The greatest of all mistake
/It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. -Sydney Smith
ideas that challenge / comfort / inspire
20 Recent Articles about Students Using AI
/Teachers Worry About Students Using A.I. But They Love It for Themselves. – New York Times
Gen Z Wary of AI Effects, Wants More Guidance From School, Work – Inside Higher Ed
Students Found Out AI Will Help Read Their Names at Commencement. Protest Ensued. – Chronicle of Higher Ed
China makes AI education mandatory in schools starting Sept 1, 2025 – Asaase Radio
Why parents are teaching their gen Alpha kids to use AI – The Guardian
What Students Are Saying About A.I. and the Future of Work – New York Times
State Dept. to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who appear "pro-Hamas" – Axios
ChatGPT for students: learners find creative new uses for chatbots – Nature
Assessing AI-Driven Approaches to Student Mental Health – Dartmouth
After offering AI detection, Turnitin offers new AI Product – Business Insider
How To Help College-Bound Students Build AI Literacy – Forbes
AI Anxiety Can writing at Harvard coexist with new technologies? – Harvard Magazine
Chegg bets big on the AI that nearly broke it – Semafor
Minnesota Grad Student Expelled for Allegedly Using AI Is Suing School - Gozmodo
Half of institution doesn’t grant students access to AI tools – Inside Higher Ed
Teachers warn AI is impacting students' critical thinking – Axios
Are Students Cheating When They Use A.I. for Their Schoolwork? – New York Times
Figuring out the Flip Side
/Artists should engage in debates about AI, not about how to stop this – that's folly – but about how to figure out the right monetization mechanism for this new world. Just as Google created a new economy based around the notion of links and clicks, paid for by new forms of advertising, these AI tools are already creating a new economy around creation and information and delegation (and likely every other “ion”, eventually).
People are increasingly paying for such newfangled tools and services, which is great, as that probably wouldn’t have been the case 20 years ago, when the rails weren’t yet in place. Now to figure out the flip side: how to get people paid for helping to power such things. – MG Siegler writing in Spyglass
The Moment You Feel
/Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. -ee cummings
14 Articles about AI & Coding
/Making AI-generated code more accurate in any language – MIT
10 No-Code AI Agents to Build Apps in 2025 – AI Agents
There is no Vibe Engineering - SerCe's blog
The Decline of Stack Overflow - Tomaž Weiss
Not all AI-assisted programming is vibe coding – Simon Willison
Not a Coder? With A.I., Just Having an Idea Can Be Enough. – New York Times
Google launches AI-powered coding for free – here’s how to try it – Tom’s Guide
The Career Ladder for Software Engineers Is Collapsing - Business Insider
How to keep AI hallucinations out of your code – InfoWorld
The End of Programming as We Know It – O’Reilly
The future belongs to idea guys who can just do things – Geoffrey Huntley
AI Killed The Tech Interview. Now What? – Karen Arraway
Sam Altman says students should master AI tools the way his generation learned to code – Business Insider
You can now download the source code that sparked the AI boom – ArshTechnica
AI Definitions: Transformers
/Transformers – A 2017 Google research paper first discussed the deep learning architecture known as transformers. The major AI models (including Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini and GPT-4) are built using these neural networks. Previously, recurrent neural networks (RNNs) processed data sequentially—one word at a time, in the order in which the words appear. Then, an “attention mechanism” was added so the model could consider the relationships between words. When transformers came along, they advanced this process by analyzing all the words in a given body of text at the same time rather than in sequence. Transformers made it possible to create higher-quality language models that could be trained more efficiently and with more customizable features. A troubling downside to transformers is their need for ever increasing power demands. This is why some researchers are looking for alternatives like test-time training (TTT).
More AI definitions here.
12 Things People are Trying to Get AI to Do
/An AI-powered tool for identifying and monitoring the critically endangered species – Data Innovation
Testing smart heat pumps that use AI to run more efficiently – Energy Live News
Thanks to Nvidia, AI Will Soon Take Your Order at Taco Bell and Pizza Hut - Wall Street Journal
The 2025 AI Index Report - Stanford
What's behind the push for AI in home appliances? – NPR
AI is coming to skin cancer detection – Washington Post
AI Agents Are a Moment of Truth for Tech – Wall Street Journal
The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’ – New York Times
AI ‘wingmen’ bots to write profiles and flirt on dating apps – The Guardian
How AI Can Protect Vital Pipelines and Cables Deep in the Ocean - Wall Street Journal
Amazon testing an AI dubbing system to translate content into other languages – Engadget
Having AI Mock Up An Old Game Is Not The Same As Preserving It – Tech Dirt
We Should Ask
/If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (April 23 is World Book Day)
Emotional Support Punctuation
/“The em dash is such a powerful writing tool that also carries great subtlety to it,” said Aileen Gallagher, a journalism professor at Syracuse University. “The idea that it is an indicator of soulless, dead AI-generated writing is really upsetting to me. Moniza Hossain, a children’s author based in Britain, called the em dash her “emotional support punctuation mark.” -Washington Post
What’s our job?
/Last year, I sat in a faculty meeting while a guest lecturer gleefully explained how they had used AI to design their class, craft PowerPoint presentations, and develop exams. At the end of the presentation, a colleague leaned over and asked, “Then what’s our job?” I have thought long and hard about that question. If faculty hope to survive, much less prosper, in the age of AI, they need to come up with a compelling answer to that question: “What’s our job?” -Scott Latham writing in the Chronicle of Higher Ed
Driving in a Snowstorm to see a Game
/Two avid sports fans plan to travel 40 miles to see a basketball game. One of them paid for his ticket: the other was on his way to purchase a ticket when he got one free from a friend. A blizzard is announced for the night of the game. Which of the two ticket holders is more likely to brave the blizzard to see the game?
The answer is immediate: we know that the fan who paid for his ticket is more likely to drive. Mental accounting provides the explanation. We assume that both fans set up an account for the game they hoped to see. Missing the game will close the accounts with a negative balance. Regardless of how they came by their ticket, both will be disappointed – but the closing balance is distinctly more negative for the one who bought a ticket and is now out of pocket as well as deprived of the game. Because staying home is worse for this individual, he is more motivated to see the game and therefore more likely to make the attempt to drive into a blizzard.
The emotions that people attach to the state of their mental accounts are not acknowledged in standard economic theory. An Econ would realize that the ticket has already been paid for and cannot be returned. Its cost is “sunk” and the Econ would not care whether he had bought the ticket to the game or got it from a friend (if Econs have friends). To implement this rational behavior, (the fan) would have to be aware of the counterfactual possibility. “Would I still drive into this snowstorm if I had gotten the ticket free from a friend?” It takes an active disciplined mind to raise such a difficult question.
Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman
23 Articles about AI & Academic Scholarship
/AI bots are overwhelming some journals – C&EN
AI research summaries ‘exaggerate findings’, study warns – Times Higher Ed
A Scanning Error Created a Fake Science Term—Now AI Won’t Let It Die - Gizmodo
AI is transforming peer review — and many scientists are worried – Nature
A Shortcut or a Level Up? Harvard Faculty Debate Generative AI in Academia – The Crimson
Publishers Embrace AI as Research Integrity Tool – Inside Higher Ed
AI tools are spotting errors in research papers: inside a growing movement – Nature
AI search summaries cannibalise academic publishers’ web traffic – Times Higher Ed
An academic paper written by AI passed peer review — but it’s a bit more nuanced than that – Tech Crunch
Trying to Write an Academic Paper with LLM Assistance – Scholarly Kitchen
Academic publishers warn against AI copyright plans - Research Professional News – Research Professional News
AI detectors are poor western blot classifiers: a study of accuracy and predictive values – PeerJ
Will AI jeopardize science photography? – Nature
Can AI Solve the Peer Review Crisis? - IZA Institute of Labor Economics
Publishers need to provide guidelines on use of AI in research, says Wiley – Chemistry World
ChatGPT to help peer review scientific studies in UK Government trial – Telegraph
Generative artificial intelligence usage guidelines for scholarly publishing: a cross-sectional study of medical journals – BMC Medicine
Retractions Increase 10-Fold in 20 Years - and Now AI is Involved – AAPS News
A viral video reveals how an AI-generated mistake led to nearly two dozen flawed research papers – Economic Times
Is AI the new research scientist? Not so, according to a human-led study. – University of Florida
The Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Academic Writing and Publishing Papers – Research Gate
AI Definitions: Generative engine optimization (GEO)
/Generative engine optimization (GEO) – This is the process of optimizing your website’s content to boost its visibility in AI-driven search engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot and Google AI). As SEO helps brands increase visibility on search engines (Google, Microsoft Bing) while GEO is all about how brands appear on AI-driven platforms. There is overlap between the goals of GEO and traditional SEO. Both SEO and GEO use keywords and prioritize engaging content as well as conversational queries and contextual phrasing. Both consider how fast a website loads, mobile friendliness, and prefer technically sound website. However, while SEO is concerned with metatags and links in response to user queries, GEO is about quick, direct responses from synthesizes content out of multiple sources.
More AI definitions here.
Create a life
/Create a life for yourself that leaves room to do the things that you love.
25 Webinars this Week about AI, Journalism & Media
/Tue, April 22 - On/Off The Record with...Ross Coulthart
What: A candid chat about his investigative reporting on UFO/UAP disclosures and why mainstream media is/isn't covering it.
Who: Ross Coulthart, special correspondent and investigative journalist for NewsNation.
When: 6 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Frontier Journalists' Network
Tue, April 22 - Introduction to ChatGPT
What: An introduction to ChatGPT designed for beginners. Only a free ChatGPT account is required to follow along.
Who: Lois Newman, Customer Enablement at Open AI and Mohammed Husain, OpenAI Solutions Engineer.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: OpenAI Academy
Tue, April 22 - How I have built up my resilience as a freelance journalist
What: Tips about how to build up resilience as a freelance journalist. Aimed at both experienced and inexperienced freelancers.
Who: Donna Ferguson, a multiple award-winning freelance journalist who is on the committee of Women in Journalism.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: £20 for non-members
Sponsor: Women in Journalism
Tue, April 22 - Learning from and Interacting with your AI-Coach
What: We’ll explore how AI coaches provide real-time feedback, adaptive learning experiences, and provide anytime/anywhere support right in your pocket or desktop in an action-first format. Discover why AI-powered coaching is transforming the way professionals develop critical skills through an action-first approach to offering personalized guidance, instant feedback, and “always on” practice environments. Learn how AI can simulate real-world interactions, helping you refine communication, problem-solving, and presentation techniques.
Who: Karl Kapp, Ed.D. Director, Institute for Interactive Technologies, Bloomsburg University; Corey Mustard Solutions Consultant, Centrical; Tammy Palazzo CEO and Co-Founder, Presentr
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
Tue, April 22 - What is Journalism For?
What: A discussion of Jon Allsop’s latest book, 'What is Journalism For?' It examines key concepts that constitute journalism’s role: good judgement, concern for truth and critical scrutiny of one or more communities. The author also considers the relationship between journalism and activism; whether journalists should aspire to change the world and whether they can be seen as champions of democracy.
Who: Journalist and author Jon Allsop
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Press Freedom Center at the National Press Club
Wed, April 23 - Tracking the Story: Understanding and Reporting Disinformation Narratives
What: Why narratives matter more than isolated content — and how they shape public perception. How to monitor narrative ecosystems using digital tools, structured observation, and collaboration. How to identify key amplifiers, from influential accounts to coordinated networks. How to communicate narrative findings clearly, ethically, and accessibly to your audience. Concrete case studies demonstrating how these techniques work in the field.
Who: Members of The International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN) at Poynter
When: 9 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Poynter
Wed, April 23 - The Business of Art
What: In this session, you’ll learn about the fundamentals of starting your creative business, basic business planning, difference between being a sole proprietor or having a business entity, understanding legal and tax requirements, and income and expenses. It is an ideal webinar for applicants for the Creative Entrepreneur Accelerator program to start with their business plans.
Who: Erika Tapp Small Business Development Center Director at Temple University
When: 9 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Small Business Development Center, Temple University
Wed, April 23 - Emerging Social Media Trends
What: You’ll walk away with answers to these questions: What are the biggest social marketing trends? What are the Small Business social media trends on the horizon? And some tips and tricks to get started with some of these social networks, and marketing strategies and tactics
Who: Ray Sidney-Smith, CEO, W3 Consulting.
When: 10 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: $45
Sponsor: Small Business Development Center, Duquesne University
Wed, April 23 - Zero to Chatbot in 30 Minutes: Build Your First AI Learning Assistant in Half an Hour
What: In this practical session, you'll: Discover how chatbots enhance learning through social interaction and immediate feedback; Create your own working chatbot by following step-by-step guidance; Apply best practices and avoid common pitfalls; Develop a functional AI teaching assistant
Who: Margie Meacham Founder and Chief Freedom Officer, Learningtogo.ai.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
Wed, April 23 - Digital Literacy and Fandom Culture
What: In this webinar, we'll discuss how interest and participation in fandom culture contributes to the development of digital literacy skills. Drawing on principles of connected learning and the Virginia Tech Digital Literacy Framework, participants will explore how learning and identity development is present in and motivated by media discussions, fan art creation, fanfiction writing, and other fandom activities.
Who: Katlyn Griffin is a Teaching & Learning Engagement Librarian at Virginia Tech.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Media Education Lab
Wed, April 23 - Detecting AI-Generated Photos
What: Learn from the insights, checks and tools the AP uses to ensure images are not produced or manipulated with generative AI.
Who: Felipe Dana, news manager field innovation, Associated Press; Nadia Ahmed, news manager, UGC editor, Associated Press.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Associated Press
Wed, April 23 - The Business of Writing: What I Wish Every Writer Knew
What: Explore the business side of writing. Learn the essential skills every writer needs to navigate publishing, build a sustainable career, and make informed decisions about their work. Whether you're a seasoned author or just starting out, this session will provide practical advice to help you succeed in the ever-changing writing industry.
Who: Jane Friedman Published Author & Industry Expert.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Scrivener
Wed, April 23 - Stand Out on Social Media: Essential Tools, Content, and Design
What: Gain valuable insights and practical strategies to navigate these challenges and create content that truly engages and builds your brand. You’ll discover how to navigate the ever-evolving social landscape with proven strategies and essential tools; See how to identify your core content topics and plan around your goals Learn how to use storytelling and design to create content that engages.
Who: Stephanie French Senior Content Manager, Webinars, Constant Contact, Megan Bieber Social Media Manager, Constant Contact.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Constant Contact
Wed, April 23 - Generative AI in the Research and Publication Process
What: An overview of how GenAI has impacted different academic disciplines, a deep dive into how GenAI has changed the publishing process, and a set of resources to help your patrons understand this ever-changing landscape.
Who: Assistant managing editor of Library Trends, Evan Allgood.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Niche Academy
Wed, April 23 - Use AI Tools to Improve Delivery Skills: A Neuroscience Approach
What: Fascinating neuroscience insights into how AI and humans compare when it comes to coaching and skill-building. In this session, you’ll discover: The latest neuroscience findings on AI vs. human coaching for developing delivery skills Practical ways to combine the strengths of humans and AI in business settings How to integrate AI into your coaching and learning strategy without losing the human touch.
Who: Carmen Simon, Ph.D. Cognitive Neuroscientist, Founder of Enhancive.
When: 3 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Training Magazine Network
Wed, April 23 - Unlock Generative AI and Microsoft 365 Copilot for Impact
What: Learn how to achieve more goals using Microsoft’s AI assistant, Copilot: Discover the benefits of using Microsoft 365 Copilot for nonprofits and how to get started; Understand the basics of generative AI and its applications; Learn how to address AI policy, bias, ethics, and security concerns.
Who: Joshua Peskay RoundTable Technology; Kim Snyder, RoundTable Technology, VP of Data Strategy.
When: 3:30 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: TechSoup
Thu, April 24 - Achieve Digital Advertising Success in 2025
What: This workshop is for small business owners and marketing professionals who want to dominate online advertising and crush their 2025 goals. For beginners to intermediate-level campaign managers and media planners. We’ll cover: Online Marketing Channels; When to use one channel over another; Creating an offer/landing page; Building Campaigns Optimizing for Success Tracking Performance.
Who: RJ Huebert, HBT Digital Consulting.
When: 10 am, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Small Business Development Center, Duquesne University
Thu, April 24 - Data Visualization, Video/Photo & News Delivery
What: University-led reporting programs have access to extraordinary expertise and resources to do cutting edge journalism that tells complex stories with visual imagery. News-academic partnerships are also laboratories for innovation. How people access news is constantly changing, and while core journalism values remain the same, these programs are not about saving what once was but also finding what is next. What better place to do that than in a university?
Who: Amanda Bright from the University of Georgia leads a conversation with CCN’s data visualization engineer Ben Cooley.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: University of Vermont Center for Community News
Thu, April 24 - Jeanne’s Online Practices: Facebook Basics and Beyond
What: This online meeting is designed for small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to build a stronger, more effective presence on Facebook but aren’t sure where to start or what to improve. This hands-on session will cover the essentials of setting up and optimizing a business page, followed by tips and techniques to take your Facebook presence to the next level.
Who: Jeanne Best, Certified WEDnetPA Partner at PennWest Clarion University
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Small Business Development Center at PennWest Clarion University
Thu, April 24 - Supercharging Your Social Video Strategy
What: We'll explore innovative strategies to supercharge your social video efforts and elevate your social media presence, even with a lean team and limited resources. Discover how to gain momentum, upskill your newsroom colleagues, and effectively communicate your strategy to ensure alignment across your team. This session will provide you with practical tools and insights to elevate your social media initiatives.
Who: Julia Munslow, Senior Platform Editor of Visual Storytelling at the The Wall Street Journal.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: $20
Sponsor: Video Consortium
Thu, April 24 - A Journalist’s Guide to Healing the Divide: Media Mindfulness for Holistic Communication
What: This session provides practical ways to create content that bridges divides rather than deepening polarization. Through guided conversation and practical examples, this session aims to empower Catholic journalists to report with clarity, responsibility, and a commitment to healing the fractures in Church and society.
Who: Sr. Nancy Usselmann, FSP, is the Director of Pauline Media Studies; Sr. Hosea Rupprecht, FSP, is a Media Literacy specialist and associate director of Pauline Media Studies.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Catholic Media Association
Thu, April 24 - Impactful Storytelling Through Film & Video
What: Demystify storytelling and filmmaking as we offer insight into how to find stories inside your organization, and explore strategies for telling those stories yourself.
Who: Billy Silva, Director and Co-Founder of 76 Degrees West, Guille Isa, Director and Co-Founder of 76 Degrees West, Oliver Hartman, Head of Development at 76 Degrees West, Katherine Branch, Founder and CEO of Green Gate Marketing.
When: 2 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Green Gate Marketing
Thu, April 24 - Building and Fine-Tuning Custom GPT Models for Your Business
What: This training will guide participants through the process of building and fine-tuning custom GPT models tailored to specific business needs. Attendees will learn how to leverage pre-trained models, collect relevant data, and fine-tune models.
Who: Rachael Wolfe Creative Content Creator & Social Media Coordinator for the Small Business Development Center at Kutztown University.
When: 5 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: The mall Business Development Center at Kutztown University.
Fri, April 25 - Your AI Teaching Tool Kit: Q&A on Innovation in Education
What: This webinar is designed for professors looking to integrate AI into their classrooms. This session will explore practical tools, strategies, and real-world applications of AI in education. Whether you’re new to AI or looking to refine your approach, this webinar will equip you with the knowledge to stay ahead in the evolving education landscape.
Who: David Joyner Georgia Tech's College of Computing.
When: 1 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: Stukent
Sat, April 26 - Data Visualization, Mapping and Photojournalism
What: University-led reporting programs have access to extraordinary expertise and resources to do cutting-edge journalism that tells complex stories with visual imagery. In this discussion, we will provide an overview of ways to integrate more graphics and photojournalism into student reporting.
Who: University of Vermont Center for Community News data visualization engineer Ben Cooley and award-winning photo editor Deb Pastner.
When: 12 pm, Eastern
Where: Zoom
Cost: Free
Sponsor: University of Vermont Center for Community News
Loving the Real Person
/Christ did not, like a moralist, love a theory of good, but he loved the real man. He was not, like a philosopher, interested in the universally valid, but rather in that which is of help to the real and concrete human being. What worried him was not, like Kant, whether the "maxim of an action can become a principle of general legislation," but whether my action is at this moment helping my neighbor to become a man before God.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics
AI Definitions: Prompts
/Prompts - Instructions for an AI. It is the main way to steer the AI in a particular direction, indicate your intent, and give it a context to work in. It can be time-consuming if the task is complex.
More AI definitions here.
The Jobs that are Safer from AI
/What AI struggles with is not intellectual difficulty or specialized skills and knowledge, but with messy workflows. Jobs that require juggling multiple pieces of information, responding to changing environments, or unclear goals remain challenging for even the most advanced AI tools. Think about it. Secretaries and even the office intern are constantly multi-tasking with shifting priorities. AI can’t handle that chaos yet. Writers and programmers also have the added vulnerability of high freelancing rates. Companies can easily swap in AI for non-staff employees without HR getting involved. The more a job involves collaboration, co-operation, and a little bit of mess, the harder it is to automate. -John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times
17 Articles about AI & Ethics
/Is “ethical AI” an oxymoron? - Hidde
MIT study finds that AI doesn’t, in fact, have values – Tech Crunch
The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem – The Atlantic
AI transparency framework – UX Design
Dark Side of GenAI: Ethical Dilemmas Threatening Our Future – Analytics Insights
GenAI synthetic data create ethical challenges for scientists – PNAS
"Humans in the loop" make AI work, for now- Axios
Will AI jeopardize science photography? - Nature
Aligning AI with human values - MIT
Knowing less about AI makes people more open to having it in their lives – new research – The Conversation
Should we disclose our use of AI — and if so, does it signal intelligence or laziness? – UX Design
Logging off life but living on: How AI is redefining death, memory and immortality - The Conversation
AI is My Research & Writing Partner. Should I disclose it? – Wired
The case for a Hippocratic Oath for artificial intelligence – Global Gov Forum
What I’m Hearing in China This Week About Our Shared Future – New York Times
Why neglecting AI ethics is such risky business - and how to do AI right - ZDnet
New book delves into the ethical dilemmas of using AI – Durham University