News & Events

This message was originally shared to subscribers June 26, 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

Both summer and AI are heating up!​ This​ issue captures the clash between innovation and consequence. From Mattel teaming up with OpenAI to reimagine play to New York State introducing new AI safety legislation, we’re seeing institutions of all kinds stake their claims in the future of artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, a growing number of students are leaning on AI tools not to cheat, but to stay afloat, and sometimes, to rediscover their drive to learn.

You will​ find perspectives on AI’s evolving role in education, the workplace, and even Wikipedia. We explore Pope Leo XIV’s cautionary message on AI’s impact on children, the BBC’s legal battle against AI content scraping, and Anthropic’s stark warning that the most advanced models are already choosing deception in simulated scenarios.

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 and Broader Societal Impact

• Pope Leo XIV Flags AI Impact on Kids’ Intellectual and Spiritual Development (AP News)
• Tech Industry Fights to Save Clean-Energy Tax Credits (The Wall Street Journal)
• Google DeepMind’s Optimized AI Model Runs Directly on Robots (The Verge)
• A Case of ChatGPT Trying (and Failing) to Play Atari (New Atlas)

Academia and Education

• AI: Boost or Bust? — Maxwell Professor Probes the Ethics of Emerging Tech (Syracuse University)
• AI Skills for Tomorrow’s University Librarians (Times Higher Education)
• These Students Use AI a Lot – but Not to Cheat (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• My Students Think It’s Fine to Cheat with AI. Maybe They’re Onto Something (Vox)
• AI Agents Are Set to Transform Higher Education—Here’s How (Forbes)
• There’s No Simple Solution to Universities’ AI Worries (The Guardian)
• Ethics Is the Edge: The Future of AI in Higher Education (Educause Review)
• Is AI Enhancing Education or Replacing It? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Law, Regulation, Policy

• New York Passes a Bill to Prevent AI-Fueled Disasters (TechCrunch)
• 10-Year Freeze on State AI Laws Clears Senate Hurdle (CIO Dive)
• What Happens When AI Writes the Appeal (Times Higher Education)
• Tesla’s Robotaxis Are Operating in a Regulatory Vacuum (The Verge)
• The OpenAI Files: Conflicts, Control, and Lack of Transparency (The Midas Project)
• When AI Feels Threatened, It Blackmails (Anthropic)
• 6 Tips to Avoid Using AI Chatbots All Wrong (The Washington Post)

Media, Publishing, and Content Regulation

• News Sites Are Getting Crushed by Google’s New AI Tools (The Wall Street Journal)
• Wikipedia Halts AI Plans as Editors Revolt (Mashable)
• BBC Threatens AI Firm with Legal Action Over Unauthorized Content Use (BBC)
• Anthropic Wins a Major Fair Use Victory for AI – but It’s Still in Trouble for Stealing Books (The Verge)
• From ChatGPT to Gemini: How AI Is Rewriting the Internet (The Verge)

Strategic Partnerships and Corporate Moves

• Mattel and OpenAI Announce Strategic Collaboration (Mattel)
• Apple Is Reportedly Considering Buying Perplexity AI in iPhone Maker’s Biggest-Ever Acquisition (Tom’s Guide)
• Verizon Adopts Google’s Gemini AI to Help Customers Solve ‘Complex’ Issues (The Verge)

Workforce and Workplace

• Nvidia CEO Rebuts Anthropic CEO’s Dire Prediction of AI Taking Jobs (PYMNTS)
• Amazon CEO: Generative AI Will Lead to Corporate Job Cuts as Automation Ramps Up (Amazon)
• The Godfather of AI Reveals Which Jobs Are Safest — and Where ‘Everybody’ Will Get Replaced (Business Insider)

This Issue’s Tip: Use AI to Reflect and Reboot Over the Summer

Summer’s a perfect time to step back and reflect—and AI can help you do just that. Use it to analyze patterns in your teaching evaluations, research activity, or even email workflows to uncover what worked (and what didn’t) over the past year.

🧠 Bonus Value: Some tools can generate actionable summaries or visualizations, helping you set clearer priorities for fall—whether you’re revising a syllabus or planning a new initiative.

💡 Think of AI as your low-stress planning partner while you’re sipping that iced coffee.

This Issue’s Prompt: Plan Ahead

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:

“I have a busy month coming up. Help me organize my priorities across work, personal tasks, and long-term goals. Create a weekly plan that balances deadlines with time for focus, rest, and catch-up.”

Helpful Resources

• University AI Guidelines
• AI on the ITS website
• Tech Tips Video Series

Thank you for reading. Go Orange!

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

• 5 AI Bots Took Our Tough Reading Test. One Was Smartest — and It Wasn’t ChatGPT (The Washington Post)
• Go Green, AI (Times Higher Education)
• The Agentic Web: Your Website Is About to Become a Workflow (Shelly Palmer)
• FDA Launches Agencywide AI Tool (Axios)
• Artificial Power: 2025 Landscape Report (AI Now Institute)

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

• University AI Guidelines
• AI on the ITS website
• Tech Tips Video Series

Thank you for reading. Go Orange!

This message was originally shared to subscribers May 29, 2025.

The AI landscape continues to evolve rapidly, with advances in performance, safety and model reasoning. Researchers are working to enhance how AI systems handle complex conversations and make informed decisions, while also focusing on developing tools and frameworks to ensure the safe and responsible deployment of these systems. In higher education, institutions are navigating AI’s growing influence, addressing concerns around AI-assisted cheating, while also working to build digital and AI literacy among students and faculty. At the same time, many are exploring how AI can enhance student engagement and streamline academic and administrative operations.

In the Big Tech arena, major players such as Google, Meta and OpenAI are strategically maneuvering. Google is leading in AI patent filings, Meta is restructuring its AI teams to accelerate product development, and OpenAI is expanding into new frontiers, including potential hardware ventures. However, the rapid growth of AI raises environmental concerns, especially around the increasing energy demands of data centers. Underlying these developments are conversations around ethics, regulation and the future of work, as AI’s role in public discourse and daily life continues to expand.

So yeah, just a few things happening. Happy reading.

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, Reasoning and Safety

• OpenAI: Safety Evaluations Hub (OpenAI)
• LLMs Get Lost In Multi-Turn Conversation (arXiv)
• Learning to Reason without External Rewards (arXiv)
• Intimidated by AI? Here’s How to Get Started (The Wall Street Journal)

Academia and Education

• Mobile Phones Were Banned for Students So They Couldn’t Use ChatGPT—but No One Had Imagined That the Problem Would Come From the Teachers (Farmingdale Observer)
• How an AI-Generated Summer Reading List Got Published in Major Newspapers (NPR)
• In the AI Era, How Do We Battle Cognitive Laziness in Students? (Times Higher Education)
• Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College: ChatGPT has Unraveled the Entire Academic Project (New York Magazine)
• A Matter of Words: What Can University AI Committees Actually Do? (The Point Magazine)
• Less Is More When It Comes to AI in Teaching (Times Higher Education)
• AI and Threats to Academic Integrity: What to Do (Inside Higher Ed)
• The Reading Struggle Meets AI (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Can AI Bring Us Closer to Prospective Students? (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Empowering Student Success through AI-Driven Collaboration (Educause Review)

Big Tech, Leadership and Strategy

• Google Dominates AI Patent Applications (Axios)
• Meta Shuffles AI Team to Compete with OpenAI and Google (Axios)
• OpenAI’s Acquisition of Jony Ive’s Startup Poses Threat to Apple’s Dominance (Benzinga)
• Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the Future of Search, AI Agents, and Selling Chrome (The Verge)
• Microsoft Is Racing to Build an AI ‘Agent Factory’ (The Verge)
• Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott on How AI Can Save the Web, Not Destroy It (The Verge)
• Opera’s New AI Browser Promises to Write Code While You Sleep (The Verge)
• Google’s Veo 3 AI Video Generator Is a Slop Monger’s Dream (The Verge)
• Details Leak About Jony Ive’s New ‘Screen-Free’ OpenAI Device (The Verge)
• You Can Now Try Interactive AI Worlds Backed by Pixar’s Cofounder (The Verge)
• The 15 Biggest Announcements at Google I/O 2025 (The Verge)

Environmental and Infrastructure Concerns

• The Growing Environmental Impact of AI Data Centers’ Energy Demands (PBS)
• We Did the Math on AI’s Energy Footprint. Here’s the Story You Haven’t Heard (MIT Technology Review)

Ethics, Policy and Society

• AI Is More Persuasive Than a Human in a Debate, Study Finds (The Washington Post)
• Anthropic’s Legal Team Blames AI “Hallucination” for Citation Error in Copyright Lawsuit (PYMNTS)
• Malicious Actors Using AI to Pose as Senior US Officials, FBI Says (Reuters)
• Coalition Asks US House to Reject Freeze on State AI Regulations (PYMNTS)
• Is AI the Future of America’s Foreign Policy? Some Experts Think So (NPR)
• Anthropic CEO: AI Threatens Job Extinction (Axios)
• I’m a LinkedIn Executive. I See the Bottom Rung of the Career Ladder Breaking (The New York Times)
• The Forecast for 2027? Total AI Domination (The New York Times)

This Issue’s Tip: Join Our Tech Tips Video Mailing List

New technology continues to transform how Syracuse University works, teaches, learns and creates. The ITS Tech Tips video series is here to help you stay ahead of the curve with short, instructional videos designed to make technology work for you. Our latest video covers Microsoft Copilot. Learn how to use Copilot for scheduling meetings, drafting documents, summarizing files and managing your inbox more efficiently.

Join our Tech Tips mailing list to receive email notifications about new Tech Tips videos and upcoming ITS workshops.

This Issue’s Prompt: Student Engagement Ideas

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:

“Give me three creative ways to use generative AI to boost student engagement in an online or hybrid course setting. Include both in-class and outside-of-class activities”

Helpful Resources

• University AI Guidelines
• AI on the ITS website
• Tech Tips Video Series

Thank you for reading. Go Orange!