the AI. Sometimes we need that guide to pull ideas out of ourselves.

How can businesses stay ahead of trends and technologies that are rapidly changing their industries? [Schindler]

On 03/19/2025, in business, corporate universities / corporate training, future, pace of change, technology (general), trends, workplace, by Daniel Christian

How can businesses stay ahead of trends and technologies that are rapidly changing their industries? — from linkedin.com by Tanja Schindler; via her Dancing with Uncertainty newsletter

Companies need to develop a sense of curiosity about both the observable trends in the present and the unobserved factors that could significantly influence their futures. While current trends can drive us in certain directions, we also need to imagine possible futures that could either disrupt our industry or offer tremendous opportunities for growth.

To stay ahead of the game, companies should focus on recognising weak signals in the present – subtle hints of emerging trends – and deciding whether to encourage or discourage these signals to avoid undesirable futures and encourage desirable ones. This process is a constant dance between the push of the present (existing trends) and the pull of the future (visions of the future we want to create).

Announcements from Nvidia and their GTC Conference this week

On 03/19/2025, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Amazon, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, creativity, data related items, design, digital audio, digital video, disruption, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, game-changing environment, generational differences, Google, graphics, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, Microsoft, multimedia, Natural Language Processing (NLP), new business models, NVIDIA, pace of change, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, society, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, trends, United States, vendors, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

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

— The AI Colony (@TheAIColony) March 19, 2025

NVIDIA’s AI Superbowl — from theneurondaily.com by Noah and Grant
PLUS: Prompt tips to make AI writing more natural

That’s despite a flood of new announcements (here’s a 16 min video recap), which included:

A new architecture for massive AI data centers (now called “AI factories”).
A physics engine for robot training built with Disney and DeepMind.
A partnership with GM to develop next-gen vehicles, factories and robots.
A new Blackwell chip with “Dynamo” software that makes AI reasoning 40x faster than previous generations.
A new “Rubin” chip slated for 2026 and a “Feynman” chip set for 2028.

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.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says we’ll soon see 1 million GPU data centers visible from space — from finance.yahoo.com by Daniel Howley
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says the company is preparing for 1 million GPU data centers.

Nvidia stock stems losses as GTC leaves Wall Street analysts ‘comfortable with long term AI demand’ — from finance.yahoo.com by Laura Bratton
Nvidia stock reversed direction after a two-day slide that saw shares lose 5% as the AI chipmaker’s annual GTC event failed to excite investors amid a broader market downturn.

Microsoft, Google, and Oracle Deepen Nvidia Partnerships. This Stock Got the Biggest GTC Boost. — from barrons.com by Adam Clark and Elsa Ohlen

The 4 Big Surprises from Nvidia’s ‘Super Bowl of AI’ GTC Keynote — from barrons.com by Tae Kim; behind a paywall

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.”

20 AI Agent Examples in 2025 — from autogpt.net

AI Agents are now deeply embedded in everyday life and?quickly transforming industry after industry. The global AI market is expected to explode up to $1.59 trillion by 2030! That is a?ton of intelligent agents operating behind the curtains.

That’s why in this article, we explore?20 real-life AI Agents that are causing a stir today.

Top 100 Gen AI apps, new AI video & 3D — from eatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Plus Runway Restyle, Luma Ray2 img2vid keyframes & extend

?In the latest edition of Andreessen Horowitz’s “Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps,” the generative AI landscape has undergone significant shifts.

Notably, DeepSeek has emerged as a leading competitor to ChatGPT, while AI video models have advanced from experimental stages to more reliable tools for short clips. Additionally, the rise of “vibecoding” is broadening the scope of AI creators.

The report also introduces the “Brink List,” highlighting ten companies poised to enter the top 100 rankings.?

AI is Evolving Fast – The Latest LLMs, Video Models & Breakthrough Tools — from heatherbcooper.substack.com by Heather Cooper
Breakthroughs in multimodal search, next-gen coding assistants, and stunning text-to-video tech. Here’s what’s new:

I do these comparisons frequently to measure the improvements in different models for text or image to video prompts. I hope it is helpful for you, as well!

I included 6 models for an image to video comparison:

Pika 2.1 (I will do one with Pika’s new 2.2 model soon)
Adobe Firefly Video
Runway Gen-3
Kling 1.6
Luma Ray2
Hailuo I2V-01

?Video Model Comparison: Image to video

6 Models included:

• Pika 2.1
• Adobe Firefly
• Runway Gen-3
• Kling 1.6
• Luma Ray2
• Hailuo T2V-01

This time I used an image generated with Magnific’s new Fluid model ( Google DeepMind’s Imagen + Mystic 2.5 ), and the same… pic.twitter.com/rH1gRbhynB

— Heather Cooper (@HBCoop_) February 19, 2025

Why Smart Companies Are Granting AI Immunity to Their Employees — from builtin.com by Matt Almassian
Employees are using AI tools whether they’re authorized or not. Instead of cracking down on AI usage, consider developing an AI amnesty program. Learn more.

But the smartest companies aren’t cracking down. They’re flipping the script. Instead of playing AI police, they’re launching AI amnesty programs, offering employees a safe way to disclose their AI usage without fear of punishment. In doing so, they’re turning a security risk into an innovation powerhouse.
…
Before I dive into solutions, let’s talk about what keeps your CISO or CTO up at night. Shadow AI isn’t just about unauthorized tool usage — it’s a potential dirty bomb of security, compliance and operational risks that could explode at any moment.
…
6 Steps to an AI Amnesty Program

Build your AI governance foundation.
Transform your IT department from gatekeeper to innovation partner.
Make AI education easily accessible.
Deploy your technical safety net.
Create an AI-positive culture.
Monitor, adapt and evolve.

A first-ever study on prompts… — from theneurondaily.com
PLUS: OpenAI wants to charge $20K a month to replace you?!

What they discovered might change how you interact with AI:

Consistency is a major problem. The researchers asked the same questions 100 times and found models often give different answers to the same question.
Formatting matters a ton. Telling the AI exactly how to structure its response consistently improved performance.
Politeness is… complicated. Saying “please” helped the AI answer some questions but made it worse at others. Same for being commanding (“I order you to…”).
Standards matter. If you need an AI to be right 100% of the time, you’re in trouble.

That’s also why we think you, an actual human, should always place yourself as a final check between whatever your AI creates and whatever goes out into the world.

Leave it to Manus
“Manus is a general AI agent that bridges minds and actions: it doesn’t just think, it delivers results. Manus excels at various tasks in work and life, getting everything done while you rest.”

From DSC:
What could possibly go wrong?!

AI Search Has A Citation Problem — from cjr.org (Columbia Journalism Review) by Klaudia Ja?wi?ska and Aisvarya Chandrasekar
We Compared Eight AI Search Engines. They’re All Bad at Citing News.

We found that…

Chatbots were generally bad at declining to answer questions they couldn’t answer accurately, offering incorrect or speculative answers instead.

Premium chatbots provided more confidently incorrect answers than their free counterparts.
Multiple chatbots seemed to bypass Robot Exclusion Protocol preferences.
Generative search tools fabricated links and cited syndicated and copied versions of articles.
Content licensing deals with news sources provided no guarantee of accurate citation in chatbot responses.

Our findings were consistent with our previous study, proving that our observations are not just a ChatGPT problem, but rather recur across all the prominent generative search tools that we tested.

5 new AI tools you’ll actually want to try — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Kaplan
Chat with lifelike AI, clean up audio instantly, and reimagine your career

Hundreds of AI tools emerge every week. I’ve picked five new ones worth exploring. They’re free to try, easy to use, and signal new directions for useful AI.

Example:

Career Dreamer
A playful way to explore career possibilities with AI

Are Entry-Level Jobs Going Away? The Hidden Workforce Shift — from forbes.com by Dr. Diane Hamilton; via Ryan Craig

The problem is that these new roles demand a level of expertise that wasn’t expected from entry-level candidates in the past. Where someone might have previously learned on the job, they are now required to have relevant certifications, AI proficiency, or experience with digital platforms before they even apply.

Some current and emerging job titles that serve as entry points into industries include:

Digital marketing associate – This role often involves content creation, social media management, and working with AI-driven analytics tools.
Junior AI analyst – Employees in this role assist data science teams by labeling and refining machine learning datasets.
Customer success associate – Replacing traditional customer service roles, these professionals help manage AI-enhanced customer support systems.
Technical support specialist – While this role still involves troubleshooting software, it now often includes AI-driven diagnostics and automation oversight.

2025 Survey of College and University Presidents
Learn about presidents’ takes on topics such as financial confidence, the 2024 election’s impact on higher ed & more.

Inside Higher Ed’s 2025 Survey of College and University Presidents was conducted by Hanover Research. The survey asked presidents from 298 public and private, largely nonprofit two- and four-year institutions timely questions on the following issues:

General financial and economic confidence, plus mergers and acquisitions
Politics, policy and the 2024 election’s impact on higher education
Public perceptions of higher ed and the value of a degree
Campus speech
Race on campus
Artificial intelligence
Environmental sustainability goals
Campus health and wellness, including student mental health
Management, governance and the hardest part about being a president

3 items re: AI in general

On 02/26/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, collaboration, Google, health, ideas, innovation, Open AI, organizational change, pace of change, platforms, research, science, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

You can now use Deep Research without $200 — from flexos.work

Accelerating scientific breakthroughs with an AI co-scientist — from research.google by Juraj Gottweis and Vivek Natarajan

We introduce AI co-scientist, a multi-agent AI system built with Gemini 2.0 as a virtual scientific collaborator to help scientists generate novel hypotheses and research proposals, and to accelerate the clock speed of scientific and biomedical discoveries.

Now decides next: Generating a new future — from Deloitte.com
Deloitte’s State of Generative AI in the Enterprise Quarter four report

There is a speed limit. GenAI technology continues to advance at incredible speed. However, most organizations are moving at the speed of organizations, not at the speed of technology. No matter how quickly the technology advances—or how hard the companies producing GenAI technology push—organizational change in an enterprise can only happen so fast.

Barriers are evolving. Significant barriers to scaling and value creation are still widespread across key areas. And, over the past year regulatory uncertainty and risk management have risen in organizations’ lists of concerns to address. Also, levels of trust in GenAI are still moderate for the majority of organizations. Even so, with increased customization and accuracy of models—combined with a focus on better governance— adoption of GenAI is becoming more established.

Some uses are outpacing others. Application of GenAI is further along in some business areas than in others in terms of integration, return on investment (ROI) and expectations. The IT function is most mature; cybersecurity, operations, marketing and customer service are also showing strong adoption and results. Organizations reporting higher ROI for their most scaled initiatives are broadly further along in their GenAI journeys.

“AI Resources for District Leaders” [Baule] + several other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 02/26/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Bias | Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DE&I), content development, aggregation, repositories, education, education technology, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, hearts -- matters of the heart, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, K-12 related, languages and translation, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, NVIDIA, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, project-based learning, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, tools, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Nvidia helps launch AI platform for teaching American Sign Language — from venturebeat.com by Dean Takahashi; via Claire Zau

Nvidia has unveiled a new AI platform for teaching people how to use American Sign Language to help bridge communication gaps.

The Signs platform is creating a validated dataset for sign language learners and developers of ASL-based AI applications.
…
Nvidia, the American Society for Deaf Children and creative agency Hello Monday are helping close this gap with Signs, an interactive web platform built to support ASL learning and the development of accessible AI applications.

Using Gen AI to Design, Implement, and Assess PBL — from gettingsmart.com by David Ross

Key Points

Generative AI can significantly reduce the time and effort required in designing PBL by providing tools for research, brainstorming, and organization.
AI tools can assist educators in managing project implementation and assessment, providing formative feedback and organizing resources efficiently.

I usually conclude blogs with some pithy words, but this time I’ll turn the microphone over to Rachel Harcrow, a high school English/Language Arts teacher at Young Women’s College Prep Charter School of Rochester, NY: “After years of struggling to call myself a PBL practitioner, I finally feel comfortable saying I am, thanks to the power of Gen AI,” Harcrow told me. “Initial ideas now turn into fully fledged high-quality project plans in minutes that I can refine, giving me the space and energy to focus on what truly matters: My students.”

AI Resources for District Leaders — from techlearning.com by Steve Baule
Educational leaders aiming to effectively integrate generative AI into their schools should consider several key resources

To truly harness the transformative power of generative AI in education, district leaders must navigate a landscape rich with resources and opportunities. By delving into state and national guidelines, exploring successful case studies, utilizing innovative planning tools, and engaging in professional development, educational leaders can craft robust implementation plans. These plans can then assist in integrating AI seamlessly into their schools and elevate the learning experience to new heights.

Anthropic brings ‘extended thinking’ to Claude, which can solves complex physics problems with 96.5% accuracy — from rdworldonline.com by Brian Buntz

Anthropic, a favorite frontier AI lab among many coders and genAI power users has unveiled Claude 3.7 Sonnet, its first “hybrid reasoning” AI model. It is capable of both near-instant answers and in-depth, step-by-step reasoning within a single system.

Users can toggle an extended thinking mode where the model self-reflects before answering, considerably improving performance on complex tasks like math, physics and coding. In early testing by the author, the model largely succeeded in creating lines of Python (related to unsupervised learning) that were close to 1,000 lines long that ran without error on the first or second try, including the unsupervised machine learning task shown below:

New Tools. Old Complaints. Why AI Won’t Kill Education or Fix it — from coolcatteacher.com by Vicki Davis; via Stephen Downes

AI won’t kill education. But will it kill learning? The challenge isn’t AI itself—it’s whether students can still think for themselves when the answers are always one click away.
…

Wait. Before you go, let me ask you one thing.
AI has opportunities to help learning. But it also won’t fix it. The real question isn’t whether students can use AI—but whether they’re still learning without it.

Whether the learning is happening between the ears.

And so much of what we teach in schools isn’t the answers on a test. It answers questions like “What is my purpose in life?” “How do I make friends?” and “How can I help my team be stronger.” Questions that aren’t asked on a test but are essential to living a good life. These questions aren’t answered between the ears but within the heart.

That, my friends, is what teaching has always been about.

The heart.

And the heart of the matter is we have new challenges, but these are old complaints. Complaints since the beginning of time and teaching. And in those days, you didn’t need kids just to be able to talk about how to build a fire, they had to make one themselves. Their lives depend on it.

And these days, we need to build another kind of fire. A fire that sparks the joy of learning. The joy of the opportunities that await us sparked by some of the most powerful tools ever invented. Kids need to not be able to just talk about making a difference, they need to know how to build a better world tomorrow. Our lives depend on it.

How Debating Skills Can Help Us In The Fight Against AI — from adigaskell.org by Adi Gaskell

Debating skills have a range of benefits in the workplace, from helping to improve our communication to bolstering our critical thinking skills. Research from the University of Mississippi suggests it might also help us in the battle with AI in the workplace.

We can often assume that debate teaches us nothing more than how to argue our point, but in order to do this, we have to understand both our own take on a subject and that of our opponent. This allows us to see both sides of any issue we happen to be debating.

“Even though AI has offered a shortcut through the writing process, it actually still is important to be able to write and speak and think on your own,” the researchers explain. “That’s what the focus of this research is: how debate engenders those aspects of being able to write and speak and study and research on your own.”

Learning Ecosystems

How can businesses stay ahead of trends and technologies that are rapidly changing their industries? [Schindler]

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