Taking AI Welfare Seriously - Robert Long, et al; arXiv

In this report, we argue that there is a realistic possibility that some AI systems will be conscious and/or robustly agentic in the near future. That means that the prospect of AI welfare and moral patienthood, i.e. of AI systems with their own interests and moral significance, is no longer an issue only for sci-fi or the distant future. It is an issue for the near future, and AI companies and other actors have a responsibility to start taking it seriously. We also recommend three early steps that AI companies and other actors can take: They can (1) acknowledge that AI welfare is an important and difficult issue (and ensure that language model outputs do the same), (2) start assessing AI systems for evidence of consciousness and robust agency, and (3) prepare policies and procedures for treating AI systems with an appropriate level of moral concern. To be clear, our argument in this report is not that AI systems definitely are, or will be, conscious, robustly agentic, or otherwise morally significant.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00986

A ‘Great Defection’ threatens to empty universities and colleges of top teaching talent - Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

An exodus appears to be under way of Ph.D.s and faculty generally, who are leaving academia in the face of political, financial and enrollment crises. It’s a trend federal data and other sources show began even before Trump returned to the White House. On top of everything else affecting higher education, this is likely to reduce the quality of education for undergraduates, experts say. Nearly 70 percent of people receiving doctorates were already leaving higher education for industry, government and other sectors, not including those without job offers or who opted to continue their studies, according to the most recent available figures from the National Science Foundation — up from fewer than 50 percent decades ago.

https://hechingerreport.org/a-great-defection-threatens-to-empty-universities-and-colleges-of-top-teaching-talent/

Anthropic’s Higher Ed AI Board Signals Shift From Tools To Guardrails - Dan Fitzpatrick, Forbes

Today, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude announced two initiatives designed to shape how institutions adopt AI. The first is the creation of a Higher Education Advisory Board made up of distinguished academic leaders. The second is the launch of three new AI Fluency courses aimed at both students and faculty. The moves underscore Anthropic’s dual strategy to influence policy through academic leadership while providing practical tools to accelerate adoption. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees and is known for its “safety-first” approach to AI. Its foray into education seems to reflect this ethos. “The choices made in the next few years about how AI enters the classroom will shape a generation’s relationship with both technology and learning,” the company said in its announcement.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danfitzpatrick/2025/08/21/anthropics-higher-ed-ai-board-signals-shift-from-tools-to-guardrails/

Are States Prepared for Workforce Pell? - Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed

Some states are going to have a harder time than others proving their noncredit programs are eligible for Pell money, a new report says. But they can start preparing now. Workforce Pell is now a reality and federal aid dollars are expected to flow to low-income students in short-term programs as soon as next July. But now comes the hard work of figuring out which programs are eligible—and some states aren’t ready, according to a new report from the State Noncredit Data Project, which helps community college systems track data related to noncredit programs. Not all states collect the data needed to make that determination, and some offer programs that wouldn’t make the cut, the report concluded.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/alternative-credentials/2025/08/28/are-states-prepared-workforce-pell

Ex-Google exec says degrees in law and medicine are a waste of time because they take so long to complete that AI will catch up by graduation - Preston Fore, Fortune

“AI itself is going to be gone by the time you finish a PhD. Even things like applying AI to robotics will be solved by then,” Jad Tarifi, the founder of Google’s first generative-AI team, told Business Insider. Tarifi himself graduated with a PhD in AI in 2012, when the subject was far less mainstream. But today, the 42-year-old says, time would be better spent studying a more niche topic intertwined with AI, like AI for biology—or maybe not a degree at all. “Higher education as we know it is on the verge of becoming obsolete,” Tarifi said to Fortune. “Thriving in the future will come not from collecting credentials but from cultivating unique perspectives, agency, emotional awareness, and strong human bonds. “I encourage young people to focus on two things: the art of connecting deeply with others, and the inner work of connecting with themselves.”

https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/ex-google-exec-ai-founder-jad-tarifi-advanced-degrees-phd-waste-of-time-higher-education-becoming-obsolue/

At one elite college, over 80% of students now use AI – but it’s not all about outsourcing their work - Germán Reyes, Middlebury, The Conversation

Over 80% of Middlebury College students use generative AI for coursework, according to a recent survey I conducted with my colleague and fellow economist Zara Contractor. This is one of the fastest technology adoption rates on record, far outpacing the 40% adoption rate among U.S. adults, and it happened in less than two years after ChatGPT’s public launch. What we found challenges the panic-driven narrative around AI in higher education and instead suggests that institutional policy should focus on how AI is used, not whether it should be banned.

https://brookingsregister.com/premium/theconversation/stories/at-one-elite-college-over-80-of-students-now-use-ai-but-its-not-all-about-outsourcing,148387

Carol Gilbert: A Different Way to Learn - KQED

Do I think all online learning is bad? Certainly not. Using smart educational software, educators can use student data to develop individualized learning programs that include all of the support that students need to be successful. Future online education is anticipated to evolve in a manner that combines virtual reality, artificial intelligence and global cooperation. These advancements hold great promise, but a teacher with whom you connect will always be needed. With a Perspective, I am Carol Gilbert.

https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201601146360/carol-gilbert-a-different-way-to-learn

'This stuff is moving so quickly': Utah Tech leaders discuss AI, unveil new cybersecurity degree - Nick Fiala, St. George News / KSL

Utah Tech University spent part of its recent Fall Academic Convocation discussing the evolving use of artificial intelligence in both business and academia and how best to implement it in the future. The university also announced on Wednesday that it will be launching a new program this fall for students to acquire a bachelor of science degree in cybersecurity. The new cybersecurity degree will reportedly offer coursework in areas including ethical hacking, cloud and IoT security, cyber law and infrastructure defense. The university added that the program anticipates enrolling 35 students by its third year. "IoT" refers to "Internet of Things," meaning devices equipped to exchange data over the internet.

https://www.ksl.com/article/51361734/this-stuff-is-moving-so-quickly-utah-tech-leaders-discuss-ai-unveil-new-cybersecurity-degree

Does GenAI provide the opportunity for creativity to take centre stage? - Ioannis Glinavos, Times Higher Education

For centuries, universities have delivered scarce expertise. We stacked programmes like layer cakes: first theory, then practice, finally – if there was time – a sprinkle of creativity. Generative AI flips that order. Because routine skills are on tap, the bottleneck shifts upstream to ideation: spotting problems worth solving and framing them so the machine can help.

How should assessors use AI for marking and feedback?

An insider’s guide to how students use GenAI tools

Three reasons to harness AI for interdisciplinary collaboration

That demands divergent thinking, curiosity and ethical judgement – qualities our assessment regimes often squeeze out. We  need to treat creativity as a core literacy, not a decorative extra. Don’t get me wrong, skills are not irrelevant – they just look different. Prompt craft, data stewardship and model critique replace manual citation and calculator drills. But they are means, not ends.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/does-genai-provide-opportunity-creativity-take-centre-stage

Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations - Anthropic

We recently gave Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 the ability to end conversations in our consumer chat interfaces. This ability is intended for use in rare, extreme cases of persistently harmful or abusive user interactions. This feature was developed primarily as part of our exploratory work on potential AI welfare, though it has broader relevance to model alignment and safeguards. In pre-deployment testing of Claude Opus 4, we included a preliminary model welfare assessment. As part of that assessment, we investigated Claude’s self-reported and behavioral preferences, and found a robust and consistent aversion to harm. This included, for example, requests from users for sexual content involving minors and attempts to solicit information that would enable large-scale violence or acts of terror. Claude Opus 4 showed:

A strong preference against engaging with harmful tasks;

A pattern of apparent distress when engaging with real-world users seeking harmful content; and

A tendency to end harmful conversations when given the ability to do so in simulated user interactions.

https://www.anthropic.com/research/end-subset-conversations

AI Is Designing Bizarre New Physics Experiments That Actually Work - Anil Ananthaswamy, Wired

Although AI has not yet led to new discoveries in physics, it’s becoming a powerful tool across the field. Along with helping researchers to design experiments, it can find nontrivial patterns in complex data. For example, AI algorithms have gleaned symmetries of nature from the data collected at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. These symmetries aren’t new—they were key to Einstein’s theories of relativity—but the AI’s finding serves as a proof of principle for what’s to come. Physicists have also used AI to find a new equation for describing the clumping of the universe’s unseen dark matter. “Humans can start learning from these solutions,” Adhikari said.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-comes-up-with-bizarre-physics-experiments-but-they-work/

Anti-Perfectionist Productivity Coach - There's an AI for That (TAAFT) on Notion

This prompt turns the AI into a high-empathy, anti-perfectionist productivity coach, someone who doesn’t force rigid systems onto messy lives but instead creates flexible, psychologically safe, adaptive frameworks. It’s designed for people who struggle with traditional productivity advice because of real-life unpredictability, resistance patterns, emotional fluctuations, or perfectionistic paralysis. Instead of treating resistance as a flaw, it treats it with curiosity and compassion, helping users map where and why they get stuck, and designing flexible, adaptive plans around their real patterns. The system emphasizes weekly momentum over daily rigidity, deep work tuned to natural energy rhythms, and reflection that prioritizes learning, not self-criticism. Everything in the prompt is built around the core philosophy: progress over perfection, always.

https://taaft.notion.site/Anti-Perfectionist-Productivity-Coach-1e1ed82cbfd380b0a7ead6eed58a0cfa

AI in the Classroom: MIT Study Explores ChatGPT and Critical Thinking - University of Louisiana at LaFayette, Distance Learning

As instructional designers and technologists within the Office of Distance Learning, one of our goals is to help faculty navigate new and changing technologies in education, including AI. Our website includes a reference bank of generative AI tools and possible uses, as well as guidelines for both encouraging and preventing AI usage. We’re in good company as institutions worldwide consider the role of AI in education, including MIT. Recently, the MIT Media Lab published a study raising important questions about how generative AI may be shaping student learning.  

https://louisiana.edu/distancelearning/blog/ai-classroom-mit-study-explores-chatgpt-and-critical-thinking

OpenAI’s Deep Research Agent Is Coming for White-Collar Work - Will Knight, Wired

Deep Research is available as part of all paid ChatGPT plans, although most users are capped at 10 queries per month. (People on the $200 ChatGPT Pro plan get 120 queries per month.) It takes a query, such as “Write me a report on the Massachusetts health insurance industry,” or “Tell me about WIRED’s coverage of the Department of Government Efficiency,” and then comes up with a plan, searching for relevant websites, combing through their content, and deciding what links to click and what information deserves further investigation. After exploring for sometimes tens of minutes, it synthesizes its findings into a detailed report, which may include citations, data, and charts.

https://www.wired.com/story/openais-deep-research-agent-is-coming-for-white-collar-work/

Why Faculty Hold The Keys To Higher Ed’s AI Digital Transformation - Aviva Legatt, Forbes

If the 20th century belonged to the textbook, the 21st belongs to the prompt. In lecture halls from Toronto to San Diego to Ho Chi Minh City, students are already co-writing their education with algorithms. Nearly 80% of undergraduates worldwide are already using generative AI, often daily. What’s missing is not adoption—it’s alignment. While students are busy teaching themselves AI, most universities remain frozen between prohibition and pilot. Eighty percent of students report that they have no structured AI support for teaching or learning, even as employers accelerate toward AI-mandatory job descriptions. This is more than a skills gap. It’s pedagogical infrastructure debt—every semester without faculty readiness compounds the cost and complexity of catching up.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/avivalegatt/2025/08/10/why-faculty-hold-the-keys-to-higher-eds-ai-digital-transformation/

Education as a driving force for self-determination, equity, and the reclamation of knowledge systems - Education International

Marking the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples (9 August), President Mugwena Maluleke reaffirmed Education International’s commitment to Indigenous Peoples’ right to free, quality, public education that is culturally relevant. On 9 August and every day, Education International (EI) member organisations defend and promote the collective rights of Indigenous educators and students, advocating for their voices to be heard and reflected in the education policies that affect their communities. Education unions also stand as allies to broader movements for land rights, cultural preservation, climate justice, and decolonisation.

https://www.ei-ie.org/en/item/30885:education-as-a-driving-force-for-self-determination-equity-and-the-reclamation-of-knowledge-systems

How should higher ed prepare students for a world where AI is everywhere? - Dayton Daily News

The roThe role of education today should be to create broadly literate students who understand how things work, why they work that way, and what the consequences are of inventing and adopting new writing tools. Educators need to face our current moment by teaching the students in front of us and designing learning environments that meet the times, not looking to the past. AI is not to blame for cheating. If students are cheating to get good grades, that is a logical consequence of turning college into diploma factories that churn out workers. We need to rethink that role of college as a degree factory.

https://www.daytondailynews.com/ideas-voices/how-should-higher-ed-prepare-students-for-a-world-where-ai-is-everywhere/KH7RBPRLVZDB7HNPK2XGSZRVR4/

OpenAI says they are no longer optimizing ChatGPT to keep you chatting — here’s why - Amanda Caswell, Tom's Guide

With over 180.5 million monthly active users and nearly 2.5 billion prompts per day, OpenAI recently revealed it is optimizing ChatGPT to help, not hook. In a new blog post titled “What we’re optimizing ChatGPT for,” OpenAI revealed it’s moving away from traditional engagement metrics like time spent chatting. Instead, the company says it’s now prioritizing user satisfaction, task completion and overall usefulness. This is an unconventional stance, as apps like TikTok, Meta, and similar Silicon Valley companies strive to keep users tied to their screens.

https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/openai-says-they-are-no-longer-optimizing-chatgpt-to-keep-you-chatting-heres-why

These College Professors Will Not Bow Down to A.I. - Jessica Grose, NY Times

Where does this leave college students? Gen Z is not giving up on the arts or the pleasures of reading and thinking for themselves. As A.I. creates chaos and uncertainty in the market for entry-level jobs, more students may react by following their passion for the humanities; why begrudgingly major in tech or business if it doesn’t even lead to employment? There’s some evidence that humanities departments are rebounding after a long period of decline. U.C. Berkeley, which is considered one of the best public universities in the country, has seen a nearly 50 percent increase in majors in their arts and humanities division over the past four years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/opinion/humanities-college-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.cU8.c-6B.tz9aF4s4j4jW&smid=url-share

OpenAI Announces Massive US Government Partnership - Joe Schiffer and Will Knight, Wired

OpenAI is partnering with the US government to make its leading frontier models available to federal employees. Under the agreement, federal agencies can access OpenAI’s models for $1 for the next year, per a Wednesday announcement from the company and the General Services Administration (GSA). The partnership is the culmination of months of effort on the part of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other OpenAI executives, who have been cozying up to the Trump administration since before President Donald Trump retook the White House in January. In a statement emailed to WIRED, Altman said: “One of the best ways to make sure AI works for everyone is to put it in the hands of the people serving the country. 

https://www.wired.com/story/openai-is-giving-chatgpt-federal-workers/

Researchers create ‘virtual scientists’ to solve complex biological problems - Hanae Armitage, Stanford

Stanford Medicine researchers created a team of virtual scientists backed by artificial intelligence to help solve problems in their real-world lab. There may be a new artificial intelligence-driven tool to turbocharge scientific discovery: virtual labs. Modeled after a well-established Stanford School of Medicine research group, the virtual lab is complete with an AI principal investigator and seasoned scientists. “Good science happens when we have deep, interdisciplinary collaborations where people from different backgrounds work together, and often that’s one of the main bottlenecks and challenging parts of research,” said James Zou, PhD, associate professor of biomedical data science who led a study detailing the development of the virtual lab. “In parallel, we’ve seen this tremendous a  Researchers create ‘virtual scientists’ to solve complex biological problems - Hanae Armitage, Stanford dvance in AI agents, which, in a nutshell, are AI systems based on language models that are able to take more proactive actions.”

https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2025/07/virtual-scientist.html