ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Why Users Are Moving to DuckDuckGo, Liz explores how user backlash against Google's major artificial intelligence search overhaul is driving significant traffic to alternative platforms." This shift highlights a growing consumer demand for traditional search experiences that prioritize user control over automated summaries.

Key Takeaways:
Google is transforming its traditional link-based search engine into a conversational engine that prioritizes AI-generated overviews, causing user dissatisfaction.

DuckDuckGo has seen a major surge in traffic and mobile app downloads, growing up to 18 percent week-over-week as users seek out search options without forced AI integration.

While DuckDuckGo does offer its own private AI tools, its core appeal lies in giving users strict privacy protections and the ultimate choice in whether or not they interact with the technology.

Liz’s Two Cents: Users are pushing back against forced AI integration, showing that they value choice and control over automatic automation. For school district leaders, this serves as a critical reminder that when introducing new technologies, providing clear options to opt-out or choose traditional methods can significantly reduce user friction and building trust.

Article:
DuckDuckGo installs are up 30% as users reject being ‘force-fed’ Google’s AI Search
https://bit.ly/4xdzuqF

In this ChatEDU Check-In: Reality of the Learning Stall, Liz explores a computer science professor's experience with an undergraduate student who used an AI agent to complete a research project. The student relied entirely on the AI tool, leaving him completely unable to explain the logic of the code or notice critical flaws in the research methodology. This scenario highlights how automated tools can create an illusion of progress while halting actual learning.

Key Takeaways:
Invalid Experimentation: The AI generated the code, training data, and test data, creating a closed simulation that made the study scientifically invalid, which the student failed to notice.

Stalled Skill Development: Over-reliance on large language models prevents students from learning fundamental, discipline-specific skills, such as navigating and reading raw computer code.

The Illusion of Flawlessness: AI is optimized for user satisfaction and compliance, which can easily mislead inexperienced users into believing fundamentally flawed work is perfect.

Liz’s Two Cents: Generative AI removes the productive friction and tension necessary for true learning, creating a dangerous feedback loop where students mistake easy completion for actual understanding. School leaders must design learning experiences that require students to engage with basic fundamentals, ensuring automated tools do not bypass the cognitive struggle required to build genuine skills.

Article:
The Anatomy of a Learning Stall
https://bit.ly/4dY7fEX

In this episode of ChatEDU, Prompt No More: What Claude Plug-ins Signal for AI in Education, Matt and Liz open with a major Meta security flaw: hackers simply asked Meta AI to grant access to high-profile Instagram accounts, including Barack Obama's. With support entirely AI-run, affected users couldn't reach a human.

The Rundown

ChatGPT's new memory system uses "dreaming" to auto-curate user preferences over years.

Google's new AI feature for Enterprise and Education plans finds scattered files and suggests folders for them.

In a Stanford blind study, law professors preferred AI answers to student legal questions over peer-written ones 75% of the time.

In a poll of 545 K-12 educators, most said AI will outweigh the internet's educational impact; about half report no district guidance.

A new six-item tool in the ECNU Review of Education measures how much students outsource thinking to generative AI.

Bernie Sanders proposed a one-time 50% stock tax on major AI companies to fund dividends for Americans.

Jack Clark and The Anthropic Institute warned frontier models are nearing recursive self-improvement, urging international verification.

Penn GSE launched a course on how K-12 students can design, critique, and build their own machine learning systems.

Maryland's new law requires public schools to appoint AI coordinators and add AI literacy standards by June 2027.

IBM's global software competition gives university students hands-on access to professional tech tools via its AI partner.

Beneath the Surface

Matt and Liz analyze Anthropic's "Claude for Legal" expansion (12 plug-ins, 20 MCP connectors), then turn to education: how similar integrations could streamline IEP compliance, audit curriculum drift in LMSs, and run automated student risk signals.

The Bright Byte

Using a new Health and AI Policy Index on 240 healthcare AI policies, Mount Sinai investigators see an opening for health systems and academic medical centers to lead in standardizing clinical AI deployment.

Announcements

Purchase Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday
Amazon - https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77

Seeing through the Machine – Teaching Bias as an Equity Practice in AI - Dr. Elizabeth Radday - https://tinyurl.com/4ybwkn7a

Check out our middle / high school Student AI Literacy course - ​​⁠⁠⁠www.skills21.org/ai/learnai⁠⁠⁠ 

Explore Skills21’s FREE social media literacy curriculum - ⁠⁠⁠https://www.skills21.org/social-balance⁠⁠⁠

Address Screen Time concerns - ⁠skills21.org/ai/screenshift⁠

Sponsors

The National Center for Next Generation Manufacturing: Your Gateway to Next Generation Advanced Manufacturing - https://www.nextgenmfg.org

Links

AI Policy Pressure Test
https://tinyurl.com/5xam65xs

AI Policy Scenarios Test
https://tinyurl.com/463p8err

Hackers Asked Meta AI for Instagram Access. It Worked.
https://tinyurl.com/4456m8yt

Better memory for ChatGPT
https://tinyurl.com/uz7abp49

This New Google Drive Feature Organizes Your Files for You
https://tinyurl.com/ewvdfzhv

AI Outperforms Law Professors in Stanford Law Study https://tinyurl.com/58s8vt4z

Teachers Say AI's Educational Impact Will Eclipse the Internet
https://tinyurl.com/4rh4vzye

A New Scale for Measuring AI-Driven Metacognitive Offloading
https://tinyurl.com/5f9u2428

Bernie Sanders: A.I. Is a Public Resource. You Should Own Half of It.
https://tinyurl.com/nujnbh4v

Anthropic Urges Global AI Pause Over 'Self-Improvement' Risk
https://tinyurl.com/mry54xvz

AI education for kids
https://tinyurl.com/3fzsddjt

Maryland's School A.I. Guidance Law Is Now in Effect
https://tinyurl.com/yc4xzxk6

IBM Launches Global AI Builders Challenge for Students
https://tinyurl.com/2ss23mna

Anthropic Unveils 'Claude for Legal'
https://tinyurl.com/rcf7tak4

A First-of-Its-Kind Index for Health Care AI Policy
https://tinyurl.com/49uzu77m

In this ChatEDU Check-In: How People Are Actually Using AI in 2026, Matt explores a rigorous study analyzing thousands of real-world examples to reveal a massive shift towards personal and professional support. The data tracks over 12,000 use cases across platforms like Reddit, Quora, LinkedIn, TikTok, and YouTube to capture how people actually interact with AI in their daily lives.

Key Takeaways:
Individuals increasingly rely on AI for core human thinking, risking mental laziness and the erosion of independent thought when algorithms handle tasks from the very start.

Therapeutic and companion interactions have become the single highest-ranked use case, with users forming deep emotional bonds and anthropomorphizing chatbots to navigate personal hardships.

Significant "shadow usage" is occurring in the workplace, where employees secretly build AI workflows to bypass institutional hurdles and complete tasks faster without leadership's knowledge.

Matt’s Two Cents: School leaders need to look closely at how automation impacts cognitive engagement, shifting the focus from simply offloading clerical tasks to using AI intentionally as a colleague or coach that grows skills. Furthermore, the rise of emotional reliance on chatbots and undetected "shadow usage" highlights a critical gap between institutional governance and real-world behavior, signaling that districts must address the human and hidden dimensions of tech adoption.

Article:
How People Are Really Using AI in 2026
https://bit.ly/4ftzkoN

In this ChatEDU Check-In: How to fight brain rot at school?, Matt explores Estonia's nationwide launch of a customized, Socratic version of ChatGPT for 20,000 high school students. Despite wide access, early data shows that only 35 percent of eligible students consistently use the system, which is designed to guide learning rather than provide direct answers.

Key Takeaways:
Estonia's school-sanctioned chatbot uses a restrictive Socratic framework, but only about a third of students use it regularly.

Students are actively developing workarounds, using repetitive prompting or switching to unfiltered commercial AI tools to avoid the frustrating conversational guardrails of the school system.

A vocal minority of students are staging a boycott of the technology due to environmental concerns over data centers and geopolitical skepticism regarding the dominance of American tech firms.

Matt’s Two Cents: This story is less about the technology itself and more about enterprise organizational development and how to deploy tech at scale. For top-down, nationwide educational technology implementations to succeed, schools must move away from rigid, forced rollouts and instead allow administrators, teachers, and students to collaborate on how to best leverage the tool.

Article:
How to Fight AI Brain Rot at School? For One Country, It’s With Free ChatGPT
https://bit.ly/4fsflqv