research

Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in the age of AI — from mckinsey.com by Lareina Yee, Anu Madgavkar, Sven Smit, Alexis Krivkovich, Michael Chui, María Jesús Ramírez, and Diego Castresana
AI is expanding the productivity frontier. Realizing its benefits requires new skills and rethinking how people work together with intelligent machines.

At a glance

Work in the future will be a partnership between people, agents, and robots—all powered by AI. …
Most human skills will endure, though they will be applied differently. …
Our new Skill Change Index shows which skills will be most and least exposed to automation in the next five years….
Demand for AI fluency—the ability to use and manage AI tools—has grown sevenfold in two years…
By 2030, about $2.9 trillion of economic value could be unlocked in the United States…

Also related/see:

The state of AI in 2025: Agents, innovation, and transformation — from mckinsey.com
Almost all survey respondents say their organizations are using AI, and many have begun to use AI agents. But most are still in the early stages of scaling AI and capturing enterprise-level value.

State of AI: December 2025 newsletter — from nathanbenaich.substack.com by Nathan Benaich
What you’ve got to know in AI from the last 4 weeks.

Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month.

Six Transformative Technology Trends Impacting the Legal Profession — from americanbar.org

Summary

Law firm leaders should evaluate their legal technology and decide if they are truly helping legal work or causing a disconnect between human and AI contributions.
75% of firms now rely on cloud platforms for everything from document storage to client collaboration.
The rise of virtual law firms and remote work is reshaping the profession’s culture. Hybrid and remote-first models, supported by cloud and collaboration tools, are growing.

Are we truly innovating, or just rearranging the furniture? That’s the question every law firm leader should be asking as the legal technology landscape shifts beneath our feet. There are many different thoughts and opinions on how the legal technology landscape will evolve in the coming years, particularly regarding the pace of generative AI-driven changes and the magnitude of these changes.

To try to answer the question posed above, we looked at six recently published technology trends reports from influential entities in the legal technology arena: the American Bar Association, Clio, Wolters Kluwer, Lexis Nexis, Thomson Reuters, and NetDocuments.

When we compared these reports, we found them to be remarkably consistent. While the level of detail on some topics varied across the reports, they identified six trends that are reshaping the very core of legal practice. These trends are summarized in the following paragraphs.

Generative AI and AI-Assisted Drafting …
Cloud-Based Practice Management…
Cybersecurity and Data Privacy…
Flat Fee and Alternative Billing Models…
Legal Analytics and Data-Driven Decision Making…
Virtual Law Firms and Remote Work…

70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum [Schwartz]

On 10/27/2025, in colleges, community colleges, curriculum, faculty/staff, funding / grants, future of higher education, higher education, learning ecosystem, legislatures / government / legal, policy, political science, research, society, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
The Public Religion Research Institute poll comes as the Trump administration is pressuring colleges to change their policies.

Dive Brief:

Most polled Americans, 70%, disagreed that the federal government should control “admissions, faculty hiring, and curriculum at U.S. colleges and universities to ensure they do not teach inappropriate material,” according to a survey released Wednesday by the Public Religion Research Institute.
The majority of Americans across political parties — 84% of Democrats, 75% of independents and 58% of Republicans — disagreed with federal control over these elements of college operations.
The poll’s results come as the Trump administration seeks to exert control over college workings, including in its recent offer of priority for federal research funding in exchange for making sweeping policy changes aligned with the government’s priorities.

Also see:

‘Nothing less than government control’: Higher ed responds to Trump’s compact — from highereddive.com by Ben Unglesbee
Federal officials offered preferential funding treatment to nine initial colleges in exchange for sweeping changes. Here’s how they replied.

How a Gemma model helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway [Google]

On 10/21/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, emerging technologies, experimentation, Google, health, platforms, research, science, tools, by Daniel Christian

How a Gemma model helped discover a new potential cancer therapy pathway — from blog.google by Shekoofeh Azizi and Bryan Perozzi
We’re launching a new 27 billion parameter foundation model for single-cell analysis built on the Gemma family of open models.

Today, as part of our research collaboration with Yale University, we’re releasing Cell2Sentence-Scale 27B (C2S-Scale), a new 27 billion parameter foundation model designed to understand the language of individual cells. Built on the Gemma family of open models, C2S-Scale represents a new frontier in single-cell analysis.

This announcement marks a milestone for AI in science. C2S-Scale generated a novel hypothesis about cancer cellular behavior and we have since confirmed its prediction with experimental validation in living cells. This discovery reveals a promising new pathway for developing therapies to fight cancer.

The State of AI Report 2025 — from nathanbenaich.substack.com by Nathan Benaich

In short, it’s been a monumental 12 months for AI. Our eighth annual report is the most comprehensive it’s ever been, covering what you need to know about research, industry, politics, and safety – along with our first State of AI Usage Survey of 1,200 practitioners.

stateof.ai
.

The World’s Classrooms Are Short 44 Million Teachers [Tamez-Robledo]

On 10/01/2025, in 21st century, education, global / globalization, learning ecosystem, professional development, research, skills, society, teachers, United States, by Daniel Christian

The World’s Classrooms Are Short 44 Million Teachers — from edsurge.com by Nadia Tamez-Robledo
It’s not just pay that’s a problem in retaining and recruiting educators, experts say.

K-12 education worldwide is facing a two-pronged dilemma: A global shortage of 44 million teachers by 2030 and not enough funding to train or retain them, according to a report released by UNESCO and the International Taskforce on Teachers for Education 2030 following the summit. Countries around the world risk not having enough teachers — or not enough high-caliber teachers — for the rising number of students expected to enter primary and secondary school within the next five years.

The report’s findings reflect what some school districts and states have been grappling with in the United States, where research has consistently shown that teachers face lower rates of well-being and satisfaction with pay than similarly employed workers in other fields.

Justice Workers — Reimagining Access to Justice as Democracy Work, with Rebecca Sandefur & Matthew Burnett [Ambrogi]

On 09/23/2025, in Access to Justice (A2J), ideas, innovation, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, research, society, sociology, UK, United States, by Daniel Christian

On LawNext: Justice Workers — Reimagining Access to Justice as Democracy Work, with Rebecca Sandefur and Matthew Burnett — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

With as many as 120 million legal problems going unresolved in America each year, traditional lawyer-centered approaches to access to justice have consistently failed to meet the scale of need. But what if the solution is not just about providing more legal services — what if it lies in fundamentally rethinking who can provide legal help?

In today’s episode, host Bob Ambrogi is joined by two of the nation’s leading researchers on access to justice: Rebecca Sandefur, professor and director of the Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona State University and a faculty fellow at the American Bar Foundation, and Matthew Burnett, director of research and programs for the Access to Justice Research Initiative at the American Bar Foundation and an adjunct professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

ILTACON 2025: The Wild, Wild West of legal tech [Black]

On 08/26/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, business, career development, corporate / business world, disruption, emerging technologies, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, Legal operations, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, Open AI, research, tools, United States, vendors, by Daniel Christian

ILTACON 2025: The Wild, Wild West of legal tech — from abajournal.com by Nicole Black

On the surface, ILTACON 2025, the International Legal Technology Association’s largest annual legal technology event, had all the makings of a great conference. But despite the thought-provoking sessions and keynotes, networking opportunities and PR fanfare, I couldn’t shake the sense that we were in the midst of a seismic shift in legal tech, surrounded by the restless energy of a boomtown.
…
The gold rush
It wasn’t ILTACON that bothered me; it was the heady, gold-rushed, “anything goes and whatever sticks works” environment that was unsettling. While this year’s conference was pirate-themed, it felt more like the Wild West to me.

This attitude permeated the conference, driven largely by the frenzied, frontier-style artificial intelligence revolution. The AI train is hurtling forward at lightning speed, destination unknown, and everyone is trying to cash in before it derails.

Two themes emerged from my discussions. First, no matter who you spoke to, “agentic AI,” meaning AI that autonomously takes purposeful actions, was a buzzword that cropped up often, whether during press briefings or over drinks. Another key trend was the race to become the generative AI home base for legal professionals.

— Nicole Black

“We are at the start of the biggest disruption to the legal profession in its history.”

— Steve Hasker, Thomson Reuters president and CEO

Also see:

Fresh Voices on Legal Tech with Bridget McCormack — from legaltalknetwork.com

Is AI the technology that will finally force lawyer tech competence? With rapid advances and the ability to address numerous problems and pain points in our legal systems, AI simply can’t be ignored. Dennis & Tom welcome Bridget McCormack to discuss her perspectives on current AI trends and other exciting new tech applications in legal…

Top Legal Tech Jobs on the Rise: Who Employers Are Looking For in 2025 — from lawyer-monthly.com

For professionals, this means one thing: dozens of new career paths are appearing on the horizon that did not exist five years ago.

Google introduces Guided Learning [Zau] + other items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 08/09/2025, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, Google, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning spaces, liberal arts, lifelong learning, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, research, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

BREAKING: Google introduces Guided Learning — from aieducation.substack.com by Claire Zau
Some thoughts on what could make Google’s AI tutor stand out

Another major AI lab just launched “education mode.”

Google introduced Guided Learning in Gemini, transforming it into a personalized learning companion designed to help you move from quick answers to real understanding.

Instead of immediately spitting out solutions, it:

Asks probing, open-ended questions
Walks learners through step-by-step reasoning
Adapts explanations to the learner’s level
Uses visuals, videos, diagrams, and quizzes to reinforce concepts

This Socratic style tutor rollout follows closely behind similar announcements like OpenAI’s Study Mode (last week) and Anthropic’s Claude for Education (April 2025).

How Sci-Fi Taught Me to Embrace AI in My Classroom — from edsurge.com by Dan Clark

I’m not too naive to understand that, no matter how we present it, some students will always be tempted by “the dark side” of AI. What I also believe is that the future of AI in education is not decided. It will be decided by how we, as educators, embrace or demonize it in our classrooms.

My argument is that setting guidelines and talking to our students honestly about the pitfalls and amazing benefits that AI offers us as researchers and learners will define it for the coming generations.

Can AI be the next calculator? Something that, yes, changes the way we teach and learn, but not necessarily for the worse? If we want it to be, yes.

How it is used, and more importantly, how AI is perceived by our students, can be influenced by educators. We have to first learn how AI can be used as a force for good. If we continue to let the dominant voice be that AI is the Terminator of education and critical thinking, then that will be the fate we have made for ourselves.

AI Tools for Strategy and Research – GT #32 — from goodtools.substack.com by Robin Good
Getting expert advice, how to do deep research with AI, prompt strategy, comparing different AIs side-by-side, creating mini-apps and an AI Agent that can critically analyze any social media channel

In this issue, discover AI tools for:

Getting Expert Advice
Doing Deep Research with AI
Improving Your AI Prompt Strategy
Comparing Results from Different AIs
Creating an AI Agent for Social Media Analysis
Summarizing YouTube Videos
Creating Mini-Apps with AI
Tasting an Award-Winning AI Short Film

GPT-Building, Agentic Workflow Design & Intelligent Content Curation — from drphilippahardman.substack.com by Dr. Philippa Hardman
What 3 recent job ads reveal about the changing nature of Instructional Design

In this week’s blog post, I’ll share my take on how the instructional design role is evolving and discuss what this means for our day-to-day work and the key skills it requires.
…
With this in mind, I’ve been keeping a close eye on open instructional design roles and, in the last 3 months, have noticed the emergence of a new flavour of instructional designer: the so-called “Generative AI Instructional Designer.”

Let’s deep dive into three explicitly AI-focused instructional design positions that have popped up in the last quarter. Each one illuminates a different aspect of how the role is changing—and together, they paint a picture of where our profession is likely heading.

Designers who evolve into prompt engineers, agent builders, and strategic AI advisors will capture the new premium. Those who cling to traditional tool-centric roles may find themselves increasingly sidelined—or automated out of relevance.

Google to Spend $1B on AI Training in Higher Ed — from insidehighered.com by Katherine Knott

Google’s parent company announced Wednesday (8/6/25) that it’s planning to spend $1 billion over the next three years to help colleges teach and train students about artificial intelligence.

Google is joining other AI companies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, in investing in AI training in higher education. All three companies have rolled out new tools aimed at supporting “deeper learning” among students and made their AI platforms available to certain students for free.

5 Predictions for How AI Will Impact Community Colleges — from pistis4edu.substack.com by Feng Hou

Based on current technology capabilities, adoption patterns, and the mission of community colleges, here are five well-supported predictions for AI’s impact in the coming years.

Universal AI Tutor Access
AI as Active Teacher
Personalized Learning Pathways
Interactive Multimodal Learning
Value-Centric Education in an AI-Abundant World

15 Quick (and Mighty) Retrieval Practices — from edutopia.org by Daniel Leonard
From concept maps to flash cards to Pictionary, these activities help students reflect on—and remember—what they’ve learned.

But to genuinely commit information to long-term memory, there’s no replacement for active retrieval—the effortful practice of recalling information from memory, unaided by external sources like notes or the textbook. “Studying this way is mentally difficult,” Willingham acknowledged, “but it’s really, really good for memory.”
…
From low-stakes quizzes to review games to flash cards, there are a variety of effective retrieval practices that teachers can implement in class or recommend that students try at home. Drawing from a wide range of research, we compiled this list of 15 actionable retrieval practices.

And speaking of cognitive science, also see:

‘Cognitive Science,’ All the Rage in British Schools, Fails to Register in U.S. — from the74million.org by Greg Toppo
Educators blame this ‘reverse Beatles effect’ on America’s decentralized system and grad schools that are often hostile to research.

When Zach Groshell zoomed in as a guest on a longstanding British education podcast last March, a co-host began the interview by telling listeners he was “very well-known over in the U.S.”

Groshell, a former Seattle-area fourth-grade teacher, had to laugh: “Nobody knows me here in the U.S.,” he said in an interview.

But in Britain, lots of teachers know his name. An in-demand speaker at education conferences, he flies to London “as frequently as I can” to discuss Just Tell Them, his 2024 book on explicit instruction. Over the past year, Groshell has appeared virtually about once a month and has made two personal appearances at events across England.

The reason? A discipline known as cognitive science. Born in the U.S., it relies on decades of research on how kids learn to guide teachers in the classroom, and is at the root of several effective reforms, including the Science of Reading.

Introducing ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action [OpenAI]

On 07/19/2025, in corporate / business world, emerging technologies, experimentation, innovation, intelligent systems, learning agents, Open AI, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, research, tools, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Introducing ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action — from openai.com
ChatGPT now thinks and acts, proactively choosing from a toolbox of agentic skills to complete tasks for you using its own computer.

ChatGPT can now do work for you using its own computer, handling complex tasks from start to finish.

You can now ask ChatGPT to handle requests like “look at my calendar and brief me on upcoming client meetings based on recent news,” “plan and buy ingredients to make Japanese breakfast for four,” and “analyze three competitors and create a slide deck.” ChatGPT will intelligently navigate websites, filter results, prompt you to log in securely when needed, run code, conduct analysis, and even deliver editable slideshows and spreadsheets that summarize its findings.

NotebookLM is one of my favorite AI tools for reading scholarly articles. — from linkedin.com by Med Kharbach, PhD

In A Mega Deal, Clio Buys vLex for $1 Billion, Merging AI, Research and Practice Management [Ambrogi]

On 07/01/2025, in business, changing business models, corporate / business world, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, law schools, Legal operations, legal reform, legal technologies, legislatures / government / legal, research, by Daniel Christian

In A Mega Deal, Clio Buys vLex for $1 Billion, Merging AI, Research and Practice Management — from lawnext.com by Bob Ambrogi

In a landmark deal that will undoubtedly reshape the legal tech landscape, law practice management company Clio has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the AI and legal research company vLex for $1 billion in cash and stock.

The companies say that the acquisition will “establish a new category of intelligent legal technology at the intersection of the business and practice of law, empowering legal professionals to seamlessly manage, research, and execute legal work within a unified system.”

The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI [various authors]

On 06/20/2025, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, memory, metacognition / metacognitive skills, participation, pedagogy, productivity / tips and tricks, psychology, research, student teaching/teacher education, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, the downsides of how people use tech, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

The Memory Paradox: Why Our Brains Need Knowledge in an Age of AI — from papers.ssrn.com by Barbara Oakley, Michael Johnston, Kenzen Chen, Eulho Jung, and Terrence Sejnowski; via George Siemens

Abstract
In an era of generative AI and ubiquitous digital tools, human memory faces a paradox: the more we offload knowledge to external aids, the less we exercise and develop our own cognitive capacities. This chapter offers the first neuroscience-based explanation for the observed reversal of the Flynn Effect—the recent decline in IQ scores in developed countries—linking this downturn to shifts in educational practices and the rise of cognitive offloading via AI and digital tools. Drawing on insights from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and learning theory, we explain how underuse of the brain’s declarative and procedural memory systems undermines reasoning, impedes learning, and diminishes productivity. We critique contemporary pedagogical models that downplay memorization and basic knowledge, showing how these trends erode long-term fluency and mental flexibility. Finally, we outline policy implications for education, workforce development, and the responsible integration of AI, advocating strategies that harness technology as a complement to – rather than a replacement for – robust human knowledge.

Keywords
cognitive offloading, memory, neuroscience of learning, declarative memory, procedural memory, generative AI, Flynn Effect, education reform, schemata, digital tools, cognitive load, cognitive architecture, reinforcement learning, basal ganglia, working memory, retrieval practice, schema theory, manifolds

Learning Ecosystems

70% of Americans say feds shouldn’t control admissions, curriculum [Schwartz]

The World’s Classrooms Are Short 44 Million Teachers [Tamez-Robledo]

Justice Workers — Reimagining Access to Justice as Democracy Work, with Rebecca Sandefur & Matthew Burnett [Ambrogi]

Introducing ChatGPT agent: bridging research and action [OpenAI]

In A Mega Deal, Clio Buys vLex for $1 Billion, Merging AI, Research and Practice Management [Ambrogi]

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