Leslie found the following texts helpful for maintaining a broad AI cultural currency. The resources are ordered chronologically to ease updating, which will happen at least quarterly. Enjoy!
Resources (* = podcast)
Alexander, B. (28 August 2025). "Teaching with AI: The Cloister and the Starship." AI, Academia, and the Future. Accessed 28 August 2025.
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Alexander describes and imagines possible outcomes for a recent pedagogical model, which some are calling, "The Cloister and the Starship." Many faculty, including Leslie, have been experimenting with this approach. Students are invited to use AI creatively at certain times (or places) and to engage in more human-centered learning processes (like peer reviewing) at others.
Roth, E. (26 August 2025). "Anthropic Settles AI Book Piracy Lawsuit." The Verge. Accessed 27 August 2025.
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Although one judge ruled that "training AI models on legally purchased books counts as fair use," Anthropic is settling with a group of authors who brought a class action suit against the developer of Claude AI.
Timmer, J. (22 August 2025). "Google Says It Dropped the Energy Cost of AI Queries by 33x in One Year." Ars Technica. Accessed 27 August 2025.
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Timmer reviews Google's recent analysis of the energetic costs of "delivering AI at Google scale." He says Google's analysis, while omitting important data, improves on previous analyses. Although he points out important omissions, he praises Google's methodology, which is more thorough than other analyses (see Calma, below, for a companion article).
Calma, J. (21 Aug. 2025). "Google Says a Typical AI Text Prompt Only Uses 5 Drops of Water--Experts Say That's Misleading." The Verge. Accessed 27 Aug. 2025.
*Roose, K and Newton, C. (22 Aug. 2025). "Is This an AI Bubble? + Meta's Missing Morals + TikTok Shock Slop." [podcast] Hard Fork. New York Times Audio. Accessed 27 August 2025.
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The Hard Fork podcast hosts explore whether we may be seeing an AI economic bubble, criticize Meta's harmful policies for adolescent users, and a discuss a recent TikTok trend.
Wallace-Wells, D. (20 Aug. 2025). "AI May Be Just Kind of Ordinary." New York Times. Accessed 27 August 2025.
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Wallace-Wells reviews the many experts writing that AI may be "normal" technology, more akin to "electricity or the Industrial Revolution or the internet, which are normal to us now, having utterly changed the world."
Jeffries, T. (19 Aug. 2025). "AI Has Produced Two New Antibiotics to Kill 'Superbugs.' It's Promising, but We Shouldn't Get Too Excited Yet." The Conversation. Accessed 27 August 2025.
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Researchers have used AI to create antibiotics to kill N. gonorrhoeae and S. aureus (the latter causes MRSA). Jeffries tempers the exciting news by acknowledging the testing and regulatory hurdles the team has to overcome before the drugs can be used in humans.
*Inoue, T. and Senk, S. (12 August 2025).
My Robot Teacher Podcast.
[podcast] CAlearninglab.org. Accessed 27 August 2025.
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Funded by the California Education Learning Lab, Inoue and Senk bring their STEM and Humanities perspectives (respectively) to bear on important questions intriguing--or plaguing--higher education faculty. The pair teaches at Cal Maritime and chats with faculty from other segments of the CA public higher education system.
Alexander, B. (21 July 2025). "Higher Education Prepares for the Upcoming AI-ified Year." AI, Academia, and the Future. Accessed 26 August 2025
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Leslie subscribes to Alexander's Substack because he offers balanced overviews of what's currently happening, as well as what he thinks might happen, in the world of AI. This post describes institutional and faculty Generative AI initiatives, innovations, and resistance in higher education.
Alexander, B. (14 July 2025). "Teaching with AI: Strategies against Cheating." AI, Academia, and the Future. Accessed 26 August 2025.
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Leslie subscribes to Alexander's Substack because he offers balanced overviews of what's currently happening, as well as what he thinks might happen, in the world of AI. This post reviews the various ways faculty are dealing with AI-facilitated cheating, providing pros/cons for each method.
