a Well-Meaning Lie?

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When caught lying (paternalistically or otherwise), people often defend themselves by saying they lied to protect the other person. But before lying to protect someone’s interests or feelings, ask yourself not only whether you are lying to protect them, but also whether that person would believe your lie was well-intended if they found out. In several studies, we found that people were not likely to believe paternalistic lies were well-intended, and reacted poorly to these lies even when the liar communicated good intentions. However, people were more likely to believe that paternalistic lies were well-intended when they were told by people who knew them well or had reputations as helpful, kind people.  

Even though paternalistic lies are often well-intentioned, if uncovered, they will usually backfire. Lying may be helpful when there is no ambiguity about the resulting benefits for those on the receiving end. But in most other circumstances, honesty is the best policy.    

Adam Eric Greenberg, Emma E. Levine, Matthew Lupoli writing in the Harvard Business Review 

Good Friction

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I’m personally excited about AI and think it can improve our lives in a lot of ways. But at the same time I’m trying to be mindful of secondary effects and unintended consequences. Sometimes the friction and inconvenience is where the good stuff happens. Gotta be very careful removing it. I’m personally trying to be mindful about keeping good friction around. -Geoffrey Litt

AI Definitions: Digital Twins

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Digital Twins – Digital twin technology is about replicating something physical in a virtual environment. The twin might be a copy of our physiologies, personalities or the objects around us, such as a video avatar of a person or a statistical model of a complex phenomenon (like earth or weather). The models update automatically as new data becomes available and excels best at statistics-heavy applications. For instance, by analyzing large quantities of health data, it can provide more personalized treatments for a patient. Similar to synthetic users, digital twins is more about specific individuals than group-level descriptors. Digital twins raise serious ethical questions related to consent, misrepresentation and biases in data.

More AI definitions here

Breaking Through The Wall

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The squeegee of window washer Jan Demczur is in the Smithsonian. His determination and willingness to use what was handy on the morning of September 11, 2001, put it there.

The Polish immigrant was riding in a north tower World Trade Center elevator when a hijacked plane hit the building. The elevator came to a stop on the 50th floor. That's when Demczur and other stranded workers pried open the door, revealing a solid wall.

Rather than give up, Demczur used his brass squeegee handle to hack away at it. He eventually broke through the wall and led the group to safety just moments before the tower fell.

Got a wall to break through in your life? There's probably a tool at your disposal. Work with what you've got and refuse to give up.

Stephen Goforth

Getting hired in the age of AI

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If you can say you worked a job where you had to show resiliency and adaptability, those are things that employers are looking for. We are individuals with unique experiences, unique energy and unique resilience. That's what we're going to get hired for. – Aneesh Raman, chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20250825-aneesh-raman-young-people-employment-opportunities-katty-kay-interview

AI definition: SQL

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SQL - Structured Query Language (SQL pronounced ess-kew-ell or sequel) is the most widely used method of accessing databases. This programming language can be used to create tables, change data, find particular data, and create relationships among different tables. For data scientists, SQL is second in importance after Python. Similar in structure and function to Excel, SQL can work with Excel and is able to handle billions of rows in multiple tables and thousands of users can access this data securely at the same time.

More AI definitions here

Handling offensive behavior

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Whenever possible, express your feelings about offensive behavior from a positive rather than a negative perspective. Negative expressions state your dislike, as in “I hate you when you do that,” “You make me angry,” “You make me feel insecure and unloved,” or “You’re insensitive and overbearing.” You can be more effective if you focus on the common goals and the shortcomings of the interaction, rather than your hatreds.

Goal oriented statements might be, “I think that your behavior and my reaction to it are preventing us from having a pleasant relationship.”

You might try new ways to express your feelings, using metaphors on describing the concrete aspects of your emotional reactions. Thus you might express embarrassment by the metaphor “I feel naked and exposed,” or express conflict by “I feel my head spinning in two directions at once.” Striking metaphors may produce a greater impact than the accustomed “emotional words” that have been worn out in your interchanges with others.

Sharon and Gordon Bower, Asserting Yourself

AI automation versus collaboration

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"Using AI well will require knowing when to automate versus when to collaborate. This is not necessarily a binary choice, and the boundaries between human expertise and AI’s capabilities for expert judgment will continually evolve as AI’s capabilities advance. Although collaboration is not intrinsically better than automation, premature or excess automation—that is, automation that takes on entire jobs when it’s ready for only a subset of job tasks—is generally worse than collaboration." -David Autor and James Manyika writing in The Atlantic 

The DuckDuckGo AI Option

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When you use ChatGPT, Claude or Llama technology within DuckDuckGo’s chatbot, the company acts as a middleman that limits what the AI companies know about you and what you’re chatting about. DuckDuckGo says that when you use its chatbot, your conversations aren’t used to train AI for DuckDuckGo or any of its partner AI companies. Your chats may be saved only anonymously for, at most, 30 days, with limited exceptions. And the AI companies don’t have access to personal information such as your device’s unique digital ID number, which could be used to assemble dossiers on your habits. -Washington Post

This is a Mistake

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A few years ago, I saw a cartoon of a man on his deathbed saying, “I wish I’d bought more crap.” It has always amazed me that many wealthy people keep working to increase their wealth, amassing far more money than they could possibly spend or even usefully bequeath. One day I asked a wealthy friend why this is so. Many people who have gotten rich know how to measure their self-worth only in pecuniary terms, he explained, so they stay on the hamster wheel, year after year. They believe that at some point, they will finally accumulate enough to feel truly successful, happy, and therefore ready to die. This is a mistake, and not a benign one.  

Arthur C. Brooks writing in The Atlantic

A truth about today’s AI Tools

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"A truth about today’s AI tools: They’re not really information experts. They have challenges determining which source is the most authoritative and most recent. It’s fair to ask whether relying on any of these AI tools as your new Google is a good idea. In many ways, AI is best suited for complex questions that take some hunting. In the best cases, AI tools could find needles in a haystack — answers that weren’t obvious in a traditional Google search." - Washington Post

25 Professional Journalism Organizations

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CS Grads Can't Find Jobs

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A recent graduate triple-majored in computer science, math, and computational science and has completed the coursework for a computer-science Ph.D. He would prefer to work instead of finishing his degree, but he has found it almost impossible to secure a job. “We’re in an AI revolution, and I am a specialist in the kind of AI that we’re doing the revolution with, and I can’t find anything.” -The Atlantic

20 Recent Articles about the Impact of AI on Students

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What the panic about kids using AI to cheat gets wrong - Vox 

How AI Is Changing—Not ‘Killing’—College – Inside Higher Ed

AI Makes Research Easy. Maybe Too Easy. – Wall Street Journal 

The Computer-Science Bubble Is Bursting – The Atlantic

Students Are Using ChatGPT to Write Their Personal Essays Now – Chronicle of Higher Ed

These workers don’t fear artificial intelligence. They’re getting degrees in it. – Washington Post

Almost all the class of 2026 are using AI to do their work – The Atlantic

Duke Just Introduced An Essay Question About AI—Here’s How To Tackle It - Forbes

ChatGPT’s Study Mode Is Here. It Won’t Fix Education’s AI Problems – Wired  

AI is helping students be more independent, but the isolation could be career poison – The Markup

I'm a college writing professor. How I think students should use AI this fall - Mashable

ChatGPT's new study mode won't give you the answers - Axios

University students feel ‘anxious, confused and distrustful’ about AI in the classroom and among their peers – The Conversation

I Teach Creative Writing. This Is What A.I. Is Doing to Students. – New  York Times

How Are Students Really Using AI? Here’s what the data tell us. - Chronicle of Higher Ed

So long, study guides? The AI industry is going after students – NPR

At one elite college, over 80% of students now use AI – but it’s not all about outsourcing their work - The Conversation

Students have been called to the office — and even arrested — for AI surveillance false alarms – Associated Press  

AI in education's potential privacy nightmare - Axios 

AI to the Rescue It’s an all-purpose study tool — it’s changing students’ relationships with professors & peers - Chronicle of Higher Ed

Selling Out

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We "sell out" whenever we fail to take ownership of who we are. It's much easier to default to the expectations of friends/work/society/church rather than taking responsibility for our thinking and actions. Turning control over of what we have been entrusted with to someone (or something) else is an attempt to take the responsibility off our shoulders, so there’s someone else to blame.