The AI Round-up: College. Looks a little different.

The AI Round-up: Year 4, Issue 34

The rectangle of sadness. Have you heard of it?

It may be in your pocket. On your desk. In your bathroom. Hell, you may be reading this on it. Yep, it’s your smart phone.

And boy do I wish I could take credit for that line. I wish I could take credit for hearing that line firsthand. But I heard it at MAICON, as one of the speakers quoted comedian Hasan Minhaj in reference to one of the most impactful inventions of our lifetime.

I’m not sure if it’s because of the phone itself…or what’s ON the phone. But let’s start with the latter point. Specifically social media, 20-ish years after most mainstream platforms debuted.

We’re still trying to understand what social media has done to us. Which isn’t the purpose of this newsletter. But I like to look at it to see what we can learn from what it’s done to us. Specifically, if history is repeating itself again with how we’re using AI.

That’s why this article in Time jumped out to me (written by college student Alana Kaufman): How AI is Impacting College Students Like Me. Instead of guessing, listening to others talk about it…maybe we just listen to the students who are growing up IN it.

Do YOU remember ever having to wrestle with ethics and existence in this way: (from the article)

I think the biggest question I was asking myself is ‘do I want to spend my money on Laundry 101 or Euro Gyro?’ (I went to Kent State).

Why am I opening today’s newsletter with this? Because we are thinking so much about AI’s impact on us (and rightfully so) that we don’t have a hell of a lot of capacity left for what it means to others. And just like social media isolated so many (despite a promise of connection) I see AI doing the same.

This is our time. Our time to put more focus on our human skills and connections and preserve our agency instead of using it to train AI so it can take others. We’re at an interesting point…and whether we know it or not, we play a part in it.

Thanks for reading…let’s get to it.

The Good Stuff!

So. What is agentic AI?

Christopher Penn does what he does, outlining and explaining what agentic AI really is and how we should view its agency.

Your AI curious employees are your greatest asset in AI adoption. (HBR)

It’s time to empower those employees who have been experimenting, trying things on their personal accounts/personal time, keep talking to you about what they’re reading/hearing. Lean into what it is they can do for you…and your organization…as you start to think more critically about what your next steps are in AI literacy.

AI v. value billing. (Conor Grennan)

One of the best breakdowns I’ve seen when it comes to understanding AI’s impact on the ‘billable’ hour. Will it take a hit? Sure. We always see work find ways to be done faster. But does it diminish the value? That’s the question to be asking yourself regardless of how you ‘charge’ your customers.

Ethan Mollick has spoken. (Ethan Mollick)

On the election. Does AI play a part?

On the stock market. Does AI scale back?

On AI transformation in your organization. Which person are you?

Kevin Roose is AGI-pilled. Why aren’t you? (The Verge/Decoder)

Kevin spoke about a lot of this at MAICON, as the speaker. In this podcast, host Nilay Patel asks him about his new book, new podcast and thoughts on AGI.

The Maybe Not-So-Good Stuff.

Is this the most important AI chart? (WSJ)

The smart kids are tracking RSI – or ‘recursive self-improvement’. This was a topic at MAICON and has been talked about in recent blogs, podcasts, etc. as the number that needs our attention.

Basically, how fast is AI building better AI.

CISOs—your budgets are about to get bigger in 2027. (a16z)

Is that a good thing? Eh, probably not from the perspective of ‘oh shit, WHY is my budget getting bigger?’. But, yes, a good thing from the perspective of ‘we need to be ready for all of these new AI cyber threats’.

AI companies want to buy your work files. (Wired)

Has anyone been approached by a company wanting to buy your old documents, proposals, emails to train AI? I have. And you know…it’s a little unsettling. Sure, they haven’t asked when they trained AI on my public content. But hey, at least now they’re asking. Will I sell? Would you?

More importantly, do we all need to start writing something into our work ‘not for AI training use?’so people can’t sell it? Who owns ‘my’ work? The company? You? Your customers?

My head hurts.

The Future of the Firm.

OpenAI released a long blog about the models it foresees companies adopting as AI integration becomes more normalized.

It struggles to prove its underlying point (workers are fine…no, no, really) but I did appreciate the truth-based approach it was taking to finally acknowledging what this could mean for the future of work. (Even if it’s written in a ‘isn’t this cool!?’ fashion.)

Data centers. Ok, we get it. You don’t want them.

If you missed it, turns out people across the U.S. don’t seem to want data centers in their towns. So what do you do next if you’re an AI company?

Rebrand!

People may not like data centers. But they’ll looooveee….compute campuses! (The Hill)

The Nopes.

1. 3 people use AI to steal $129M by impersonating lawyers. (CBS News)
2. How AI is enabling faster, more dangerous cyber war. (Axios)
3. ‘Fear’ of AI job loss, white collar workers are quitting. (The Guardian)
4. Who supervises self-building AI? (Shelly Palmer)

Live life, love life,

Ben

As a reminder, this is a round-up of the biggest stories, often hitting multiple newsletters I receive/review. The sources are many … which I’m happy to read on your behalf. Let me know if there’s one you’d like me to track or have questions about a topic you’re not seeing here.