Category: Higher Ed

AI capability surge and infrastructure impacts (Links) – Jul. 13, 2026
- Simon Willison: What’s new in Claude Sonnet 5 (Jun. 30, 2026)
  Claude Sonnet 5 offers Opus 4.8-like performance, a 1,000,000-token context, 128,000-token outputs, and drops sampling params temperature, top_p, and top_k.
- The Official Microsoft Blog: Powering the next wave of AI: Expanding capacity with our new datacenter in Pecos (Jun. 22, 2026)
  Microsoft will build a multibillion-dollar, 2 GW datacenter campus in Pecos, Texas, creating over 6,000 construction jobs and hundreds of permanent roles. It will fund on-site power, use closed-loop cooling, support local training, and engage the community.
- The Texas Tribune: A data center boom is coming to Texas. (Jun. 8, 2026)
  Texas is facing a surge of AI data center proposals, which could demand vast electricity and water, strain the grid, and push ERCOT to tighten rules. Supporters tout jobs and investment, opponents warn of higher bills, pollution, and local impacts.
- Bloomberg: Germany Is Showcase for How to Use AI to Juice Your Economy (Jun. 29, 2026)
  German firms are rapidly using AI to ease labor shortages, halving routine tasks, routing, and reporting, potentially adding 0.2–0.7 percentage points to annual growth.
- WSJ: Madison Avenue Is Going All In on AI (Jun. 29, 2026)
  At Cannes Lions, advertisers showcased how AI is reshaping ad creation, targeting, and measurement, cutting production time and costs, and enabling on-the-fly ad generation.
- WSJ: AI Struggles to Out-Trade the Market in the Long Term, Study Finds (Jun. 25, 2026)
  Backtests of LLM trading over 20 years found they mostly failed to beat buy-and-hold, missing bull-market gains and suffering big losses in downturns.
- Animation Magazine: Parry Gripp's 'Space Unicorn' Takes Off as Animated Feature from Spiridellis Bros. (Mar. 19, 2026)
  Spiridellis Bros. Studios announced Space Unicorn, an AI-powered animated feature inspired by Parry Gripp’s song.
- Inside Higher Ed: Can—and Should—Honor Codes Survive in the AI Age? (Jun. 22, 2026)
  Colleges are shifting from student-enforced honor codes to proctored exams as AI makes cheating easier, undermining peer-based enforcement.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Teaching: How AI is forcing professors to overhaul the way they teach (Jun. 25, 2026)
  AI has reshaped college teaching, forcing faculty to redesign courses, police cheating, and shift toward in-class skill-building, oral exams, and AI-aware assignments.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: The Forecast for Arts Grads: Partly Sunny, With Strong Gusts of AI (Jun. 23, 2026)
  Arts graduates often land diverse jobs because their creative, teamwork, and project skills are valued, and many freelance or move into management or teaching. AI complicates work and IP issues, but those who pair creativity with clear positioning gain advantage.
- Bloomberg Law: University of Texas Law Alters AI Policy to Stop Skills Loss (Jun. 17, 2026)
  UT Law’s dean urged new AI policies to prevent cognitive de-skilling, emphasizing Socratic questioning, in-class assessments, and teaching AI skills.
- NY Times: Voters Think A.I. Is Terrible. In Campaigns, It’s Everywhere. (Jun. 29, 2026)
  Voters largely distrust A.I., yet campaigns across parties are using it to analyze voter data, generate content, and tailor messages, from canvass apps to opposition research.
- WSJ: The Trillion-Dollar Borrowing Binge Lifting the Stock Market to Risky Heights (Jun. 28, 2026)
  Investors are piling into margin loans, leveraged ETFs, and options, driving record margin debt and booming leveraged-fund assets.
July 13, 2026
AI Growth: Local Models and Societal Strain (Links) – Jun. 30, 2026
- Quesma: Qwen 3.6 27B is the sweet spot for local development (Jun. 29, 2026)
  Qwen 3.6, especially the dense 27B model, delivers powerful local performance, handles coding and creative tasks well, and runs efficiently with llama.cpp and 8-bit quantization.
- WSJ: AI Data Centers Have Been Great for the Steel Industry. Now, a Power Crisis Looms. (Jun. 29, 2026)
  AI data center growth is boosting electricity demand, raising power costs for electric arc furnace steelmakers, risking outages. Data centers lift steel demand, but higher power prices squeeze margins.
- WSJ: When AI Puts Gen Z in the C-Suite (Jun. 25, 2026)
  Pendo hired 23-year-old Zain Lakhani as chief AI officer because his Gen Z, AI-native perspective helps reshape product design, hiring, and marketing.
- MIT Sloan Research Paper : Some Simple Economics of AGI (Feb. 24, 2026)
  AGI pushes automation costs toward zero, creating a Measurability Gap between machine output and human verification.
- EL PAÍS English: People cheat much more if they use AI (Sep. 24, 2025)
  A Nature study found delegating tasks to AI lowers moral responsibility and increases cheating in experiments, including dice games and tax scenarios.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Can Student Use of AI to Write Prompt Higher-Order Thinking? (Jun. 29, 2026)
  Study of an “AI and Writing” course found students used AI to shift effort from sentence-level drafting to higher-order planning, evaluation, and quality control, and critiquing AI often deepened learning.
- Tyler Cowen: AI cheating on math econ at Brown (Jun. 29, 2026)
  At Brown University, Professor Roberto Serrano found at least 50 students cheated on an ECON 1170 midterm using AI, the largest known Ivy League scandal.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: AI Is Overhauling the Way Professors Teach. Here’s How. (Jun. 17, 2026)
  Generative AI is forcing professors to change teaching, prompting bans, integration, and tactics like paper reading, in-class assessments, shared drafts, and AI rules.
- WSJ: The Tech Innovations Readers Want to See in the Next 20 Years (Jun. 29, 2026)
  Solar-paneled cars, vehicle-to-vehicle autopilot, swappable solid-state batteries, bacteria-powered home generators, robot chefs, noise-cancelling outdoor systems, and longevity drugs.
June 30, 2026
AI Infrastructure Boom and Responsible Human Use (Links) – Jun. 19, 2026
- Epoch AI: The Epoch Brief – June 12, 2026 (Jun. 12, 2026)
  “The AI infrastructure boom, which began in 2023, has more than doubled the share of US GDP attributable to computing infrastructure. Investment in AI-related data center construction, compute hardware, and networking equipment accounted for ~0.8% of US GDP in Q1 2026”
- The Chronicle of Higher Education Opinion: AI Can Improve Scholarly Writing — If We Use It Right (Apr. 16, 2026)
  Use AI as a thinking partner to test, sharpen, and refine ideas, not to outsource judgment. Experienced scholars get more from it, while overreliance can dull originality and diversity.
- Noah Smith: You are what you consume (Apr. 16, 2026)
  Society praises production, giving work status and identity, while treating consumption as trivial. But daily choices about what to buy, watch, and read show preferences, help self‑expression, and ultimately define who you are.
June 19, 2026
AI Market Race and Governance Risks (Links) – Jun. 8, 2026
- WSJ: The Trillion-Dollar Stakes of the OpenAI vs. Anthropic IPO Race (Jun. 1, 2026)
  OpenAI and Anthropic will mainly compete on technology, but who lists first in a hot IPO market could shape their futures.
- OpenAI: Advancing content provenance for a safer, more transparent AI ecosystem (May 14, 2026)
  OpenAI is strengthening provenance by adopting C2PA, adding SynthID watermarking with Google, and previewing a public verification tool. The approach pairs metadata, watermarks, and public checks to help provenance survive edits and uploads.
- WSJ: Nvidia Introduces RTX Spark Chips for Running AI-Agent PCs, Laptops (May 31, 2026)
  Nvidia unveiled the RTX Spark superchip and thin, light laptops to run AI agents. The products target creators, AI developers, and gamers.
- WSJ: Even at $5 Trillion, Nvidia Is Underappreciated (May 21, 2026)
  Nvidia remains the dominant AI-chip leader, with accelerating revenue, yet its stock has lagged after earnings beats.
- Andy Masley: A history of the data center panic (May 19, 2026)
  Panic over data centers rests on flawed numbers, especially a UMass study that overstated AI training emissions by 90x, due to errors about algorithms, hardware, and data center efficiency. That error spread through papers and media, shaping wrong public views.
- Nieman Lab: Erin Brockovich made a map to track data centers around the country (May 1, 2026)
  Erin Brockovich launched a tool to map data centers nationwide, and collect community reports on impacts. The map shows 33 operational centers, 44 under construction, 27 proposed.
- WSJ: AI Made My Expertise More Effective (May 31, 2026)
  An economist used AI coding assistants to build a detailed retirement-planning app, showing AI lets people turn expert knowledge into custom software.
- NY Times: My Partner’s Dependence on Chatbots Is Becoming a Problem. How Do I Tell Him? (May 30, 2026)
  One reader reports a partner who relies on ChatGPT, Claude, and A.I. for nearly every decision, repeats machine‑generated advice, and spends less quality time together. The Ethicist warns this erodes critical thinking, harms relationships, and urges a direct conversation.
- The Daily Caller: Company Accidentally Blows $500,000,000 On Claude AI In One Month (May 29, 2026)
  Ouch! A company accidentally spent $500 million on Anthropic’s Claude in one month after no spending caps, causing firms to curb usage.
- NY Times Opinion: Writing Is Fundamental to How We Think (May 27, 2026)
  Analysis of 370,000 college essays found richer wording after ChatGPT, but far fewer original ideas, creating homogenized submissions.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Unions Push for Guardrails on AI, With Mixed Success (May 20, 2026)
  College faculty and unions are pushing administrators for contractual protections around generative AI, after incidents like Arizona State’s scraping of teaching materials.
- WSJ: A Master’s Degree Isn’t the Job Guarantee It Used to Be (May 17, 2026)
  Master’s degrees are delivering weaker job outcomes for workers under 35, as AI accelerates a skills‑first approach.
- WSJ: Trump Signs AI Executive Order to Increase Government Oversight (Jun. 2, 2026)
  President Trump signed an order requiring AI companies to give the government access to models 30 days before public release, and to help fix cybersecurity flaws.
- NY Times: Trump Signs Executive Order Seeking Oversight of A.I. Models (Jun. 2, 2026)
  President Trump signed an order asking tech firms to give the government a voluntary 30-day review of new A.I. models before release, shifting from a hands-off stance.
- NY Times Opinion: We Have to Take the Future of A.I. Into Our Own Hands (May 31, 2026)
  Policy debates focus on A.I.’s risks, but we need a public agenda: access to compute, a public frontier model, and funded data sets. These measures could steer A.I. toward health, scientific discovery, and better government services.
- NY Times: Teachers Union Urges Schools to Curb A.I. Chatbots and Screen Time (May 27, 2026)
  The American Federation of Teachers urged no screens for pre-K–2, no A.I. chatbots in elementary schools, and national privacy and safety standards.
- NY Times: What Graduation Speakers Are Telling the Class of 2026 (May 21, 2026)
  Graduation speakers told the Class of 2026 to face economic uncertainty, A.I., and political divisions with humor, practical advice, and resilience.
- TechCrunch: Intuit to lay off over 3,000 employees to refocus on AI (May 20, 2026)
  Intuit will cut about 17% of staff, roughly 3,000 jobs, to simplify its structure, refocus on AI, and reduce complexity.
June 8, 2026
Enterprise AI Growth and Education Disruption (Links) – May 23, 2026
- Cursor: Introducing Composer 2.5 (May 17, 2026)
  Composer 2.5 is now in Cursor, offering stronger intelligence, more reliable long-task performance, and smoother collaboration. It uses scaled training, targeted textual feedback, and extensive synthetic tasks,
- NY Times: OpenAI Bought Company That Offered A.I. Tools for Cloning Voices (May 15, 2026)
  OpenAI quietly bought Weights.gg, a startup that let users create and share AI voice clones of celebrities and politicians. It bought the team and IP, shut the service, and plans limited, partner-only uses.
- Anthropic: KPMG integrates Claude across its core business and workforce of more than 276,000 in strategic alliance
  KPMG formed a global alliance with Anthropic to embed Claude in Digital Gateway, giving 276,000+ employees access, and adding tax, legal, and cybersecurity tools.
- NY Times Opinion: What A.I. Did to My College Class (May 16, 2026)
  At Stanford, A.I. has reshaped campus life, fueling startups, lavish wealth, and widespread cheating, prompting a return to proctored exams. It narrows job prospects, erodes learning, and normalizes dishonesty.
- Konstantin Tkachuk: The Floor Doesn't Exist (May 13, 2026)
  AI didn’t invent new attack types but slashed the cost and skill required: hacking is now affordable via commercial subscriptions rather than elite labor.
- NY Times: Josh Tyrangiel book excerpt: How OpenAI and Khan Academy Made a Chatbot (May 16, 2026)
  OpenAI and Khan Academy built Khanmigo, an AI tutor echoing Sal Khan’s pedagogy. Their rocky, secretive collaboration exposed benefits, risks, and trade-offs over accuracy, bias, and reputation.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: A New ‘AI First’ College Aims to Offer Cheaper, Employer-Friendly Degrees (May 14, 2026)
  Sal Khan is launching Khan TED Institute, a nonprofit offering a $10,000, competency-based applied-AI degree with partners Khan Academy, TED, ETS, Google, Microsoft, and Accenture. The online, project-focused program builds portfolios, group work, and practical skills for the AI era.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: How the Commencement Speech Became One of Colleges’ Biggest PR Problems (May 14, 2026)
  High‑profile incidents include boos at UCF over an AI remark, Georgetown Law’s Morton Schapiro backing out after a student petition, disinvitations at Rutgers and South Carolina State, and protests at Howard and Utah Valley.
- NY Times: Anduril Raises $5 Billion in Funding and Is Valued at $61 Billion (May 13, 2026)
  Anduril raised $5 billion, valuing the AI-backed weapons start-up at $61 billion, twice its value a year earlier.
- Anthony B. Bradley: America Is Closing Its Elementary Schools, and Nobody Wants to Say Why (May 18, 2026)
  Elementary schools are closing nationwide, in cities, suburbs, and rural areas, not mainly because of homeschooling or private schools, but because fewer children are being born. This shrinking birth rate, below replacement, is driving district consolidations and civic decline.
May 23, 2026
AI Adoption Surge Meets Governance and Regulation (Links) – May 17, 2026
- Google: Multi-token-prediction in Gemma 4 (May 5, 2026)
  Gemma 4 adds Multi-Token Prediction drafters, using speculative decoding to draft multiple tokens and verify them, giving up to 3x faster inference with no quality loss.
- WSJ: Anthropic and FIS Are Building an AI Agent to Help Banks Police Financial Crimes (May 4, 2026)
  Anthropic and FIS are building AI agents that will scour bank systems, gather transaction and account evidence, and flag potential money‑laundering, terrorism, and drug‑trafficking cases.
- Microsoft: Anthropic Models for Copilot in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint on by Default (Apr. 6, 2026)
  From May 4, Anthropic models will be enabled by default for Copilot in Excel, PowerPoint, and Word (Word in summer), with processing outside EU Data Boundary. Admins can change this in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center.
- WSJ: Meta’s Cheap Stock Is an Investor Trap (May 5, 2026)
  Meta’s shares look cheap, as AI-driven ad gains and 33% revenue growth boost results, but heavy AI spending, rising debt, and slowing user growth threaten the ad-dependent business.
- TechCrunch: Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code (May 8, 2026)
  Airbnb says AI wrote 60% of engineers’ code, handles 40% of support issues, and accelerates API tool development, though chatbots still struggle for travel.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Another Undergrad Is Trying to Disrupt College With AI. He Says His Version Isn’t Cheating. (May 1, 2026)
  Notre Dame suspended a freshman after he offered Kerra, an AI that reads Canvas, makes study guides, drafts, and tracks deadlines. Faculty worry it enables cheating.
- 404 Media: OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft Back Bill to Fund ‘AI Literacy’ in Schools (May 4, 2026)
  Senator Adam Schiff introduced the LIFT AI Act, backed by OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, to fund NSF grants for K–12 AI literacy curriculum and teacher development.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Teaching: What kind of support do academics want for AI? (Apr. 30, 2026)
  Panelists called for practical AI literacy, clear disclosure rules, opt-outs, and more resources.
- POLITICO: White House distances itself from tighter AI regulation (May 7, 2026)
  White House officials sent mixed messages on requiring pre-release vetting of powerful AI models, likening it to FDA testing, but stressing partnership.
- NY Times: White House Considers Vetting A.I. Models Before They Are Released (May 4, 2026)
  The White House may require vetting of new AI models through a government working group, after Anthropic’s Mythos raised cybersecurity alarms.
May 17, 2026
AI Safety and Cybersecurity (Links) – May 12, 2026
- Simon Willison: A quote from New York Times Editors’ Note (May 10, 2026)
  “This article was updated after The Times learned that a remark attributed to Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative leader, was in fact an A.I.-generated summary of his views about Canadian politics that A.I. rendered as a quotation.”
- Anthropic: Teaching Claude why (May 8, 2026)
  Anthropic improved Claude’s alignment, eliminating blackmail in Claude Haiku 4.5+ by changing training to emphasize principles, ethical reasoning, and constitutional documents.
- Google: Gemini API File Search is now multimodal (May 5, 2026)
  Gemini API File Search is now multimodal, indexing text, images, and metadata with Gemini Embedding 2. It adds custom metadata filters, page citations, and simple APIs for uploading and querying files.
- Shrivu Shankar: How AI Productivity Fails (May 10, 2026)
  Achieving 2x–10x requires changing personal practice and organizational design: plan up front, close verification loops, codify reusable skills, prioritize review and loop ownership, and reward long-term leverage, not raw usage.
- Tyler Cowen: Will AI kill the research paper? (May 10, 2026)
  AI can turn static papers into evolving, customizable meta-papers that generate many versions, updates, and robustness checks. Research will shift to building and maintaining these boxes.
- Sean Goedecke: The left-wing case for AI (May 10, 2026)
  LLMs can serve as powerful disability aids, help chronically ill patients research and advocate, and reduce class barriers by translating professional language, while broadening educational access.
- WIRED: The Canvas Hack Is a New Kind of Ransomware Debacle (May 7, 2026)
  Canvas was put into maintenance mode after a ShinyHunters-linked breach and extortion attempt, disrupting finals and end-of-year work at hundreds of schools. Attackers claimed student data was exposed, defaced some login pages, and pressured institutions to pay.
- Reclaim The Net: France Moves to Break Encrypted Messaging (May 6, 2026)
  France’s parliamentary intelligence delegation backed weakening end-to-end encryption on WhatsApp, Signal, and Telegram, proposing targeted access for magistrates, judges, and intelligence agents, including a hidden “ghost” participant. Critics say any backdoor would create lasting vulnerabilities, and enable abuse.
May 12, 2026
AI Boom: Rapid Adoption and Rising Risks (Links) – May 9, 2026
- WSJ: Microsoft Reports Strong Cloud Growth, But Questions About AI Returns Persist (Apr. 29, 2026)
  Microsoft posted $82.9B in sales, $31.8B net income, and 18% year-over-year growth, beating expectations. Azure grew about 40%, Copilot reached 20 million paid users, and AI capital spending will rise to $190B.
- OpenAI: Introducing GPT-Rosalind for life sciences research (Apr. 16, 2026)
  OpenAI introduces GPT-Rosalind, a life-sciences reasoning model for biology, drug discovery, and translational medicine, with a plugin linking to 50+ tools, available via trusted access for qualified organizations.
- Quanta Magazine: The AI Revolution in Math Has Arrived (Apr. 13, 2026)
  Many mathematicians dismiss LLMs for making odd mistakes, but some tolerate the errors, extract useful ideas, and act as verifiers. Ernest Ryu used ChatGPT to prove Nesterov’s convergence.
- Simon Willison: AI at Google (Apr. 13, 2026)
  Steve Yegge claimed Google’s AI adoption mirrors John Deere’s: 20% agentic power users, 20% refusers, and 60% chat-tool users. Googlers dispute this claim.
- NY Times: What Teens Are Doing With Those Role-Playing Chatbots (Apr. 4, 2026)
  Teens use role-playing chatbots for entertainment, companionship, writing practice, and exploring taboos, often spending hours a day and bypassing age checks. Growing use has prompted concerns.
- Simon Willison: Supply Chain Attack on Axios Pulls Malicious Dependency from npm (Mar. 31, 2026)
  A supply chain attack compromised Axios npm, adding a malicious dependency, plain-crypto-js, that stole credentials and installed a RAT.
- NY Times: Woman Spent Five Months in Jail After A.I. Linked Her to Bank Fraud Case (Mar. 30, 2026)
  Angela Lipps, a Tennessee woman never having been to North Dakota, was arrested after facial‑recognition software linked her to bank fraud and spent five months jailed. Charges were dismissed on Dec. 24, police acknowledged missteps.
- Inside Higher Ed: As AI Skills Surge, Entry-Level Jobs Lag (Apr. 30, 2026)
  Handshake finds 85% of seniors use AI, many daily, while employer demand for AI skills rises. Only 28% report AI in coursework, creating a gap, raising job anxiety, and spurring more study.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Can’t Get ChatGPT to Cite Your College? Try These Tactics. (Apr. 24, 2026)
  As students turn to AI for college searches, institutions risk disappearing unless they adopt answer-engine optimization, updating content, FAQs, formatting, and metadata.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Nearly Everyone’s Using AI at Cal State. And Nearly Everyone’s Worried About It. (Apr. 1, 2026)
  A Cal State survey of 94,000 students, faculty, and staff found near-universal use of generative AI, especially ChatGPT, paired with widespread doubts about accuracy, ethics, and job security.
- NY Times Opinion: There’s Another Reason Gen Z Can’t Find Work (Apr. 22, 2026)
  Young workers find the job market bleak, facing more despair and weak wages. A decades-long collapse of the job ladder, driven by employer consolidation, noncompete clauses, and reduced hiring, leaves many stuck in low-paying jobs, with fewer outside offers.
May 9, 2026
AI Job Disruption Meets Privacy and Security Risks (Links) – May 8, 2026
- Google: The Gemini App is now available on Mac OS (Apr. 15, 2026)
  The Gemini app is now a native macOS experience for macOS 15+, free at gemini.google/mac, offering instant AI help with the Option + Space shortcut.
- Simon Willison: Cybersecurity Looks Like Proof of Work Now (Apr. 14, 2026)
  An AISI evaluation found Claude Mythos excels at finding security vulnerabilities, with results improving as more tokens (money) are spent. That creates an incentive to outspend attackers, fund reviews, and share audits, raising open source value.
- WSJ: I Uploaded My Blood Work to AI. Am I Oversharing? (Apr. 4, 2026)
  People now link medical records and wearables to AI chatbots, such as Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot, for personalized health advice. They explain results well, and sometimes overstate findings.
- WSJ: The CEO Preaching Straight Talk About AI and Job Losses (Apr. 19, 2026)
  Verizon CEO Dan Schulman warns AI could cause 20–30% unemployment in two to five years, pushed 13,000 layoffs, and set up a $20 million retraining fund.
- That Privacy Guy!: Anthropic secretly installs spyware when you install Claude Desktop (Apr. 17, 2026)
  Claude Desktop silently installed undocumented Native Messaging manifests across Chromium browsers on macOS, pre-authorising a native host to access sessions, read DOM, fill forms, and record interactions.
- WSJ: Are College Graduates Finally Catching a Break in This Job Market? (Apr. 20, 2026)
  Entry-level hiring is rebounding, with employers boosting graduate hires, falling young-degree unemployment, and big firms expanding recruiting. But AI and strict hiring standards keep competition high, so networking, internships, and work experience help graduates land jobs.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Students Are Using AI to Guide College Decisions. What Is It Telling Them? (Apr. 15, 2026)
  High school students increasingly rely on AI, sometimes adding or dropping colleges based on inaccurate or incomplete answers.
- WSJ: Kevin Warsh Pitched a Case for Fed Interest-Rate Cuts. His Future Colleagues Are Skeptical. (Apr. 20, 2026)
  Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Fed nominee, says AI-driven productivity will curb inflation, allowing interest-rate cuts.
- WSJ: Why AI Models Are More Reliable Now Than Ever Before (Apr. 17, 2026)
  Modern AIs are more useful because they combine richer, human-curated knowledge, web lookups, and practical tools like calculators and code.
- Tyler Cowen: Economists on AI and economic growth and employment (Mar. 31, 2026)
  Experts see big AI progress without a sharp break from current trends: GDP growth roughly stable, and labor participation slightly lower.
May 8, 2026
AI Power vs Human Judgment and Security Risks (Links) – Apr. 4, 2026
AI’s rapid capability leap promises transformative productivity—from research and corporate automation to search and teaching—prompting claims of AGI. Simultaneously, security, integrity, and governance risks (malicious packages, cheating, privacy, supply‑chain concerns) demand institutional guardrails, human judgment, and regulation.
- The Verge: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says ‘I think we’ve achieved AGI’ (Mar. 23, 2026)
  On Lex Fridman’s podcast, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, “I think we’ve achieved AGI,” claiming AI can start, grow, and run major companies.
- NY Times: Is Taste the One Thing A.I. Can’t Replace? (Mar. 22, 2026)
  Tech workers are trying to cultivate “taste,” a human judgment guiding AI, as a skill that could keep them indispensable. They teach courses, host dinner salons, and debate whether taste is teachable, subjective, or merely a buzzword.
- Out of Sample: A Second Industrial Enlightenment (Mar. 23, 2026)
  AI breakthroughs suggest machines can accelerate analyses, proofs, and experiments, approaching Nobel-level research in some fields. But limits in interpretation, verification, and incentives mean institutions are needed to sustain growth.
- WSJ: AI Is Rewriting the Old Rules of Google Search and SEO (Mar. 22, 2026)
  AI-powered search is changing SEO, so companies must become trusted sources by engaging customers, structuring content, and adding contextual details.
- Simon Willison: Malicious litellm_init.pth in litellm 1.82.8 — credential stealer (Mar. 24, 2026)
  LiteLLM on PyPI hid a base64 credential stealer that ran on install, stealing SSH keys, cloud credentials, wallets, and histories.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: AI Broke College Assessment. One University Believes It’s Got a Fix. (Mar. 23, 2026)
  U.S. colleges mostly leave AI policy to individual professors, creating a confusing patchwork, straining faculty, and harming integrity.
- Inside Higher Ed: Canvas Unrolls AI Teaching Agent (Mar. 23, 2026)
  Canvas launched IgniteAI to automate routine tasks, free faculty for mentoring, and include guardrails to prevent automated grading. Critics warn agentic AI may enable cheating, erode student-faculty ties, and push higher education toward larger classes.
- The Chronicle of Higher Education: Is AI Making Us Stupid? Cal Newport Is Worried. (Mar. 12, 2026)
  Cal Newport warns AI threatens to outsource hard thought, and urges universities to cultivate cognitive fitness, protect deep work, and ban AI-written student work.
- NY Times: In N.Y.C. Classes, Teachers Can Use A.I. to Plan but Not to Assign Grades (Mar. 24, 2026)
  New York City released an A.I. playbook letting teachers use A.I. for lesson planning, research, and drafting, but banning it for assigning grades or disciplinary decisions. It stresses guardrails, data privacy, teacher judgment.
- The Register: US bans any new consumer-grade routers not made in America (Mar. 24, 2026)
  The FCC added all foreign-made consumer routers to its Covered List, banning approval of new models, while allowing previously authorized devices. It cites national security, critics say most routers are made abroad, and DoD, DHS, and conditional approvals are allowed.
April 4, 2026