How Colleges Can Safeguard Democracy in an AI Era | Learning Curve It’s a pivotal time for democracy because of the rise of AI. What role should colleges play? For this episode Jeff headed to Washington, DC to sit down with Mark Fisher, the director of a new center a...

AI threatens to erode another key aspect of higher ed — teaching students the habits of discussion and civic engagement that make democracy work.

As students use ChatGPT for discussion posts and routinely consult bots, will they lose ability to build communities?

learningcurve.fm/episodes/how...

Global Skills Week 2026 | Overview | QS Learn more about Global Skills Week. View the agenda, see our speakers, and buy your tickets now.

I'm excited to be in DC this week for QS Global Skills Week, learning about the future of education and work (naturally I'm curious about how AI is playing a role).

www.qs.com/conferences/...

How to Prepare Students For a World of AI Co-Workers | Learning Curve As companies start to replace employees with AI agents, how are human workers adjusting? For this episode Jeff connected with Evan Ratliff, who created what he calls “the world’s first AI-led startup”...

What if most of your co-workers were AI agents? Or your boss was a bot?

How should colleges help students prepare for an AI work world?

The latest episode of Learning Curve podcast features Evan Ratliff from Shell Game.

One answer: Take a philosophy class.

learningcurve.fm/episodes/how...

The Case for Memorization in the AI Era | Learning Curve Competitive memory athlete Nelson Dellis has won multiple national championships, and he’s used AI to help him train for competitions. But as he turned to chatbots more and more, his thinking began to...

Should educators emphasize memorization as an antidote to the rush of AI tools?

A small but growing number of experts are making that case. Check out the latest episode of Learning Curve -- which features a 6-time US memory champion and an expert on how to learn.

learningcurve.fm/episodes/the...

The A.I. Free For All In Schools An A.I. expert joins to talk about the highs, lows, and inevitabilities of ChatGPT and the like in schools.

Can Parents Really Protect Kids From the A.I. Robots?

I joined the hosts of Slate’s Care and Feeding parenting podcast to talk about that question. It was a blast.

slate.com/podcasts/car...

Lessons From Minneapolis About AI and Misinformation | Learning Curve During the ICE surge in Minneapolis, AI is playing a role in this tense and unfolding story, specifically how it is contributing to misinformation. What can educators do to prepare students, and any o...

Student journalists at the U of Minnesota are donning bullet-proof vests and gas masks and attending trainings designed for war correspondents to cover the ICE surge. One of their professors worries AI-doctored images make it harder to sort real from misinformation

learningcurve.fm/episodes/les...

Is It Possible to Put Age Limits on AI Tools? | Learning Curve Is It Possible to Put Age Limits on AI Tools? Last week the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing about potential legislation banning kids under 13 from using social media. Australia has a ne...

Australia recently passed a law banning kids under 16 from using social media. Will similar laws come to the U.S.?

And should age restrictions be placed on new generative AI tools as well?

We dive in on the latest Learning Curve podcast: learningcurve.fm/episodes/is-...

What Guardrails Should AI Companies Build to Protect Learning? | Learning Curve In the past few months new AI tools known as “Agentic AI” have emerged. These new browsers let users deploy AI assistants that can surf the web on their behalf. While they were designed to do things l...

What kind of guardrails should AI companies build to protect learning?
I talked w/ @annamillsoer.bsky.social for the latest Learning Curve podcast about her argument that agentic AI browsers offer a clear case of how AI & edtech companies can help protect learning.

learningcurve.fm/episodes/wha...

Is Your Mechanic Using AI? | Learning Curve Skilled trades are typically seen as professions that won’t be permeated by AI. But that’s starting to change. Jeff visited auto tech classes at Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount, Minn., wh...

Even hands-on trades are getting infused with AI, and in some surprising ways. That's what I learned when I visited an auto tech class experimenting with the technology.

learningcurve.fm/episodes/is-...

Why Do So Many Students Have AI Friends? | Learning Curve More than 40 percent of high school students have AI friends or know someone who does, according to a recent survey. What does this phenomenon mean for how students and teachers view the AI tools used...

It's becoming common for students to have AI friends. I've been curious to try to understand what this phenomenon means for how students and teachers view the AI tools used in education. I dove in on the latest episode of Learning Curve podcast: learningcurve.fm/episodes/why...

#ai
#education

Can Colleges 'AI-Proof' the Core Curriculum? (And Should They?) A student newspaper editorial has sparked a discussion on one campus in ways that colleges around the country can learn from.

Student newspaper editors at Notre Dame are calling on college leaders to revamp all assignments in required courses to make it so AI can't easily be used to complete them. It's essentially a call by students to make them work harder and learn more:
learningcurvepodcast.substack.com/p/can-colleg...

Is AI Becoming the Next Polarizing Issue on Campuses? As some professors boycott AI trainings, one longtime education expert worries about how to have productive conversations and guide students about the fast-moving tech.

Is AI Becoming the Next Polarizing Issue on Campuses?

learningcurvepodcast.substack.com/p/is-ai-beco...

How Do Students Feel About Their AI Use? It's Complicated | Learning Curve We set up a table at the University of Minnesota and asked students to share how they use AI in their studies — and how they feel about the technology. Fear was the common thread — Fear of being caugh...

AI is causing fear and anxiety for many students. That's what I heard when I set up a table in front of the student center at U of Minnesota and interviewed undergrads for Learning Curve podcast. I teamed up with the student newspaper to help produce this one: learningcurve.fm/episodes/why...

Can AI Avatars Make Class Time More Human? | Learning Curve Colleges are experimenting with making online teaching videos featuring AI avatar versions of professors. Some students find the simulated likenesses of their instructors a bit creepy, but proponents ...

Can AI Avatars Make Class Time More Human?

The latest episode of Learning Curve podcast explores colleges who see AI as a key tool for expanding "flipped classroom" approaches by making it easy to create teaching videos.

Some students find it creepy, though.
learningcurve.fm/episodes/can...

Is My Professor Using AI to Teach? If a critical mass of instructors enter their lecture notes into AI tools as prompts to save a few minutes making their slides, is that giving away the store as far as their intellectual property?

If a critical mass of profs enter their lecture notes into AI tools to save a few minutes making their slides, is that giving away the store as far as their intellectual property? Are companies like Gamma amassing valuable sets of lecture notes?
learningcurvepodcast.substack.com/p/is-my-prof...

Is My Professor Using AI? | Learning Curve Ella Stapleton noticed something unusual in lecture notes her professor handed out to students. Coverage of what happened next sparked discussion about misuse of AI in education – not by students tryi...

Is My Professor Using AI to Teach?
learningcurve.fm/episodes/is-...

Learning Curve | Jeff Young | Substack What does it mean to teach and learn in an age of generative AI? This is the newsletter for the Learning Curve podcast by education journalist Jeff Young. Click to read Learning Curve, by Jeff Young, ...

Learning Curve
learningcurvepodcast.substack.com?r=61y900&utm...

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity Despite a surge in generative AI use across workplaces, most companies are seeing little measurable ROI. One possible reason is because AI tools are being used to produce “workslop”—content that appea...

AI-Generated “Workslop” Is Destroying Productivity
hbr.org/2025/09/ai-g...

In my own reporting I keep asking folks for examples of cost savings and significant improvements from AI, and I find folks hard-pressed to give concrete examples... this article in HBR digs into this issue more deeply...

Educators Need to Know How Generative AI 'Thinks' Why one scholar argues that understanding what makes ChatGPT and other new AI tools tick is necessary to best harness the tech in classrooms.

I've started a Substack for Learning Curve podcast. I hope you'll sign up!

open.substack.com/pub/learning...

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

“Like students facing hard exam questions, large language models sometimes guess when uncertain, producing plausible yet incorrect statements instead of admitting uncertainty," say researchers in a new study showing AI hallucinations are fundamental to the tech
www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

Will AI Bring More Student Disengagement? | Learning Curve If students are already prone to check out in school, it really doesn’t help to look over and see students secretly having ChatGPT do their work for them. The co-author of the new book on student dise...

Will AI Bring More Student Disengagement?

This just dropped - latest episode of Learning Curve podcast. I talked with Rebecca Winthrop, co-author of The Disengaged Teen - and a high school student giving her view on the pros and cons of AI for student motivation.

learningcurve.fm/episodes/wil...

What If College Teaching Was Redesigned With AI In Mind? | Learning Curve A former university president is trying to reimagine college teaching with AI in mind, and this year he released an unusual video that provides a kind of artist’s sketch of what that could look like. ...

Ep 2 of Learning Curve just dropped! This one looks at a new model for teaching with AI proposed by Paul LeBlanc, former president of SNHU, plus some reaction from longtime teaching expert Maha Bali. Can AI bots be part of teaching w/o cutting off human connection?

learningcurve.fm/episodes/wha...

Trump wants to add jobs in manufacturing, but colleges are already having difficult recruiting and keeping up w/ companies’ fast-changing needs.

I traveled to Lorain County Community College to check out their efforts to sell students on manufacturing programs.

hechingerreport.org/colleges-str...

Learning Curve What does it mean to teach and learn in the age of generative AI? Join host Jeff Young as he talks with educators, tech leaders and students, aiming to cut through the hype and inform a conversation a...

I'm starting a podcast!

I'm focusing on AI and education, exploring what it means to teach and learn when chatbots and other generative AI can do work that was once thought to be uniquely human. The podcast is called Learning Curve and the first episode is up. learningcurve.fm

Protecting Your Campus in the AI Era From deepfakes that use professors’ voices to chatbots that turn against students with the very information they’ve provided, higher ed is increasingly vulnerable to nefarious, AI-powered cyberattacks...

My latest article for The Chronicle of Higher Ed - a look at AI and cybersecurity. Turns out profs are particularly prone to deepfake attacks because they often have samples of their image and voice on YouTube clips of them giving talks or online lecture videos.

www.chronicle.com/ci/insights/...

Your Campus Already Has AI—And That's the Problem If you teach on a college campus, you likely have access to a slew of generative AI tools or features that have been quietly embedded in applications you use each day.

The story of how generative AI arrived on college campuses is far more complicated and troubling than purchasing a single app, like ChatGPT. Updates in existing contacts don’t require a clearly defined decision making processes or go through shared governance
marcwatkins.substack.com/p/your-campu...

For Some Recent Graduates, the A.I. Job Apocalypse May Already Be Here

So is Gen AI already taking away white-collar jobs?

One expert I talked to from Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce says no, but this NYTimes column by ‪@kevinroose.com‬ argues that the job losses area already happening, and that new college grads are feeling it.

What do folks think?

UAE’s AI University Aims to Become Stanford of the Gulf Mohamed bin Zayed University of AI is focused on building an engineering pipeline, incubating homegrown startups, and hypercharging the region’s AI development

UAE’s AI University Aims to Become Stanford of the Gulf

"The UAE is on a mission to become a global player in AI. The country appointed the world’s first AI minister back in 2017, and mandated this month that all primary schools add AI-based topics like algorithmic bias and prompt engineering..."

Medicaid cuts could push more kids into unpaid family caregiving roles As state officials anticipate Medicaid funding cuts that could strip resources for those with disabilities and chronic health conditions, an army of unpaid caregivers waits in the wings: children.

Here's a must read from Leah Fabel:

Medicaid cuts could push more kids into unpaid family caregiving roles

"Young caregivers report more depression, anxiety, and stress than their peers. Their physical health tends to be worse, too." and their educational outcomes are greatly impacted.

Tufts student detained by US immigration authorities must be released, judge rules A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to release a Tufts University student from Turkey who has been held for over six weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention facility after she co-wrote an opinion piece criticizing her school's response to Israel's war in Gaza.

It seems like everyone has seen the video of Turkish PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk getting arrested on the street because of an op-ed she co-wrote for the campus newspaper criticizing the university's response to Israel's war in Gaza. After six weeks of detention, she is now free after a judge's order