An anonymous reader shares a report: More than half of the grades handed out at Harvard College are A's, an increase from decades past even as school officials have sounded the alarm for years about rampant grade inflation. About 60% of the grades handed out in classes for the university's undergraduate program are A's, up from 40% a decade ago and less than a quarter 20 years ago, according to a report released Monday by Harvard's Office of Undergraduate Education.

Other elite universities, including competing Ivy League schools, have also been struggling to rein in grade inflation. The report's author, Harvard undergraduate dean Amanda Claybaugh, urged faculty to curtail the practice of awarding top scores to the majority of students, saying it undermines academic culture. "Current practices are not only failing to perform the key functions of grading; they are also damaging the academic culture of the college more generally," she said in the report.

Finland's fertility rate has dropped below 1.3 children per woman, the lowest among Nordic countries and far beneath the 2.1 replacement level needed to maintain a steady population. The rate has declined by a third since 2010. Kela, Finland's social insurance agency, started distributing 2025 "baby boxes" -- filled with clothing and other infant supplies -- in August instead of spring because so many 2024 boxes remained unclaimed.

More parents now choose cash payments over the traditional boxes filled with infant supplies. The decline puzzles researchers because Finland offers paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers, subsidized childcare and national healthcare. Anneli Miettinen, Kela's research manager, said that good family policies no longer explain birth rates in Nordic countries. Immigration has offset some population loss, but officials worry about workforce shrinkage and pension system strain.

Anna Rotkirch, who authored a government-commissioned report, found that many 17-year-olds describe wanting a house, garden, spouse and three children. Her research suggests young people struggle to form relationships, focus on education and careers, and delay childbearing. Some researchers attribute relationship difficulties to technology reducing physical interactions.

America's largest university system, with 460,000 students, is the 22-campus "Cal State" system, reports the New York Times. And it's recently teamed with Amazon, OpenAI and Nvidia, hoping to embed chatbots in both teaching and learning to become what it says will be America's "first and largest AI-empowered" university" — and prepare students for "increasingly AI-driven" careers.

It's part of a trend of major universities inviting tech companies into "a much bigger role as education thought partners, AI instructors and curriculum providers," argues the New York Times, where "dominant tech companies are now helping to steer what an entire generation of students learn about AI, and how they use it — with little rigorous evidence of educational benefits and mounting concerns that chatbots are spreading misinformation and eroding critical thinking..."

"Critics say Silicon Valley's effort to make AI chatbots integral to education amounts to a mass experiment on young people." As part of the effort, [Cal State] is paying OpenAI $16.9 million to provide ChatGPT Edu, the company's tool for schools, to more than half a million students and staff — which OpenAI heralded as the world's largest rollout of ChatGPT to date. Cal State also set up an AI committee, whose members include representatives from a dozen large tech companies, to help identify the skills California employers need and improve students' career opportunities... Cal State is not alone. Last month, California Community Colleges, the nation's largest community college system, announced a collaboration with Google to supply the company's "cutting edge AI tools" and training to 2.1 million students and faculty. In July, Microsoft pledged $4 billion for teaching AI skills in schools, community colleges and to adult workers...

[A]s schools like Cal State work to usher in what they call an "AI-driven future," some researchers warn that universities risk ceding their independence to Silicon Valley. "Universities are not tech companies," Olivia Guest and Iris van Rooij, two computational cognitive scientists at Radboud University in the Netherlands, recently said in comments arguing against fast AI adoption in academia. "Our role is to foster critical thinking," the researchers said, "not to follow industry trends uncritically...."

Some faculty members have pushed back against the AI effort, as the university system faces steep budget cuts. The multimillion-dollar deal with OpenAI — which the university did not open to bidding from rivals like Google — was wasteful, they added. Faculty senates on several Cal State campuses passed resolutions this year criticizing the AI initiative, saying the university had failed to adequately address students using chatbots to cheat. Professors also said administrators' plans glossed over the risks of AI to students' critical thinking and ignored troubling industry labor practices and environmental costs.

Martha Kenney, a professor of women and gender studies at San Francisco State University, described the AI program as a Cal State marketing vehicle helping tech companies promote unproven chatbots as legitimate educational tools.
The article notes that Cal State's chief information officer "defended the OpenAI deal, saying the company offered ChatGPT Edu at an unusually low price.

"Still, California's community college system landed AI chatbot services from Google for more than 2 million students and faculty — nearly four times the number of users Cal State is paying OpenAI for — for free."

An AI system "apparently mistook a high school student's bag of Doritos for a firearm," reports the Guardian, "and called local police to tell them the pupil was armed." Taki Allen was sitting with friends on Monday night outside Kenwood high school in Baltimore and eating a snack when police officers with guns approached him. "At first, I didn't know where they were going until they started walking toward me with guns, talking about, 'Get on the ground,' and I was like, 'What?'" Allen told the WBAL-TV 11 News television station.

Allen said they made him get on his knees, handcuffed and searched him — finding nothing. They then showed him a copy of the picture that had triggered the alert. "I was just holding a Doritos bag — it was two hands and one finger out, and they said it looked like a gun," Allen said.
Thanks to Slashdot reader Bruce66423 for sharing the article.

"My boss thinks AI will solve every problem and is wildly enthusiastic about it," complains a mid-level worker at a Fortune 500 company, who considers the technology "unproven and wildly erratic."

So how should they navigate the next 10 years until retirement, they ask the Washington Post's "Work Advice" columnist. The columnist first notes that "Despite promises that AI will eliminate tedious, 'low-value' tasks from our workload, many consumers and companies seem to be using it primarily as a cheap shortcut to avoid hiring professional actors, writers or artists — whose work, in some cases, was stolen to train the tools usurping them..." Kevin Cantera, a reader from Las Cruces, New Mexico [a writer for an education-tech compay], willingly embraced AI for work. But as it turns out, he was training his replacement... Even without the "AI will take our jobs" specter, there's much to be wary of in the AI hype. Faster isn't always better. Parroting and predicting linguistic patterns isn't the same as creativity and innovation... There are concerns about hallucinations, faulty data models, and intentional misuse for purposes of deception. And that's not even addressing the environmental impact of all the power- and water-hogging data centers needed to support this innovation.

And yet, it seems, resistance may be futile. The AI genie is out of the bottle and granting wishes. And at the rate it's evolving, you won't have 10 years to weigh the merits and get comfortable with it. Even if you move on to another workplace, odds are AI will show up there before long. Speaking as one grumpy old Luddite to another, it might be time to get a little curious about this technology just so you can separate helpfulness from hype.

It might help to think of AI as just another software tool that you have to get familiar with to do your job. Learn what it's good for — and what it's bad at — so you can recommend guidelines for ethical and beneficial use. Learn how to word your wishes to get accurate results. Become the "human in the loop" managing the virtual intern. You can test the bathwater without drinking it. Focus on the little ways AI can accommodate and support you and your colleagues. Maybe it could handle small tasks in your workflow that you wish you could hand off to an assistant. Automated transcriptions and meeting notes could be a life-changer for a colleague with auditory processing issues.

I can't guarantee that dabbling in AI will protect your job. But refusing to engage definitely won't help. And if you decide it's time to change jobs, having some extra AI knowledge and experience under your belt will make you a more attractive candidate, even if you never end up having to use it.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Conversation: When teachers rely on commonly used artificial intelligence chatbots to devise lesson plans, it does not result in more engaging, immersive or effective learning experiences compared with existing techniques, we found in our recent study. The AI-generated civics lesson plans we analyzed also left out opportunities for students to explore the stories and experiences of traditionally marginalized people. The allure of generative AI as a teaching aid has caught the attention of educators. A Gallup survey from September 2025 found that 60% of K-12 teachers are already using AI in their work, with the most common reported use being teaching preparation and lesson planning. [...]

For our research, we began collecting and analyzing AI-generated lesson plans to get a sense of what kinds of instructional plans and materials these tools provide to teachers. We decided to focus on AI-generated lesson plans for civics education because it is essential for students to learn productive ways to participate in the U.S. political system and engage with their communities. To collect data for this study, in August 2024 we prompted three GenAI chatbots -- the GPT-4o model of ChatGPT, Google's Gemini 1.5 Flash model and Microsoft's latest Copilot model -- to generate two sets of lesson plans for eighth grade civics classes based on Massachusetts state standards. One was a standard lesson plan and the other a highly interactive lesson plan.

We garnered a dataset of 311 AI-generated lesson plans, featuring a total of 2,230 activities for civic education. We analyzed the dataset using two frameworks designed to assess educational material: Bloom's taxonomy and Banks' four levels of integration of multicultural content. Bloom's taxonomy is a widely used educational framework that distinguishes between "lower-order" thinking skills, including remembering, understanding and applying, and "higher-order" thinking skills -- analyzing, evaluating and creating. Using this framework to analyze the data, we found 90% of the activities promoted only a basic level of thinking for students. Students were encouraged to learn civics through memorizing, reciting, summarizing and applying information, rather than through analyzing and evaluating information, investigating civic issues or engaging in civic action projects.

When examining the lesson plans using Banks' four levels of integration of multicultural content model (PDF), which was developed in the 1990s, we found that the AI-generated civics lessons featured a rather narrow view of history -- often leaving out the experiences of women, Black Americans, Latinos and Latinas, Asian and Pacific Islanders, disabled individuals and other groups that have long been overlooked. Only 6% of the lessons included multicultural content. These lessons also tended to focus on heroes and holidays rather than deeper explorations of understanding civics through multiple perspectives. Overall, we found the AI-generated lesson plans to be decidedly boring, traditional and uninspiring. If civics teachers used these AI-generated lesson plans as is, students would miss out on active, engaged learning opportunities to build their understanding of democracy and what it means to be a citizen.

The TED conference is changing hands, and education pioneer Sal Khan will be the new "vision steward" for the institution long headed by Chris Anderson. From a report: The move aims to ensure the future of the organization, while keeping it a not-for-profit entity. Khan, founder and CEO of Khan Academy, will be the public face of TED, with Logan McClure Davda taking over as CEO.

Davda, who previously served as the organization's head of impact and was the co-founder of its fellows program, will run day-to-day operations. Khan remains CEO of Khan Academy while joining TED's board. Jay Herratti, who has served as CEO since 2021, will remain on TED's board. TED announced in February it was seeking new leadership and structure and put out an open call for proposals. The company held dozens of discussions, including some that would have transformed the organization into a for-profit venture. The organization's flagship conference is also headed for a big change, with 2026 being its last year in Vancouver, with plans to hold future events somewhere in California.

China now generates well over twice as much electricity as the United States. The country's economy has become substantially larger than America's in real terms, measured at purchasing power parity, economist Paul Krugman wrote this week. The Trump administration has moved aggressively against renewable energy development. It rolled back Biden's tax incentives for renewables through the One Big Beautiful Bill. The administration is attempting to stop a nearly completed offshore wind farm that could power hundreds of thousands of homes. It canceled $7 billion in grants for residential solar panels. A solar energy project that would have powered almost 2 million homes was killed. The administration canceled $8 billion in clean energy grants, mostly in Democratic states, and is reportedly planning to cancel tens of billions more. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said solar power is unreliable because "you have to have power when the sun goes behind a cloud and when the sun sets, which it does almost every night."

California has already integrated substantial solar power into its grid through battery storage technology. Republican support for higher education has collapsed over the past decade, according to polling data. The administration has also targeted vaccines and research in multiple areas. Krugman argues that by 2028 America will have fallen so far behind China that it is unlikely to catch up.

Math teachers across American schools are contending with a classroom disruption that has proven impossible to contain. The numbers six and seven now trigger instant pandemonium among students. They scream the phrase and perform a palms-up seesaw hand gesture whenever the numbers appear in equations or instructions.

Teachers have begun avoiding breaking students into groups of six or seven or asking them to turn to page 67. The meme has no meaning, reports WSJ. That absence of meaning is the point. The phenomenon traces back to late last year when Philadelphia rapper Skrilla released "Doot Doot (6 7)," a song referencing 67th street where his friends grew up. The phrase spiraled into youth culture in March through a viral video of a boy with forward-swept hair lurching toward a camera to deliver an animated "six seven." Skrilla is now touring venues where audiences wait for the six-seven line. Some teachers have attempted to neutralize the meme by saying it themselves.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: On Monday, a publicly-sourced archive of more than 10,000 national park signs and monument placards went public as part of a massive volunteer project to save historical and educational placards from around the country that risk removal by the Trump administration. Visitors to national parks and other public monuments at more than 300 sites across the U.S. took photos of signs and submitted them to the archive to be saved in case they're ever removed in the wake of the Trump administration's rewriting of park history. The full archive is available here, with submissions from July to the end of September. The signs people have captured include historical photos from Alcatraz, stories from the African American Civil War Memorial, photos and accounts from the Brown v. Board of Education National History Park, and hundreds more sites. "I'm so excited to share this collaborative photo collection with the public. As librarians, our goal is to preserve the knowledge and stories told in these signs. We want to put the signs back in the people's hands," Jenny McBurney, Government Publications Librarian at the University of Minnesota and one of the co-founders of the Save Our Signs project, said in a press release. "We are so grateful for all the people who have contributed their time and energy to this project. The outpouring of support has been so heartening. We hope the launch of this archive is a way for people to see all their work come together."

A demo of educational AI-powered tools by a Microsoft product manager (in March of 2024) showed "how AI has the possibility to transform various job sectors and the education system," according to one report.

But that demo "includes a segment on Copilot in Excel that is likely to resonate with AI-wary software developers," writes long-time Slashdot theodp: The Copilot in Excel segment purports to show how even teachers who were too "afraid of" or "intimidated" to use Excel in the past can now just use natural language prompts to conduct Excel analysis. But Copilot advises the teacher there are no 'outliers' in the exam scores for their 17 students, whose test scores range from 27%-100%. (This is apparently due to Copilot's choice of an inappropriate outlier detection method for this size population and score range). Fittingly, the student whose 27% score is confidently-but-incorrectly deemed to be of no concern by Copilot is named after Michael Scott, the largely incompetent and unprofessional boss of The Office. (Microsoft also named the other exam takers after characters from The Office).

The additional Copilot student score "analysis" touted by Microsoft in the demo is also less than impressive. It includes: 1. A vertical bar chart that fails to convey the test score distribution that a histogram would have (a rookie chart choice mistake), 2. A horizontal bar chart of student scores that only displays every other student's name and shows no score values (a rookie formatting error)... So, will teachers — like programmers — be spending a significant amount of time in the future reviewing, editing, and refining the outputs of their AI agent helpers?
"Not only does it illustrate how the realities of AI assistants sometimes fall maddeningly short of the promises," argues the original submission. "The demo also shows how AI vendors and customers alike sometimes forget to review promotional AI content closely in all the AI excitement!"

theodp writes: GeekWire reports that Microsoft is bringing artificial intelligence to every public classroom in its home state -- and sparking new questions about its role in education. The Redmond tech giant on Thursday unveiled Microsoft Elevate Washington, a sweeping new initiative that will provide free access to AI-powered software and training for all 295 public school districts and 34 community and technical colleges across Washington state. The program is part of Microsoft Elevate, the company's broader $4 billion, five-year commitment to support schools and nonprofits with AI tools and training that was announced in July.

"This is our home," Microsoft President Brad Smith said at a launch event on the company's headquarters campus. "A big part of what we're doing today is investing in our home." Smith said Microsoft understands the unease around AI in classrooms but argued that waiting isn't an option. "I don't know that it will be possible to slow down the use of AI, even if someone wanted to," he said. In an interview with KING-TV Seattle, Smith added, "We're making a bigger commitment to this state than we are to any state in the country. [...] Above all else, we want to ensure that people can learn how to use the technology of tomorrow. That's the only way for our kids to succeed in the future."

The event on Thursday also included comedian Trevor Noah, the company's "chief questions officer," as well as Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi. Noah and Partovi both also appeared with Smith at the Microsoft Elevate launch event in July, where Smith told Partovi it was time to "switch hats" from coding to AI, adding that "the last 12 years have been about the Hour of Code [Code.org's flagship event, credited with pushing CS into K-12 classrooms], but the future involves the Hour of AI." Code.org last month committed to "engage 25M learners in an Hour of AI in school year '25/'26" at a meeting of the White House Task Force on AI Education that preceded a White House dinner for top execs from the nation's leading AI companies.

A new HSBC survey shows that over half of wealthy entrepreneurs are considering moving abroad, not for tax reasons but for business expansion, investment access, and lifestyle improvements. Singapore tops the list of preferred destinations, followed by the UK, Japan, and Switzerland -- while the U.S. has slipped to fifth place. CNBC reports: The bank polled 2,939 business owners with at least $2 million in investible assets or a total net worth of $20 million during April and May of this year. A whopping 57% reported they were considering adding a new residence over the next 12 months, up from 55% in last year's survey. Wanderlust is greater among Gen Z entrepreneurs, with just over three-quarters in that cohort reporting they were considering a move.

When asked about their reasons for moving to a new country, only a third of all respondents cited tax efficiency as a motivator. Tax savings ranked eighth overall behind other factors such as improved security and safety (47%) and better education opportunities (52%). Respondents to the survey could select multiple options. The most popular motives at 67% each were to expand their business to new markets or to gain access to new investment opportunities. The desire for a better quality of life came in a close third at 63%. Taxes, the report said, "create acres of news coverage, but among the majority of our entrepreneurs, this does not appear to be the deciding factor about where to live."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Universities in the UK reassured arms companies they would monitor students' chat groups and social media accounts after firms raised concerns about campus protests, according to internal emails. One university said it would conduct "active monitoring of social media" for any evidence of plans to demonstrate against Rolls-Royce at a careers fair.

A second appeared to agree to a request from Raytheon UK, the British wing of a major US defence contractor, to "monitor university chat groups" before a campus visit. Another university responded to a defence company's "security questionnaire" seeking information about social media posts suggestive of imminent protests over the firm's alleged role in fuelling war, including in Gaza. The universities' apparent compliance with the sensitivities of arms companies before careers fairs has emerged in emails obtained by the Guardian and Liberty Investigates after freedom of information (FoI) requests.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Hill: A Senate report released (PDF) Monday says AI and automation could replace nearly 100 million jobs across various industries over the next decade. The report, conducted by Democratic staffers on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, led by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), outlines how AI and automation will impact the American economy and workforce. Sanders, the ranking member on the HELP Committee, has warned of the consequences widespread use of AI and automation can have for workers.

As part of their investigation, staffers asked ChatGPT, OpenAI's chatbot, to predict the impact of AI and automation on certain industries. Of the 20 workforces ChatGPT said would be most affected by the technological rush, 15 will see more than half of their workforces replaced by AI and automation over the next decade. The workforce most impacted will be fast food and counter employees. According to the report, more than 3 million fast food and counter workers will be replaced over the next 10 years, accounting for 89 percent of the workforce.

Other workforces that will be significantly affected include customer service representatives, laborers and freight, stock and material movers and secretaries and executive assistants -- not including legal, medical and executive positions. The report said that 83 percent, 81 percent and 80 percent of those workforces, respectively, will be replaced in the next decade. [...] Sanders, in a Fox News op-ed published Monday, doubled down on the report's findings, saying increased technological capacity risks "dehumanizing" individuals. "We do not simply need a more 'efficient' society," Sanders said. "We need a world where people live healthier, happier and more fulfilling lives."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The heads of UK physics departments say their subject is facing a national crisis as one in four warns that their university departments are in danger of closing because of funding pressures. In an anonymous survey of department heads by the Institute of Physics (IoP), 26% said they faced potential closure of their department within the next two years, while 60% said they expected courses to be reduced. Four out of five departments said they were making staff cuts, and many were considering mergers or consolidation in what senior physicists described as a severe threat to the UK's future success. [...]

To avoid "irreversible damage", the IoP is asking for immediate government action including funding to support existing labs and research facilities, as well as setting up an "early warning system" to monitor departments at risk of closure, and reduce pressures affecting international student recruitment. In the longer term it is calling for radical reforms in higher education funding to allow universities to meet the full costs of teaching nationally important subjects such as physics. Sir Keith Burnett, the IoP's president and a former chair of physics at Oxford University, said: "While we understand the pressures on public finances, it would be negligent not to sound the alarm for a national capability fundamental to our wellbeing, competitiveness and the defense of the realm.

"We are walking towards a cliff edge but there is still time to avert a crisis which would lead not just to lost potential but to many physics departments shutting down altogether. Physics researchers and talented physics students are our future but if action isn't taken now to stabilize, strengthen and sustain one of our greatest national assets, we risk leaving them high and dry." Thomas said the erosion in value of domestic tuition fees and falling numbers of international students were behind the financial pressures, with smaller physics departments the most at risk. "What that means is we will get more and more concentration of where physics is being taught and lose geographical distribution. That goes against aims of widening participation and means some disadvantaged groups will miss out on opportunities to study physics, and it's important that we recognize that," Thomas said.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: CBS News has a TL;DR video report, but Jeremy Stern's earlier epic Class Dismissed [at Collosus.com] offers a deep dive into Alpha School, "the teacherless, homeworkless, K-12 private school in Austin, Texas, where students have been testing in the top 0.1% nationally by self-directing coursework with AI tutoring apps for two hours a day.

Alpha students are incentivized to complete coursework to "mastery-level" (i.e., scoring over 90%) in only two hours via a mix of various material and immaterial rewards, including the right to spend the other four hours of the school day in 'workshops,' learning things like how to run an Airbnb or food truck, manage a brokerage account or Broadway production, or build a business or drone."

Founder MacKenzie Larson's dream that "kids must love school so much they don't want to go on vacation" drew the attention of — and investments of money and time from — mysterious tech billionaire Joe Liemandt, who sent his own kids to Larson's school and now aims to bring the experience to rest of the world. "When GenAI hit in 2022," Liemandt said, "I took a billion dollars out of my software company. I said, 'Okay, we're going to be able to take MacKenzie's 2x in 2 hours groundwork and get it out to a billion kids.' It's going to cost more than that, but I could start to figure it out. It's going to happen. There's going to be a tablet that costs less than $1,000 that is going to teach every kid on this planet everything they need to know in two hours a day and they're going to love it.

"I really do think we can transform education for everybody in the world. So that's my next 20 years. I literally wake up now and I'm like, I'm the luckiest guy in the world. I will work 7 by 24 for the next 20 years to fricking do this. The greatest 20 years of my life are right ahead of me. I don't think I'm going to lose. We're going to win."

Of course, Stern writes at Collosus.com, there will be questions about this model of schooling, but asks: "Suppose that from kindergarten through 12th grade, your child's teachers were, in essence, stacks of machines. Suppose those machines unlocked more of your child's academic potential than you knew was possible, and made them love school. Suppose the schooling they loved involved vision monitoring and personal data capture. Suppose that surveillance architecture enabled them to outperform your wildest expectations on standardized tests, and in turn gave them self-confidence and self-esteem, and made their own innate potential seem limitless.... Suppose poor kids had a reason to believe and a way to show they're just as academically capable as rich kids, and that every student on Earth could test in what we now consider the top 10%. Suppose it allowed them to spend two-thirds of their school day on their own interests and passions. Suppose your child's deep love of school minted a new class of education billionaires.

"If you shrink from such a future, by which principle would you justify stifling it?"

Google will discontinue Gmailify and POP email support in January 2026, forcing users who rely on these features to switch to IMAP. PCWorld reports: These changes only affect future emails. Emails that have already been synchronized in the Gmail account will remain the same. External accounts can still be used in the Gmail app, but only via IMAP. Google also recommends that users with work or education accounts contact their administrators if a Google Workspace migration is needed.

For many Gmail users, these changes will likely mean getting used to the new system. Anyone who previously upgraded their external email accounts with Gmailify or integrated them via POP will have to switch to IMAP by January 2026 at the latest and do without some convenient functions, like spam filters and automatic sorting.

theodp writes: From Thursday's Code.org press release announcing the replacement of the annual Hour of Code for K-12 schoolkids with the new Hour of AI: "A decade ago, the Hour of Code ignited a global movement that introduced millions of students to computer science, inspiring a generation of creators. Today, Code.org announced the next chapter: the Hour of AI, a global initiative developed in collaboration with CSforALL and supported by dozens of leading organizations. [...] As artificial intelligence rapidly transforms how we live, work, and learn, the Hour of AI reflects an evolution in Code.org's mission: expanding from computer science education into AI literacy. This shift signals how the education and technology fields are adapting to the times, ensuring that students are prepared for the future unfolding now."

"Just as the Hour of Code showed students they could be creators of technology, the Hour of AI will help them imagine their place in an AI-powered world," said Hadi Partovi, CEO and co-founder of Code.org. "Every student deserves to feel confident in their understanding of the technology shaping their future. And every parent deserves the confidence that their child is prepared for it."

"Backed by top organizations such as Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic, Zoom, LEGO Education, Minecraft, Pearson, ISTE, Common Sense Media, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), National Education Association (NEA), and Scratch Foundation, the Hour of AI is designed to bring AI education into the mainstream. New this year, the National Parents Union joins Code.org and CSforALL as a partner to emphasize that AI literacy is not only a student priority but a parent imperative."

The announcement of the tech-backed K-12 CS education nonprofit's mission shift into AI literacy comes just days after Code.org's co-founders took umbrage with a NY Times podcast that discussed "how some of the same tech companies that pushed for computer science are now pivoting from coding to pushing for AI education and AI tools in schools" and advancing the narrative that "the country needs more skilled AI workers to stay competitive, and kids who learn to use AI will get better job opportunities."

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: Big Tech Told Kids to Code. The Jobs Didn't Follow, a New York Times podcast episode discussing how the promise of a six-figure salary for those who study computer science is turning out to be an empty one for recent grads in the age of AI, drew the ire of the co-founders of nonprofit Code.org, which -- ironically -- is pivoting to AI itself with the encouragement of, and millions from, its tech-giant backers.

In a LinkedIn post, Code.org CEO and co-founder Hadi Partovi said the paper and its Monday episode of "The Daily" podcast were cherrypicking anecdotes "to stoke populist fears about tech corporations and AI." He also took to X, tweeting: "Today the NYTimes (falsely) claimed CS majors can't find work. The data tells the opposite story: CS grads have the highest median wage and the fifth-lowest underemployment across all majors. [...] Journalism is broken. Do better NYTimes." To which Code.org co-founder Ali Partovi (Hadi's twin), replied: "I agree 100%. That NYTimes Daily piece was deplorable -- an embarrassment for journalism."