Puutio took a different approach than outlawing the instruments that made it. He now mandates that students use AI in all of their assignments. This decision, which he described in an essay for Business Insider in March 2026, is based on a set of guidelines intended to do something that most university AI policies aren’t yet capable of: differentiate between AI that does the thinking and AI that supports the thinking.

The distinction seems straightforward. In reality, it is the whole issue. Undergraduate students at Harvard are as aware of this as their professors are, and in some ways, they have been more openly dealing with its complexity. Developed through interviews with seven faculty members and 27 HGSE graduate students, a guide released by the Harvard Graduate School of Education in January 2025 paints a picture of students who are considering AI in ways that aren’t always reflected in institution-wide policy documents. These students aren’t attempting to get away with anything. They are students who have already incorporated AI into their work processes and are now, quite understandably, requesting that their teachers catch up.

Even though it seems hard to deliver, what they want is not complicated. Instead of the ambiguous language about “responsible experimentation,” which Harvard’s general AI policy currently offers, they want explicit policies that specify exactly what constitutes authorized use in each course. Instead, they want actual guidance from the instructor who is grading their work. Professor Karen Brennan, who co-wrote the guide and oversees the Creative Computing Lab at HGSE, compares the fear surrounding AI to the “moral panic” that followed the development of the pocket calculator. This fear proved to be partially justified, partially misguided, and primarily resolvable through careful integration rather than outright prohibition. Similar statements were made by the students in her study. When instructors explained why they were assigning a certain task, they said it was actually helpful because it made it easier for them to decide what to give to AI and what to keep for themselves.

The HGSE guide quotes a student who said, “Really think about what you want at this moment,” which seems to have more wisdom than most institutional policy statements. Do you want to learn or just finish the task at hand? Perhaps that question ought to be at the top of every American course syllabus at the moment. The students who are inquiring are aware of the limitations of AI. They cautioned one another about the challenging learning curve, the need for several rounds of quick refinement to produce meaningful results, and the moment one student, six hours into a session that should have taken two, realized that sometimes using your own skills is just more efficient than battling the machine.

One example of this in action is the framework Puutio employs in his own classroom. AI for research and synthesis, AI as an editor and critic once the argument has been developed, but never AI creating the argument itself. The student must be the one who thinks. When that line is clearly drawn, the assignment’s nature is altered without giving up on technology. It’s difficult to ignore how different that is from the binary decisions that the majority of universities continue to make: either completely prohibit it or say nothing helpful and hope for the best.

Fundamentally, what Harvard students are requesting is honesty. They are aware of the existence of AI. Regardless of policy, the majority of them use it in every course. They want academics who are prepared to confront this reality head-on, not act as though it will disappear or treat every discussion of AI as a disciplinary issue, but rather sit with the true complexity of a technology that, depending on how it is applied, can either enhance or detract from learning. This is already being figured out by the students. Whether their institutions will advance fast enough to be beneficial is the question.

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Due to alleged antisemitism on campus, the Trump administration suspended over $2.2 billion in federal grants to Harvard. Harvard filed a lawsuit. The restoration of funds was mandated by a federal judge. The government filed an appeal. The funds were in legal limbo, and administrators at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, which houses the humanities, social sciences, and arts, were using spreadsheets to conduct scenario analyses that no one wanted to see. The budget for the arts and humanities alone suffered a direct loss of almost $2 million. The number of PhD admissions in the sciences was reduced to a quarter of what it used to be. Emergency meetings were held by faculty. Suddenly, the organization that had spent decades fostering the notion of intellectual permanence was preparing for unforeseen circumstances.

The $53 billion endowment, which is the largest university endowment in the world, is the number that is always brought up in these situations. It is typically used to support the claim that Harvard should just quit whining and spend its way out of trouble. Almost all of the pertinent information about how the money actually functions is hidden by that figure. Economist John Y. Campbell, who reimagined FAS’s endowment management in 2021 and served on the board of the Harvard Management Company for seven years, has been making this point with meticulous precision. Approximately 80% of the endowment is donor-restricted, which means that it can only be used for the particular uses that each donor has specified, such as building maintenance, financial aid, professorships in specific fields, and specific research areas. Under the direct control of university leadership, less than 5% of the total is truly unrestricted money. It is evident that the $53 billion is not a war chest. According to Campbell, it’s a collection of particular pledges made to particular donors that result in yearly distributions that are already mostly devoted to paying for Harvard’s operating budget, which enables the university to operate at all.

In this context, the arts are especially vulnerable. When institutions are under budgetary pressure, creative programs—visual arts, theater, music, and the humanities that support them all—tend to suffer the most because their worth is more difficult to measure using the metrics that funding agencies, both public and private, typically favor. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard made a cautious announcement in April 2026 that it was getting ready for a major administrative reorganization. In comparison to their already small budgets, the arts and humanities were facing a reduction that was disproportionately large.

In February 2026, an uncommon kind of reaction emerged into this landscape. As part of a challenge to raise $100 million by June, a group of alumni donors led by Alfred and Rebecca Lin of the 1994 class announced a $50 million donation toward an endowment fund for PhD students across FAS and SEAS. The Research Accelerator Challenge, as it was called, was specifically created to provide PhD candidates with the kind of financial security that enables them to pursue high-risk, high-reward research without relying on the now-unreliable federal grants. In a sense, it was a workaround. This is an attempt to shield the institution’s intellectual work from political weather rather than a solution to the political issue.

It’s difficult to ignore the unique aspect of that gesture—wealthy alumni essentially taking over the role of the federal government by providing funding for the prerequisites for scholarships. Harvard’s own economists would likely respond cautiously to the question of whether this is a sound model for academic funding. According to Campbell’s framework, short-term relief can be obtained at the expense of long-term capacity by spending endowment distributions above the planned rate. To put it another way, generosity has a budget. Watching all of this unfold from a position that feels uncomfortably exposed for an institution of this size and prestige are the arts and humanities programs that make Harvard what it is, the ones that send students into the world with the capacity to think critically about human experience.

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When compared to the trillion-dollar balance sheets of Blackstone or Apollo, Evolution Capital Management, a Harvard spinout, has surpassed $4 billion in assets under management. However, when you take into account the market it currently operates in, this milestone may seem insignificant. The year for private credit is not going well. According to Fitch Ratings, the private credit default rate for U.S. corporate borrowers reached a record 9.2% in 2025. For non-traded private credit vehicles, Moody’s has changed its forecast to negative. One vehicle saw 41% of redemption requests at Blue Owl’s funds, while another saw 22%. The $3.5 trillion asset class is quickly realizing that the second half of its ten-year promise of equity-like returns with bond-like volatility may have been overly optimistic.

Evolution is expanding in that setting. From the outside, it’s not always clear whether the timing is extremely fortunate or extremely well thought out. The company’s positioning around what analysts refer to as HALO investing—Heavy Assets, Low Obsolescence—does seem to be intentional. The concept is simple, but its implementation is not: the strategy concentrates on tangible assets with long economic lives rather than lending to software companies whose revenue models are currently being renegotiated by AI. infrastructure. data centers. physical items that don’t go out of style when a new model is released. A company positioned against that exposure occupies an interesting position in a market where major funds’ exposure to software-company loans—the same software loans on which JPMorgan subtly marked down collateral earlier this year—is the main cause of institutional anxiety.

Instead of collapsing abruptly, the larger private credit crisis has the feel of a gradual unwinding. The Blue Owl situation, which started last fall when redemption requests at one of its non-traded business development companies grew to the point where the company tried a merger to handle the issue—a merger it later abandoned due to the losses it would have caused investors—was one of the triggers. The episode sparked concerns about the underlying loans’ health, which quickly gained traction. Elevated redemption requests were made by investors at BDCs managed by Apollo, Ares, Blackstone, BlackRock, and Morgan Stanley. The funds mostly refused to fully honor them, citing caps intended to safeguard all investors. In addition to acknowledging that the pressure is genuine, Blackstone did consent to a record 7.9% withdrawal from its flagship private credit fund.

The crisis has caused a slightly different kind of anxiety for institutional investors, such as pensions, endowments, and university funds. The non-traded BDCs that have been the focus of the drama do not contain the majority of them. However, they are observing while in private credit. The chief investment officer of the $60 billion Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund, Angela Miller-May, explained that she had to give Blue Owl a call to make sure her fund’s investments in Atalaya, a company that Blue Owl purchased in 2024, were distinct from the problematic vehicles. They were. However, the very fact that she had to make that call is a type of data point in and of itself.

Evolution’s positioning subtly recognizes the structural nature of the deeper issue. Valuations are usually updated on a quarterly basis by private credit funds. The value of the loans is frequently determined by the same individuals who originated them. That arrangement is referred to as a feature—low volatility, steady returns—when everything is rising. Former Fidelity fund manager George Noble put it simply when credit began to deteriorate: “It’s a trapdoor.” Even more blunt was John Zito, co-president of Apollo’s asset management division, who told UBS clients, “I literally think all the marks are wrong.” A short seller’s perspective is not out of the ordinary. It is the co-president of one of the leading companies in the sector.

Observing Evolution’s rise against this background gives one the impression that the company gains from both its investments and its non-investments. This company doesn’t have a legacy software loan book that requires an explanation. It is not handling the conflict between fund structures intended to restrict transparency and institutional clients who seek it. It emerged from Harvard with a particular thesis at a particular time, and the market has advanced toward that thesis more quickly than most people anticipated. There are still genuinely unanswered questions about whether $4 billion turns into $10 billion and whether the HALO strategy can withstand a full credit cycle. However, staying out of the conversation is a competitive advantage in a market where the biggest names are handling redemption crises and defending their valuation methodology to dubious journalists.

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A new generation of solid-state batteries made of lithium and metal is at the center of this development. These are something much more grounded—and possibly more potent in the short term—than the theoretical “quantum batteries” that makes headlines. The Harvard approach does away with the sharp structures known as dendrites by using silicon particles that regulate how lithium reacts and flows. In conventional batteries, these needle-like growths frequently result in short circuits or fires, especially under stress.

The team was able to limit the behavior of lithium by incorporating these silicon particles at the anode. The ions establish a homogeneous layer on the particle surface rather than burrowing at random. Consistent energy flow is ensured by this evenness, which is essential for reducing heat spikes and improving efficiency. Additionally, the battery can recharge in just ten minutes without deteriorating over time because this layer grows consistently and cleanly.

Through strategic alliances, the university developed this invention into Adden Energy, a firm that is attempting to bring the technology to market. Their initial prototypes already perform better than the majority of commercial batteries. They have maintained 80% capacity through over 6,000 complete charge-discharge cycles, which is a significantly better performance than lithium-ion cells, which start to lose capacity after a few hundred cycles.

Adden Energy has created pouch cell batteries that are the same size as smartphone batteries but charge much more quickly by utilizing this innovation. This architecture could result in significantly reduced charging periods for large-scale gadgets and electric cars without compromising battery health.

However, the narrative doesn’t stop there, even though these solid-state advancements have potential applications.

Harvard and other universities are investigating the fundamentals of quantum batteries concurrently. These are based on completely different laws, ones that are exclusive to quantum physics rather than chemistry. Theoretically, quantum batteries can store and release energy at nearly lightning-fast speeds by utilizing entanglement and superposition. There is no heat. Absolutely no deterioration. Energy comes in and goes out.

At the moment, these experimental gadgets have relatively limited power storage. We are referring to a portion of what your smartwatch needs. In nanoseconds, however, they charge. Crucially, the process speeds up considerably as the battery scales, which is an uncommon and incredibly motivating feature. It’s not a marketing slogan; scientists call this the “quantum advantage.” Conventional energy logic is defied by this demonstrable effect.

Harvard’s work is gaining attention because it combines quantum ambition and solid-state pragmatism. The former is going to provide the majority of the immediate advantages. However, the interest spurred by quantum advances is changing the way engineers envision infrastructure in the future.

It makes sense that the lines have become more hazy in recent headlines. On social media, promises of “charging phones in seconds” often catch on, even when the underlying research is years away from being scaled. The pace, however, is more controlled in labs. Selling the dream is not in a hurry. Rather, scientists are gaining confidence, particle by particle and atom by atom.

This marks a change for both tech titans and early-stage entrepreneurs. The goal of battery research is no longer just to maximize storage. Previously considered secondary factors, speed, robustness, and sustainability are increasingly being discussed.

I noticed one thing when reading the published data: the design not only removes dendrites but also produces a surface that is so homogeneous that energy passes through it with little resistance. Structural elegance like that was almost poetry. It served as a reminder that finding harmony within constraints, rather than radically reinventing something, is frequently the path to innovation.

Harvard’s team has also listed dozens of additional materials that could offer comparable plating behavior using a descriptor model. One of the candidates was Silver. If accurate, this paves the way for further study into a variety of solid-state battery topologies, some of which might even surpass their chocolate-truffle concept.

This momentum is in line with more significant changes in the way we use electricity. Fast charging and stable battery technology is essential for real-time data centers, smart grids, and microgrids. It’s about lowering load variations, avoiding grid instability, and increasing the use of renewable energy sources—it’s not only convenience.

Furthermore, even if quantum batteries would not be affordable next year, their quick development suggests potential directions for storage technology. Consider satellite storage with no loss. Emergency backup for medical equipment. Solar and wind power buffers that are responsive and operational around-the-clock.

Researchers are normalizing a once-distant fantasy by incorporating quantum notions into routine engineering talks. The idea of a phone charging in a matter of seconds is no longer implausible. The steps are being taken gradually and clearly.

The foundation has already been laid with Harvard’s present technology in the early stages of commercialization. Beginning with consumer electronics, Adden Energy intends to expand its battery line into the transportation sector. Long-term goals include integrating EVs, where range anxiety might be completely eliminated with ten-minute charging.

It’s not vapeware. It is an incredibly obvious direction supported by concrete data, working prototypes, and a scientific staff that isn’t scared to make adjustments rather than make hasty decisions. Perhaps the most interesting feature of all is that.

We might not have to pick between speed and safety in the upcoming years if solid-state batteries continue to gain popularity and quantum research develops. We anticipate both.

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