When seeking guidance on classroom practice, teachers—understandably—tend to trust other teachers the most. An innovative fellowship program connects teachers with one another to provide concrete examples of what effective literacy instruction looks like.
A small philanthropy called the Goyen Foundation sponsors the program, now in its third year. For each cohort, the foundation selects 12 to 14 educators who are skilled in systematically teaching foundational reading skills while simultaneously building the knowledge that enables reading comprehension.
The Goyen Literacy Fellows document their own classroom practice, mostly through videos that are posted on social media platforms like X/Twitter and Facebook. They also interact with other educators who may have heard about “structured literacy” but aren’t sure what it means or how it’s done.
Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results — from nytimes.com by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop are the authors of “The Disengaged Teen: Helping Kids Learn Better, Feel Better, and Live Better.”
In a polarized nation, one point of agreement deserves more attention: Young adults say they feel woefully unprepared for life in the work force, and employers say they’re right.
In a survey by Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation of more than 4,000 members of Gen Z, 49 percent of respondents said they did not feel prepared for the future. Employers complain that young hires lack initiative, communication skills, problem-solving abilities and resilience.
There’s a reason the system isn’t serving people well, and it goes beyond the usual culprits of social media and Covid. Many recent graduates aren’t able to set targets, take initiative, figure things out and deal with setbacks — because in school and at home they were too rarely afforded any agency.
Maybe it’s time to define a higher ideal for education, less about ranking and sorting students on narrow measures of achievement and more about helping young people figure out how to unlock their potential and how to operate in the world. Amid the drumbeat of evolving artificial intelligence, wars, rising authoritarianism, political polarization and digital disconnection, they need to learn a lot more than how to follow instructions.
Youth Voice & Choice
At XQ, we don’t see high schools as the tail end of K-12 education. Instead, we believe they are pivotal spaces for unleashing a young person’s sense of possibility and agency—so much so that it’s one of our Design Principles for school-wide success: Youth Voice and Choice.
Anderson and Winthrop, too, emphasize that when students feel they can shape the direction of their learning, they gain essential life skills: setting targets, identifying strategies, monitoring progress, and course-correcting when inevitable challenges arise. These aptitudes translate directly to college readiness, workforce performance, and a strong sense of agency in adulthood. As the authors note, even small doses of agency—like letting students choose which angle of a topic to explore—can radically transform how teens engage with the material and each other.
We’ve long championed youth voice and choice as a key element for transforming the traditional high school experience. By adopting this design principle, educators and school leaders empower students to be agents of their own learning journeys. They celebrate students’ personal growth and consistently provide opportunities for them to set goals and reflect on how they learn best.
By shifting away from checklists and mindless compliance, we can transform high schools into spaces of curiosity, discovery, and lasting engagement—where a spark lit in 9th grade can guide and energize students for a lifetime.
At the end of 2024 and start of 2025, we’ve witnessed some fascinating developments in the world of AI and education, from from India’s emergence as a leader in AI education and Nvidia’s plans to build an AI school in Indonesia to Stanford’s Tutor CoPilot improving outcomes for underserved students.
Other highlights include Carnegie Learning partnering with AI for Education to train K-12 teachers, early adopters of AI sharing lessons about implementation challenges, and AI super users reshaping workplace practices through enhanced productivity and creativity.
India emerges as Global Leader in AI Education: Bosch Tech Compass 2025 — from medianews4u.com 57% Indians receive employer-provided AI training, surpassing Germany, and other European nations
Bengaluru: India is emerging as a global leader in artificial intelligence (AI) education, with over 50% of its population actively self-educating in AI-related skills, according to Bosch’s fourth annual Tech Compass Survey. The report highlights India’s readiness to embrace AI in work, education, and daily life, positioning the nation as a frontrunner in the AI revolution.
AI for Education reviewed the ElevenLabs AI Voice Tool through an educator lens, digging into the new autonomous voice agent functionality that facilitates interactive user engagement. We showcase the creation of a customized vocabulary bot, which defines words at a 9th-grade level and includes options for uploading supplementary material. The demo includes real-time testing of the bot’s capabilities in defining terms and quizzing users.
The discussion also explored the AI tool’s potential for aiding language learners and neurodivergent individuals, and Mandy presented a phone conversation coach bot to help her 13-year-old son, highlighting the tool’s ability to provide patient, repetitive practice opportunities.
While acknowledging the technology’s potential, particularly in accessibility and language learning, we also want to emphasize the importance of supervised use and privacy considerations. Right now the tool is currently free, this likely won’t always remain the case, so we encourage everyone to explore and test it out now as it continues to develop.
Why Combine Them? Faster Onboarding: Start broad with Deep Research, then refine and clarify concepts through Learn About. Finally, use NotebookLM to synthesize everything into a cohesive understanding.
Deeper Clarity: Unsure about a concept uncovered by Deep Research? Head to Learn About for a primer. Want to revisit key points later? Store them in NotebookLM and generate quick summaries on demand.
Adaptive Exploration: Create a feedback loop. Let new terms or angles from Learn About guide more targeted Deep Research queries. Then, compile all findings in NotebookLM for future reference. .
There are several challenges to making policy that make institutions hesitant to or delay their ability to produce it. Policy (as opposed to guidance) is much more likely to include a mixture of IT, HR, and legal services. This means each of those entities has to wrap their heads around GenAI—not just for their areas but for the other relevant areas such as teaching & learning, research, and student support. This process can definitely extend the time it takes to figure out the right policy.
That’s naturally true with every policy. It does not often come fast enough and is often more reactive than proactive.
Still, in my conversations and observations, the delay derives from three additional intersecting elements that feel like they all need to be in lockstep in order to actually take advantage of whatever possibilities GenAI has to offer.
Which Tool(s) To Use
Training, Support, & Guidance, Oh My!
Strategy: Setting a Direction…
Prophecies of the Flood — from oneusefulthing.org by Ethan Mollick What to make of the statements of the AI labs?
What concerns me most isn’t whether the labs are right about this timeline – it’s that we’re not adequately preparing for what even current levels of AI can do, let alone the chance that they might be correct. While AI researchers are focused on alignment, ensuring AI systems act ethically and responsibly, far fewer voices are trying to envision and articulate what a world awash in artificial intelligence might actually look like. This isn’t just about the technology itself; it’s about how we choose to shape and deploy it. These aren’t questions that AI developers alone can or should answer. They’re questions that demand attention from organizational leaders who will need to navigate this transition, from employees whose work lives may transform, and from stakeholders whose futures may depend on these decisions. The flood of intelligence that may be coming isn’t inherently good or bad – but how we prepare for it, how we adapt to it, and most importantly, how we choose to use it, will determine whether it becomes a force for progress or disruption. The time to start having these conversations isn’t after the water starts rising – it’s now.
That’s because the current class of high school seniors is the last before a long decline begins in the number of 18-year-olds — the traditional age of students when they enter college.
This so-called demographic cliff has been predicted ever since Americans started having fewer babies at the advent of the Great Recession around the end of 2007 — a falling birth rate that has not recovered since, except for a slight blip after the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Demographers say it will finally arrive in the fall of this year. That’s when recruiting offices will begin to confront the long-anticipated drop-off in the number of applicants from among the next class of high school seniors.
“A few hundred thousand per year might not sound like a lot,” Strohl said. “But multiply that by a decade and it has a big impact.”
From DSC: I remember seeing graphics about this demographic cliff over a decade ago…so institutions of traditional higher education have seen this coming for many years now (and the article references this as well). But it’s still important and the ramifications of this could be significant for many colleges and universities out there (for students, faculty, staff, and administrations).
Will there be new business models?
More lifelong learning models?
Additions to the curricula?
I sure hope so.
Higher Ed’s Governance Problem— from chronicle.com by Brian Rosenberg; via Ryan Craig Boards are bloated and ineffectual.
According to the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, the average size of a private nonprofit college or university board is 28 (larger than a major-league baseball roster), though boards of elite colleges tend to skew even larger: closer to 40, according to a study done by McKinsey.
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By way of comparison, the average size of the board of directors of a publicly traded company in the United States is nine. If that seems too “corporate,” consider that the average size of the board of a nonprofit health-care institution is 13…
Still, anyone who studies organizational effectiveness would tell you that college and university boards are much too large, as would almost any college or university president when speaking off the record. Getting 12 people to spend significant time studying serious challenges and then reaching consensus about how to tackle those challenges is a heavy lift. Doing this with 25 or 35 or 45 people is close to impossible.
In fact, the sum is small compared to what other colleges and universities are investing in advertising, marketing and promotion, which has been steadily rising and is on track this year to be nearly double what it was last year.
Among the reasons are a steep ongoing decline in enrollment, made worse by the pandemic, and increasing competition from online providers and others.
“Private schools in particular are acutely conscious of the demographics in this country. They’re competing for students, and marketing is how you have to do that.”
John Garvey, president, Catholic University
From DSC:
And for you students out there, check this sound advice out!
While “polarization” was Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2024, we have some early frontrunners for 2025 — especially when it comes to higher education. Change. Agility. Uncertainty. Flexibility. As we take a deep dive into the trends on tap for higher education in the coming year, it’s important to note that, with an incoming administration who has vowed to shake things up, the current postsecondary system could be turned on its head. With that in mind, we wade into our yearly look at the topics and trends that will be making headlines — and making waves — in the year ahead.
Top AI Tools of 2024 — from ai-supremacy.com by Michael Spencer (behind a paywall) Which AI tools stood out for me in 2024? My list.
Memorable AI Tools of 2024
Catergories included:
Useful
Popular
Captures the zeighest of AI product innovation
Fun to try
Personally satisfying
NotebookLM
Perplexity
Claude
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New “best” AI tool? Really? — from theneurondaily.com by Noah and Grant
PLUS: A free workaround to the “best” new AI…
What is Google’s Deep Research tool, and is it really “the best” AI research tool out there? … Here’s how it works: Think of Deep Research as a research team that can simultaneously analyze 50+ websites, compile findings, and create comprehensive reports—complete with citations.
Unlike asking ChatGPT to research for you, Deep Research shows you its research plan before executing, letting you edit the approach to get exactly what you need.
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It’s currently free for the first month (though it’ll eventually be $20/month) when bundled with Gemini Advanced. Then again, Perplexity is always free…just saying.
We couldn’t just take J-Cal’s word for it, so we rounded up some other takes:
Our take: We then compared Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, and Deep Research (which we’re calling DR, or “The Docta” for short) on robot capabilities from CES revealed:
An excerpt from today’s Morning Edition from Bloomberg
Global banks will cut as many as 200,000 jobs in the next three to five years—a net 3% of the workforce—as AI takes on more tasks, according to a Bloomberg Intelligence survey. Back, middle office and operations are most at risk. A reminder that Citi said last year that AI is likely to replace more jobs in banking than in any other sector. JPMorgan had a more optimistic view (from an employee perspective, at any rate), saying its AI rollout has augmented, not replaced, jobs so far.
With this mind, Thomson Reuters and Lexpert hosted a panel featuring law firm leaders and industry experts discussing the challenges and trends around the use of generative AI in the legal profession.?Below are insights from an engaging and informative discussion.
Sections included:
Lawyers are excited to implement generative AI solutions
Angelo added, “We really doubled down on AI because it was just so new — not just to the legal industry, but to the world.” Under his leadership, Buchanan’s efforts to embrace AI have garnered significant attention, earning the firm recognition as one of the “Best of the Best for Generative AI” in the 2024 BTI “Leading Edge Law Firms” survey.
This acknowledgment reflects more than ambition; it highlights the firm’s ability to translate innovative ideas into actionable results. By focusing on collaboration and leveraging technology to address client demands, Buchanan has set a benchmark for what is possible in legal technology innovation.
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The collective team followed these essential steps for app development:
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, has introduced transformative potential to legal practice. For in-house counsel, managing legal risk while driving operational efficiency increasingly involves navigating AI’s opportunities and challenges. While AI offers remarkable tools for automation and data-driven decision-making, it is essential to approach these tools as complementary to human judgment, not replacements. Effective AI adoption requires balancing its efficiencies with a commitment to ethical, nuanced legal practice.
NVIDIA’s Apple moment?! — from theneurondaily.com by Noah Edelman and Grant Harvey PLUS: How to level up your AI workflows for 2025…
NVIDIA wants to put an AI supercomputer on your desk (and it only costs $3,000). … And last night at CES 2025, Jensen Huang announced phase two of this plan: Project DIGITS, a $3K personal AI supercomputer that runs 200B parameter models from your desk. Guess we now know why Apple recently developed an NVIDIA allergy…
… But NVIDIA doesn’t just want its “Apple PC moment”… it also wants its OpenAI moment. NVIDIA also announced Cosmos, a platform for building physical AI (think: robots and self-driving cars)—which Jensen Huang calls “the ChatGPT moment for robotics.”
NVIDIA is bringing AI from the cloud to personal devices and enterprises, covering all computing needs from developers to ordinary users.
At CES 2025, which opened this morning, NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang delivered a milestone keynote speech, revealing the future of AI and computing. From the core token concept of generative AI to the launch of the new Blackwell architecture GPU, and the AI-driven digital future, this speech will profoundly impact the entire industry from a cross-disciplinary perspective.
From DSC: I’m posting this next item (involving Samsung) as it relates to how TVs continue to change within our living rooms. AI is finding its way into our TVs…the ramifications of this remain to be seen.
The Rundown: Samsung revealed its new “AI for All” tagline at CES 2025, introducing a comprehensive suite of new AI features and products across its entire ecosystem — including new AI-powered TVs, appliances, PCs, and more.
The details:
Vision AI brings features like real-time translation, the ability to adapt to user preferences, AI upscaling, and instant content summaries to Samsung TVs.
Several of Samsung’s new Smart TVs will also have Microsoft Copilot built in, while also teasing a potential AI partnership with Google.
Samsung also announced the new line of Galaxy Book5 AI PCs, with new capabilities like AI-powered search and photo editing.
AI is also being infused into Samsung’s laundry appliances, art frames, home security equipment, and other devices within its SmartThings ecosystem.
Why it matters: Samsung’s web of products are getting the AI treatment — and we’re about to be surrounded by AI-infused appliances in every aspect of our lives. The edge will be the ability to sync it all together under one central hub, which could position Samsung as the go-to for the inevitable transition from smart to AI-powered homes.
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“Samsung sees TVs not as one-directional devices for passive consumption but as interactive, intelligent partners that adapt to your needs,” said SW Yong, President and Head of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “With Samsung Vision AI, we’re reimagining what screens can do, connecting entertainment, personalization, and lifestyle solutions into one seamless experience to simplify your life.” — from Samsung
The following framework I offer for defining, understanding, and preparing for agentic AI blends foundational work in computer science with insights from cognitive psychology and speculative philosophy. Each of the seven levels represents a step-change in technology, capability, and autonomy. The framework expresses increasing opportunities to innovate, thrive, and transform in a data-fueled and AI-driven digital economy.
The Rise of AI Agents and Data-Driven Decisions — from devprojournal.com by Mike Monocello Fueled by generative AI and machine learning advancements, we’re witnessing a paradigm shift in how businesses operate and make decisions.
AI Agents Enhance Generative AI’s Impact Burley Kawasaki, Global VP of Product Marketing and Strategy at Creatio, predicts a significant leap forward in generative AI. “In 2025, AI agents will take generative AI to the next level by moving beyond content creation to active participation in daily business operations,” he says. “These agents, capable of partial or full autonomy, will handle tasks like scheduling, lead qualification, and customer follow-ups, seamlessly integrating into workflows. Rather than replacing generative AI, they will enhance its utility by transforming insights into immediate, actionable outcomes.”
Everyone’s talking about the potential of AI agents in 2025 (and don’t get me wrong, it’s really significant), but there’s a crucial detail that keeps getting overlooked: the gap between current capabilities and practical reliability.
Here’s the reality check that most predictions miss: AI agents currently operate at about 80% accuracy (according to Microsoft’s AI CEO). Sounds impressive, right? But here’s the thing – for businesses and users to actually trust these systems with meaningful tasks, we need 99% reliability. That’s not just a 19% gap – it’s the difference between an interesting tech demo and a business-critical tool.
This matters because it completely changes how we should think about AI agents in 2025. While major players like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are pouring billions into development, they’re all facing the same fundamental challenge – making them work reliably enough that you can actually trust them with your business processes.
Think about it this way: Would you trust an assistant who gets things wrong 20% of the time? Probably not. But would you trust one who makes a mistake only 1% of the time, especially if they could handle repetitive tasks across your entire workflow? That’s a completely different conversation.
In the tech world, we like to label periods as the year of (insert milestone here). This past year (2024) was a year of broader experimentation in AI and, of course, agentic use cases.
As 2025 opens, VentureBeat spoke to industry analysts and IT decision-makers to see what the year might bring. For many, 2025 will be the year of agents, when all the pilot programs, experiments and new AI use cases converge into something resembling a return on investment.
In addition, the experts VentureBeat spoke to see 2025 as the year AI orchestration will play a bigger role in the enterprise. Organizations plan to make management of AI applications and agents much more straightforward.
Here are some themes we expect to see more in 2025.
AI agents take charge
Jérémy Grandillon, CEO of TC9 – AI Allbound Agency, said “Today, AI can do a lot, but we don’t trust it to take actions on our behalf. This will change in 2025. Be ready to ask your AI assistant to book a Uber ride for you.” Start small with one agent handling one task. Build up to an army.
“If 2024 was agents everywhere, then 2025 will be about bringing those agents together in networks and systems,” said Nicholas Holland, vice president of AI at Hubspot. “Micro agents working together to accomplish larger bodies of work, and marketplaces where humans can ‘hire’ agents to work alongside them in hybrid teams. Before long, we’ll be saying, ‘there’s an agent for that.'”
… Voice becomes default
Stop typing and start talking. Adam Biddlecombe, head of brand at Mindstream, predicts a shift in how we interact with AI. “2025 will be the year that people start talking with AI,” he said. “The majority of people interact with ChatGPT and other tools in the text format, and a lot of emphasis is put on prompting skills.
Biddlecombe believes, “With Apple’s ChatGPT integration for Siri, millions of people will start talking to ChatGPT. This will make AI so much more accessible and people will start to use it for very simple queries.”
Get ready for the next wave of advancements in AI. AGI arrives early, AI agents take charge, and voice becomes the norm. Video creation gets easy, AI embeds everywhere, and one-person billion-dollar companies emerge.
To better understand the types of roles that AI is impacting, ZoomInfo’s research team looked to its proprietary database of professional contacts for answers. The platform, which detects more than 1.5 million personnel changes per day, revealed a dramatic increase in AI-related job titles since 2022. With a 200% increase in two years, the data paints a vivid picture of how AI technology is reshaping the workforce.
Why does this shift in AI titles matter for every industry?
An Arizona charter school will use AI instead of human teachers for two hours a day on academic lessons.
The AI will customize lessons in real-time to match each student’s needs.
The company has only tested this idea at private schools before but claims it hugely increases student academic success.
One school in Arizona is trying out a new educational model built around AI and a two-hour school day. When Arizona’s Unbound Academy opens, the only teachers will be artificial intelligence algorithms in a perfect utopia or dystopia, depending on your point of view.
In order to encourage and facilitate debate on key controversies related to AI, I put together this free 130+ page guide to the main arguments and ideas related to the controversies.
Universities need to step up their AGI game — from futureofbeinghuman.com by Andrew Maynard As Sam Altman and others push toward a future where AI changes everything, universities need to decide if they’re going to be leaders or bystanders in helping society navigate advanced AI transitions
And because of this, I think there’s a unique opportunity for universities (research universities in particular) to up their game and play a leadership role in navigating the coming advanced AI transition.
Of course, there are already a number of respected university-based initiatives that are working on parts of the challenge. Stanford HAI (Human-centered Artificial Intelligence) is one that stands out, as does the Leverhulm Center for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, and the Center for Governance of AI at the University of Oxford. But these and other initiatives are barely scratching the surface of what is needed to help successfully navigate advanced AI transitions.
If universities are to be leaders rather than bystanders in ensuring human flourishing in an age of AI, there’s an urgent need for bolder and more creative forward-looking initiatives that support research, teaching, thought leadership, and knowledge mobilization, at the intersection of advanced AI and all aspects of what it means to thrive and grow as a species.
Ever since a new revolutionary version of chat ChatGPT became operable in late 2022, educators have faced several complex challenges as they learn how to navigate artificial intelligence systems.
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Education Week produced a significant amount of coverage in 2024 exploring these and other critical questions involving the understanding and use of AI.
Here are the five most popular stories that Education Week published in 2024 about AI in schools.
Dr. Lodge said there are five key areas the higher education sector needs to address to adapt to the use of AI:
1. Teach ‘people’ skills as well as tech skills
2. Help all students use new tech
3. Prepare students for the jobs of the future
4. Learn to make sense of complex information
5. Universities to lead the tech change
Checking the Pulse: The Impact of AI on Everyday Lives So, what exactly did our users have to say about how AI transformed their lives this year? .
Top 2024 Developments in AI
Video Generation…
AI Employees…
Open Source Advancements…
Getting ready for 2025: your AI team members (Gift lesson 3/3) — from flexos.com by Daan van Rossum
And that’s why today, I’ll tell you exactly which AI tools I’ve recommended for the top 5 use cases to almost 200 business leaders who took the Lead with AI course.
1. Email Management: Simplifying Communication with AI
Microsoft Copilot for Outlook. …
Gemini AI for Gmail. …
Grammarly. …
2. Meeting Management: Maximize Your Time
Otter.ai. …
Copilot for Microsoft Teams. …
Other AI Meeting Assistants. Zoom AI Companion, Granola, and Fathom
3. Research: Streamlining Information Gathering
ChatGPT. …
Perplexity. …
Consensus. …
…plus several more items and tools that were mentioned by Daan.
Introducing the 2025 Wonder Media Calendar for tweens, teens, and their families/households.Designed by Sue Ellen Christian and her students in her Global Media Literacy class (in the fall 2024 semester at Western Michigan University), the calendar’s purpose is to help people create a new year filled with skills and smart decisions about their media use. This calendar is part of the ongoing Wonder Media Library.comproject that includes videos, lesson plans, games, songs and more. The website is funded by a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, in partnership with Western Michigan University and the Library of Michigan.
As 2024 draws to a close, we took a look at the past year and the year ahead with Christina Blacklaws, the former president of the Law Society of England and Wales who, after leaving office, has developed a career supporting businesses as a non-executive director, consultant and strategic advisor. One of those advisory roles is chair of LawtechUK, an initiative to “turbocharge” the UK’s lawtech sector, delivered by CodeBase and LegalGeek and funded by the Ministry of Justice.
For Blacklaws, one of the huge areas of potential for GenAI technology is in helping to solve the access to justice crisis and she talks through some of the exciting work being done in this space and why we’re on the cusp of meaningful change.
The Legal Operations landscape is evolving faster than ever, and UpLevel Ops is at the forefront of this transformation. With advancements like generative AI subscriptions, custom GPT services, and value-based pricing shaking up traditional approaches, legal departments are navigating uncharted territory.
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From revolutionary uses of AI to new strategies in outside counsel management, their insights provide a roadmap for legal teams ready to embrace the next wave of innovation.
A judge in Florida has just set a precedent that might forever change the US legal system—and maybe even the global legal system—forever.
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But now the technology has advanced to the point where the judge and jury can be almost literally in his client’s shoes.
This allows the judge to not just understand the words of his testimony, but the physical conditions of it in a much more tactile way. Whether or not this will make his case more convincing is up to the jury.
The Evolution of a Virtual Court System — from law.com by Sondra Mendelson-Toscano (behind a paywall) “It is my prediction that the future of the court system includes a hybrid employment model for the bench.”
Shortly thereafter, the New York Office of Court Administration designed and executed a plan whereby judges were able to handle their assigned matters electronically. Such seemed like a natural progression under the circumstances, given that prior to the advent of the Coronavirus, electronic testimony was successfully utilized in many different types of proceedings in various ways (e.g. vulnerable child witnesses, interstate custody and child support, elderly material witnesses, medically disabled defendants, and incarcerated individuals).
A virtual court online resource center was created for judges, staff, and the public for information related to remote operations. Despite some initial resistance by attorneys (who argued violations of the right to confrontation, that virtual is less effective and not as persuasive, computer illiteracy, and so forth), the Unified Court System pushed forward.
OCA’s course of action proved to be effective and, eventually, attorneys and litigants enjoyed the option of appearing virtually. Lawyers could handle multiple matters from their home offices in less time than it would have taken them to drive back and forth between courthouses, thus maximizing their work day.
Parties appreciated the flexibility of appearing from home and those who were essential workers valued joining proceedings on breaks while at work. Being in court remotely alleviated the stress of having to ask for, and take off, time from work, or making arrangements to address child care issues, elder care issues, and the like. Litigants with physical disabilities and other hardships, such as lack of transportation, received an automatic accommodation without having to request one.
“In an ideal world, we would get everyone an in-person attorney to represent them for the full length of their case,” says Baez, the Commission on Immigration’s director of pro bono. “But in the reality we live in, where that’s really not possible, we are trying to be thoughtful and innovative on how we engage the most volunteers to help the most people who would otherwise not be able to access any legal assistance.”
In June, the Commission on Immigration partnered with Microsoft to launch a new virtual clinic to help pro se asylum-seekers complete their asylum applications. During this clinic, which included four sessions, nearly 30 volunteers from Microsoft worked with asylum-seekers to gather necessary information and prepare their applications for submission.
Tech Trends 2025 — from deloitte.com by Deloitte Insights In Deloitte’s 16th annual Tech Trends report, AI is the common thread of nearly every trend. Moving forward, it will be part of the substructure of everything we do.
We propose that the future of technology isn’t so much about more AI as it is about ubiquitous AI. We expect that, going forward, AI will become so fundamentally woven into the fabric of our lives that it’s everywhere, and so foundational that we stop noticing it.
AI will eventually follow a similar path, becoming so ubiquitous that it will be a part of the unseen substructure of everything we do, and we eventually won’t even know it’s there. It will quietly hum along in the background, optimizing traffic in our cities, personalizing our health care, and creating adaptative and accessible learning paths in education. We won’t “use” AI. We’ll just experience a world where things work smarter, faster, and more intuitively—like magic, but grounded in algorithms. We expect that it will provide a foundation for business and personal growth while also adapting and sustaining itself over time.
Nowhere is this AI-infused future more evident than in this year’s Tech Trends report, which each year explores emerging trends across the six macro forces of information technology (figure 1). Half of the trends that we’ve chronicled are elevating forces—interaction, information, and computation—that underpin innovation and growth. The other half—the grounding forces of the business of technology, cyber and trust, and core modernization—help enterprises seamlessly operate while they grow.
