A certain silence envelops a research paper that no one is quite prepared to read. That’s how Anthropic’s AI Fluency Index came to be: it was posted without much fanfare, picked up by a few interested economists and education writers, and then it sat there, waiting for the rest of us to catch up. It’s the type of report that doesn’t seem urgent until you examine the actual measurements. Then it does. The idea is so basic that it seems almost obvious. These days, millions of people use AI on their phones at two in the morning, at work, and…
Author: Janine Heller
When students are typing into something other than a document, a certain kind of silence descends upon the classroom. When a screen presents a neat paragraph in a matter of seconds, you can see it in the half-smile and slightly unfocused gaze. Instructors have been observing it for some time. The Oxford University Press report, which was released following a survey of 2,000 British teenagers between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, merely provided statistics to support the suspicions of many educators. Eighty percent of those students reported using AI on a regular basis for academic purposes. Merely 2% reported…
A certain type of legislation passes through statehouses in silence; it is the type that seldom attracts protests or cameras because its wording is dull enough to bore a law student. Among them is the Oklahoma bill. The Utah one is, too. If you skim either of them, you might overlook the fact that two red states are attempting to make it almost impossible for anyone within their borders to bring an oil company into civil court regarding the climate crisis. The bills arrive at an intriguing time. Major oil producers have been sued by more than 70 states, counties,…
When a senior quant at a large financial institution asks a recent graduate what they know about reinforcement learning in portfolio optimization and receives a blank stare in return, a certain kind of awkwardness permeates the room. It occurs more frequently than hiring managers would like to acknowledge. The grades were good and the degree is legitimate, but something crucial is lacking. The ability to work smoothly at the nexus of machine learning, programming, and finance is becoming more and more important. CategoryDetailsTopicAI Skills Gap in Quantitative FinanceKey Research BodyCQF Institute — Certificate in Quantitative FinanceSpokespersonDr. Randeep Gug, Managing Director,…
A student is currently turning in an essay that she is proud of in a classroom somewhere. She organized her ideas, filled in the blanks, and polished the language with the aid of an AI assistant. The writing exudes assurance. It moves. The subtle shift in tone will likely be noticed by her teacher, but the subtly fabricated statistic tucked away in paragraph four may go unnoticed by the student. In actuality, the AI literacy gap looks like this. It’s not overly dramatic. It doesn’t make an announcement. It manifests itself in brief instances of undeserved self-assurance, in the fluid,…
A large corporation, a public health emergency, and a sales team instructed to keep the phones ringing at all costs are all eerily familiar. In the spring of 2020, when the world was shutting down port by port and NCL representatives were allegedly informing concerned customers that the coronavirus couldn’t survive in tropical temperatures, that is essentially what happened with Norwegian Cruise Line. To put it simply, it was untrue. Years later, a coalition of twelve state attorneys general, including Nevada’s, announced a broad multi-state settlement that would hold the company responsible for what investigators claim were false and misleading…
One day, in a lecture hall at a university in California or a high school classroom in a suburban area of Ohio, a student opens a laptop, types a question into ChatGPT, and pastes the answer into an assignment. It is graded by the instructor. The pupil proceeds. No one gains any knowledge. Technically speaking, the system functioned precisely as intended. Artificial intelligence has brought this unsettling reality to light. The technology is not the issue. A grading system that was already measuring the wrong things long before ChatGPT existed is the issue with the technology being used to game.…
Every Tuesday morning, if you walk into most university lecture halls, you’ll notice something strangely predictable: rows of students staring at a single person speaking at the front of the room. A few are making notes. A few are using their phones. Some are actually involved. The students either keep up or quietly lag behind the professor, who moves at whatever pace suits them, and they frequently don’t say anything about it. For centuries, education has operated essentially in this manner. Additionally, an increasing amount of research indicates that it’s a rather ineffective method of teaching anyone anything. CategoryDetailsInstitutionMassachusetts Institute…
Between the opening remarks and the vote at the CCCC’s annual convention in Cleveland, it became evident that this wasn’t merely a procedural resolution. It was a line being drawn in every true sense. The largest professional association for writing instructors worldwide, the Conference on College Composition and Communication, passed a resolution reaffirming what many in higher education have been hesitant to publicly state: instructors and students have the right to reject generative AI in the writing classroom. It was an overwhelming vote. Afterwards, Jennifer Sano-Franchini, an associate professor at West Virginia University and the most recent chair of the…
April has a talent for surprising people. Taxes, spring cleaning, and, if you’ve been following consumer law news lately, a flurry of deadlines for class action settlements that could actually put money back in your pocket. Many of the people who are currently reading this may already be eligible for one of these payouts. The majority simply aren’t aware of it yet. It is important to keep a close eye on the Inova Health settlement. In response to claims that pixel tracking technology on its website was surreptitiously gathering and sending patient data to businesses like Facebook and Google—all without…