Introduction: Text transcripts or other recordings of higher education presentations at key conferences are rarely if ever freely accessible by the overwhelming majority of educators in the U.S. and the world. In the case of Stanford’s February 25, 2025, conference, “The future is already here: AI and education in 2025,” video recordings of nine entire presentations have been made available to the public at their site and on YouTube. I asked ChatGPT to summarize them. -js
These three advances in AGI were announced after ETC Journal’s Oct. 17, 2025, article was published: (1) DeepMind’s SIMA 2, a Gemini-powered agent that “thinks” in 3D virtual worlds, (2) DeepMind’s new work on aligning visual representations, improving how models “see” the world, and (3) Anthropic’s $50 billion US compute / data-center investment, a large infrastructure bet to sustain frontier-model training.
Authors: Adam Cheng, Aaron Calhoun, and Gabriel Reedy
Journal:Advances in Simulation
Publication Date: April 18, 2025
DOI: 10.1186/s41077-025-00350-6
The central thesis of this article is that generative artificial intelligence tools can be ethically integrated into academic writing processes as long as researchers adhere to principles of transparency, maintain human accountability for content, and use AI to enhance rather than replace critical thinking and scholarly development.
AI the new source of geopolitical power. “The dialogue [TRENDS’ 2nd Annual Dialogue on AI] concluded that artificial intelligence has become the new source of geopolitical power, surpassing natural resources and military strength. Soft power is no longer limited to culture and education but now includes digital identity systems, innovative services, and AI models” (MSN, 14 Nov 2025).
Introduction: I asked Copilot to identify and rank order the 10 world leaders in AI drone warfare as of November 13, 2025, using the following criteria: R&D, Industrial Scale, Battlefield Performance, and Export/Influence. When Ukraine failed to make the list, I asked Copilot to explain. I think you’ll find the explanation insightful. -js
1. Apple’s reported partnership with Google to power Siri with Gemini
Between October 14 and November 13, 2025, one headline cut through the noise: Apple reportedly partnering with Google to supercharge Siri with Gemini—framed as a leap toward trillion-parameter intelligence on consumer devices. The article “Apple Joins Forces with Google to Supercharge Siri with 1.2 Trillion-Parameter AI!” by Mackenzie Ferguson, published on OpenTools on November 6, 2025, captured the public imagination and crystallized a turning point in platform strategy. The piece appeared on OpenTools’ AI News page and set out the basic claim and its significance for the smartphone AI battleground opentools.ai.
“Today’s AI differs from previous generations’ because it can tell stories and create images. Built from online human stories rather than facts or logic, generative AI mimics human intelligence by collecting and recombining our digital narratives. While earlier AI managed specific organizational functions, generative AI directly addresses how humans think and communicate. Unintended consequences: Because generative AI is built from people’s digital commentary, it inherently propagates biases and misinformation.
Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics (X.com)
In mid-October, analysis of the Trump administration’s 2025 AI Action Plan highlighted tangible momentum: expanded data center build-outs, “innovation sandboxes,” and targeted federal funding intended to accelerate U.S. AI leadership. This period’s developments underscored a pro-innovation posture—streamlining permits and encouraging private-sector deployment—while signaling an export-forward stance that positions American AI to compete globally.
Video created by Grok via an image created by Copilot 11/12/2025Continue reading →
Thomas Claburn1 reports that “The 339 respondents participating in the [Murphy et al.2] project – AI and ML scientists, economists, technical staff at frontier AI companies, and policy experts from NGOs – believe that AI will spur significant social changes by 2040.” Claburn says the project found that “there’s only about a 20 to 25 percent chance that the AI train will be slowed by lack of AI literacy, societal unease, lack of use cases, and costs. Data quality, regulations, and cultural resistance are seen as more likely (30 to 35 percent) barriers to adoption. Integration and unreliability are expected to be the most significant obstacles (40 percent).”
MicroAdapt is a new approach to edge artificial intelligence developed at The University of Osaka’s Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research (SANKEN). At its core, MicroAdapt is a family of self-evolving, dynamic modeling algorithms designed to watch time-evolving data streams on small devices, automatically identify recurring regimes or patterns in that stream, and maintain — on device — a compact ensemble of tiny models that are created, updated, and retired as the situation demands. In other words, rather than shipping raw data to the cloud and relying on a single large model trained offline, MicroAdapt performs continual modeling and short-term forecasting in situ on modest hardware such as a Raspberry Pi, using very little memory and power. This on-device learning architecture is what the research team describes as “self-evolving” edge AI. (sanken.osaka-u.ac.jp)
Yasuko Matsubara, Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, University of Osaka
The research paper by Kestin, Miller, Klales and colleagues* represents a watershed moment in educational technology research, offering rigorously controlled evidence that properly designed AI tutoring can surpass traditional pedagogical best practices. Conducted at Harvard University during Fall 2023 and published on 3 June 2025 in Scientific Reports, this randomized controlled trial provides empirical validation for claims about artificial intelligence’s transformative potential in education.
Introduction: I asked Claude to report on articles published in 2025 that discuss why banning AI chatbots is impossible or unwise in college settings. It found four. I also asked ChatGPT to add two more. -js
By Michael Akuchie English Composition Instructor Southern Illinois University Carbondale
The United States has a reading problem, and according to findings by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), it is not wrong to worry about the future of classroom learning and the culture of reading for pleasure. Per the NEA’s survey of US adults who read books in 2022, only 48.5% said that they had read a book within that period. When asked about literary works, such as novels and short story collections, the percentage of adults who reported having consumed at least one literary piece declined to 37.6%. As adults pay less attention to books, especially literary works, that apathy has unfortunately trickled down to first-year college students, who represent the future of America’s labor force.
Introduction: Anna Lee Mijares, in her article “10 AI Innovations Businesses Need to Watch for Competitive Advantage in 2025” (Unity-Connect, 6 Nov. 2025), mentions 10 innovations* that will shape AI in the remainder of 2025. Her list is excellent! She covers 10 of the most important. To complement her work, I asked a number of AI chatbots: Can you think of one or two critical innovations that could be added to her list? All responded with two suggestions, and I combined them into the list below. -js
The question of whether an AI-driven robot can truly play a musical instrument—especially at a high artistic level—touches both the limits of robotics and the nature of human expressivity. In recent years, advances in machine learning, sensor technology, and robotics have brought us closer to answering that question with an emphatic “yes”—but with important qualifications. Some instruments lend themselves more easily to robotic imitation than others. A closer look at the violin, trumpet, guitar, and drums reveals how the degree of difficulty varies depending on the physical and expressive demands of each instrument.
Introduction: I stumbled upon an article this morning, “AI Unlocks Cosmic Secrets: Revolutionizing Discovery in Physics and Cosmology” (by TokenRing AI, Financial Content, 5 Nov. 2025). I was impressed by both the clear style and even clearer message, but I was intrigued by the “writer” — purportedly an AI. Curious, I asked Copilot to review the article and to dig into TokenRing AI. The following is Copilot’s review. -js
Introduction: Because of fee-walls erected by many if not most higher ed conference organizers, many outstanding papers remain out of sight for the academic community. To see if a chatbot could discover, without circumventing paywalls, some of these gems by relying on sources that aren’t normally crawled by chatbots, I asked Grok to identify five to ten noteworthy papers on AI from conferences held in 2025. It accessed and synthesized information from publicly available proceedings, open-access repositories like arXiv, institutional archives, and conference websites, even when full papers are behind paywalls—often through abstracts, preprints, or shared excerpts that highlight key contributions. Grok came up with seven.* -js
A significant number of high-profile AI-related TED Talks were released following the TED2025 conference, “Humanity Reimagined,” which took place in April 2025. These talks generally fall into three critical areas: the acceleration and ultimate power of AI, the existential and catastrophic risks, and the imperative for ethical foresight and societal preparation. Five prominent talks from this period represent this crucial spectrum of debate. The first sets the stage for the hyper-acceleration argument, and the remaining four with their details.
Megan McArdle is a Washington Post columnist (screenshot from her TED Talk)
The landscape of free AI-driven language learning apps in November 2025 is dynamic. For anyone eager to begin or deepen their language journey for free, exploring the social immersion of HelloTalk, the structured lessons of 50LANGUAGES, the vocabulary-rich flashcards of Quizlet, and the gamified content of Memrise offers a comprehensive foundation without time or lesson restrictions.
Introduction: I asked Copilot to review Henley Wing Chiu’s “I analyzed 180M jobs to see what jobs AI is actually replacing today” (Bloomberry, 3 Nov. 2025) and to extract the three most compelling insights. I also asked it to weigh the analysis in the context of other 2025 analyses.
Introduction: As of November 4, 2025, AI is reshaping college campus architecture and environment. Taken together, these changes show that AI’s influence on campus is not merely an IT or curricular update: it is a material, spatial and governance transformation. New hubs and instrumented labs concentrate AI resources and change campus traffic and program adjacency; AI-responsive classrooms require different structural and finish choices (raised access floors, networked ceilings, acoustic zoning); instrumented building operations change façades, mechanical systems and commissioning practices; and AI surveillance reshapes public space and triggers new policy/ethics design work.
Introduction: The rise of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has forced a critical re-evaluation of what constitutes a “good” student-written essay. Traditional benchmarks like organization, focus, development, and formal correctness are now easily met by AI, rendering them insufficient as definitive markers of student learning and unique intellectual effort. The criteria that remain stubbornly human—originality of insight, genuine personal voice, and nuanced engagement with lived experience—are now paramount. I asked Gemini and Claude to examine articles that address these personal criteria to provide a glimpse into the future of writing pedagogy and the outer limits of AI’s current capabilities.
Amazon’s Nova Cognition Multi-Agent Platform, known as Nova Act, is a newly launched AI system designed to autonomously perform complex web-based tasks. As of November 2025, it represents Amazon’s strategic leap into the competitive AI agent landscape, challenging incumbents like OpenAI and Anthropic. The platform is currently in developer preview, with rapid expansion expected through early 2026. It is led by Amazon’s AGI lab in San Francisco and faces serious competition from OpenAI’s GPT agents and Anthropic’s Claude-based systems.
David Luan, VP of Autonomy and head of Amazon’s AGI SF Lab (Amazon Science)
The rapid proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) from experimental tools into the core of enterprise operations has simultaneously unlocked immense potential and exposed a new frontier of critical security vulnerabilities. In this context, Arthur AI’s concept of a “Self-Healing” AI Firewall for LLMs emerges not merely as a feature, but as an essential security primitive for the autonomous AI-driven ecosystem of the future. This architectural necessity stems from the unique attack surface that LLMs present, which fundamentally differs from traditional software.
As of November 2, 2025, DeepSeek’s R1 model stands as one of the most consequential open-source achievements in artificial intelligence. Released earlier in the year, R1 captured global attention for its advanced reasoning capabilities and its daringly open release strategy. It has since become a cornerstone in the conversation about how the next generation of AI should be trained, shared, and governed.
Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek’s CEO and founder (eHangZhou)
Educational Technology and Change Journal 
