OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.  Provided by Barchart

Dear Commons Community,

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has become one of the most influential voices in artificial intelligence (AI), known for his candid assessments of both the promise and disruption brought by new technologies. In a recent Bloomberg interview, Altman addressed the looming impact of AI and robotics on employment, stating, “AI is for sure going to change a lot of jobs, totally take some jobs away, and create a bunch of new ones. This is what happens with technology, and in fact, if you look at the history of the world of technology-driven job change, it’s been happening for a long time. And the thing that is different this time is just the rate of which it looks like it will happen.” As reported by MSN News.

While Altman largely downplays the impact of AI on the job market, he did say humanity isn’t prepared for something else he believes will have a much greater impact: “The thing I think the world is not ready for is, I don’t think the world has had the humanoid robots moment yet, and I don’t think that’s very far away from a visceral ‘this is going to do a lot of things that people used to do.’ It’s coming. We have always tried to be super honest about what we think the impact may be, realizing that we may be wrong about a lot of the details.” When asked what will happen when humanoid robots arrive, Altman predicted that their presence will feel “very sci-fi,” fundamentally altering daily life and the job market.

Altman’s authority on this subject is rooted in a career defined by technological foresight and leadership. After dropping out of Stanford, he co-founded Loopt, a location-based social networking startup, and later became president of Y Combinator, where he helped launch and scale some of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups. Since 2019, Altman has led OpenAI, guiding the organization through the development of advanced AI systems such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, which have set new standards in natural language processing and generative AI. Under his leadership, OpenAI has secured major investments, including a multi-billion-dollar partnership with Microsoft, and has been at the center of global discussions about the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence.

Altman’s comments reflect a pragmatic understanding of technological change. He draws on historical precedent, noting that job displacement and creation have accompanied every major wave of innovation, from the Industrial Revolution to the rise of the internet. What distinguishes the current era, in Altman’s view, is the speed and breadth of change that AI and robotics are likely to bring. His prediction that the world is unprepared for the “humanoid robots moment” signals a belief that the next phase of automation will be more visible and rapid than previous shifts, with robots performing tasks previously reserved for humans.

This perspective is particularly relevant as businesses and policymakers grapple with how to adapt to AI’s accelerating capabilities. Altman’s insistence on honesty about the uncertainties involved, and his acknowledgment that even experts may be wrong about the details, offers a measured approach to navigating the future of work. His leadership at OpenAI, marked by a focus on transparency and ethical considerations, lends credibility to both his warnings and reassurances alike.

As AI continues to reshape industries, Altman’s insights serve as both a caution and a call to prepare for profound changes that will challenge existing structures but also create new opportunities, as has been the case throughout technological history.

Altman knows of what he speaks!

Tony

Governor Kathy Hochul rallied with students, staff and faculty at LaGuardia Community College to celebrate the free community college program for adults in high-demand fields through CUNY and SUNY Reconnect. (Office of the Governor)

Dear Commons Community,

New York’s free community college program is drawing strong interest, with more than 16,500 people applying to the new $47-million initiative. The program covers the tuition of adults interested in high-demand fields, such as artificial intelligence, nursing and green energy.

“Just since we started getting the word out, just since a few months ago when this became the law of New York State, we have over 16,000 people who’ve already signed up for this, and these are the lives that we’re going to be changing forever,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday at LaGuardia Community College.

Hochul touted the program as a way to expand access to higher education and good-paying jobs, strengthen the state’s workforce, and invest in community colleges. CUNY’s community college enrollment increased by 6% last year but remains below pre-pandemic levels.

Adults must be ages 25 to 55 to apply. Eligible degree programs also include advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity, engineering, technology and education.

About 7,000 adults have applied for free community college at CUNY, plus 9,000 more interested in the program at SUNY, college officials said. While there’s no guarantee all those applicants will ultimately enroll, Hochul insisted the number of people already taking advantage of the opportunity is a sign it’ll be a “game-changer.”

Asked if the degree programs already exist at CUNY or if campuses are propping up new ones aligned with qualifying fields, Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez expected a mix of both.

“We wanted to have an infrastructure that was able to respond to the early demand, but it allows us to continue to build,” he said.

On top of tuition, Hochul and her team said the program covers fees, books and supplies after all other financial aid is applied. It also includes funding for SUNY and CUNY to help keep adult students enrolled, such as for academic advisers and “student success” coaches.

CUNY is launching a $1.2-million marketing campaign to promote the program online and on the subways and buses, a spokesman confirmed.

The governor suggested she would stand by those investments, including in the face of federal budget cuts under the Trump administration.

“Despite the disastrous policies coming out of Washington,” Hochul said, “it would be too short-sighted on our part to disinvest in a brand-new program that we think is going to be wildly successful. The more people working, guess what? More people paying taxes as well.”

Congratulations Governor Hochul for this initiative.

Tony

The unveiling of former president Barack Obama’s official White House portrait in 2022.  Kevin Dietsch via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Trump continues to prove that deep down inside he’s a teeny tiny little baby man.

Case in point, according to CNN, Trump decided to essentially hide former president Barack Obama’s official portrait from the White House — and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) is calling the move like he sees it.

Typically, White House protocol calls for portraits of the most recent American presidents to be featured prominently in the entrance way, so that they’re visible during official events and visitors on tours.

But Trump directed staff to move Robert McCurdy’s photorealistic painting (above) of the 44th president to the top of the Grand Staircase into a corner where most can’t see it. CNN, who obtained a photo of the portrait’s new location, also noted that it’s now hanging on a landing leading into a private residence that is heavily restricted.

Portraits of former presidents George W. Bush and his father, George H. W. Bush, have also been moved to the same location.

A portrait of Trump’s most recent predecessor, Joe Biden, has not yet been completed — and once it is, we’re sure Trump will find a nice home for it in the White House’s basement. Or he’ll just pave over it, like the rose garden.

When news of Trump’s latest jab at Obama made its way to Newsom, he only needed six words to sum up why Trump would do this.

“Small men hide from history’s giants,” Newsom wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

This is not the first time Trump has moved Obama’s portrait. In April, it was removed from the Grand Foyer and replaced by a painting of Trump — complete with a gold frame ― pumping his fist in the air after last year’s attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. Obama’s portrait then hung in the East Room, until it got demoted to its dusty corner.

Trump’s interior design move comes amid high tensions between the president and Obama. Last month, Trump accused Obama of participating in a “coup” against him in 2016 — an allegation Obama later called “outrageous.”

Trump has beef with the Bush family as well. George W. Bush, whom Trump has called a “failed president,” skipped Trump’s first inauguration. In 2017, the late George H. W. Bush called Trump a “blowhard,” and said he voted for Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.

Small man indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Looking for some fun summer reading, my wife, Elaine suggested I might try Elena Ferrante’s work entitled, The Neapolitan Novels, also known as the Neapolitan Quartet. They are a four-part series of fiction by the pseudonymous Italian author Elena Ferrante, published originally by Edizioni and translated into English by Ann Goldstein and published by Europa Editions (New York). In October 2016, investigative reporter Claudio Gatti published an article jointly in Il Sole 24 Ore, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the New York Review of Books that relied on financial records related to real estate transactions and royalties payments to draw the conclusion that Anita Raja, a Rome-based translator, is the real author behind the Ferrante pseudonym.   

The English-language titles of the novels are My Brilliant Friend (2012), The Story of a New Name (2013), Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay (2014), and The Story of the Lost Child (2015). In the original Italian edition, the whole series bears the title of the first novel L’amica geniale (literally translated, “the brilliant friend”). The series has been characterized as a bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story. In an interview in Harper’s Magazine, Elena Ferrante has stated that she considers the four books to be “a single novel” published serially for reasons of length and duration. The series has sold over 10 million copies in 40 countries.

The series follows the lives of two perceptive and intelligent girls, Elena (sometimes called “Lenù”) Greco and Raffaella (“Lila”) Cerullo, from childhood to adulthood and old age, as they try to create lives for themselves amidst the violent and stultifying culture of their home – a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, Italy.

I have just finished Book One,  My Brilliant Friend (2012), which begins in the 1950s, in a poor neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples, where the narrator Elena meets Lila, her best friend, her mirror, and at times her fiercest critic. This first novel follows Lila and Elena from their meeting as six-year-olds through their school years and adolescence, until Lila’s marriage at the age of sixteen.

I found it a most enjoyable read and have begun Book Two, The Story of a New Name (2013), 

Tony

California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Getty Images.

Dear Commons Community,

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a committed thorn in Donald Trump’s side, told the president Monday that he’s prepared to redraw California’s districts in Democrats’ favor if he doesn’t call on Texas and other red states to halt their own GOP-friendly redistricting plans.

Newsom made the threat in a letter to Trump, who’s backing a GOP-led effort to redraw five Texas districts in Republicans’ favor ― something the president has said his party is “entitled” to ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“If you will not stand down, I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states,” Newsom vowed. “But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it.”

It’s not a step he takes lightly, continued Newsom, who said he believes legislative district maps should be drawn through “independent, citizen-led efforts,” not via political maneuvering.

“You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy, while knowing that California can neutralize any gains you hope to make,” he continued. “This attempt to rig congressional maps to hold onto power before a single vote is cast in the 2026 election is an affront to American democracy.”

The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on Newsom’s threat.

The letter comes after Democratic members of the Texas state House left the state to deny Republicans a quorum on the redistricting vote, outraging Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who sought to arrest them and remove at least one of them from office.

Republicans are also leading redistricting efforts in multiple other states, including in Indiana, Missouri, Ohio and South Carolina.

Tony

Protesters rally in downtown Washington D.C. near the White House on August 11, 2025, after President Donald Trump ordered an increased federal law enforcement presence across the streets of Washington, D.C., a federal takeover of Metro Police Department and the deployment of National Guard troop in the city. The president has increasingly criticized crime in Washington even as it’s reached a 30-year low.

Dear Commons Community,

Trump’s plan to take over to take over law enforcement in Washington, D.C. was met with strong opposition by protesters in the nati0n’s capitol.

Joined by top administration officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the president announced the National Guard will be deployed in the nation’s capital and that the local police will be placed under federal control.  As reported by USA Today.

“This is an emergency,” Trump said. “This is a tragic emergency.”

The president painted a dark portrait of the city throughout yesterday’s press conference, describing it as overrun by homeless people, drug addicts and other “bloodthirsty criminals” that his administration will no longer tolerate.

Many residents and activists have long resisted those characterizations as false and racially motivated attacks against the city, which has lobbied for statehood in recent years.

Mayor Muriel Bowser pushed back at the president’s claims of rising crime over the weekend, saying residents “are not experiencing a crime spike.” She underscored the need for D.C. statehood during a separate press conference on Aug. 11 hours after Trump’s comments.

“We are American citizens. Our families go to war, we pay taxes and we uphold the responsibilities of citizenship,” Bowser said. “And while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can’t say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that we’re totally surprised.”

But Trump and his allies have been keen on spotlighting individual violent crimes against reporters, White House aides and congressional staffers that often seize headlines and startle tourists.

Democrats and other critics pointed out that Washington’s homicide rate is down 32% year-to-date, according to the Metropolitan Police Department. They called Trump’s move another abuse of his executive authority.

Here are key takeaways from Trump’s press conference.

Trump administration taking over DC police

Trump signed two executive orders, the first invoking the 1973 Home Rule Act, which allows the president to assume control of Washington police for 48 hours if they determine “that special conditions of an emergency nature exist…”

Such a takeover can be extended with congressional approval but any request of more than 30 days must be passed into law.

In a separate order, Trump ordered Hegseth to deploy National Guard troops in Washington, which also authorized him to work with governors of other states to utilize their guard as well.

Key officials within the administration are now being tasked with overseeing DC’s law enforcement agencies, including Bondi, who will take command of the local Metropolitan Police Department. Drug Enforcement Agency Administrator Terry Cole, who was sworn in last month, will serve as interim federal commissioner of the police department.

White House spotlights DOGE staffer and other crime victims

During the press conference, Trump sprinkled in many individual cases of violent crime that he argued justified his takeover, such as the May 21 fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers outside a downtown museum.

One at the top of mind was the assault of Edward Coristine, who worked as a staffer with the Department of Government Efficiency. An Aug. 3 police report, obtained by USA TODAY, said officers observed a group of about 10 juveniles surrounding Coristine’s car and assaulting him around 3 a.m.

“He was left dripping in blood,” Trump said. “He thought he was dead, with a broken nose and concussion. Can’t believe that he’s alive. He can’t believe it.”

The president also evoked Phillip Todd, a former aide to Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who was stabbed in 2023. Trump described the attacker, identified by police as Glynn Neal, as a “demented lunatic.”

In an August profile by The Washington Post, Todd, a son of Christian missionaries, said that he had forgiven Neal and was rethinking his views on crime and punishment.

Chicago, other cities could see federal oversight, Trump warns

While ticking off individual cases, Trump noted that his Washington takeover might be brought to cities including Chicago; Baltimore; Los Angeles and Oakland, California.

Those Democratic-controlled cities and states, Trump said, have adopted left-leaning policies, such “no cash bail” rules, that he blamed for violent crime.

“This issue directly impacts the functioning of the federal government, and is a threat to America, really,” he said. “It’s a threat to our country. We have other cities also that are bad, very bad.”

Chicago was in the news earlier this summer for a historic drop in crime that Mayor Brandon Johnson, who Trump called out during the press conference, has touted.

“This reduction in hate crimes and of violence generally is a testament to what’s possible when we invest in people and community safety in a holistic way,” Johnson said in a July 18 statement that credited “strategic, constitutional policing” and “jobs for young people, access to mental health care, and housing people can afford.”

Similar trends have occurred in Baltimore, which has seen a 24% decrease in homicides and an 18% decline in nonfatal shootings, according to Mayor Brandon Scott.

In a statement to USA TODAY, the Democratic Mayor’s Association said federal intervention isn’t needed and argued the president is looking to create a “political charade” to distract voters.

“Let’s be clear: Crime is down in most major cities − including Washington, DC − in spite of Donald Trump, not because of him,” the group said. “If Trump actually cared about reducing crime, he wouldn’t have made unprecedented cuts to public safety programs that actually work.”

Congress’ takeover of Washington could come next

Trump’s crackdown in Washington could be followed by further changes, specifically to its home rule status, which is often a favorite punching bag for congressional Republicans.

Ahead of the president’s press conference, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, declared that now is the time for lawmakers to take control of the city.

“We should pass the BOWSER Act in September and return full control of Washington to Congress,” Lee said in an Aug. 11 post on X.

The bill, dubbed “Bringing Oversight to Washington and Safety to Every Resident” was introduced earlier this year, and was named after Bowser as a criticism of crime and alleged corruption in the city.

Lee co-sponsored the measure with Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tennessee, and cited an ongoing scandal involving a Washington police commander who in July was suspended for allegedly changing crime stats. He also noted how in some news reports local residents said they were afraid to speak out about crime.

Trump appeared to allude to the Ogles-Lee proposal to rescind home rule. “We’re going to change the statue, and I’m going to have to get the Republicans to vote, because the Democrats are weak on crime,” he said.

Democrats point out most violent cities are in Republican states

National Democrats took a few swings at Trump’s declaration, casting it as a political ploy more than a fight to improve public safety.

“The most violent cities are in Republican states − and there’s no takeover happening there,” Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, a rumored 2028 presidential contender, said in a post on X. “This is just another attempt to distract from Trump’s corruption and suppress dissent.”

Tony

Jen Pawol

Dear Commons Community,

One day after becoming the first woman to umpire an MLB regular-season game, Jen Pawol was behind home plate for Sunday’s game between the Miami Marlins and Atlanta Braves, making her the first female umpire to call balls and strikes for an MLB game.

With strike zone graphics now a mainstay on MLB broadcasts and resources like MLB Gameday showing balls and strikes in detail, calls by home plate umpires are under more scrutiny than ever. Unfortunately, Pawol contributed to that discourse with a dubious first strike call.

The opening pitch of the game from Braves starter Joey Wentz was inside and out of the zone, but Pawol called the 93 mph fastball a strike.

As Braves play-by-play broadcaster Joe Simpson said, “Joey Wentz likes that first call from Jen Pawol!”

That pitch looked far inside on the TV broadcast and MLB Gameday confirmed that location.

Marlins second baseman Xavier Edwards didn’t dispute the call or show much reaction to it. The Braves then called timeout to get the ball to commemorate the occasion for Pawol. However, perhaps sensing where Pawol’s strike zone was situated, Edwards swung at a fastball thrown even further inside and hit it up the middle for a single.

Pawol appeared to settle in and find the strike zone better from there, calling that inside pitch to right-handed batters consistently and getting several borderline calls correct. Wentz and Marlins starter Cal Quantrill also helped out by locating most of their pitches in the zone. Through four innings, Wentz threw 44 of his 65 pitches for strikes, while Quantrill threw 29 of 46 in the zone.

Marlins manager Clayton McCullough tipped his cap to Pawol for making history.

“I think Jen did a really nice job,” McCullough said, via The Associated Press. “I think she’s very composed back there. She handled and managed the game very well. And big day for her. Big day for Major League Baseball. I congratulated her again on that because it’s quite the accomplishment.”

Pawol made her major-league debut Saturday, umpiring the first game of a doubleheader between the Marlins and Braves at first base. She worked the second game of the twin bill at third base. As part of her duties at first base, she checked Braves pitcher Hurston Waldrep for illegal substances after the first inning.

The cap she wore for Saturday’s opening game was given to the National Baseball Hall of Fame afterward.

Prior to her MLB debut, Pawol umpired over 1,200 minor-league games, beginning in 2016. Before being promoted to the majors, Pawol, 48, umpired MLB spring training games during the past two seasons, the first woman to do so since Ria Cortesio in 2007.

She became MLB’s first female umpire after the NBA broke that gender barrier with Violet Palmer in 1997. Sarah Thomas was the first female referee to officiate an NFL game in 2015. And in 2022, Stéphanie Frappart became the first woman to referee a men’s World Cup game.

Congratulations Umpire Pawol and Major League Baseball!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump wasted no time making himself feel right at home when he moved back into the White House in January. The Oval Office was already giving Trump Tower 2.0 vibes just a month after he was officially handed the keys to the country. Gold vases posed on top of the room’s fireplace, and golden-framed pictures of our founding fathers glamorized the walls. Even the rug that masked the office’s floor matched its gold theme. But apparently, the executive mansion’s transformation was only getting started. The wall and fireplace wore gold pieces and carvings that they didn’t have when Trump initially settled into the White House. More gold trinkets stood on top of its mantle, including a clock that posed at the center.  Given Trump’s attachment to gold, the White House’s glow-up shouldn’t come as too much of a shock

Maureen Dowd in her column yesterday likens Trump to King Midas.  She comments:

“Trump is trying to turn the people’s house into a Saudi palace – “dictator chic”. It is symbolic of this president: he’s refashioning our democracy as an autocracy.

“In one year, we’ll celebrate 250 years of independence from a mad king,” said political consultant David Axelrod. “Would you not give anything to invite Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln back to comment on what they’re seeing? It’s blasphemous.”

She concludes:

“The president’s unbridled gilt reflects his unbridled greed.

King Midas of legend paid for his vanity. He was horrified that he could not control the golden touch. He turned his daughter, his food and his drink into gold. Aristotle said his “vain prayer” led to starvation.

It is a lesson Trump will never learn: the flashiest is never the truest.

Below is Dowd’s entire column.

Tony

————-——————————————

The New York Times

President Midas’ Terrible Touch

Maureen Dowd

Sun Aug 10 2025

When I was little, my mom told me a Cinderella story that happened to be true.

Once upon a time, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson held a competition for the design of the house of our presidents. Well-established architects submitted proposals, but the winner was a young Irishman, James Hoban. He also supervised construction of part of the Capitol.

My dad, another Irishman, worked at the Capitol. And sometimes my mom and I would drive down and gaze at the White House and Capitol, so proud that an up-and-coming Irishman could have beaten out all the other architects to play such a central role in conjuring the seats of our new Republic.

I would think about that when I grew up to be a White House reporter, interviewing president George HW Bush in the Oval Office. The room where it happens was a place of wonder, baked in history – good and bad. A famous old ivy, which had lasted through so many administrations and eavesdropped on so many remarkable conversations, was the main item on the mantel, flanked by porcelain vases. (Now there are nine gold decorative objects and counting.)

Back then, the room was understated and overwhelming. As Michael Douglas’s CEO said in The American President, showing off the Oval Office, “The White House is the single greatest home court advantage in the modern world.”

Real power doesn’t need to shout. In fact, it can whisper.

But Donald Trump was shouting down to reporters on Tuesday as he surveyed his desecration from the White House roof. He looked at his brutalist Rose Garden renovation, a stone slab with Florida-esque patio furniture and the site of the proposed $200 million ballroom, encroaching on the East Wing and encompassing 90,000sq ft, nearly twice the size of the White House residence.

Trump vowed to pay for the ballroom with private funds – which means, of course, that someone else will curry favour and pay.

Trump has long been a human wrecking ball, but now his chaos has splattered on to the usually serene White House. He’s obsessively terraforming the place to be an extension of his attention-crazed id.

Ever since he escaped what he considered a drab existence in Queens, Trump has bedazzled his life; everything from tweezers to seat belts to TV remotes were gilt. Even as president, he’s selling gold sneakers, gold watches and gold phones.

Now he has tarted up the Oval; it’s the modern version of worshipping the golden calf and just as profane.

Trump’s tacky rococo gold adornments are growing exponentially. He’s piling on more and more garish features – from cherubs to mantelpiece swirls – and sycophants add to the gold rush by bringing offerings to truckle to King Midas.

A grovelling Tim Cook came to the Oval on Wednesday with a gift for the president: a glass plaque with a 24-karat gold base.

Trump is trying to turn the people’s house into a Saudi palace – “dictator chic”. It is symbolic of this president: he’s refashioning our democracy as an autocracy.

“In one year, we’ll celebrate 250 years of independence from a mad king,” said political consultant David Axelrod. “Would you not give anything to invite Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln back to comment on what they’re seeing? It’s blasphemous.”

Trump is making the justice department a wholly owned subsidiary of Trump Inc, turning the FBI into his personal, political police force, pursuing his foes with a Javert-like fever. Justice is investigating Letitia James and Adam Schiff, and another agency is investigating Jack Smith. After Democratic legislators left Texas to block Trump’s gerrymandering power grab there, and after Trump said the FBI “may have to” get involved, a Republican senator from Texas said the bureau agreed to help locate the lawmakers.

Trump sent his former lawyer, now deputy attorney general, to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, who was then summarily transferred to Club Fed amid whispers of a possible pardon. Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as acting head of the FBI, was dismissed because he tried to protect agents from Trump’s purge of anyone involved in investigating the January 6th insurrection.

This, even as Jared Wise, a rioter who egged on the mob that day to “kill” the police, has been named an adviser to the justice department task force seeking vengeance against Trump’s perceived political foes. Trump slapped Brazil with a 50 per cent tariff because the government is prosecuting his far-right buddy Jair Bolsonaro, known as “the Trump of the tropics”, for trying to overturn the election he lost.

The president’s unbridled gilt reflects his unbridled greed.

King Midas of legend paid for his vanity. He was horrified that he could not control the golden touch. He turned his daughter, his food and his drink into gold. Aristotle said his “vain prayer” led to starvation.

It is a lesson Trump will never learn: the flashiest is never the truest.

Dear Commons Community,

My new book, Online Education:  Foundations, Planning and Pedagogy, 2^nd Edition, has just been published by Routledge/Taylor & Francis).  It is a comprehensive exploration of fully online and blended teaching platforms, addressing history, theory, research, planning, and practice. As colleges, universities, and schools around the world accelerate their adoption of large-scale technologies and traditional class models shift into seamless, digitally interactive environments, critical insights are needed into the implications for administration and pedagogy. This substantively revised second edition examines recent developments in services and implementation, from the expansion of synchronous online learning experiences to the widened availability of generative artificial intelligence software, while updating its research foundations and case studies. A provocative concluding chapter speculates on the future of education as the sector becomes increasingly dependent on advanced AI systems, massive cloud computing, biosensing tools, and robotics.

New to this Edition

This first edition of this book was published in 2019 and is six years old.  With respect to online technology, many changes have occurred since that time that were considered in writing a new edition.  First, the normal evolution of digital technology over six years requires a re-examination of new hardware and software products and services. Second, the world is still reeling from the impact of COVID (2020-2022) on all levels of education which resulted in greater reliance on online technology for most aspects of their operations including instruction. Third, the introduction of generative artificial intelligence (i.e., ChatGPT) in 2022, has awakened society to determine how best to integrate AI into all of its organizations including education.  Keeping these developments in mind, a number of changes and upgrades to the first edition were made to bring its material up to date as we enter the midpoint of the 2020s.  Also, the case studies in Appendix A have been reviewed and revised. Faculty using this book as a reading assignment in their courses, should consider integrating them into discussion or “after chapter” writing activities.

My book is available at Routledge/Taylor & Francis 

And at Amazon at: Online Education: Foundations, Planning, and Pedagogy: Picciano, Anthony G.: 9781032839912: Amazon.com: Books

Try it.  You will like it!

Tony

One-fifth of computer science papers may include AI-written sentences.

 W. LIANG ET AL., NAT HUM BEHAV (2025) BEHAV (2025) HTTPS://DOI.ORG/10.1038/S41562-025-02273-8

Dear Commons Community,

A massive, cross-disciplinary look at how often scientists turn to artificial intelligence (AI) to write their manuscripts has found steady increases since OpenAI’s text-generating chatbot ChatGPT burst onto the scene. In some fields, the use of such generative AI has become almost routine, with up to 22% of computer science papers showing signs of input from the large language models (LLMs) that underlie the computer programs.

The study, which appeared last week in Nature Human Behaviour, analyzed more than 1 million scientific papers and preprints published between 2020 and 2024, primarily looking at abstracts and introductions for shifts in the frequency of telltale words that appear more often in AI-generated text. “It’s really impressive stuff,” says Alex Glynn, a research literacy and communications instructor at the University of Louisville. The discovery that LLM-modified content is more prevalent in areas such as computer science could help guide efforts to detect and regulate the use of these tools, adds Glynn, who was not involved in the work. “Maybe this is a conversation that needs to be primarily focused on particular disciplines.”

When ChatGPT was first released in November 2022, many academic journals—hoping to avoid a flood of papers written in whole or part by computer programs—scrambled to create policies limiting the use of generative AI. Soon, however, researchers and online sleuths began to identify numerous scientific manuscripts that showed blatant signs of being written with the help of LLMs, including anomalous phrases such as “regenerate response” or “my knowledge cutoff.”

“On the surface, it’s quite amusing,” says Glynn, who compiles Academ-AI, a database that documents suspected instances of AI use in scientific papers. “But the implications of it are quite troubling.” LLMs are notorious for “hallucinating” false or misleading information, Glynn explains, and when obviously AI-generated papers are published despite rounds of peer review and editing, it raises concerns about journals’ quality control.

Unfortunately, it has gotten harder to spot AI’s handiwork as the technology has advanced and authors who use it have become more proficient at covering their tracks. In response, scientists have looked for subtler signs of LLM use. For the new study, James Zou, a computational biologist at Stanford University, and colleagues took paragraphs from papers written before ChatGPT was developed and used an LLM to summarize them. The team then prompted the LLM to generate a full paragraph based on that outline and used both texts to train a statistical model of word frequency. It learned to pick up on likely signs of AI-written material based on a higher frequency of words such as “pivotal,” “intricate,” or “showcase,” which are normally rare in scientific writing.

The researchers applied the model to the abstracts and introductions of 1,121,912 preprints and journalpublished papers from January 2020 to September 2024 on the preprint servers arXiv and bioRxiv and in 15 Nature portfolio journals. The analysis revealed a sharp uptick in LLM-modified content just months after the release of ChatGPT. That this trend appeared so soon “means that people were very quickly using it right from the start,” Zou says.

Rise of AI
The amount of artificial intelligence (AI)-generated text in scientific papers had surged by September 2024, almost 2 years after the release of ChatGPT, according to an analysis.

Certain disciplines exhibited faster growth than others, which may reflect differing levels of familiarity with AI technology (see table, below). “We see the biggest increases in the areas that are actually closest to AI,” Zou explains.

By September 2024, 22.5% of computer science abstracts showed evidence of LLM modification, with electrical systems and engineering sciences coming in a close second—compared with just 7.7% of math abstracts. Percentages were also comparatively smaller for disciplines such as biomedical science and physics, but Zou notes that LLM usage is increasing across all domains: “The large language model is really becoming, for good or for bad, an integral part of the scientific process itself.”

University of Tübingen data scientist Dmitry Kobak, whose recent similar study in Science Advances revealed that about one in seven biomedical research abstracts published in 2024 was probably written with the help of AI, is impressed by the new work. “This is very solid statistical modeling,” Kobak says.

He adds that the true frequency of AI use in scientific publishing could be even higher, because authors may have started to scrub “red flag” words from manuscripts to avoid detection. The word “delve,” for example, started to appear much more frequently after the launch of ChatGPT, only to dwindle once recognized as a hallmark of AI-generated text.

Although the new study primarily looked at abstracts and introductions, Kobak worries authors will increasingly rely on AI to write sections of scientific papers that reference related works. That could eventually cause these sections to become more similar to one another and create a “vicious cycle” in the future, in which new LLMs are trained on content generated by other LLMs.

Zou and his colleagues are currently planning a conference where the writers and reviewers are all AI agents, which they hope will demonstrate whether and how these technologies can independently generate new hypotheses, techniques, and insights. “I expect that there will be some quite interesting findings,” he says. “I also expect that there will be a lot of interesting mistakes.”

Tony