How do AI tools impact college students? 231 students in an object-oriented programming class participated in a study at Estonia's University of Tartu (conducted by an associate professor of informatics and a recently graduated master's student). They were asked how frequently they used AI tools and for what purposes. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, and Spearman's rank correlation analysis was performed to examine the strength of the relationships. The results showed that students mainly used AI assistance for solving programming tasks — for example, debugging code and understanding examples. A surprising finding, however, was that more frequent use of chatbots correlated with lower academic results. One possible explanation is that struggling students were more likely to turn to AI. Nevertheless, the finding suggests that unguided use of AI and over-reliance on it may in fact hinder learning.
The researchers say their report provides "quantitative evidence that frequent AI use does not necessarily translate into better academic outcomes in programming courses."

Other results from the survey:

• 47 respondents (20.3%) never used AI assistants in this course.

• Only 3.9% of the students reported using AI assistants weekly, "suggesting that reliance on such tools is still relatively low."

• "Few students feared plagiarism, suggesting students don't link AI use to it — raising academic concerns."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Can AI help "smooth over" discussion on abortion, racism, immigration, or Israel-Palestine? Columbia University sure hopes so. The Verge has learned that the university recently began testing Sway, an AI debate program currently in beta. Developed by two researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, Sway matches up students with opposing views to chat one-on-one about hot-button issues and "facilitates better discussions between them," according to the tool's website. Nicholas DiBella, a postdoctoral scholar at CMU who helped develop Sway, told The Verge that about 3,000 students from more than 30 colleges and universities have used the tool.

One of those may soon be Columbia. News of the potential partnership comes after more than two years of escalating tensions at Columbia between students, administrators, and the federal government. The university has spent years at the center of controversy after controversy: expulsions of pro-Palestinian student protesters, a string of police raids, and demands from the federal government.

People at Columbia's Teachers College are testing Sway in order to potentially integrate it into the conflict resolution curriculum and "bridge-building initiatives at Columbia," DiBella said. He said there's also been interest from other teams at Columbia in using Sway for the fall 2026 semester and onward. Simon Cullen, an assistant professor at CMU and the other developer behind Sway, told The Verge that the company is also in touch with Columbia University Life.

The Washington Post covers "a string of false reports of active shooters at a dozen U.S. universities this month as students returned to campus." The FBI is investigating the incidents, according to a spokesperson who declined to specify the nature of the probe. While universities have proved a popular swatting target, the agency "is seeing an increase in swatting events across the country," the FBI spokesperson said... Local officials are frustrated by the anonymous calls tying up first responders, straining public safety budgets and needlessly traumatizing college students who grew up in an era in which gun violence has in some way shaped their school experience...

The recent string of swattings began Thursday with a false report to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, quickly followed by one about Villanova University later that day. Hoaxes at 10 more schools followed... Villanova also received a second threat. As the calls about shootings came in, officials on many of the campuses pushed out emergency notifications directing students and employees to shelter in place, while police investigated what turned out to be false reports. (Iowa State was able to verify the lack of a threat before a campuswide alert was sent, its police chief said. [They had a live video feed from the location the caller claimed to be from.]) In at least three cases, 911 calls reporting a shooting purported to come from campus libraries, where the sound of gunshots could be heard over the phone, officials told The Washington Post...

Although false bomb reports, shooter threats and swatting incidents are not new, bad actors used to be more easily traceable through landline phones. But the era of internet-based services, virtual private networks, and anonymous text and chat tools has made unmasking hoax callers far more challenging... In 2023, a Post investigation found that more than 500 schools across the United States were subject to a coordinated swatting effort that may have had origins abroad...

[In Chattanooga, Tennessee last week] a dispatcher heard gunfire during a call reporting an on-campus shooting. "We grabbed everybody that wasn't already out on the street and got to that location," said University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Police spokesman Brett Fuchs. About 150 officers from several agencies responded. There was no shooter.
The New York Times reports that an online group called "Purgatory" is "suspected of being connected to several of the episodes, including reports of shootings, according to cybersecurity experts, law enforcement agencies and the group members' own posts in a social media chat." (Though the Times, couldn't verify the group's claims.) Federal authorities previously connected the same network to a series of bomb scares and bogus shooting reports in early 2024, for which three men pleaded guilty this year... Bragging about its recent activities, Purgatory said that it could arrange more swatting episodes for a fee.
USA Today tries to quantify the reach of swatting: Estimated swatting incidents jumped from 400 in 2011 to more than 1,000 in 2019, according to the Anti-Defamation League, which cited a former FBI agent whose expertise is in swatting. From January 2023 to June 2024 alone, more than 800 instances of swatting were recorded at U.S. elementary, middle and high schools, according to the K-12 School Shootings Database, created by a University of Central Florida doctoral student in response to the Parkland High School shooting in 2018.tise is in swatting... David Riedman, a data scientist and creator of the K-12 School Shooting Database, estimates that in 2023, it cost $82,300,000 for police to respond to false threats.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Phys.org: In a first-of-its-kind experiment, engineers at the University of Pennsylvania brought quantum networking out of the lab and onto commercial fiber-optic cables using the same Internet Protocol (IP) that powers today's web. Reported in Science, the work shows that fragile quantum signals can run on the same infrastructure that carries everyday online traffic. The team tested their approach on Verizon's campus fiber-optic network. The Penn team's tiny "Q-chip" coordinates quantum and classical data and, crucially, speaks the same language as the modern web. That approach could pave the way for a future "quantum internet," which scientists believe may one day be as transformative as the dawn of the online era.

Quantum signals rely on pairs of "entangled" particles, so closely linked that changing one instantly affects the other. Harnessing that property could allow quantum computers to link up and pool their processing power, enabling advances like faster, more energy-efficient AI or designing new drugs and materials beyond the reach of today's supercomputers. Penn's work shows, for the first time on live commercial fiber, that a chip can not only send quantum signals but also automatically correct for noise, bundle quantum and classical data into standard internet-style packets, and route them using the same addressing system and management tools that connect everyday devices online. "By showing an integrated chip can manage quantum signals on a live commercial network like Verizon's, and do so using the same protocols that run the classical internet, we've taken a key step toward larger-scale experiments and a practical quantum internet," says Liang Feng, Professor in Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) and in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), and the Science paper's senior author.

"This feels like the early days of the classical internet in the 1990s, when universities first connected their networks," added Robert Broberg, a doctoral student in ESE and co-author of the paper. "That opened the door to transformations no one could have predicted. A quantum internet has the same potential."

theodp writes: The New York Times reports from the CS grad job-seeking trenches: Growing up near Silicon Valley, Manasi Mishra remembers seeing tech executives on social media urging students to study computer programming. "The rhetoric was, if you just learned to code, work hard and get a computer science degree, you can get six figures for your starting salary," Ms. Mishra, now 21, recalls hearing as she grew up in San Ramon, Calif.

Those golden industry promises helped spur Ms. Mishra to code her first website in elementary school, take advanced computing in high school and major in computer science in college. But after a year of hunting for tech jobs and internships, Ms. Mishra graduated from Purdue University in May without an offer. "I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle," Ms. Mishra said in a get-ready-with-me TikTok video this summer that has since racked up more than 147,000 views.

Some graduates described feeling caught in an A.I. "doom loop." Many job seekers now use specialized A.I. tools like Simplify to tailor their resumes to specific jobs and autofill application forms, enabling them to quickly apply to many jobs. At the same time, companies inundated with applicants are using A.I. systems to automatically scan resumes and reject candidates.

NBC News reports that in the U.S., many recent graduates looking to enter the labor force "are painting a dire picture of their job search." NBC News asked people who recently finished technical school, college or graduate school how their job application process was going, and in more than 100 responses, the graduates described months spent searching for a job, hundreds of applications and zero responses from employers — even with degrees once thought to be in high demand, like computer science or engineering.

Some said they struggled to get an hourly retail position or are making salaries well below what they had been expecting in fields they hadn't planned to work in. "It was very frustrating," said Jensen Kornfeind, who graduated this spring from Temple University with a degree in international trade. "Out of 70-plus job applications, I had three job interviews, and out of those three, I got ghosted from two of them."

The national economic data backs up their experience. The unemployment rate among recent graduates has been increasing this year to an average of 5.3%, compared to around 4% for the labor force as a whole, making it one of the toughest job markets for recent graduates since 2015, according to an analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released Friday. "Recent college graduates are on the margin of the labor market, and so they're the first to feel when the labor market slows and hiring slows," said Jaison Abel, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Across the economy, hiring in recent months has ground to its slowest pace since the start of the pandemic, with employers adding just 73,000 jobs in July, according to data released Friday... Tech workers have been some of the hardest hit in a slowing job market, with more than 400 employers including Meta, Intel and Cisco announcing more than 130,000 jobs cut in 2025, according to tech job site TrueUp.
The article cites an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab who believes early adoption of AI "is also likely driving some of the cuts and leading employers to rethink hiring plans in anticipation of AI's future role." So besides federal policy changes, the article blames "the emergence of AI, which some companies have said they are using to replace certain entry-level jobs, like those in customer support or basic software development."

Seven months after graduating, one CS major told NBC News he'd applied for 100 jobs, and got one job offer — for the 4 a.m. shift at Starbucks.

Satirical singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer died Saturday at age 97. The Associated Press notes Lehrer had long ago "largely abandoned his music career to return to teaching math at Harvard and other universities." Lehrer had remained on the math faculty of the University of California at Santa Cruz well into his late 70s. In 2020, he even turned away from his own copyright, granting the public permission to use his lyrics in any format without any fee in return.

A Harvard prodigy (he had earned a math degree from the institution at age 18), Lehrer soon turned his very sharp mind to old traditions and current events... He'd gotten into performing accidentally when he began to compose songs in the early 1950s to amuse his friends. Soon he was performing them at coffeehouses around Cambridge, Massachusetts, while he remained at Harvard to teach and obtain a master's degree in math. [Lehrer also "spent several years unsuccessfully pursuing a doctorate..."]

He cut his first record in 1953, "Songs by Tom Lehrer"... After a two-year stint in the Army, Lehrer began to perform concerts of his material in venues around the world. In 1959, he released another LP called "More of Tom Lehrer" and a live recording called "An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer," nominated for a Grammy for best comedy performance (musical) in 1960. But around the same time, he largely quit touring and returned to teaching math, though he did some writing and performing on the side. Lehrer said he was never comfortable appearing in public...

He did produce a political satire song each week for the 1964 television show "That Was the Week That Was," a groundbreaking topical comedy show that anticipated "Saturday Night Live" a decade later. He released the songs the following year in an album titled "That Was the Year That Was"... [Lehrer's body of work "was actually quite small," the article notes, "amounting to about three dozen songs."] He also wrote songs for the 1970s educational children's show "The Electric Company." He told AP in 2000 that hearing from people who had benefited from them gave him far more satisfaction than praise for any of his satirical works...

He began to teach part-time at Santa Cruz in the 1970s, mainly to escape the harsh New England winters. From time to time, he acknowledged, a student would enroll in one of his classes based on knowledge of his songs. "But it's a real math class," he said at the time. "I don't do any funny theorems. So those people go away pretty quickly."

An anonymous reader shares a blog post: The International Mathematical Olympiad is the world's most prestigious competition for young mathematicians, and has been held annually since 1959. Each country taking part is represented by six elite, pre-university mathematicians who compete to solve six exceptionally difficult problems in algebra, combinatorics, geometry, and number theory. Medals are awarded to the top half of contestants, with approximately 8% receiving a prestigious gold medal.

Recently, the IMO has also become an aspirational challenge for AI systems as a test of their advanced mathematical problem-solving and reasoning capabilities. Last year, Google DeepMind's combined AlphaProof and AlphaGeometry 2 systems achieved the silver-medal standard, solving four out of the six problems and scoring 28 points. Making use of specialist formal languages, this breakthrough demonstrated that AI was beginning to approach elite human mathematical reasoning.

This year, we were amongst an inaugural cohort to have our model results officially graded and certified by IMO coordinators using the same criteria as for student solutions. Recognizing the significant accomplishments of this year's student-participants, we're now excited to share the news of Gemini's breakthrough performance. An advanced version of Gemini Deep Think solved five out of the six IMO problems perfectly, earning 35 total points, and achieving gold-medal level performance.

It's "a milestone for scalable quantum technologies," according to the announcement from Boston University. Scientists from Boston University, UC Berkeley, and Northwestern University "reported the world's first electronic-photonic-quantum system on a chip, according to a study published in Nature Electronics."

Quantum computing is on "a decades-long path from concept to reality," says Milos PopoviÄ, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at BU and a senior author on the study. "This is a small step on that path — but an important one, because it shows we can build repeatable, controllable quantum systems in commercial semiconductor foundries." The system combines quantum light sources and stabilizing electronics using a standard 45-nanometer semiconductor manufacturing process to produce reliable streams of correlated photon pairs (particles of light) — a key resource for emerging quantum technologies. The advance paves the way for mass-producible "quantum light factory" chips and large-scale quantum systems built from many such chips working together...

Just as electronic chips are powered by electric currents, and optical communication links by laser light, future quantum technologies will require a steady stream of quantum light resource units to perform their functions. To provide this, the researchers' work created an array of "quantum light factories" on a silicon chip, each less than a millimeter by a millimeter in dimension... "What excites me most is that we embedded the control directly on-chip — stabilizing a quantum process in real time," says Anirudh Ramesh, a PhD student at Northwestern who led the quantum measurements. "That's a critical step toward scalable quantum systems."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot for sharing the news.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Jalopnik: On July 2, the 88th anniversary of famed aviator Amelia Earhart's disappearance, Purdue University announced an expedition [which will launch in November] to confirm whether or not the wreckage of her plane has been found.

Satellite imagery from a decade ago indicated the presence of something that sure looks plane-like under the waters of Nikumaroro Island, an uninhabited spit of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that just happens to be near Earhart's intended flightpath...

This isn't the first time Earhart investigators have been to Nikumaroro. Human bones were recovered from the island previously, which scientists determined with 99% confidence to belong to the beloved pilot, per the university's student newspaper the Purdue Exponent. The investigators also found some women's beauty products from the 1930s. If that is indeed where Earhart died, it stands to reason that her Lockheed Electra 10E, nicknamed the Flying Laboratory, wouldn't be far away. Since nobody noticed any aircraft wreckage on the island (which isn't very big), it would probably be under the water.

Recovering such a legendary airplane will be a multi-stage process spanning years. This expedition, which will embark in November, is only planning to verify what's actually there, not retrieve anything. Recent satellite imagery doesn't show the object anymore, meaning it might have become buried; in fact, it was only ever visible in 2015, right after a cyclone blew threw and shifted a bunch of sand, as NBC News reports. The team will start with non-invasive procedures, such as sonar and magnetometers, before drilling through the silt with a hydroglobe to make physical contact with the object. Lastly, they will use a suction dredge to pull off loose sediment. If they're lucky, that will be sufficient to actually see part of the Lockheed Electra.

The University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering is overhauling its approach to computer science education as AI reshapes the tech industry. Director Magdalena Balazinska has declared that "coding, or the translation of a precise design into software instructions, is dead" because AI can now handle that work.

The Pacific Northwest's premier tech program now allows students to use GPT tools in assignments, requiring them to cite AI as a collaborator just as they would credit input from a fellow student. The school is considering "coordinated changes to our curriculum" after encouraging professors to experiment with AI integration.

A politically motivated hacker breached Columbia University's IT systems, stealing vast amounts of sensitive student and employee data -- including admissions decisions and Social Security numbers. The Record reports: The hacker reportedly provided Bloomberg News with 1.6 gigabytes of data they claimed to have stolen from the university, including information from 2.5 million applications going back decades. The stolen data the outlet reviewed reportedly contains details on whether applicants were rejected or accepted, their citizenship status, their university ID numbers and which academic programs they sought admission to. While the hacker's claims have not been independently verified, Bloomberg said it compared data provided by the hacker to that belonging to eight Columbia applicants seeking admission between 2019 and 2024 and found it matched.

The threat actor reportedly told Bloomberg he was seeking information that would indicate whether the university continues to use affirmative action in admissions despite a 2023 Supreme Court decision prohibiting the practice. The hacker told Bloomberg he obtained 460 gigabytes of data in total -- after spending two months targeting and penetrating increasingly privileged layers of the university's servers -- and said he harvested information about financial aid packages, employee pay and at least 1.8 million Social Security numbers belonging to employees, applicants, students and their family members.

An artist cancelled their Duolingo and Audible subscriptions to protest the companies' decisions to use more AI. "If enough people leave, hopefully they kind of rethink this," the artist tells the Washington Post.

And apparently, many more people feel the same way... In thousands of comments and posts about Audible and Duolingo that The Post reviewed across social media — including on Reddit, YouTube, Threads and TikTok — people threatened to cancel subscriptions, voiced concern for human translators and narrators, and said AI creates inferior experiences. "It destroys the purpose of humanity. We have so many amazing abilities to create art and music and just appreciate what's around us," said Kayla Ellsworth, a 21-year-old college student. "Some of the things that are the most important to us are being replaced by things that are not real...."

People in creative jobs are already on edge about the role AI is playing in their fields. On sites such as Etsy, clearly AI-generated art and other products are pushing out some original crafters who make a living on their creations. AI is being used to write romance novels and coloring books, design logos and make presentations... "I was promised tech would make everything easier so I could enjoy life," author Brittany Moone said. "Now it's leaving me all the dishes and the laundry so AI can make the art."
But will this turn into a consumer movement? The article also cites an assistant marketing professor at Washington State University, who found customers are now reacting negatively to the term "AI" in product descriptions — out of fear for losing their jobs (as well as concerns about quality and privacy). And he does predict this can change the way companies use AI.

"There will be some companies that are going to differentiate themselves by saying no to AI." And while it could be a niche market, "The people will be willing to pay more for things just made by humans."

Timothy B. Lee has written for the Washington Post, Vox.com, and Ars Technica — and now writes a Substack blog called "Understanding AI."

This week he visits recent research by computer scientists and legal scholars from Stanford, Cornell, and West Virginia University that found that Llama 3.1 70BÂ(released in July 2024) has memorized 42% of the first Harry Potter book well enough to reproduce 50-token excerpts at least half the time... The paper was published last month by a team of computer scientists and legal scholars from Stanford, Cornell, and West Virginia University. They studied whether five popular open-weight models — three from Meta and one each from Microsoft and EleutherAI — were able to reproduce text from Books3, a collection of books that is widely used to train LLMs. Many of the books are still under copyright... Llama 3.1 70B — a mid-sized model Meta released in July 2024 — is far more likely to reproduce Harry Potter text than any of the other four models....

Interestingly, Llama 1 65B, a similar-sized model released in February 2023, had memorized only 4.4 percent of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. This suggests that despite the potential legal liability, Meta did not do much to prevent memorization as it trained Llama 3. At least for this book, the problem got much worse between Llama 1 and Llama 3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was one of dozens of books tested by the researchers. They found that Llama 3.1 70B was far more likely to reproduce popular books — such as The Hobbit and George Orwell's 1984 — than obscure ones. And for most books, Llama 3.1 70B memorized more than any of the other models...

For AI industry critics, the big takeaway is that — at least for some models and some books — memorization is not a fringe phenomenon. On the other hand, the study only found significant memorization of a few popular books. For example, the researchers found that Llama 3.1 70B only memorized 0.13 percent of Sandman Slim, a 2009 novel by author Richard Kadrey. That's a tiny fraction of the 42 percent figure for Harry Potter... To certify a class of plaintiffs, a court must find that the plaintiffs are in largely similar legal and factual situations. Divergent results like these could cast doubt on whether it makes sense to lump J.K. Rowling, Richard Kadrey, and thousands of other authors together in a single mass lawsuit. And that could work in Meta's favor, since most authors lack the resources to file individual lawsuits.
Why is it happening? "Maybe Meta had trouble finding 15 trillion distinct tokens, so it trained on the Books3 dataset multiple times. Or maybe Meta added third-party sources — such as online Harry Potter fan forums, consumer book reviews, or student book reports — that included quotes from Harry Potter and other popular books..."

"Or there could be another explanation entirely. Maybe Meta made subtle changes in its training recipe that accidentally worsened the memorization problem."

In a world first, a research team used 2D materials — only an atom thick — to develop a computer. The team (led by researchers at Pennsylvania State University) says it's a major step toward thinner, faster and more energy-efficient electronics.

From the University's announcement: They created a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) computer — technology at the heart of nearly every modern electronic device — without relying on silicon. Instead, they used two different 2D materials to develop both types of transistors needed to control the electric current flow in CMOS computers: molybdenum disulfide for n-type transistors and tungsten diselenide for p-type transistors... "[A]s silicon devices shrink, their performance begins to degrade," [said lead researcher/engineering professor Saptarshi Das]. "Two-dimensional materials, by contrast, maintain their exceptional electronic properties at atomic thickness, offering a promising path forward...."

The team used metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) — a fabrication process that involves vaporizing ingredients, forcing a chemical reaction and depositing the products onto a substrate — to grow large sheets of molybdenum disulfide and tungsten diselenide and fabricate over 1,000 of each type of transistor. By carefully tuning the device fabrication and post-processing steps, they were able to adjust the threshold voltages of both n- and p-type transistors, enabling the construction of fully functional CMOS logic circuits.

"Our 2D CMOS computer operates at low-supply voltages with minimal power consumption and can perform simple logic operations at frequencies up to 25 kilohertz," said first author Subir Ghosh, a doctoral student pursuing a degree in engineering science and mechanics under Das's mentorship. Ghosh noted that the operating frequency is low compared to conventional silicon CMOS circuits, but their computer — known as a one instruction set computer — can still perform simple logic operations.

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: The old Code.org curriculum page for middle and high school students has been changed to include a new Python Lab in the tech-backed nonprofit's K-12 offerings. Elsewhere on the site, a Computer Science and AI Foundations curriculum is described that includes units on 'Foundations of AI Programming [in Python]' and 'Insights from Data and AI [aka Data Science].' A more-detailed AI Foundations Syllabus 25-26 document promises a second semester of material is coming soon: "This semester offers an innovative approach to teaching programming by integrating learning with and about artificial intelligence (AI). Using Python as the primary language, students build foundational programming skills while leveraging AI tools to enhance computational thinking and problem-solving. The curriculum also introduces students to the basics of creating AI-powered programs, exploring machine learning, and applying data science principles."

Newly-posted videos on Code.org's YouTube channel appear to be intended to support the new Python-based CS & AI course. "Python is extremely versatile," explains a Walmart data scientist to open the video for Data Science: Using Python. "So, first of all, Python is one of the very few languages that can handle numbers very, very well." A researcher at the Univ. of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) adds, "Python is the gold standard and what people expect data scientists to know [...] Key to us being able to handle really big data sets is our use of Python and cluster computing." Adding to the Python love, an IHME data analyst explains, "Python is a great choice for large databases because there's a lot of support for Python libraries."

Code.org is currently recruiting teachers to attend its CS and AI Foundations Professional Learning program this summer, which is being taught by Code.org's national network of university and nonprofit regional partners (teachers who signup have a chance to win $250 in DonorsChoose credits for their classrooms). A flyer for a five-day Michigan Professional Development program to prepare teachers for a pilot of the Code.org CS & A course touts the new curriculum as "an alternative to the AP [Computer Science] pathway" (teachers are offered scholarships covering registration, lodging, meals, and workshop materials).

Interestingly, Code.org's embrace of Python and Data Science comes as the nonprofit changes its mission to 'make CS and AI a core part of K-12 education' and launches a new national campaign with tech leaders to make CS and AI a graduation requirement. Prior to AI changing the education conversation, Code.org in 2021 boasted that it had lined up a consortium of tech giants, politicians, and educators to push its new $15 million Amazon-bankrolled Java AP CS A curriculum into K-12 classrooms. Just three years later, however, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was boasting to investors that Amazon had turned to AI to automatically do Java coding that he claimed would have otherwise taken human coders 4,500 developer-years to complete.

Ohio State University is launching a campus-wide AI fluency initiative requiring all students to integrate AI into their studies, aiming to make them proficient in both their major and the responsible use of AI. "Ohio State has an opportunity and responsibility to prepare students to not just keep up, but lead in this workforce of the future," said the university's president, Walter "Ted" Carter Jr. He added: "Artificial intelligence is transforming the way we live, work, teach and learn. In the not-so-distant future, every job, in every industry, is going to be [affected] in some way by AI." The Guardian reports: The university said its program will prioritize the incoming freshman class and onward, in order to make every Ohio State graduate "fluent in AI and how it can be responsibly applied to advance their field." [...] Steven Brown, an associate professor of philosophy at the university, told NBC News that after students turned in the first batch of AI-assisted papers he found "a lot of really creative ideas."

"My favorite one is still a paper on karma and the practice of returning shopping carts," Brown said. Brown said that banning AI from classwork is "shortsighted," and he encouraged his students to discuss ethics and philosophy with AI chatbots. "It would be a disaster for our students to have no idea how to effectively use one of the most powerful tools that humanity has ever created," Brown said. "AI is such a powerful tool for self-education that we must rapidly adapt our pedagogy or be left in the dust."

Separately, Ohio's AI in Education Coalition is working to develop a comprehensive strategy to ensure that the state's K-12 education system, encompassing the years of formal schooling from kindergarten through 12th grade in high school, is prepared for and can help lead the AI revolution. "AI technology is here to stay," then lieutenant governor Jon Husted said last year while announcing an AI toolkit for Ohio's K-12 school districts that he added would ensure the state "is a leader in responding to the challenges and opportunities made possible by artificial intelligence."

The New York Times reports: California State University announced this year that it was making ChatGPT available to more than 460,000 students across its 23 campuses to help prepare them for "California's future A.I.-driven economy." Cal State said the effort would help make the school "the nation's first and largest A.I.-empowered university system..." Some faculty members have already built custom chatbots for their students by uploading course materials like their lecture notes, slides, videos and quizzes into ChatGPT.
And other U.S. campuses including the University of Maryland are also "working to make A.I. tools part of students' everyday experiences," according to the article. It's all part of an OpenAI initiative "to overhaul college education — by embedding its artificial intelligence tools in every facet of campus life."

The Times calls it "a national experiment on millions of students." If the company's strategy succeeds, universities would give students A.I. assistants to help guide and tutor them from orientation day through graduation. Professors would provide customized A.I. study bots for each class. Career services would offer recruiter chatbots for students to practice job interviews. And undergrads could turn on a chatbot's voice mode to be quizzed aloud ahead of a test. OpenAI dubs its sales pitch "A.I.-native universities..." To spread chatbots on campuses, OpenAI is selling premium A.I. services to universities for faculty and student use. It is also running marketing campaigns aimed at getting students who have never used chatbots to try ChatGPT...

OpenAI's campus marketing effort comes as unemployment has increased among recent college graduates — particularly in fields like software engineering, where A.I. is now automating some tasks previously done by humans. In hopes of boosting students' career prospects, some universities are racing to provide A.I. tools and training...

[Leah Belsky, OpenAI's vice president of education] said a new "memory" feature, which retains and can refer to previous interactions with a user, would help ChatGPT tailor its responses to students over time and make the A.I. "more valuable as you grow and learn." Privacy experts warn that this kind of tracking feature raises concerns about long-term tech company surveillance. In the same way that many students today convert their school-issued Gmail accounts into personal accounts when they graduate, Ms. Belsky envisions graduating students bringing their A.I. chatbots into their workplaces and using them for life.

"It would be their gateway to learning — and career life thereafter," Ms. Belsky said.

alternative_right shares a report from Phys.Org: Using conventional propulsion and low-energy trajectories, it takes six to nine months for crewed spacecraft to reach Mars. These durations complicate mission design and technology requirements and raise health and safety concerns since crews will be exposed to extended periods in microgravity and heightened exposure to cosmic radiation. Traditionally, mission designers have recommended nuclear-electric or nuclear-thermal propulsion (NEP/NTP), which could shorten trips to just 3 months. In a recent study, a UCSB physics researcher identified two trajectories that could reduce transits to Mars using the Starship to between 90 and 104 days.

The study was authored by Jack Kingdon, a graduate student researcher in the Physics Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He is also a member of the UCSB Weld Lab, an experimental ultracold atomic physics group that uses quantum degenerate gases to explore quantum mechanical phenomena. [...] As outlined on its website, conference presentations, and user manual, the SpaceX mission architecture consists of six Starships traveling to Mars. Four of these spacecraft will haul 400 metric tons (440 U.S. tons) of cargo while two will transport 200 passengers. Based on the Block 2 design, which has a 1,500 metric ton (1,650 U.S. ton) propellant capacity, the crewed Starships will require 15 tankers to fully refuel in low Earth orbit (LEO). The cargo ships would require only four, since they would be sent on longer low-energy trajectories. Once the flotilla arrives at Mars, the Starships will refuel using propellant created in situ using local carbon dioxide and water ice. When the return window approaches, one of the crew ships and 3-4 cargo ships will refuel and then launch into a low Mars orbit (LMO). The cargo ships will then transfer the majority of their propellant to the crew ship and return to the surface of Mars. The crew ship would then depart for Earth, and the process could be repeated for the other crew ship.

Kingdon calculated multiple trajectories using a Lambert Solver, which produces the shortest elliptical arc in two-body problem equations (aka Lambert's problem). The first would depart Earth on April 30th, 2033, taking advantage of the 26-month periodic alignment between Earth and Mars. The transit would last 90 days, with the crew returning to Earth after another 90-day transit by July 2nd, 2035. The second would depart Earth on July 15th, 2035, and return to Earth after a 104-day transit on December 5th, 2037. As Kingdon explained, the former trajectory is the most likely to succeed: "The optimal trajectory is the 2033 trajectory -- it has the lowest fuel requirements for the fastest transit time. A note that may not be obvious to the layreader is that Starship can very easily reach Mars in ~3 months -- in fact, it can in any launch window, over a fairly wide range of trajectories. However, Starship may impact the Martian atmosphere too fast (although we do not know, and likely SpaceX don't either actually how fast Starship can hit the Martian atmosphere and survive). The trajectories discussed are ones that I am confident Starship will survive." The paper describing the work has been published in the journal Scientific Reports.

International interest in American higher education has plummeted to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data tracking prospective student behavior online. Studyportals, which operates a global directory of degree programs, reports that clicks on American university courses have reached their lowest point since the early pandemic period.

Weekly page views of US university courses halved between January 5th and the end of April. First-quarter traffic to American undergraduate and master's degree programs fell more than 20% compared to the same period last year, while interest in PhD programs dropped by one-third. India, which supplies nearly a third of America's international students, showed the steepest decline at 40%. The data suggests British universities would be the primary beneficiaries of students looking elsewhere.

The sharp drop in interest follows the Trump administration's escalating restrictions on international students, including stripping Harvard University of its enrollment authority on May 22nd and suspending all new student visa interviews on May 27th. International students contributed $43.8 billion to the American economy during the 2023-24 academic year, with about three-quarters of international PhD students indicating they plan to remain in the country after graduation.