"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis What AI Means for Students & Teachers: My Keynote from the Michigan Virtual AI Summit
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Nov 25, 2025 In a captivating keynote, Nathan Labenz addresses K-12 educators about the rapid evolution of AI. He emphasizes the balance of excitement and caution surrounding this technology. Key insights include AI's potential to revolutionize education, the risks of cheating, and the automation of traditional jobs. He debunks common misconceptions about AI's capabilities and highlights recent breakthroughs. Nathan urges the necessity of AI literacy for students, urging society to prepare for significant changes in learning and career landscapes.
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Models Show Conceptual Reasoning
- Nathan challenges claims that models "don't understand" by pointing to mechanistic interpretability and emergent reasoning.
- He stresses modern models show conceptual understanding and novel internal reasoning behaviors.
Beyond Next-Word Prediction
- Nathan explains reinforcement learning changed training signals so models now optimize for correct answers, not just next-token prediction.
- He warns internal chains-of-thought are becoming alien and harder for humans to parse.
Rapid Benchmark Breakthroughs
- Recent benchmarks show AIs achieving top ranks in math, coding, and multimodal tasks previously reserved for humans.
- Nathan highlights multimodal AIs can combine images and text, extending capability beyond language.
