Have you heard about our upcoming AI events? ITS is teaming up with Blackboard on Friday, Jan. 31, to discuss AI in higher education, including within Blackboard itself. On Thursday, Feb. 13, we will host our second AI at Work event featuring ITS leadership and campus community members who will share how they have incorporated generative AI into their daily work. We hope you can join us!
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News and Views
Government
- Biden’s administration proposes new rules on exporting AI chips, provoking an industry pushback (Associated Press)
- How Will the Policy Direction of the U.S. Executive Order on AI Change? (Gartner)
- Trump announces up to $500 billion in private sector AI infrastructure investment (CBS News)
- Trump revokes Biden executive order on addressing AI risks (Reuters)
Higher Education
- College Leaders Are Divided on the Risks and Benefits of Generative AI (Chronicle of Higher Education)
- Generative Artificial Intelligence and Education: A Brief Ethical Reflection on Autonomy (Educause)
- The Cheating Vibe Shift (Chronicle of Higher Education podcast via reader Robert Wilson)
Industry News
- OpenAI’s Economic Blueprint (OpenAI)
- AI jobs on the rise, new LinkedIn report finds (Axios)
- How Are Companies Using AI Agents? Here’s a Look at Five Early Users of the Bots (Wall Street Journal)
- OpenAI Expands Frontiers with Robotics Initiative (OpenTools)
- New ChatGPT Feature: Scheduled Tasks (OpenAI)
- LinkedIn adds free AI tools for job hunters and recruiters (TechCrunch)
- CES 2025: An Abundance of (AI) Experimentation (Hardcore Software)
- Apple is pulling its AI-generated notifications for news after generating fake headlines (CNN)
- OpenAI launches Operator—an agent that can use a computer for you (MIT Technology Review)
- 2025 AI Business Predictions (PwC)
- Assessing the GenAI process, not the output (Times Higher Education)
- Will Artificial Intelligence Replace Us or Empower Us? (New York Times)
This Issue’s Tip: Checking for Accuracy
Just like people, generative AI tools can make mistakes. Generative AI requires human input, editing and evaluation. Whichever tool you use, always check its output for relevance, accuracy, grammar and style.
This Issue’s Prompt: Summarizing a Document
Prompts are how you ask generative AI tools to do something for you (e.g., creating, summarizing, editing or transforming). Treat it like a conversation, using clear language and enough context to get the result you have in mind.
To get more practice, use the generative AI tool of your choice (for example, Microsoft Copilot, Open AI ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude) to execute the following prompt:
“You are presenting to an audience of Syracuse University community members. Please summarize the information at https://academicaffairs.syracuse.edu/asp/leading-with-distinction/ in 200 words or less in a bulleted format.”
(Spoiler alert: Certain tools like Claude are not able to access URLs and will ask you to paste the text into the chat instead.)
Helpful Resources
Thank you for reading. Go Orange!