Introduction: I had this conversation with Copilot a few minutes ago, curious about the possible connections between MOOCs and AI/chatbots. In education, it seems older theories don’t really vanish. Instead, they often reappear in fresh new clothes to define the latest fashions. So, how does AI meld with MOOCs to create the next step in ed tech? -js
JS: Good morning, Copilot. Please provide a succinct history of MOOCs, including key figures in their development, foundational theories, and a status timeline.
Introduction: I had another wide-ranging discussion with Gemini this morning, which began with a question on NATO’s reluctance to provide the degree of assistance Ukraine needs to oust Russia from the territories they’re occupying and branched into a number of probabilities: An independent Crimea? Ukraine emerging from this war as a powerful military presence in Europe? Peace leaving Ukraine between a rock and a hard place? And Ukraine becoming the Israel of Eastern Europe? -js
JS: Good morning, Gemini. NATO’s paralyzing reluctance to provide the kind of aid that Ukraine needs to oust Russia from its occupied territories seems to be based in its fear of Putin’s threat to escalate with nuclear weapons or attack the countries providing aid and, thus, force all NATO members to enter the conflict. Is this an accurate claim? If not, please enlighten me. If it’s accurate, share your researched opinion on the likelihood that Putin will follow through with his threat if NATO countries provide all the firepower Ukraine needs to turn the tide of the war and win back its territories. On another note, would Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continue if Putin were removed from his position? Or would the invasion collapse and all lands taken from Ukraine, including Crimea, be returned?
Introduction: On this quiet Sunday afternoon in humid Honolulu, I had another wide-ranging conversation with Gemini. I began as usual with a thought, this time about Moore’s Law and the progress of chip technology, and the conversation gradually flowed into other streams while maintaining the same general course. Come along for the ride. I had fun, and you might, too. -js
JS: Does Moore’s Law re the doubling of the number of components on a single silicon chip every two years account for the exponential growth of the speed of change? And does this growth impact its two-year time frame and doubling rate? Is Moore’s Law still viable today?
Introduction: In this article, I asked ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot to predict the outcome of the Inoue-Akhmadaliev fight on 14 Sep. 2025 and the Inoue-Nakatani fight tentatively scheduled for May 2026. Naoya Inoue is currently the undisputed super bantamweight champion and #2 in the pound-for-pound rankings. His record is 30 wins, 0 losses and draws, and 27 KOs. Murodjon Akhmadaliev is the WBA interim super bantamweight champion with a record of 14 wins, 1 loss, 0 draws, and 11 KOs. (Note that Akhmadaliev lost a split-decision, for the only loss in his career, to Marlon Tapales. Inoue subsequently KOʻd Tapales, who had been the WBA and IBF super bantamweight champion, to become undisputed. Junto Nakatani is the WBC, IBF, and Ring Magazine bantamweight champion with a record of 31 wins, 0 losses and draws, and 24 KOs. See the prompt at the end of this article. -js
ChatGPTʻs prediction
Here’s my in‑depth forecast for Inoue vs. Akhmadaliev (Sep 2025) and Inoue vs. Nakatani (May 2026)—based on records, styles, coaching camps, and analysis from respected observers.
Introduction:Claude and I collaborated on this short story. See the prompt at the end. -js
The Writing Path
Min-jun stared at the bus schedule on his phone, calculating arrival times for the third time that morning. The September heat still clung to Chicago’s suburbs, but inside his chest, everything felt cold. Today was the first day of English 100, and despite acing calculus and physics placement exams, this single three-credit course terrified him more than organic chemistry ever could.
The number 42 bus wheezed to a stop, and Min-jun climbed aboard with his overstuffed backpack. As suburban strip malls gave way to the sprawling campus of University of Illinois Chicago, he practiced introducing himself under his breath. “Hi, I’m Min-jun. I’m an engineering major.” Simple words, but they still felt clumsy on his tongue after all these years.
Introduction: I interviewed Gemini for this article. -js
JS: Hi, Gemini. A natural fit for AI and chatbots seems to be athletics, and I can’t help but think that athletes, coaches, and front offices alike are using them extensively to crunch the massive amounts of data that define and guide performance in nearly every aspect of a sport, especially in elite pro and college leagues. And what’s good for the top usually filters downward and begins to define success at lower levels such as high school. And where there’s fierce competition, betting is sure to follow, so I’m guessing that AI/chatbots are being used extensively by oddsmakers, bookies, and gamblers too. Am I correct on this? Using the latest 2025 data, gauge the growth of AI in these sectors and provide annotated references for your responses.
Introduction: The original title of this article was “A Chat About Metaphors for Chatbots.” We say thinking in similes, metaphors, and analogies is poetic, and it is, but it is also our natural way to “make sense” (hmm) of the world around us. We categorize things we encounter by gauging their similarity to other things, but we find that the less obvious the outer similarities, the greater the insights we gain. As I become familiar with chatbots, I’ve been searching for comparisons that resonate for me. I turned to ChatGPT for ideas. -js
Introduction: I had a wide-ranging chat with Perplexity today (25 July 2025) that revolved around U.S. STEM leadership in academia and industry with a powerful undercurrent of conservative US immigration policy trends and the probability of their continued expansion in the post-Trump era. Here’s the conversation in an interview format.
JS: I notice that many (most?) of the top AI executives seem to be from outside the US even when they’re associated with companies in the US. Is this true? Please explain why or why not, and share your thoughts re how this trend might play out in the coming years.
Introduction: I know that our chats may be used by chatbots “as training data” to improve how “the models behave, reason, and respond over time,” but I didn’t know whether that “data” includes the actual content of our messages. Here’s what I learned from a collaboration with ChatGPT:
Prompt: Do the chats users create actually have the potential to improve the database accessed by the chatbot? That is, do our chats contribute, in the short- and long-term, to the improvement of chatbots?
Introduction: I worked with ChatGPT on this article about a hypothetical college freshman struggling to pass a required writing course. See the prompt at the end of the article. -js
Prologue: The Boy with the Blinking Cursor
When Malik Thompson stepped onto the campus of Western Plains State University last August, he brought with him two duffel bags, a cracked iPhone, and a quiet but persistent fear: that he wasn’t cut out for college writing.
He had passed his high school English classes—barely—and had relied heavily on late-night cramming and the kindness of teachers who knew he was working two part-time jobs. But now he was in a required first-year composition course with a syllabus full of words like “rhetorical situation,” “synthesis,” and “MLA citation.” From day one, Malik felt like he was drowning in expectations he didn’t understand.
Introduction: Concerned about the timeliness of information Iʻve been receiving from chatbots, I collaborated with Copilot to come up with this list of the best search-augmented capabilities in the free versions of six chatbots. (See the prompt at the end of this article.) To stay current, they use search engines or APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to fetch the latest information; perform real-time web searches to retrieve fresh content; and analyze the results, summarize or cite them, and blend them into the conversation. In rank order, the top three are Perplexity, Gemini, and ChatGPT. See the charts and explanations below.
Introduction: This short story was written by Claude (Sonnet 4) in response to a prompt I created, which appears at the end of the story. The purpose is to provide an example of Chatbot reach at this point in time. Equally important purposes are to highlight the richness that Filipino-American culture adds to the nationʻs fabric and to spotlight the use of AI in the lives of teens. I’ll be publishing other short stories from time to time.
Maya Reyes-Santos woke up at 6:47 AM to the gentle chime of her phone’s alarm, three minutes before her actual wake-up time—a buffer she’d programmed to ease herself into consciousness. Her room was a careful curation of her dual identity: a wooden bahay kubo replica her Lola had sent from Cebu sat on her bookshelf next to her collection of Studio Ghibli figurines, while polaroids of her friends at last month’s homecoming dance were tucked into the frame of her vanity mirror alongside a small Santo Niño statue her mother insisted she keep for protection.
Introduction: The following is a transcript of a chat I had with Gemini in the late evening of 24 July 2025. Iʻm including it in its entirety to fit form to function, to demonstrate the give-and-take inherent in effective communication not only between human and chatbot but between any encoder and decoder. As I dive deeper into chatbots, Iʻm beginning to better understand the rhetorical context between human and AI, and not so surprisingly, itʻs basically no different than human-to-human interactions, and this mindset is arguably the first step toward successful chatbotting. -js
Introduction: I collaborated with ChatGPT on this article, and it suggested the titles “AI Drama Is the New Silicon Valley” and “Soap Opera:As the Algorithm Turns.” The AI talent wars have become a strategic battlefield, and high-profile executive moves are shaping the race for AI supremacy as much as the models themselves. Below is a rundown of the most consequential, controversial, or “juicy” executive shifts (2022–2025), highlighting the drama, strategic value, and ripple effects across OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Inflection, xAI, and others. (ChatGPT)
Prompt: In the race for AI supremacy, there seems to be a beehive of intrigue re executive movement among the competitive companies, with executives from one company moving to other companies etc. Can you provide a rundown of the juiciest movements based on their impact on the affected companies?
Introduction: Overwhelmed by the mishmash of players, companies, products, and services associated with chatbots, I collaborated with ChatGPT to develop a clarifying table. I hope this helps you as much as it does me. -js
Prompt: For chatbots such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Copilot, Pi, Poe, Perplexity, You.com, and DeepSeek, please identify the associated companies, major executives, and LLM engines.
Introduction: This article is a collaboration with Gemini this morning (23 July 2025). Future projections could be considered whimsy, but theyʻre a fun way to switch our headlights to high to see farther down the road to tomorrow. To raise the fun factor, I decided to concentrate all future UH students into a single hypothetical student, Keani. The prompts below describe the parameters given to Gemini. The purpose of this article is to present a clearer, more vivid picture of how AI might impact students entering the University of Hawaiʻi System in fall 2025. Hopefully, itʻll shed some light on how educators at all levels can better prepare for the next decade. Although the focus is on the UH System, the projection may generalize to other colleges in the US and the world. -js
Introduction: This article is a collaboration with ChatGPT. With the gigantic Air Jordan leaps we’re taking toward AI, we can’t help but wonder: Are people with special needs being neglected? Left behind? Or are we, as a society, making efforts to not only bring them along but developing innovative AI technology to address their needs? Perhaps the heart of the question is: Are we doing enough?
The following ChatGPT response is a recomposition, combining sections of the original raw responses from this afternoon with sections from the revised. I had asked for a report that combined the separate responses in paragraphs instead of outline format, and I specifically asked for “fluid and coherent” transitions, but this instruction turned into 60-grit sandpaper for some of the sections, removing the bumps and splinters that made the original text readable and dynamic.
As a result, sections of the revised text turned out to be too smooth and lifeless, having lost the raw character that gave them zing. So I cut and pasted ChatGPT’s original and revised outputs into a more lively whole. I did some reorganizing for fluency but left the text more or less intact. Takeaway: With chatbot instructions, we have to be careful about what we ask for. We might just get it. -js
Introduction: I collaborated with nine different chatbots to come up with a list of college professors who are using them in their courses in exemplary ways. The purpose was to provide readers with concrete examples of chatbot use by professors in their courses. These examples, hopefully, will generate interest among educators to integrate AI strategies in classrooms.
A secondary purpose was to spotlight professors who are actively applying chatbots in their courses. They’re leading the way into the AI Century (2025-2075) and deserve recognition. I’m sure the chatbots have missed dozens if not hundreds of other professors who should have been on this list of 49. If you happen to be one or know of others, please let me know in the comments section attached to this article.
I asked each chatbot to identify ten. I ended up with 49 professors (teams were counted as one). Five appeared in two lists, and one appeared in three (Professor Ashok Goel, Georgia Institute of Technology). I eliminated items in lists that omitted professor names. I eliminated an entire list because the chatbot failed to include information requested in the prompt. One chatbot listed only two professors.
Introduction: Yesterday and this morning, I’ve been chatting with ChatGPT re OpenAI’s power structure and its status as both a nonprofit and for-profit, focusing on its mission, which includes the statement “avoid enabling uses that would … unduly concentrate power.” I asked the chatbot to write an essay that covers our broad discussion, and I’m publishing it below pretty much as submitted. (I’ve added yellow highlights.) Since ChatGPT is an OpenAI service, I realize the potential conflict, but I’m proceeding with the intent to provide information that may be useful to readers, with the caveat to remain open and objective at the same time, i.e., to separate fact from opinion while gathering insights into arguably the most powerful force in AI and the reliability of chatbots in general.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with OpenAI or any of its partners. This article reflects my independent research and perspective, and is not endorsed, reviewed, or influenced by OpenAI in any way. -js
Prompt: Please provide a 2000-word summary of our chat, thus far, on OpanAI’s nonprofit and for-profit balance and its mission statement: “avoid enabling uses that would … unduly concentrate power.” Use a paragraph, essay instead of outline or bulleted format, and keep the tone conversational and informal rather than technical. Feel free to introduce new information to enhance the fluency and coherence of this paper. Please append an annotated list of references, in APA style, that have informed your response.
Introduction: For this article, I collaborated with six chatbots: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity, and Pi to identify the college president most successful in advocating AI.
Prompt #1 (open-ended): Please identify the one college president in the country who is currently succeeding at doing the most to promote and apply AI at their institution. Describe this person in detail, providing concrete support for your selection. Use a paragraph and conversational style instead of a bulleted outline. Please append an annotated list of references, in APA style, that have informed your response.
The results for prompt #1:
Darryll J. Pines, Connie Ledoux Book, Ross Gittell, Joseph E. Aoun, José Luis Cruz Rivera
Introduction: For a better grasp of the advancements in GPT-4, I’ve asked ChatGPT to explain, in language aimed at 10th-grade high school students, the critical differences between GPT-3.5 (current free version) and GPT-4 (paid version). Keep in mind that I have been and am using the free GPT-3.5 version in all my articles on chatbots — along with other free chatbots such as Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity.
To clarify the explanations, I’ve asked ChatGPT to provide actual examples of how 10th graders might apply these advanced features to real-world learning activities in typical courses such as English, Math, History, Art, and Science.
As this conversation progressed, I realized the power of chatbots in developing curricula and lessons. I’m sure many if not most educators are already making use of this potential. Along the same lines, students could use chatbots to plan their school assignments and projects. This article focuses on high school students, but I believe the ideas can be scaled to lower grades and college as well.
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with OpenAI or any of its partners. This article reflects my independent research and perspective, and is not endorsed, reviewed, or influenced by OpenAI in any way. -js
Introduction: For this article, I collaborated with three chatbots: Gemini (Google Bard), ChatGPT (GPT-3.5 free; GPT-4, OpenAI), and Claude (Sonnet 4, Anthropic). I asked each to come up with five seminal works in the development of chatbots. Three were mentioned by two chatbots, so I ended up with a list of twelve. They are listed below by their date of publication. Three were published before 2000, and only one between 2000 and 2014. Five were published between 2015 and 2019, and the remaining three, 2020 and after. Thus, 67% were published in the last ten years.
1. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” by Turing (1950). 2. “ELIZA—A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication Between Man and Machine” by Weizenbaum (1966). 3. “Procedures as a Representation for Data in a Computer Program for Understanding Natural Language” by Winograd (Often referred to as the SHRDLU dissertation) (1971). 4. “Social Dialogue With Embodied Conversational Agents” by Bickmore & Cassell (2005). 5. “A Neural Conversational Model” by Vinyals & Le (2015). 6. “Attention Is All You Need” by Vaswani et al (Google Brain Team) (2017). 7. “BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding” by Devlin et al. (2018). 8. “Language Models Are Unsupervised Multitask Learners” by Radford et al. (2019). 9. “A Unified Framework of Five Principles for AI in Society” by Floridi & Cowls (2019). 10. “Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners” by Brown et al. (2020). 11. “Constitutional AI: Harmlessness from AI Feedback” by Bai et al (2022). 12. “Training Language Models to Follow Instructions with Human Feedback” by Ouyang et al. (InstructGPT Paper, 2022).
See the chatbot listings below for details about each work. I’m drawn to the latest, especially Brown et al. and Ouyang et al. I’ll follow up this article with chatbot-generated reviews of these two.
Introduction: I was curious to see how a chatbot would work with a first-year college student who has hated math since high school and is now struggling to pass a required course in algebra. I decided to focus on a male student but asked the bot, at the end of the process, if it would use the same approach with a female student. The chatbots tested were ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. As usual, to better understand the philosophical roots of the bots’ approach to tutoring, I asked them to provide explanations and references for their pedagogical decisions. The subject matter is math, but I believe the instructional approach would generalize, with a few tweaks, to other disciplines. The purpose of this article is to give readers a feel for how the human-bot collaboration might work out and a sense of its potential effectiveness, and the goal is to encourage them to make the leap — if they haven’t already — into chatbotting as an invaluable tool in their academic and professional skill set. Finally, another more practical purpose is to get a better feel for the strengths of these three chatbots by experiencing how they might approach the same pedagogical problem, with the caveat that chatbot performances often vary quite a bit from chat to chat. -js
Introduction: In this article, I presented the same prompt to seven chatbots to observe the range of responses and share the results with readers. The chatbots, in order, were: Copilot, Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Pi, and You.com. I’ll let you be the judge of how well each bot initiated communication with a preschooler. -js
Summary: This article explores how traditional academic disciplines will transform over the next 50 years due to AI integration and global challenges. The author uses ChatGPT and Gemini AI to analyze current core disciplines and project future changes. The piece examines how AI will be integrated into academic divisions, with projections showing computer science achieving 95-100% integration by 2075, while humanities may reach 60-75% integration. The analysis suggests that rigid departmental boundaries will dissolve, replaced by problem-focused, interdisciplinary fields addressing climate change, consciousness studies, and space exploration. The timeline spans from 2025-2035’s “Convergence Decade” through 2065-2075’s “Transcendence Decade,” with new disciplines emerging like neuroengineering, synthetic biology, and eventually cosmic consciousness studies. The article identifies 20 key leaders and institutions driving these changes, including Fei-Fei Li at Stanford and organizations like MIT’s CSAIL, emphasizing that technological convergence and societal demands for cross-disciplinary solutions will fundamentally reshape higher education’s structure and purpose. (Claude)
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
