AI Definitions: Stealth Crawler

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Stealth Crawler (AI crawlers) – This type of web crawler scrapes content from sites, often ignoring whether a site wants them to do so or not. Stealth crawlers may disguise themselves as ordinary visitors, making it hard for publishers to identify and stop them. Since stealth crawlers don’t identify themselves, the traffic could come from an AI company or a company mining data it can resell. Publishers are asking for laws that would require AI crawlers to disclose their identity and purpose. Critics say these laws are too broad—that crawlers often benefit the public by facilitating academic research, investigative reporting, etc. For example, Meta stopped researchers from using automated tools that studied misinformation on Facebook. Observers point out that blocking AI crawlers can make sites less visible—preventing them from showing up in AI summaries and answers may be similar to blocking Google crawlers, which would keep a site from appearing in Google search results. Some observers believe scraping has become a billion-dollar industry.  

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11 Articles from Sept 2026 about Data Science & AI

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18 (mostly free & one-hour) Journalism Courses about Audio, Video, & Various Topics

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22 Articles about AI’s impact on College Faculty & Administrators

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Higher Ed’s AI Integration Overhyped, New Data Shows – Inside Higher Ed

As the coding boom fades, AI is forcing colleges and computer science grads to adjust – Fast Company

Dartmouth’s Provost Quietly Used AI in His Published Work. It’s Touched Off a Campus Firestorm. – Chronicle of Higher Ed

An M.I.T. Report Warns A.I. Is Causing ‘Cognitive Surrender.’ Universities Are in a Bind. – New York Times

Congress Crawls Toward Higher-Ed AI Regulation – Chronicle of Higher Ed

Report: Student Protections Haven’t Kept Up With Higher Ed’s Adoption of AI – Inside Higher Ed

Higher Education Does Not Need More AI Tools but Better AI Experiences – Campus Technology

It could be a long time before independent research emerges on learning outcomes. – Inside Higher Ed

Harvard College’s Dean: ‘Everyone Is Using AI All the Time for Everything’ – Chronicle of Higher Ed

The big college major rethink – Axios

Can AI Help Colleges Reach Struggling Students Earlier? – Inside Higher Ed

The Academic-Integrity Council Can’t Keep Up With AI – Chronicle of Higher Ed

AI Slop Is a Tenure Problem, Not Just a Tech Problem – Inside Higher Ed

How ‘Chaos’ Surrounding AI Can Sink a College Presidency - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Chinese universities are cutting language majors to make way for AI – Rest of World

Does Your College Need a Librarian for AI? – Chronicle of Higher Ed

The ‘Nonexistent’ Research on AI’s Benefits for Education - Inside Higher Ed

Colleges Are Building A.I. Degrees, Hoping Students Will Come – New York Times  

A New ‘AI-First’ College Aims to Offer Cheaper, Employer-Friendly Degrees – Chronicle of Higher Ed

Half of Campus Tech Leaders Question AI’s ROI – Inside Higher Ed

Spelman College Names an A.I. Expert as Its New President – New York Times  

AI Is a ‘Wicked Problem.’ That’s the University’s Specialty. – Chronicle of Higher Ed

Don’t form strong beliefs about AI (yet)

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Don’t form strong beliefs about AI (yet). Even in the frontier labs, no one knows what the future holds. Those outside the labs don’t even know what the present holds, because they haven’t seen the most advanced models, which haven’t been released. If you are sure you know what will happen, or what we should do about it, you are nurturing what writer and satirist Ambrose Bierce called “a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.” - Megan McArdle writing in the Washington Post

24 Recent Articles about AI & Academic Scholarship

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One professor’s AI-assisted output: 200 papers and 14 books this year – Washington Post

AI saves scientists seven hours a week, Google paper finds – Research Professional News

What if AI can make Science Better, not just Faster? - Bradley Max Segal

AI co-scientists are revolutionizing how research is done – Nature

The AI Discourse in Academia is Toxic. It Doesn’t have to be.- Ran Blekhman

Can researchers trust that AI models won’t leak their ideas? – Science Business

Who gets credit in the AI era? OpenAI maths bombshell sparks debate – Nature

AI conference drowning in abstracts, with roughly 50,000 submissions before the deadline – The Decoder

Journal editor developing system to weed out authors “submitting AI-assisted papers they ‘don’t understand.' - Nihar Shah

Use and Effects of LLMs in Peer Review: A Randomized Experiment and Survey at ICML 2026 – arXiv

Provost of Dartmouth Busted Using AI for His Own Writing in Newspapers and Academic Journals – Futurism

South Korean Government New Guidelines mandate of AI Disclosure in Research – Chosun  

Could AI Be Better at Peer Review Than Humans? – Chronicle of Higher Ed

All corners of academia will soon be flooded with AI-generated research - Giorgio Gilestro

Misconduct case dropped against AI expert after claims of AI use in recent book – Retraction Watch

AI in peer review should be a second reader, not a judge – KevinMD

Three-quarters of researchers unsure what use of AI to disclose - Research Professional News

The “synthetic validity” problem in AI-generated science – PNAS

A psychology journal has retracted a paper on how using generative AI can affect confidence in work tasks – Retraction Watch

It could be a long time before independent research emerges on how AI should—or shouldn’t—be used to improve learning outcomes. – Inside Higher Ed

Scholars are divided over how much AI use is acceptable. - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Analysis of predatory journals using AI generated papers – Springer

AI Paper Mills Now Taint One in Ten Cancer Studies: France Cuts Big Publisher Ties – Tech Times

Why funders should investigate if AI is making research more conservative – Science Business

Professors & Students are in a Bind

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Professors and students are often in a bind about what they should do: Use more A.I. to stay relevant, or dial back to preserve learning and thinking? Getting answers from a bot can create the illusion of learning” for students who reach for A.I. at the first hint of struggle. At the same time, the potential of these technologies to augment work across campus is immense. -New York Times

26 Surprising Things AI can do now

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FAA launches AI tool to assist air traffic control at major D.C.-area airports – Washington Post

K-Pop Is Betting on AI and Robots. Will Fans Buy It? – Wall Street Journal

How DraftKings Uses A.I. to Target the Gamblers Likeliest to Lose – New York Times

Satellite data combined with machine learning gives meteorologists new tools to predict deadly floods sooner. – The Verge

AI can now control fusion plasma faster than humans can react – Science Daily

Will A.I. Kill Us? Can It Hack My Bank Account? Your A.I. Questions Answered – New York Times

Mastercard Joins Visa in Letting AI Bots Do Your Shopping – Wall Street Journal

Single brain implant enables people with paralysis to speak and convey upper-body gestures simultaneously via a virtual avatar - National Institutes of Health

Listing sites are littered with homes with fake fireplaces, improved views and virtual landscaping, raising false advertising concerns. – New York Times

Manuscripts-turned AI agents can now ‘talk’ to each other, make new discoveries – Stanford

Philosophy Journal Publishes Largely AI-Authored Article — On Purpose – Daily Nous

OpenAI Says It Has Cracked One of Math’s ‘Millennium Problems’ – New York Times

This may be the first academic profession to see its work taken over by AI – Washington Post

Google’s New Phone Comes With Plenty of A.I. Does Anyone Want That? – New York Times

Your AI agents can now control your Google Home devices – Tech Crunch

AI agents are checking the scientific literature — and spotting decades-old errors – Nature

A.I. Is Everywhere in China. See For Yourself. – New York Times

OpenAI’s latest math breakthroughs commit research misconduct, experts say – Scientific American 

This $150 lifetime AI-powered app listens while you play piano and coaches you in real time - Mashable

I was an AI skeptic — until I started using it to identify plants – Tom’s Guide

Oh Lord, AI Reporters Are Actually Breaking Big News – Wired

Baby’s first A.I. surveillance will track sleep and other data for young children – New York Times

AI Can Now Create Viruses From Scratch. What Happens When Someone Uses It for Harm? - Popular Mechanics

AI assistant hacks gym website in first known Australian autonomous cyber attack – ABC

A New Class of Cuddly Mascots Is Selling Everything From AI to Tap Water – Wall Street Journal

An A.I. was able to create 16 viruses not found in nature after scientists trained it on DNA libraries – New York Times

Stanford's Use of AI Questioned

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Stanford University used AI to replace a Latino man with a fictitious Black woman on banners displayed on campus. The faces of the other students in the banner were also edited with AI tools, to make them appear slimmer. Stanford officials said the use of AI violated university policy, and the school has removed the welcome banners. -San Francisco Standard

15 (mostly free & one-hour) Journalism Courses about Legal Issues & AI  

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