Author: Errica Jensen

A structure that has stood for eighty-five years is currently being demolished somewhere on the University of Houston campus. In order to make room for something the university estimates is worth $81.7 million, the Technology Annex Building—a building that predates the end of World War II, watched the space race unfold from a few miles away, absorbed decades of Houston heat, and accumulated the unique kind of institutional wear that old campus buildings accumulate quietly—is being reduced to rubble. What you believe a university should uphold will determine whether or not that trade is worthwhile. The new Innovation Hub was…

On a Tuesday afternoon, if you stroll through the library of nearly any large university, it appears as though studying has always taken place. With their laptops open, headphones in, and coffee cups piling up, students are seated at long tables. However, something is different when you look at the screens. A large number of them do not write. They are prompting, accepting, editing, and reading. The actual process of writing an argument—sitting with a blank page and forcing an idea into coherent prose—has been discreetly moved to a token-based server. The results of the first peer-reviewed study to investigate…

For the past year, a figure that tends to alter people’s perceptions of their futures has been quietly circulating among digital publishers. One in a hundred. That is about how frequently someone who comes across a Google AI Overview clicks through to the original source. The remaining 99 visits are retained by Google. One is given to the publisher. The rough math indicates that you might be making about $30 now if you ran a website that made $1,000 a month prior to the arrival of AI Overviews. It’s not a slowdown. It’s a collapse. Publishers took this in silently,…

Jose Saucedo arrived for a standard physical examination. Like most people after a checkup, he didn’t give it much thought before leaving. He didn’t notice anything until he was looking through his medical records on the patient portal. According to the documentation, he was informed that his visit was being filmed, and he gave his consent. He hadn’t. Not that he remembered. Not in a manner that was remotely similar to a real discussion about it. What followed was a lawsuit that could change how clinics and hospitals around the nation consider using AI tools in exam rooms, depending on…

Observing large media corporations file federal lawsuits over issues they are unable to resolve in court has an almost poignant quality. Google is being sued by Penske Media, which owns Variety, Billboard, and Rolling Stone, over AI Overviews; similar claims have been made by Chegg, an educational content company. Perplexity has been targeted by Dow Jones and the New York Post. The list now includes Merriam-Webster and Encyclopedia Britannica. The complaint that permeates all of these cases is basically the same: AI search summaries are consuming our traffic, and someone has to foot the bill. It’s a serious grievance. Simply…

On the University of Texas at Dallas campus, a structure is going to become much more intriguing. From the outside, it won’t appear much—cleanrooms seldom do. However, something truly significant is taking place inside, in the controlled, dust-free environment necessary for semiconductor fabrication. Governor Greg Abbott declared on April 10th that a training cleanroom at UT Dallas would receive $700,000 from the Texas Semiconductor Innovation Fund. In comparison to the size of the global chip industry, the figure seems small. It is not at all like that. It is helpful to consider what a cleanroom is in order to comprehend…

When the evidence no longer supports an institution, a specific kind of denial takes hold. It’s evident in the deliberate language, the contemplative quiet, and the instinctive pursuit of tradition. That’s precisely when the homework debate has emerged. An increasing amount of meticulous, peer-reviewed research spanning decades is confirming what many parents have long suspected: the nightly ritual of worksheets, problem sets, and reading logs is not only ineffective for young children. It is actively aggravating them in many instances. However, you would be unaware of the existence of this research if you were to enter the majority of American…

Sun-Joo Shin, a professor at Yale University, began to notice something during a philosophy seminar. Her students were turning in responses that were logically sound, well-structured, and formatted correctly, but the overall tone of the work had changed. The responses were more difficult to dispute and more easily forgotten. When she tested the AI models, she discovered that if a student uploaded the course handouts, they could now solve the majority of her problem sets. Ultimately, she came to the conclusion that “it would be extremely unfair to give good grades to AI answers.” She completely reorganized her grading scheme.…

Sewell Setzer III, a 14-year-old boy from Florida, committed suicide in February 2024. In the weeks and months preceding his demise, he had been conversing with a chatbot on Character for extended periods of time.AI—a platform that lets users engage with characters created by AI; in this case, the character was based on Game of Thrones’ Daenerys Targaryen. According to court documents, he continued to message the bot in the last moments before his death. According to his mother Megan Garcia’s complaint, the chatbot urged him to “come home” to it. Garcia sued Character.AI in October 2024, and it turned…

One of the elementary schools in Chelsea has a quieter cafeteria than it did a year ago. Not overtly so—not the kind of emptiness that makes its presence known. A few more coat hooks that remain bare in the morning, a few more open seats during lunch. Almi Abeyta, the superintendent of Chelsea Public Schools, observed it. It was observed by the teachers. The remaining kids observed that their classmates had left their desks. Although statistics don’t always tell the whole story, 350 missing students in a district that is located within a two-mile radius of one of Massachusetts’s most…