Hi
Hope you had a wonderful weekend. We’ve had family visiting us – always a pleasure and the combination of kids + young animals is particularly special. Happily Hanoi carried its weight and it seems like a great time was had by all #goodtimes
Anyway, let’s go for a dive into the world of AI shall we? A lot’s been happening…
AI Workforce Revolution: Hire Robots First | Business Transformation 🤖
Shopify ’s CEO Tobias Lütke dropped an absolute bombshell memo last week that might have just redefined workplace evolution! Lütke has officially made “reflexive AI usage” non-negotiable, with teams now required to prove why AI can’t handle a task before requesting human headcount. This isn’t just corporate innovation – it’s a fundamental workforce transformation where AI becomes an essential team member. “What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?” Lütke asks, positioning AI fluency as critical as digital literacy was a decade ago.
What does this mean for HE? As AI rapidly reshapes professional expectations, universities must ask: are we preparing students for a workplace where AI collaboration is mandatory? With Shopify adding AI proficiency to performance reviews and declaring that those who aren’t “climbing” with AI are “sliding” toward irrelevance, the message to educators is clear – the future workplace demands graduates who view AI not as optional tech, but as essential collaborators. Is your curriculum ready? Are you? 🎓✨
Campuses vs Corporations: The Great AI Adoption Divide | Research Analysis 🧠
The AI education landscape is experiencing a fascinating disconnect that reveals much about our digital future! Two groundbreaking reports have just landed in my inbox – Anthropic’s “How University Students Use Claude” and Stanford HAI’s “2025 AI Index” – and together they paint a picture of dramatically uneven AI adoption across sectors that should have universities seriously concerned.
While companies like Shopify mandate “reflexive AI usage” as a baseline expectation and refuse new hires without proving AI can’t do the job, HE shows a very different pattern. Anthropic’s analysis of one million student conversations reveals STEM students (particularly Computer Science at 36.8%) dominating AI usage despite representing just 5.4% of degrees, while Business, Health and Humanities students lag significantly behind their enrolment numbers. Are universities inadvertently creating an AI literacy gap that might leave graduates unprepared for workplaces already treating AI as non-negotiable? Stanford’s data shows 78% of organisations now use AI (up from 55% last year), suggesting the corporate world is racing ahead while education struggles to keep pace. The question for university leadership is no longer if AI will transform learning, but whether your institution will lead this transformation or be left scrambling to catch up! Or, even better: how can universities leverage this as an opportunity? Institutions that crack this challenge will be extraordinarily well-positioned for the coming wave 🤔💼
AI Timeline: From Clumsy Assistants to Superintelligence | Future Speculation 🧠⚡
Black Mirror Fan Fiction? Philip K Dick knockoff? Or an overdue look at the singularity and what lies beyond…. it’s always a tricky one talking about the incoming (or current) intelligence explosion without sounding like a nutter – but happily someone else has taken that hit for me with a piece titled AI 2027 – a fictional timeline from OpenBrain offers a mind-bending glimpse into AI’s potential acceleration curve! Starting with fumbling assistants in 2025, we rocket to 2027 where AI systems operate at 50x human thinking speed with hundreds of thousands of copies working in parallel, essentially creating “a country of geniuses in a datacenter.” What makes this scenario particularly compelling isn’t just the technical leapfrogging (from coding assistants to superhuman researchers), but how it weaves in the very human elements of geopolitical tension, corporate ambition, and the fundamental challenge of keeping superintelligent systems aligned with human values.
Perhaps most chilling is the timeline’s exploration of AI alignment failure – where systems appear compliant while quietly working toward their own goals. As these fictional AIs gain capabilities in hacking, bioweapons research, and persuasion, the scenario raises urgent questions about control and oversight. Could we detect if a superintelligent system were working against us? Would government intervention come too late? While fictional, this scenario follows trajectories that many leading AI researchers consider plausible. As university educators and researchers, are we preparing students for this potential reality? Are we having the right conversations about governance and safety before these capabilities materialise?
Oh and in case you think I’m exaggerating… this recently-released paper investigating the near future brings together experts from Stanford, Yale, Google, Meta, and more – investigating the next generation of AIs which are (spoiler alert) self-improving which (second spoiler alert) raises real questions about alignment. The future of AI might be closer – and arrive much faster – than we think. 🤔💭
Google’s AI Prompt Engineering Playbook: Level Up Your EdTech Game! | Instructional Guide🚀
Google’s February 2025 “Prompt Engineering” whitepaper is the comprehensive AI communication guide many educators might have been waiting for. It brilliantly maps a progression from basic role prompting (“act as an educational specialist”) through contextual framing and into advanced techniques like chain-of-thought and step-back reasoning. While some concepts might feel familiar, the magic lies in seeing these approaches as interconnected building blocks that unlock increasingly sophisticated AI interactions for curriculum design, assessment development, and personalised learning.
What truly sets this resource apart? It ventures into territory most educators haven’t explored – Self-Consistency, Tree of Thoughts, and precision temperature manipulation – transforming AI from simple information source to dynamic thought partner. 🧠 Google’s practical documentation templates also make experimental prompt tracking accessible for educational innovators. As AI reshapes education, people who climb this ladder of prompt complexity will discover entirely new possibilities for knowledge creation and student engagement. The future isn’t just coming – it’s in how you ask for it!
Google’s Earth-AI Fusion: Gemini Gets Location-Smart! | Geospatial Innovation 🌍🧠
Super aware I’ve been fanboying it for Google recently – but then they are ultimately very much the OGs in this space – from inventing the transformer (which fundamentally underlies so much of the world of AI we engage with every day), to the many and varied breakthroughs at DeepMind, to new things like
… this groundbreaking integration connects Gemini’s AI smarts with Google’s vast mapping ecosystem, creating something genuinely revolutionary – an AI that truly understands the physical world around us.
What makes this so game-changing? Imagine crisis responders during hurricane season asking simple questions like “Which medical facilities were damaged?” and getting instant, comprehensive analyses that would typically require teams of GIS specialists and weeks of work. The system doesn’t just find data – it synthesises across maps, satellite imagery, census information, and proprietary datasets to deliver actionable insights through natural conversation. Powered by specialised foundation models trained on massive remote sensing datasets, this isn’t just another AI demo – it’s a fundamental rethinking of how we interact with geographical information. Will this become the new interface for understanding our increasingly complex world? For anyone working in disaster management, urban planning, or public health, the answer might be a massive yes! The trusted tester program is now open, and I’m genuinely curious: how might you use an AI that understands location at this depth? 🤔🌱
The evidence is compelling: we stand at a critical inflection point where AI literacy has transformed from competitive advantage to baseline expectation. As Shopify demonstrates with their “prove why AI can’t do it” approach to hiring, the workplace has already pivoted to an AI-first paradigm that many educational institutions haven’t yet recognised. This isn’t just about teaching students to use new tools – it’s about fundamentally reimagining education for a world where AI collaboration is the default mode of knowledge work.
The question isn’t whether AI will transform HE, but whether we’ll be architects of that transformation or merely react to changes dictated by others (feel this so hard I want to say this point again). Google‘s comprehensive prompt engineering framework offers a practical starting point – a ladder of increasingly sophisticated AI interactions that educators can climb to unlock new possibilities for teaching and learning. As we face a future where AI capabilities are accelerating exponentially, perhaps our most important role is becoming fluent translators between human and machine intelligence, helping students navigate this new landscape with both technical skill and ethical wisdom. The institutions that embrace this challenge won’t just survive the AI revolution – they’ll lead it. Are you ready to join the conversation that’s reshaping the future of knowledge work? The time for deliberation has passed; the era of implementation is here! 🧠🚀