The discussion also explored how the responsibilities of product managers could change as generative AI systems become part of the development process. Ostrovskiy wrote: “The job becomes less about coordination and more about 1) understanding real user problems, 2) defining what ‘success’ means in an AI system, and 3) building evals and feedback loops so you can tell if a new model configuration is actually better than the last one.” He added that curiosity about how AI systems behave may become a core skill across multiple roles: “The advantage goes to people who are curious about system behavior and who like building, regardless of whether their title says PM, engineer, designer or something else.” The conversation also included advice for students learning how to evaluate AI systems: “Build something with one foundation model, then swap in a different model or prompt configuration and force yourself to decide if it’s better. When you’re a student looking to become a better PM, even a simple spreadsheet of use cases plus a qualitative rubric counts as an eval.”
Monday, March 16, 2026
How AI Can Close Equity Gaps for First-Generation Students - Richard J. Smith, EdTech
The emergence of artificial intelligence in higher education is often blamed for widening the digital divide for first-generation college students. However, given that a growing majority of Americans have access to the internet and capable digital devices, such as laptops and smartphones, AI has the potential to close equity gaps for under-resourced students. Student support professionals can leverage this technology even further by providing AI-driven, on-demand guidance across nearly every facet of the college experience. Because first-generation students often require more personalized, intrusive advising than their continuing-generation peers, they are an ideal population for supplemental advising tools.
OpenAI Adds Interactive Math and Science Learning Tools to ChatGPT - Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
ChatGPT adds interactive learning tools: OpenAI introduced interactive math and science visualizations that allow users to explore formulas, variables, and relationships in real time. The tool currently covers over 70 core math and science topics and is aimed initially at high school and college-level learners. Users can adjust variables, manipulate formulas, and immediately see how changes affect graphs and outcomes.
Sunday, March 15, 2026
The Unmaking of the American University - Nicholas Lemann, the NewYorker
Now the compact between the universities and the federal government has been broken, and maybe not just temporarily. The Trump Administration has deployed a brutally effective, previously unused technique for getting these institutions’ full attention: suspending their funds, even those appropriated by Congress and legally committed to in contracts.
Adopting AI is a social contract - Andrew Inkpen & Dani Inkpen, University Affairs
Integrating artificial intelligence into our societies and personal lives binds us to certain futures and forecloses the possibility of others. Are we ready to accept the consequences? Much of the present conversation about AI in higher education centers around questions of implementation. How do we use AI in accordance with principles of universal design? How can we ensure equity in its usage, be it across axes of gender, race or class? What does AI mean for the longevity of the professorial profession? Implementation should indeed be approached with care and nuance, and we welcome this conversation. Yet, questions of implementation assume that AI is desirable and inevitable in the classroom. The prior question of whether AI in higher education is actually desirable is often overlooked. Two widespread assumptions underpin this move: 1) technological progress is inevitable; 2) technology is apolitical — it only becomes political in its implementation.
New Jersey to Use AI to Score Standardized Writing Tests - Liz Rosenberg, GovTech
Starting this spring, a new state test called the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments-Adaptive for grades 3-10 will be “adaptive,” meaning students will get different questions based on their previous answers. The “artificial intelligence” will be trained using scores generated by human scorers on practice tests that were given to students in October and November. New Jersey is debuting a new type of state tests — called the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments-Adaptive — this spring. It will be given to students in grades 3 through 10 to test their knowledge of English, math and science.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
AI broke the college degree: Why higher education matters more than ever - Katherine Perry, the Linfield Review
While it was once a faraway and futuristic idea, AI has now found its way into many aspects of everyday life, including higher education. This is what Patrick Dempsey, founder and co-CEO of Pend AI, spoke about in his keynote lecture on Feb. 18. Higher education is, at least in part, meant to equip students with the skills and specialized knowledge from their fields they will need in their careers after graduation. For this reason, Dempsey weighed in on the discourse surrounding AI in the workplace. While many worry that AI will automate jobs wholesale, he posited that AI could be used to automate certain tasks within jobs that don’t require this specialized knowledge, like emailing and meetings.
AI Tools to Reduce College Dropout Rates - Nancy Mann Jackson, EdTech
Roughly 3 in 10 college students drop out without earning any degree, resulting in higher unemployment and lower lifetime earnings than those who earn bachelor’s degrees, according to the Education Data Initiative. To help boost student retention, colleges and universities are using a variety of artificial intelligence tools that can help identify at-risk students early, offer customized learning, provide 24/7 assistance and improve engagement. “We’ve always known in higher education that we need to deliver more personalized, timely help to students who are struggling, but we haven’t always had the resources to deliver personal attention at scale,” says Timothy Renick, executive director of the National Institute for Student Success at Georgia State University. “Using technology can level the playing field, allowing us to leverage data and analytics to deliver personal attention at scale in a way that is much more cost effective than hiring hundreds of new staff.”
Today’s AI is built to respond. The future belongs to proactive systems. - Kiara Nirghin & Nikhara Nirghin, Big Think
Much of what we’ve seen from the biggest artificial intelligence (AI) companies has revolved around words: You go to their chatbot, ask it a question, and it responds. Over the past couple of years, some have taken this a step further with AI agents — those can actually do things, but only things you’ve told them to do. The next frontier in AI is not better chat. It is not even better agents. The next frontier is proactive AI, the kind that takes action, learns in real time, and, critically, comes to you before you go to it. This distinction is not a feature improvement. It is a civilizational pivot.
Friday, March 13, 2026
What national AI plans get wrong and how to fix them - Cameron F. Kerry and Saurabh Mishra, Brookings
AI is not a standalone sector; it creates value only when embedded in real industries. Countries should build cognitive infrastructure, including data, institutions, talent, and inherent local domain knowledge—not just compute capacity—to operationalize AI for real-world impact. The winning strategy is to strengthen what a country already does well and use AI to move into adjacent higher-value activities.
OpenAI’s New GPT-5.4 Pro Is Now The Smartest AI In The World. - TheAIGRID, YouTube
The video discusses the release of OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 Pro, highlighting its dominance across sophisticated benchmarks like Frontier Math and OSWorld, where it demonstrates superhuman problem-solving by resolving mathematical equations that remained unsolved for decades [06:46]. While the model shows significant advancements in professional white-collar tasks and creative writing, the creator notes that its high performance comes with a substantial price increase [02:17] and introduces serious cybersecurity risks. Classified as a "high" threat in OpenAI’s preparedness framework, the model's ability to autonomously execute complex cyberattacks [21:42] suggests that future iterations could reach "critical" risk levels, potentially necessitating stricter access controls and government oversight as AI capabilities continue to accelerate toward human-level proficiency in specialized fields [13:37]. [summary assisted by Gemini 3]
OpenAI's new GPT-5.4 clobbers humans on pro-level work in tests - by 83% - David Gewirtz, ZDnet
GPT-5.4 is also more reliable, producing 18% fewer errors and 33% fewer false claims than GPT-5.2, according to OpenAI. GPT-5.4's 83% score suggests AI rivals expert professionals. Tests span nine industries and 44 real-world occupations. New capabilities boost coding, tools, and computer control.
Thursday, March 12, 2026
Universities Are Not Only About Jobs. They're About Human Existence in the Age of AI. - Maria Mercedes Mateo-Berganza Diaz, IDB
In a world where AI can outperform humans in many cognitive tasks, universities must preserve human judgment, ethics, and purpose — not just technical skills. Higher education must prioritize broad, humanistic foundations alongside specialized skills to prepare students for complex, “messy” work that machines cannot replace. For the Global South, the stakes are even higher: universities are essential to safeguard agency, cultural sovereignty, and the ability to shape futures — not merely adapt to those designed elsewhere.
AI in HE: International study finds high use, low support - Karen MacGregor, University World News
An international survey of university academics and students by Coursera, the massive online learning platform with 375 leading university and industry partners, has revealed highly positive attitudes towards generative AI and more than 95% make use of AI tools. But a weighty 56% fear that higher education is unprepared to handle AI. In the survey of 4,200 educators and students in India, Mexico, the United States, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia, only 26% of academics said their university had an AI use policy. Two thirds (65%) of educators and students believed unregulated AI could undermine degrees. Importantly, Dr Marni Baker Stein, chief content officer at Coursera, told University World News: “We’re seeing learners run out ahead in figuring out how to use AI tools in pretty sophisticated and personalised ways to help them in their studies. The question is, how and when do universities catch up with that velocity in the learner population?”
AI in higher education is now the norm—not the exception - Michelle Centamore, University Business
AI is quickly becoming standard practice in higher education, with students and faculty reporting widespread use and a largely positive view of its impact, according to Coursera’s new report, “AI in Higher Education: Insights on Attitudes, Adoption, and Risks.” The findings also point to rising demand for formal training. Nine in 10 students said they want generative AI instruction included in their degree programs. On the hiring side, 75% of employers said they would rather hire a less experienced candidate with a generative AI credential than a more experienced candidate without one.
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Ensuring AI use in education leads to opportunity - OpenAI
Of the 900 million people who use ChatGPT each week, college-age adults are the biggest adopters among age groups. How they learn to use AI will increasingly shape their future opportunities, and education systems are uniquely positioned to help. Much of modern education was built to help students get ready for existing systems of work. But those systems are changing fast. Studies(opens in a new window) predict nearly 40% of the core skills workers rely on will change, largely because of AI. To thrive in this Intelligence Age, students need to build agency: the ability to learn continuously, solve hard problems, and create new economic opportunities for themselves with AI.
Introducing GPT‑5.4: Designed for professional work - OpenAI
Today, we’re releasing GPT‑5.4 in ChatGPT (as GPT‑5.4 Thinking), the API, and Codex. It’s our most capable and efficient frontier model for professional work. We’re also releasing GPT‑5.4 Pro in ChatGPT and the API, for people who want maximum performance on complex tasks. GPT‑5.4 brings together the best of our recent advances in reasoning, coding, and agentic workflows into a single frontier model. It incorporates the industry-leading coding capabilities of GPT‑5.3‑Codex while improving how the model works across tools, software environments, and professional tasks involving spreadsheets, presentations, and documents. The result is a model that gets complex real work done accurately, effectively, and efficiently—delivering what you asked for with less back and forth.
How the Last Analog Generation Can Shape AI - Cornelia C. Walther, Knowledge at Wharton
We are living through a threshold moment in human history, and most of us haven’t fully grasped its magnitude. Those of us born before the mid-1990s represent something that will never exist again: the last generation to spend our formative years in an analog world. We learned to think, to relate, to solve problems in an environment of productive friction — wrestling with paper-based dictionaries, getting physically lost before finding our way home, experiencing the uncomfortable cognitive pull that comes from sustained attention without the dopamine micro-hits of infinite scrolling. The cognitive architectures developed through analog learning, from arithmetic to deep reading, via spatial navigation to face-to-face conflict resolution, result in neural pathways that are fundamentally different from those shaped primarily by digital interfaces. Growing up in an environment that was minimally mediated by artificial assets, we developed our executive functions against resistance. Our children and grandchildren are developing theirs in an environment of infinite algorithmic accommodation.
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
How AI Is Changing College Assessments of Proficiency - Abby Sourwine, GovTech
Artificial intelligence is causing college instructors to move more meaningful examinations back to the classroom, and connect the dots with students on why learning matters. College instructors are redesigning how and where they assess student learning. Hummels is working with students in a pilot independent study project to explore research questions using AI chatbots. Students submit full transcripts of their chatbot exchanges, which allows him to see how students’ ideas develop. He uses AI on his part, to help analyze those transcripts and generate targeted follow-up questions.
Ellucian's 3rd Annual Higher Education AI Survey Signals Shift from Individual AI Use to Institutional Strategy, Data Privacy Still the Top Barrier - Ellucian
90% of higher ed professionals now use AI, suggesting personal adoption is nearing a ceiling (up from 84% year over year). Institutional AI adoption jumped to 66% (from 49% the previous year), signaling a move from experimentation to mainstream integration; 43% say AI is already reflected in their institution's strategic plan, and 88% expect institutional AI use to keep rising over the next two years. Data security and privacy remain the #1 barrier to AI use at both the personal and institutional levels, while concerns about cost and limited understanding of the technology decline year over year. New barriers are emerging: more than 1 in 5 cite environmental impact among top three barriers, and concern about AI-related role elimination doubled to 14%.
Provost Ann Stevens answers questions on CU system-ChatGPT agreement - CU Boulder Today
I would also like to be clear about what this agreement is and what it is not. This agreement does not require the use of generative AI in classrooms or research, nor does it diminish faculty authority over pedagogy, curriculum or assessment. It does not replace existing tools or limit future choices. Instead, it provides a secure, institutionally supported option for a technology many in our community are already encountering and using, often without the protections we would want to have in place. Our current data show that more than 28,000 users on campus already have registered ChatGPT accounts using their @colorado.edu credentials, including more than 3,000 faculty and staff. Although that statistic is limited to users of CU email credentials, countless other users access tools like ChatGPT for work or studying using their personal email addresses as well.
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