ChatEDU – The AI & Education Podcast Deep Think: What If AI Could Help Us Reclaim Our Attention Spans? | Ep. 94
In this episode of ChatEDU (Deep Think: What If AI Could Help Us Reclaim Our Attention Spans?), Matt and Liz open with an AI slip-up at the National Weather Service that invented fake towns, raising trust and oversight concerns, before launching into a wide-ranging rundown.
The Rundown
The episode opens on health and AI: OpenAI is piloting a Health tab in ChatGPT, raising privacy and legal questions, while MIT Sloan research suggests personalized generative AI can aid weight loss, but lacks community support.
Matt and Liz discuss reports showing Google’s AI Overviews gave inaccurate medical advice, prompting Google to pull some health summaries and highlighting the risks of AI errors in high-stakes settings.
The discussion shifts to safety and governance, with Google and Character.AI pursuing early settlements in teen chatbot death cases, highlighting regulatory gaps and OpenAI partnering with Common Sense Media on California’s Parents and Kids Safe AI Act.
They also address backlash against X after Grok was used to generate nonconsensual sexualized images, prompting the company to rein in those capabilities.
Education wraps the K–12 segment, with a deepfake response course co-created by Elliston Berry, a teen targeted by AI abuse, a practical deepfake detection infographic from Evan Harris, and Lego’s new hands-on AI literacy kits.
The focus shifts to higher ed: U.S. college enrollment has surpassed pre-pandemic levels, led by public schools and workforce credentials, as Google doubles down on skills and curiosity over degrees in hiring.
The rundown closes with a Brookings report warning that AI’s risks in education currently outweigh its benefits, contrasted with a Brookings video offering a more nuanced take on AI’s impact on work and learning.
Beneath the Surface
Matt and Liz ask whether AI can counter fragmented attention, using tools like Google Gemini to replace doomscrolling with focused interactions, before debating world models and whether they represent play or a shift from consumption to creation.
Bright Byte
In the Alps, rescuers used drones and AI to scan thousands of images, spot a single red helmet in the snow, and recover a missing mountaineer, showcasing AI’s growing role in search and rescue.
Announcements
Celebrate our 100th episode: skills21.org/chatedu100
Learning They'll Love - Dr. Elizabeth Radday
ASCD: https://tinyurl.com/bde652nn
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/22t9hz77
Barnes and Noble: https://tinyurl.com/bdckf6zw
EdAdvance is offering a Middle and High School Student AI Literacy course — email chatedu@edadvance.org 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. https://www.nextgenmfg.org
Links
AI Map Hallucinates Idaho Towns
https://tinyurl.com/5n8kwx8r
OpenAI’s Risky Health Push
https://tinyurl.com/yw3p53uk
Generative AI Boosts Weight Loss
https://tinyurl.com/5yd26hds
Google’s AI Health Safety Crisis
https://tinyurl.com/ymhv9p3k
Google Halts Medical AI Overviews
https://tinyurl.com/3jtuxn8x
Google Settles Teen AI Death Cases
https://tinyurl.com/24pbmph3
Joint Push for California Child AI Law
https://tinyurl.com/4w6ehwjf
X Halts Grok AI "Undressing"
https://tinyurl.com/2z6f4nbh
Fighting Deepfakes: A Victim’s New Course
https://tinyurl.com/f7upcs9k
Lego uses bricks to demystify AI
https://tinyurl.com/2dtpwa5n
College Gains: Cost and Career Focus
https://tinyurl.com/3p5p8tns
Skills Over Degrees at Google
https://tinyurl.com/2kexb69e
Students in AI World: Prosper, Prepare, Protect
https://tinyurl.com/mryx5mk7
Gemini better than doomscrolling
https://tinyurl.com/3xmuwupz
Can AI Restore Gen Z's Focus?
https://tinyurl.com/yyac2u62
AI Solved Mystery of a Missing Mountaineer
https://tinyurl.com/mpd34m8u
Why Young Workers Are Hit First
https://tinyurl.com/mp32zebb