AI Insights for June 12

This message was originally shared to subscribers June 12, 2025.

Upcoming Event

Join us for Generative AI for Staff, part of the ITS Summer Series, on Monday, July 8. In just 45 minutes, Tech Transformation Specialist Shannon Glennon will demo tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini and show you easy ways to start using AI in your day-to-day work.

Quick, practical, and virtual—don’t miss it! Register here.

In This Issue

Today’s edition we spotlight the growing reach of AI in higher education and the workplace, as well as the tensions that accompany it.

You’ll find stories of universities boldly embedding AI agents into learning environments, as seen in the University of Sydney’s Cogniti platform, alongside reflections from faculty navigating the pedagogical and ethical trade-offs of generative AI. Meanwhile, OpenAI is pushing forward with its “AI-native university” vision, even as recent grads struggle to land jobs in a tech-driven labor market increasingly reshaped by automation.

From Meta replacing human risk reviewers with AI to the rise of “secret cyborgs” in the workplace, the implications are deep and wide-ranging. We also dive into the limitations of “thinking” AI models and explore how agentic systems could fundamentally reshape the web as we know it. It’s a complex, evolving landscape.

News and Views

Access to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post is available to all students, faculty and staff with a valid Syracuse University NetID. Learn more.

AI Performance, Tools and Infrastructure

Academia and Education

  • Ohio State Launches Bold AI Fluency Initiative to Redefine Learning and Innovation (Ohio State University)
  • Case Study: Empowering Faculty Use of AI Agents for Student Success (Gartner) (Access Gartner Here)
  • What I Learned Serving on My University’s AI Committee (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
  • In the Room Where It Happens: Generative AI Policy Creation in Higher Education (Educause Review)
  • Welcome to Campus. Here’s Your ChatGPT (The New York Times)
  • AI Achieves First Peer-Reviewed Paper Acceptance (Intology)
  • 5 Questions About Retrieval-Augmented Generation (EdTech Magazine)
  • The Illusion of Thinking: Understanding the Strengths and Limitations of Reasoning Models via the Lens of Problem Complexity (Apple)

Ethics, Policy and Society

  • Google Co-Founder Sergey Brin Suggests Threatening AI for Better Results (The Register)
  • State Lawmakers Push Back on Federal Proposal to Limit AI Regulation (StateScoop)
  • Anthropic C.E.O.: Don’t Let A.I. Companies Off the Hook (The New York Times)
  • Some Thoughts on Human-AI Relationships (Reservoir Samples)
  • Chinese Tech Firms Freeze AI Tools in Crackdown on Exam Cheats (The Guardian)
  • Meta Plans to Replace Humans with AI to Assess Privacy and Societal Risks (NPR)

Media and Communications

  • The New York Times and Amazon Ink AI Licensing Deal (TechCrunch)
  • The First Fully AI-Generated National TV Commercial has Launched (Axios)
  • The MAHA Report’s AI Fingerprints, Annotated (The Washington Post)

Scientific Discovery and Space

  • High School Student Discovers 1.5 Million Potential New Astronomical Objects by Developing an A.I. Algorithm (Smithsonian Magazine)

Workforce and Workplace

  • AI is Keeping Recent College Grads Out of Work (Axios)
  • I’m a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking (The New York Times)
  • Secret Chatbot Use Causes Workplace Rifts (Axios)
  • Business Leaders Expect Agentic AI to Take Over Customer Service (CIO Dive)

This Issue’s Tip: Use AI to Tidy Up Your To-Do List

Feeling a little scattered this summer? If your to-do list is getting long—or just plain chaotic—try pasting it into a generative AI tool like ChatGPT or Gemini and ask for help organizing it.

AI can help you:

  • Group similar tasks (great for things like grocery lists—AI can even sort items by store section!)
  • Prioritize based on deadlines or how much effort each task takes
  • Transform messy notes into a clear, actionable checklist

It’s a quick way to bring order to your day—so you can focus on what really matters (like catching some rays while the sun’s still out ☀️).

This Issue’s Prompt: Out-of-Office

A prompt is 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, OpenAI ChatGPT or Anthropic Claude) to execute the following prompt:

“Write a professional out-of-office reply for July 15–22. Mention I’ll have limited access to email and include who to contact for urgent matters.”

Helpful Resources

Thank you for reading. Go Orange!