ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast

In this episode of ChatEDU, From Messaging to Mastery, Texting Your Way to AI Literacy, Matt and Liz discuss couples therapy for a man and his AI girlfriend, OpenAI shelving adult companion features, and a pivot toward coding tools.

The Rundown

Gemini now imports personal context from other apps

University of Florida's Shark AI teaches K-12 machine learning through fossils and 3D prints

14 ways to remind kids that AI is a machine, not a friend

A new study on how 13–24-year-olds interact with AI

Mayor Wu wants Boston to lead on AI literacy in schools

Wikipedia bans AI-generated articles

Landmark rulings against Meta and Google over child safety

An Irish town bans smartphones for primary students

25 states target AI in education

The White House unveils a national AI workforce training framework

Prince William County bans AI glasses in school

Educause's "Prompt to Practice" pushes faculty AI transparency

Agentic AI speeds up math research at UPenn

Solar GPS and AI are replacing physical fences for livestock

AI bots have driven a 7,851 percent surge in internet traffic

Melania Trump proposes robots to teach classical studies

Anthropic finds an economic divide between AI newbies and power users

Beneath the Surface

Liz shares her firsthand experience with "Make America AI Ready," a free, week-long AI literacy course delivered via text message, discussing how SMS makes foundational AI concepts accessible to all Americans.

The Bright Byte

Helpany uses radar sensors to monitor seniors in living communities, reducing falls by 72% without invasive cameras.

Announcements

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday
ASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠ 
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77
Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw

Our six-week AI Micro-Credential course launching this spring in partnership with Southern Connecticut State University. Group discounts are available at Skills21.org/AI/Micro.

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 at https://www.skills21.org/social-balance⁠⁠

Register for our Spring AI Conference (5.1.26) in Litchfield, CT https://www.skills21.org/event-details/ai-in-education-spring-2026-conference 

Check out our new Screen Time initiative
skills21.org/ai/screenshift 

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

Links

Therapy for a man and his AI girlfriend
https://tinyurl.com/yuwub6x8

Bring your AI chat history to Gemini 
https://tinyurl.com/4dknmrca

Using shark teeth to teach Florida students about AI
https://tinyurl.com/2fe8ym3y

Ways to Remind Yourself (and Your Kids) AI is a Machine
https://tinyurl.com/7fhpacyy

Youth, AI, and the Relationships That Shape Them
https://tinyurl.com/yshp99bc

Boston schools and AI literacy
https://tinyurl.com/2tz2kshk

Wikipedia bans AI-generated articles
https://tinyurl.com/2cfd2pka

How courts are rewriting the rules for Big Tech and children
https://tinyurl.com/3phy49ed

A Phone-Free Childhood?
https://tinyurl.com/4wrkhxkh

One Question Every Superintendent Should Be Asking
https://tinyurl.com/ye25sff2

National AI Policy Framework
https://tinyurl.com/mstfm8nt

Guidance for the use of AI-enabled glasses 
https://tinyurl.com/4mpvnp8e

Transparent GenAI Use in Higher Education
https://tinyurl.com/ytbr4uym

How AI is reshaping math research workflows
https://tinyurl.com/3szc52hd

Expansion of Virtual Fencing
https://tinyurl.com/22ykucvz

AI Traffic & Cyberthreat Benchmark Report
https://tinyurl.com/2e5rxaap

Melania and the Robot 
https://tinyurl.com/523buhen

America's next class war: AI fluency
https://tinyurl.com/496ns9n7

Make America AI-Ready
https://tinyurl.com/4tc9ja7h

Radar-Based Fall Prevention and Motion Monitoring
https://helpany.com

In this ChatEDU Check-In: The New Social Lab Modeling Humanity with Millions of Bots, Matt explores how researchers are moving beyond individual chatbots to study the collective behavior of millions of autonomous agents in digital societies. These studies utilize environments like Minecraft to observe how AI agents interact, organize, and evolve without human guidance.

Key Takeaways:

AI research is shifting toward a new field of digital sociology where thousands of autonomous agents function as a persistent collective society rather than just one to one conversational tools.

Without human intervention, AI agents in simulations spontaneously developed complex social structures, including specialized labor, economic systems, and even political debates over tax reforms.

Researchers successfully modeled the spread of ideologies by introducing a parody religion to a small group of agents, demonstrating how AI societies can act as digital twins to track the movement of misinformation.

Matt’s Two Cents: These simulations raise a critical strategic question for educators: are these agents providing novel insights into human behavior, or are they simply mimicking human patterns as "stochastic parrots"? As we consider using AI personas for focus groups or sociological modeling, we must discern whether these digital twins offer authentic data or merely reflect the biases and behaviors already present in their training sets.

Articles:

The first ‘AI societies’ are taking shape: how human-like are they?
https://tinyurl.com/y2uesysk

These AI Minecraft characters did weirdly human stuff all on their own
https://tinyurl.com/z46e2rbk

Sponsored by:

Eduaide: Where good ideas become great lessons. Eduaide is an AI-powered, research-based K-12 tool that creates high-quality resources, games, and graphic organizers built for better student outcomes. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.

In this ChatEDU Check-In: The AI refugee crisis, Matt explores the growing trend of white collar professionals transitioning into teaching to escape AI driven job instability. As automation erodes roles in finance and marketing, veteran workers are seeking the human centric stability of the classroom.

Key Takeaways:

Experienced professionals in their 40s and 50s are fleeing corporate sectors where AI has significantly reduced income and job security.

Generative AI is automating high level tasks like data summarization and document creation, allowing companies to replace entire teams with a single staff member using tools like ChatGPT.

The interpersonal nature of teaching remains a unique defense against displacement, offering a career path focused on human development that AI cannot easily replicate.

Matt’s Two Cents: The influx of "AI refugees" into education brings valuable real world experience to the classroom, but it also creates new competition for younger teachers entering the field. District leaders must consider how this shift affects the long term economic prospects of students as they prepare for a labor market where even high level corporate functions are being automated.

Article:

Meet the AI refugees: white-collar workers retrain as teachers
https://tinyurl.com/2cs2hzfs

Sponsored by:

Eduaide: Where good ideas become great lessons. Eduaide is an AI-powered, research-based K-12 tool that creates high-quality resources, games, and graphic organizers built for better student outcomes. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.

In this episode of ChatEDU: Human Start, AI Feedback, Human Finish, Matt and Liz open the show with some lighthearted banter about the high-stakes world of AI-powered wine pairing and the terrifying prospect of a digital agent "purging" an entire inbox. Later in the show, Matt sits down with the 2024 California Teacher of the Year to discuss the delicate balance of keeping humans at the center of the classroom in an increasingly AI infused world.

The Rundown

New data shows AI rising as a top-tier political issue, with voters across the spectrum prioritizing job security over concepts like Universal Basic Income.

AI labs are hiring sketch comics and improv actors to teach models authentic human emotion and close the "jagged performance gap" in multimodal LLMs.

The City University of New York launches a $3 million initiative featuring 113 projects to integrate AI across its massive campus system.

A study of 1.2 million interactions reveals that while most student AI use is policy-compliant, 20% of interactions involve using AI to complete schoolwork.

Insights into how elementary schools in Washington are turning to AI tools to manage critical staffing shortages.

A look at how students and teachers are collaborating on AI-driven solutions to solve real-world community problems.

Beneath the Surface

In this episode’s deep dive, Matt sits down with Casey Cuny, the 2024 California Teacher of the Year. Casey shares his "Human Start, AI Feedback, Human Finish" framework, offering a practical look at how educators can embrace technology while maintaining the essential human connection. They discuss the "jagged frontier" of AI capabilities and how teachers can navigate this new landscape to foster authentic student growth.

The Bright Byte

This week’s Bright Byte features the work of Professor Ayan Mukhopadhyay, who is leading NSF-funded projects to solve "cyber-physical" challenges. In Virginia Beach, his team uses AI to optimize flood responses and evacuation routes under high uncertainty. Meanwhile, in Nashville, a $697,000 NSF Civic Innovation Challenge project is helping the Department of Transportation use traffic speed data to automatically identify illegal road closures caused by unauthorized construction, improving city safety and local business access.

Announcements

Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday

ASCD:⁠ ⁠https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn⁠⁠ 

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

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

Our six-week AI Micro-Credential course launching this spring in partnership with Southern Connecticut State University. Group discounts are available at Skills21.org/AI/Micro.

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: supporting the future of manufacturing through leadership and resources.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠https://www.nextgenmfg.org⁠

This episode is sponsored by EDIA: An AI-powered math coaching platform that accelerates student growth and saves teachers time; visit edia.app to learn more.

Links

The Rising Political Importance of AI⁠
https://tinyurl.com/bdzu32zk

AI companies want to harvest improv actors’ skills to train AI on human emotion
https://tinyurl.com/4pak7vtt

CUNY Invests $3M to Support 113 Campus AI Projects
https://tinyurl.com/3r3ssc8x

Real-Time Data Shows Exactly How Students Use AI on School Technology
https://tinyurl.com/45ruyjnd

Ferndale schools implement new AI reading tool
https://tinyurl.com/y4xe5yd5

Student AI Prompt-A-Thon
https://tinyurl.com/37ewcc2k

AI for Social Impact: From Models to Meaningful Action for Large Cyber-Physical Systems
https://tinyurl.com/3dhyk94a

In this ChatEDU Check-In: The Best Response to AI is a Library Card, Liz explores the critical intersection of basic literacy and artificial intelligence. The episode argues that the current rush to teach AI skills assumes a level of critical thinking and reading comprehension that many users have not yet mastered.

Key Takeaways:

AI literacy frameworks often mistakenly assume users can already read critically, assess evidence, and distinguish between persuasive arguments and factual truths.

Reading long form literature is essential for building cognitive muscles for sustained attention, which AI-generated text often fails to replicate.

The Slow AI Public Library project uses a diagnostic quiz to recommend specific books designed to rebuild the empathy, judgment, and patience that constant prompting can erode.

Article:

The Best Response to Ai is a Library Card
https://tinyurl.com/5h7x6e6k

Liz’s Two Cents: We are currently rushing to teach people how to use AI before ensuring they possess the fundamental literacy skills required to vet its output. For schools, the high level strategic implication is clear: the most effective "AI proofing" for students isn't more technology, but a doubling down on deep, difficult reading that forces encounters with perspectives that do not simply adapt to user preferences.

Sponsored by: Eduaide.ai

Eduaide: Where good ideas become great lessons. Eduaide is an AI-powered, research-based K-12 tool that creates high-quality resources, games, and graphic organizers built for better student outcomes. Take advantage of our special offer: 50 percent off an Eduaide subscription with code: ChatEDU at⁠ https://www.eduaide.ai/⁠.