A weekly collection of education-related news from around the web.

Topic: tech/AI: industry development

A.I. Updates

    • Notion
    • 12/22/25
    “My co-founder Simon was what we call a 10× programmer, but he rarely writes code these days. Walk by his desk and you’ll see him orchestrating three or four AI coding agents at once, and they don’t just type faster, they think, which together makes him a 30-40× engineer. He queues tasks before lunch or […]
    • New York Times
    • 10/02/25
    “After we spent less than a day with the app, what became clear to us was that Sora had gone beyond being an A.I.-video generation app. Instead, it is, in effect, a social network in disguise; a clone of TikTok down to its user interface, algorithmic video suggestions and ability to follow and interact with […]
    • New York Times
    • 09/30/25
    “Dr. Agarwal is among more than 20 researchers who have left their work at Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other big A.I. projects in recent weeks to join a new Silicon Valley start-up, Periodic Labs. Many of them have given up tens of millions of dollars — if not hundreds of millions — to make […]
    • Guardian
    • 08/15/25
    “While traditional kickboxing comes with the risk of blood, sweat and serious head injuries, the competitors in Friday’s match at the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing faced a different set of challenges. Balance, battery life and a sense of philosophical purpose being among them… And while robots jumping and kicking looks impressive, mundane […]
    • Microsoft
    • 04/23/25
    “As a result, a new organizational blueprint is emerging, one that blends machine intelligence with human judgment, building systems that are AI-operated but human-led. Like the Industrial Revolution and the internet era, this transformation will take decades to reach its full promise and involve broad technological, societal, and economic change. To help leaders understand how […]
    • Stanford
    • 04/07/25
    “In 2024, the proportion of survey respondents reporting AI use by their organizations jumped to 78% from 55% in 2023. Similarly, the number of respondents who reported using generative AI in at least one business function more than doubled—from 33% in 2023 to 71% last year.”

CHARACTER

LEARNING SCIENCE

    • Noema
    • 09/03/24
    “Hybridization of life with technology is scary when you can’t quite lose the unspoken belief that current humans are somehow an ideal, crafted, chosen form (including their lower back pain, susceptibility to infections and degenerative brain disease, astigmatism, limited life span and IQ, etc.).”

SUSTAINABILITY

TECH/AI

TECH/AI: ETHICS AND RISK

TECH/AI: INDUSTRY DEVELOPMENT

TECH/AI: SOCIAL

TECH/AI: USES AND APPLICATIONS

    • New York Times
    • 08/13/25
    ““It’s not surprising that early A.I. efforts are falling short,” said Mr. McAfee, who is a founder of Workhelix, an A.I.-consulting firm. “Innovation is a process of failing fairly regularly.””
    • The Verge
    • 12/03/24
    “They never thought they were the type of person to sign up for an AI companion, by which they meant the type of person you might already be picturing: young, male, socially isolated. I did speak to people who fit that description, but there were just as many women in their 40s, men in their […]

Issues

Every week I send out articles I encounter from around the web. Subject matter ranges from hard knowledge about teaching to research about creativity and cognitive science to stories from other industries that, by analogy, inform what we do as educators. This breadth helps us see our work in new ways.

Readers include teachers, school leaders, university overseers, conference organizers, think tank workers, startup founders, nonprofit leaders, and people who are simply interested in what’s happening in education. They say it helps them keep tabs on what matters most in the conversation surrounding schools, teaching, learning, and more.

Peter Nilsson

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