Deep Think: What If AI Could Help Us Reclaim Our Attention Spans? | Ep. 94

In this episode of ChatEDU (Deep Think: What If AI Could Help Us Reclaim Our Attention Spans?), Matt and Liz open with an AI slip-up at the National Weather Service that invented fake towns, raising trust and oversight concerns, before launching into a wide-ranging rundown.

The Rundown

The episode opens on health and AI: OpenAI is piloting a Health tab in ChatGPT, raising privacy and legal questions, while MIT Sloan research suggests personalized generative AI can aid weight loss, but lacks community support.

Matt and Liz discuss reports showing Google’s AI Overviews gave inaccurate medical advice, prompting Google to pull some health summaries and highlighting the risks of AI errors in high-stakes settings.

The discussion shifts to safety and governance, with Google and Character.AI pursuing early settlements in teen chatbot death cases, highlighting regulatory gaps and OpenAI partnering with Common Sense Media on California’s Parents and Kids Safe AI Act.

They also address backlash against X after Grok was used to generate nonconsensual sexualized images, prompting the company to rein in those capabilities.

Education wraps the K–12 segment, with a deepfake response course co-created by Elliston Berry, a teen targeted by AI abuse, a practical deepfake detection infographic from Evan Harris, and Lego’s new hands-on AI literacy kits.

The focus shifts to higher ed: U.S. college enrollment has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, led by public schools and workforce credentials, as Google doubles down on skills and curiosity over degrees in hiring.

The rundown closes with a Brookings report warning that AI’s risks in education currently outweigh its benefits, contrasted with a Brookings video offering a more nuanced take on AI’s impact on work and learning.

Beneath the Surface

Matt and Liz ask whether AI can counter fragmented attention, using tools like Google Gemini to replace doomscrolling with focused interactions, before debating world models and whether they represent play or a shift from consumption to creation.

Bright Byte

In the Alps, rescuers used drones and AI to scan thousands of images, spot a single red helmet in the snow, and recover a missing mountaineer, showcasing AI’s growing role in search and rescue.

Announcements

Celebrate our 100th episode: ⁠skills21.org/chatedu100⁠

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday

ASCD: ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠ 

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77

Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw

EdAdvance is offering a Middle and High School Student AI Literacy course — email [email protected] to bring it to your district. ​​⁠www.skills21.org/ai/learnai⁠

Skills21’s FREE social media literacy course. Check it out here - ⁠https://www.skills21.org/social-balance⁠

This episode is sponsored by The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing. ⁠https://www.nextgenmfg.org⁠

Links

AI Map Hallucinates Idaho Towns

https://tinyurl.com/5n8kwx8r

OpenAI’s Risky Health Push

https://tinyurl.com/yw3p53uk

Generative AI Boosts Weight Loss

https://tinyurl.com/5yd26hds

Google’s AI Health Safety Crisis

https://tinyurl.com/ymhv9p3k

Google Halts Medical AI Overviews

https://tinyurl.com/3jtuxn8x

Google Settles Teen AI Death Cases

https://tinyurl.com/24pbmph3

Joint Push for California Child AI Law

https://tinyurl.com/4w6ehwjf

X Halts Grok AI "Undressing"

https://tinyurl.com/2z6f4nbh

Fighting Deepfakes: A Victim’s New Course

https://tinyurl.com/f7upcs9k

Lego uses bricks to demystify AI

https://tinyurl.com/2dtpwa5n

College Gains: Cost and Career Focus

https://tinyurl.com/3p5p8tns

Skills Over Degrees at Google

https://tinyurl.com/2kexb69e

Students in AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect

https://tinyurl.com/mryx5mk7

Gemini better than doomscrolling

https://tinyurl.com/3xmuwupz

Can AI Restore Gen Z's Focus?

https://tinyurl.com/yyac2u62

AI Solved Mystery of a Missing Mountaineer

https://tinyurl.com/mpd34m8u

Why Young Workers Are Hit First

https://tinyurl.com/mp32zebb