As the senior vice president for consumer experience at Mondelēz International, Jonathan Halvorson helps guide the marketing campaigns for some of the world’s most well-loved snacks. Cadbury, Toblerone, Oreo, and Ritz are just a few on the roster. These days, Halvorson and his team are turning toward generative AI to find new ways to work smarter, reach more consumers, and help their products stand out in the crowd. While AI has been a game changer for them, he said, it takes human ingenuity to get the most out of a technology that is available to everyone — including competitors.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
AI as an Educational Ally: Innovative Strategies for Classroom Integration - Lisa Delgado Brown, Faculty Focus
Let’s confront the reality: students are using AI. According to a recent survey by Anthology (2023), 60% of students in the US have used AI tools, with 10% reporting weekly use 38% using them monthly. Instead of fearing AI, we should actively explore its potential in the classroom, emphasizing how it can enrich the learning experience. One effective strategy is to intentionally redesign classroom activities and assignments to incorporate AI tools. This allows educators to gain insights from students’ interactions with these technologies, fostering a deeper understanding of their applications and promoting ethical use. Here is one example from an AI reflective assignment that I tried out in my classes, followed by some other actionable strategies you may want to try out.
Using AI to predict student success in higher education - Denisa Gándara and Hadis Anahideh, Brookings
As AI becomes more accessible, higher education is increasingly turning to prediction algorithms to inform decisions and target support services. Prediction algorithms can underestimate success for Black and Hispanic students, disproportionately predicting failure erroneously, even when those students ultimately graduate. Bias-mitigation techniques built into model training are more effective than those applied to the data beforehand, but no single method eliminates disparities.
Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Urgent Need for AI Literacy - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
As we approach May, alarm bells are ringing for all colleges and universities to ensure that AI literacy programs have been completed by learners who plan to enter the job market this year and in the future. The rapid advent of AI capabilities, coupled with the developing economic pressures worldwide, have led to a surge in employers seeking to reduce operating expenses through widespread use of generative and agentic AI to augment, and in some cases, replace, humans in their workforce. This follows last year’s warning from the World Economic Forum that said, “AI skills are becoming more important than job experience.”
OpenAI says newest AI model can ‘think with images,’ understanding diagrams and sketches - Hayden Field, CNBC
OpenAI released its newest AI model that it said can understand uploaded images like whiteboards, sketches and diagrams, even if they’re low quality. The company called o3 its most advanced model yet and also released a smaller model called o4-mini. OpenAI is racing to stay ahead in generative AI as competitors including Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI ramp up development.
Introducing: The world's fastest Conversational Video Interface for developers - Julia Szatar, Tavus
At Tavus, our mission is to make digital experiences as immersive as human face-to-face interactions by empowering people to leverage their likeness at scale online. Back in March, we launched our breakthrough Digital Replica model, Phoenix, and Video Generation on our developer platform. Today, we’re thrilled to announce: the Conversational Video Interface. Developers can now build rich, realistic, real-time conversational experiences with digital twins on the Tavus platform. Try talking to Carter in our live demo on our homepage.
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
"The Industry Reacts to o3 and o4!" - Matthew Berman, YouTube
The video discusses the industry's reaction to the release of O3 and O4 AI models:
- O3's High Intelligence: O3 is highlighted for achieving a near-genius level IQ score (136), surpassing competitors like Gemini 2.5 Pro. It shows strong capabilities in iterative tool use and discovering new information [00:09, 01:05].
- O4 Mini's Tool Use: O4 mini demonstrates advanced reasoning by incorporating tool calls (like writing and executing Python code) directly into its problem-solving process [02:58].
- Significant Innovation: O3 is considered a major advancement in AI, comparable in impact to ChatGPT, especially regarding its utility and ability to handle complex tasks [03:37].
- Overall: The release represents a significant step forward in AI, showcasing impressive reasoning, tool use, and problem-solving skills, although some limitations remain [15:03].
(summary provided in part by Gemni 2.5 Pro)
Southeast Minnesota colleges are contending with a new kind of fraud: Ghost students - Matthew Stolle, Post Bulletin
Last year, officials at Minnesota State College Southeast were heartened by a gratifying trend. Spring enrollment numbers were up — way up. It was a mirage. Many of the students weren’t real. They were “ghost students.” In all, the college ended up dropping 84 fake students — all believed to be part of a scam to access and abscond with financial aid money. The ploy represents a new kind of enrollment fraud that U.S. and area colleges are facing. The fraudsters, using stolen or fabricated identities, pose as online learners. Often targeting community and technical colleges, where digital learning comprises a significant portion of enrollment, these “learners” take advantage of the asynchronous nature of online learning.
Who is the assistant-human or artificial intelligence? - State-Times
In today’s time, every industry is using AI extensively so that their work becomes easier and it is happening but is it really for the well-being of humans because AI has taken over the work of many people? According to research from America, about 37% of US adults believe that AI will result in fewer opportunities, while older generations express pessimism and worry about potential skill replacement. They are more inclined to embrace AI as a collaborative partner rather than viewing it as a threat. AI is a big concern. It potentially impacts job security in every industry and will primarily replace entry-level jobs. To avoid this job-eating disaster, institutions should adequately prepare students for the challenges and opportunities presented by AI. Institutions should incorporate more training on AI and its implications into their curriculum because we should make AI our assistant and not become its assistant.
Monday, April 28, 2025
Many College Degrees Are Now Useless—Here’s What Is Worth Your Money - Cheryl Robinson, Forbes
TikTok millionaires and AI tools make college look like an overpriced relic, so it’s fair to ask: are degrees even worth it anymore? The answer? Some absolutely are—and some absolutely are not. The key is relevance. If you invest four (or more) years of your life and tens of thousands of dollars, you better make sure you’re walking away with something more than just a piece of paper and a student loan the size of a mortgage. As the value of a four-year degree is increasingly questioned, public perception is shifting to match: nearly half of Americans believe it’s less important for securing a well-paying job than it was two decades ago according to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey. Major companies like Apple, IBM and Hilton have eliminated degree requirements for many roles, opting instead to evaluate candidates based on their experience and practical skills. A 2022 study by the Burning Glass Institute revealed that millions of job postings have dropped bachelor’s degree requirements, and a 2020 analysis found a similar trend for positions like production supervisors.
We tried the ChatGPT 'reverse location search' trend, and it's scary - Tim Marcin, Mashable
ChatGPT users have discovered that the popular AI chatbot can serve as a reverse-location search tool. In other words, you can show ChatGPT a picture, and it can pretty reliably tell you where it was taken. The trend is inspired by the online game Geoguessr, where folks try to figure out a location from a simple web image. We decided to put this new ChatGPT trend to the test, and the results were downright scary. Mashable tech reporters prompted ChatGPT to play a geo-guessing game and uploaded a series of photos. Even when ChatGPT identified the wrong location, it still got pretty close (such as identifying a rooftop hotel in Buffalo instead of Rochester). In other cases, it suggested specific addresses.
A guide to navigating growing economic uncertainty - McKinsey
Tariffs and trade barriers are expanding rapidly, ushering in the first major global economic shock since the COVID-19 pandemic. Combined with inflationary pressures, recession risks, and volatile macroeconomic cycles, the current landscape is anything but predictable. “Given the web of interdependencies that govern global trade, business leaders realize that they can’t define and prepare for the path forward using traditional forecasting and planning methods,” write McKinsey’s Cindy Levy, Mihir Mysore, Shubham Singhal, and Varun Marya. “A nerve center can help companies move from a focus on immediate tactical responses to more comprehensive plans balanced across time frames.” Explore these insights to help make sense of the growing economic complexity—and chart a more confident path forward.
Sunday, April 27, 2025
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash introduces ‘thinking budgets’ that cut AI costs by 600% when turned down - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
Google has launched Gemini 2.5 Flash, a major upgrade to its AI lineup that gives businesses and developers unprecedented control over how much “thinking” their AI performs. The new model, released today in preview through Google AI Studio and Vertex AI, represents a strategic effort to deliver improved reasoning capabilities while maintaining competitive pricing in the increasingly crowded AI market.
The model introduces what Google calls a “thinking budget” — a mechanism that allows developers to specify how much computational power should be allocated to reasoning through complex problems before generating a response. This approach aims to address a fundamental tension in today’s AI marketplace: more sophisticated reasoning typically comes at the cost of higher latency and pricing.
AI has grown beyond human knowledge, says Google's DeepMind unit - Tiernan Ray, ZDnet
"Incredible new capabilities will arise once the full potential of experiential learning is harnessed," write DeepMind scholars David Silver and Richard Sutton in the paper, Welcome to the Era of Experience.The two scholars are legends in the field. Silver most famously led the research that resulted in AlphaZero, DeepMind's AI model that beat humans in games of Chess and Go. Sutton is one of two Turing Award-winning developers of an AI approach called reinforcement learning that Silver and his team used to create AlphaZero. The approach the two scholars advocate builds upon reinforcement learning and the lessons of AlphaZero. It's called "streams" and is meant to remedy the shortcomings of today's large language models (LLMs), which are developed solely to answer individual human questions.
How Tech Giants Are Tackling AGI Safety Risks - Forward Future
In a world where the boundaries between human and artificial intelligence are becoming increasingly blurred, we are on the cusp of a technological revolution that could fundamentally change our lives. Artificial General Intelligence—AI systems that are at least as capable as humans in almost all cognitive areas or, depending on the definition, an autonomous AI agent that can generate $100b in profit—could become a reality in the coming years. According to Google DeepMind, “equipped with agentic capabilities, it could enable AI to understand, think, plan and act autonomously.
Saturday, April 26, 2025
Workforce 2025: Power Shifts -The shifting dynamics between employer control and employee expectations are powering up the future of work - Korn Ferry
When companies need to cut labor costs, middle managers are often the first in line for layoffs. And that tactic seems to be affecting many workers this year. In our 2025 Korn Ferry Workforce survey, 41% of employees told us that their organization has slashed management layers. 43% of employees say their leaders aren't aligned, and 37% say the lack of managers has left them feeling directionless.
The impact is more than just a slimmed-down organizational chart with fewer managers. Losing that management layer can quickly lead to employee confusion and dissatisfaction, ultimately affecting productivity. 43% of employees say their leaders aren't aligned, and 37% say the lack of managers has left them feeling directionless.
Navigating tariffs with a geopolitical nerve center - Cindy Levy, Mihir Mysore, Shubham Singhal, and Varun Marya - McKinsey
Given the web of interdependencies that govern global trade, business leaders realize that they can’t define and prepare for the path forward using traditional forecasting and planning methods. What they need is a geopolitical nerve center—a central hub that tracks new developments in global trade, plans across several horizons, and guides decision-makers on ways to mitigate the impact of the expanding tariffs and trade controls.
Developers can now start building with Gemini 2.5 Flash. - Google Keyword
We’re excited to roll out an early version of Gemini 2.5 Flash today in preview in the Gemini API via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI. Building upon the popular foundation of 2.0 Flash, this new version delivers a major upgrade in reasoning capabilities, while still prioritizing speed and cost. Our new 2.5 Flash model has an amazing performance to cost ratio, putting it on the pareto frontier. It is our first fully hybrid reasoning model, allowing developers to turn thinking on or off, and set thinking budgets to optimize the balance between quality, cost, and latency. Even with thinking off, developers can maintain the speed of 2.0 Flash and improve performance. We can’t wait to see how you put Gemini 2.5 Flash to work in your apps, and to get your feedback. Gemini 2.5 Flash is also available to everyone in the Gemini app, and can be used with new features like Canvas, an interactive space for refining your documents and code.
Friday, April 25, 2025
It’s all about connection, support, and lifting each other up. - Amy Shaiman, EDUCAUSE
This YouTube short discusses the significance of mentorship within higher education. The speaker emphasizes supporting team members horizontally and offering help to superiors when suitable [00:07]. Additionally, the value of community feedback for gaining an external perspective on different situations is acknowledged [00:42].
OpenAI launches o3 and o4-mini, AI models that ‘think with images’ and use tools autonomously - Michael Nuñez, Venture Beat
OpenAI launched two groundbreaking AI models today that can reason with images and use tools independently, representing what experts call a step change in artificial intelligence capabilities. The San Francisco-based company introduced o3 and o4-mini, the latest in its “o-series” of reasoning models, which it claims are its most intelligent and capable models to date. These systems can integrate images directly into their reasoning process, search the web, run code, analyze files, and even generate images within a single task flow.
Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud - Jagmeet Singh, TechCrunch
Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend a “vast majority” of ad accounts before they ever served an ad. Last year, Google launched over 50 LLM enhancements to improve its safety enforcement mechanisms across all its platforms.
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