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Sitting on a hillside between the mountains and the ocean in Lahaina, Hawaii, this new neighborhood of brightly-colored cottages did not exist a year ago. The housesmost of which were built in factories in Colorado and Idaho and delivered to Maui on a bargeare temporary homes for families who lost everything in the Lahaina wildfires in 2023. Theyre also a new type of housing for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Built to meet local and international building codes, theyre very different from the cheap, toxic trailers that FEMA deployed 20 years ago, when Hurricane Katrina displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Some of those trailers had formaldehyde levels that were 75 times greater than safe levels. They were poorly insulated and never meant for long-term housing, but some families were stuck in them for years. [Photo: Liv-Connected] The cottages in Hawaii, by contrast, use materials chosen to maintain healthy air quality. The homes are filled with light, with huge windows and high ceilings. They were built to be durable, with the potential to be turned into affordable long-term housing after their temporary use. They could be a model for future disaster response. But as the Trump administration pushes to dismantle FEMA, its not clear what will happen to the homes nowor what will happen during the next disaster. [Photo: Liv-Connected] Rethinking disaster housing Liv-Connected, the New York City-based modular home company that designed most of the new Hawaiian cottages, didnt originally plan to build disaster housing. But the startup, founded in 2019, got attention from the disaster relief world after it made some early prototypes. The companys first goal was to lower costs by making transportation easier for modular homes. The team saw the potential of building Lego-like homes efficiently in factories, but it also saw that other modular companies had failed in part because the homes were expensive to move, and building big factories in multiple locations was even more expensive. We just said, all right, our modular can be differentits going to fit on a flatbed truck, says Jordan Rogove, CEO and cofounder of Liv-Connected. We worked backward from there: How do we get a really great house that fits on a standard flatbed? [Photo: Liv-Connected] While shipping a fully constructed volumetric modular house might require a couple of oversize trucks and cost $16 to $18 a mile, a home that fits on a flatbed truck could cost $2 to $3 per mile instead. The companys basic design includes some fully built pieces, like the kitchen and the bathroom. But most of the house can be flat-packed and then quickly assembled on-site. The installation in Hawaii turned out to be different. Because the homes needed to travel more than 2,000 miles over the open ocean on a barge, it made sense to fully build each house and ship them in complete, watertight sealed units. (Future homes delivered to the continental U.S. could use the less expensive flat-packed version.) But there were other reasons that FEMA picked Liv-Connected to provide more than 100 homes for the site. [Photo: Liv-Connected] The houseswhich range from a 480-square-foot one-bedroom unit to a 980-square-foot three-bedroom homeare designed to help improve well-being, with high ceilings, wood-paneled walls, and outdoor views. “It’s just more generous and dignified,” Rogove says. “Our understanding of providing accommodations like that is that healing happens a lot faster.” Outside, the homes are painted in different colors, both as a nod to buildings that were lost in the fire and to help the development feel more like a neighborhood. “I think the issue with those FEMA trailers is that they’re all identical, and then it starts to have this quality of barracks,” he adds. “So there isn’t a sense of neighborhood or a community.” [Photo: Liv-Connected] The homes are also designed to last, with fire-resistant siding and tight insulation. They could stay in good condition for decades, versus months or a few years for an old FEMA trailer. “In our discussions with FEMA, you really need to do better for people,” Rogove says. “If you are willing to spend upward of 20% to 30% more than you would for a trailer, you can have a home that could be used for up to 30 years. So it could be deployed multiple times as opposed to a single deployment and then basically tossed into the garbage.” [Photo: Liv-Connected] Building the neighborhood After the wildfires in August 2023, FEMA invited developers to submit proposals for the homes the following March. In late June last year, Liv-Connected learned that it was selected to provide 109 homes in a first installment. (Two other companies provided a smaller number of houses, with 167 total in the development.) Then it worked with two manufacturing partners to begin building. One of FEMA’s requirements was that the homes would be delivered by November 2024. “We effectively had about two months to build 109 homes,” Rogove says. “And then another two months to have all of them installed.” At the same time, engineers were preparing the site. Hawaii offered state-owned land for FEMA’s temporary use at no cost. At a Colorado factory owned by Liv-Connected’s partner Fading West, a crew of workers spent 12-hour days on the project, building as many as 10 homes each week. Guerdon Modular Buildings, in Idaho, was contracted to build the final 25 homes, and it finished in two weeks. Then the houses were trucked to the Port of Seattle and spent three weeks on a barge to Maui. Just before Thanksgiving, families started moving in. The process was incredibly fast, although the factories say that it could be even faster if FEMA could preapprove particular designs. “If FEMA had a library of preapproved modular plans, we could start production within seven to 10 days of a natural disaster, Tommy Rakes, CEO of Guerdon, said in one case study of the project. These homes could be shipped anywhere in the continental U.S. in three to five days, installed, and occupied within a day. In under three weeks, displaced victims could have permanent homes. Having additional factories in some areas could also help. Fading West has talked to the Hawaiian government about the possibility of setting up a local modular housing factory to avoid long-distance transportation. The state also sees the potential for modular housing as a way to help it deal with the affordable housing crisis. [Photo: Liv-Connected] An uncertain future In FEMA’s original plan, families would have up to five years to live in the homes in Lahaina, paying a fair market rent that’s limited to 30% of a household’s gross income. But the development may now close as soon as next February. FEMA would have to grant an extension to the state to keep it open later and continue providing financial assistance. The agency says that the state’s request is currently under review, but it didn’t provide more details. It’s not clear what will happen next, or where the homes will end up when the project ends. Trump has called for eliminating FEMA and tried to cut billions in disaster funding. FEMA originally planned to build another 231 modular disaster relief homes in Lahaina, Rogove says, but that doesn’t appear to be moving forward. “It’s been absolute silence,” he adds. “So I think the likelihood of that happening seems to decrease day by day.” FEMA says that it isn’t planning another 231 homes. In future disasters, it’s not clear how FEMA will handle housing or what role modular homes will play, though the agency says that modular homes may be considered when they’re a fit for local requirements. It’s possible that states may push the solution forward faster. In Maui, the state of Hawaii partnered with a nonprofit developer on another modular neighborhood built near the FEMA site. Texas has explored the idea of building modular housing in advance and storing the units in warehouses in key citiesready to deploy in a disaster. In California, Liv-Connected and other modular housing manufacturers are offering options to residents trying to rebuild after the Los Angeles fires. “What we’ve seen so far is states stepping in to fill the gap, in the absence of the clear organizational order that was there before,” Rogove says. “I think that’s probably what it’s going to look like for the next several years. That fills me with hope for the states that have the capacity to do that. And I have a lot of reservations for states that don’t have those types of resources.” In Hawaii, the state government says that FEMA’s assistance has been critical over the last several years through hurricanes, flooding, fires, and volcanic activity. “While state, local, and private resources have supported recovery, they are limited in scale and speed,” Gov. Josh Green wrote in a recent letter about the agency. “Timely federal deployment remains crucial to meeting the needs of affected communities.”
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E-Commerce
When Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, it was the largest climate bill in U.S. history, with major incentives for electric vehicle production and adoption. In its wake, investment in the U.S. electric vehicle industry accelerated. But in 2025, President Donald Trumps so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act eliminated most of the incentives, and U.S. investment collapsed. Hitting the brakes on electric vehicles will clearly mean less progress in reducing transportation emissions and less strategic U.S. leadership in a key technology of the future. But in a new study, my colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University and I find that fewer electric vehicles will also mean less investment to clean up the electricity sector. How we got here U.S. electric vehicle adoption lags behind the rest of the worldespecially China, which has invested heavily and strategically to dominate electric vehicle markets and supply chains and to leapfrog the historical dominance of American, European, and Japanese manufacturers of vehicles powered by internal combustion engines. Electric vehicles are much simpler to engineer, and this opened a window for China to bet big on EVs with investment, incentives, and experimentation. As battery prices dropped dramatically, electric cars became real competition for gasoline carsespecially for the massive Chinese market, where buyers dont have strong prior preferences for gasoline. China now dominates the supply chain for battery materials, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt, and manganese, as well as the rare earth minerals used in electric motors. In 2022, the U.S. took action to change this trend when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act. The law encouraged EV adoption by lowering costs to manufacturers and consumers. But it also encouraged automakers to find ways to build EVs without Chinese materials by making the largest incentives conditional on avoiding China entirely. After the law passed, investment soared across hundreds of new battery manufacturing and material processing facilities in the U.S. But in 2025, Congress passed and Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which eliminated most of the incentives. U.S. investment in EV-related production has collapsed. Electric vehicles are cleaner As a scholar of electric vehicle technology, economics, environment, and policy, I have conducted numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies characterizing the benefits and costs of electric vehicles over their life cycle, from production through use and end of life. When charged with clean electricity, electric vehicles are one of the few technologies in existence that can provide transportation with near-zero emissions. With todays electricity grid, EV emissions can vary, depending on the mix of electricity generators used in the region where they are charged, driving conditions such as weather or traffic, the specific vehicles being compared, and even the timing of charging. But EVs are generally better for the climate over their life cycle today than most gasoline vehicles, even if the most efficient gas-electric hybrids are still cleaner in some locations. EVs become cleaner as the electricity grid becomes cleaner and, importantly, it turns out that EVs can even help make the electricity grid cleaner. This matters because transportation and electricity together make up the majority of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, and the passenger cars and light trucks that we all drive produce the majority of our transportation emissions. In its efforts to prevent the government from regulating greenhouse gas emissions, the Trump administration is now claiming that emissions from cars and trucks are not meaningful contributors to climate change. But in reality, a technology that cleans up both transportation and electricity at the same time is a big deal. Across most of the U.S., adding electricity demand, such as from increasing the use of electric vehicles, would spark development of clean-energy power plants to meet that rising need. [Image: Michalek et al.] An opportunity for cleaner electricity Our research has found that turning away from electric vehicles does more than miss a chance to curb transportation emissionsit also misses an opportunity to make the nations electricity supply cleaner. In our paper, my coauthors Lily Hanig, Corey Harper and Destenie Nock, and I looked at potential scenarios for electric vehicle adoption across the U.S. from now until 2050. We considere situations ranging from cases with no government policies supporting electric vehicles to cases with enough electric vehicle adoption to be on track with road maps targeting overall net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. In each of these scenarios, we calculated how the nations power grid and electricity generators would respond to electric vehicle charging load. We found that when there are more electric vehicles charging, more power plants would need to be builtand because of cost competitiveness, most of those new power plants would be solar, wind, battery storage, and natural gas plants, depending on the region. Once wind and solar plants are built, they are cheaper to operate than fossil fuel plants, because utilities dont need to buy more fuel to burn to make more electricity. That cost advantage means wind and solar energy get used first, so they can displace fossil-fuel generation even when EVs arent charging. A virtuousor viciouscycle Our analysis reveals that whats good for climate in the transportation sectoreliminating emissions from vehicle tailpipesis also good for climate in the power sector, supporting more investment in clean power and displacing more fossil fuel-powered generation. As a result, encouraging electric vehicle adoption is even better for the climate than many people expected because EV charging can actually cause lower-emitting power plants to be built. Gasoline vehicles cant last forever. The cheap oil will eventually run out. And EV batteries have gotten so cheap, with ranges now comparable to gas cars, that the global transition is already well underway. Even in the U.S., consumers are adopting more EVs as the technology improves and offers consumers more for less. The U.S. government cant single-handedly stop this transitionit can only decide how much to lead, lag, or resist. Rolling back electric vehicle incentives now means higher emissions, less clean energy investment, and weaker U.S. competitiveness in a crucial industry of the future. Our findings show that slowing electric vehicle adoption doesnt just affect emissions from transportation. It also misses opportunities to help build a cleaner power sector, potentially locking the U.S. into higher emissions from its top two highest-emitting sectorspower generation and transportationwhile the window to avoid the worst effects of climate change is closing. Jeremy J. Michalek is a professor of engineering & public policy, professor of mechanical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
The aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk in Orem, Utah, has been a maelstrom of misinformation and hatred, revealing how polarized social media and the past decade of digital conflict have left us. One of the most unsettling signs that something fundamental has broken in our sense of reality comes from a seemingly trivial detail: Donald Trumps pinky finger. In a White House statement mourning Kirks death, many viewers focused less on the presidents words than on the video itself. The high-contrast footage was scrutinized for evidence that it had been manipulated by artificial intelligence, and some viewers claimed they found undeniable proof. At one point in the clip, Trumps left pinky finger appears to merge with the others as he clasps his hands on the desk. Conspiracy theorists have seized on this, arguing it showed the president as proof that Trump didnt make the statement at all, or that it was highly doctored. The reality is far more prosaic. A mix of the Trump White Houses preferred color tinting, combined with the low resolution and compression of digital video on social media, can cause frames to collapse or distort. Compression adds digital artifacts. Put it all together and you end up with something that makes a metaphorical mountain out of a molehill. Before rushing to dismiss those who are crying foul, it helps to consider the broader context. Such conspiratorial thinking is easier to understand in a world awash with generative AI. When AI image and video generation tools that are capable of producing something not dissimilar to the Trump video are just a Google search away, it becomes easy to question everything. Seeing is no longer believing. Early signs of this shift have already disrupted public discourse. When Catherine, the Princess of Wales, revealed her cancer diagnosis in a video shared on social media in March 2024, it was done so as a way to quell rumors that she had died. Even with video proof, many people insisted it was AI-generated. At that time, the technology was not advanced enough to make such a fabrication plausible. Since then, though, tools have improved dramatically. The release of Googles Gemini AI image generator (nicknamed Nano Banana during its development) made it possible to create images nearly indistinguishable from reality. Paired with new video-generation systems, it is now entirely feasible to replicate the look of Trumps official White House video. In fact, it could be done quickly and cheaply. These powerful tools have been a gift in many respects. Yet they are also unraveling our shared sense of reality. Add them to the toxicity of our modern discourse, and the cracks in public trust deepen into fractures. What counts as real is no longer obvious even to the most attentive observer. And that should alarm us all.
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E-Commerce
Dr. Natalie Nixon is the CEO of Figure 8 Thinking, a creativity and foresight strategy firm. As an advisor, she helps leaders connect the dots between creativity and business results. She was listed on the Top 50 Keynote Speakers In The World list for 2022 by Real Leaders. Whats the big idea? What if our most productive selves arent when were on Zoom calls or churning through emails, but when we give ourselves the space and the time to move, think, and rest? Move. Think. Rest. outlines a compelling new framework for work in the 21st century. One that replaces slowly dying of burnout at your desk with a productivity routine that makes downtime a must-have. Below, Natalie shares five key insights from her new book, Move. Think. Rest.: Redefining Productivity & Our Relationship with Time. Listen to the audio versionread by Natalie herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App. 1. The MTR framework gets you to your new human operating system The MTR frameworkpronounced motoris an acronym for move, think, and rest. It isnt just another productivity hack; its a research-backed philosophy that serves as a powerful antidote to hustle culture and unprecedented burnout. The MTR framework fundamentally challenges the outdated belief that movement, reflection, and rest are counterproductive to getting work done. Instead, it positions the incorporation of all three as essential ingredients for strategic creativity and sustainable success. When you move, think, and rest, you activate the two most fundamental elements of creativity: wonder and rigor. I interviewed over 60 people for this book, including Ivy Ross, Chief Design Officer at Google. Ivy told me about a practice that perfectly embodies MTR in the thinking dimension. During the COVID-19 pandemic, when her team was overwhelmed by uncertainty, she facilitated an exercise where team members created fairy tales about the future. This helped them suspend judgment about how heavy and burdensome the pandemic felt. This is MTR in action: using creative thinking (curiosity, imagination, dreaming, discipline, and technique) to move beyond traditional problem-solving. Ivy also organizes off-site trips where her team leaves their job titles back at the corporate office and, for example, visits a farm where they become beekeepers or flower pickers for the day. Time seems to stand still, and when they return to the office, they bring fresh perspective and renewed energy back to their work. The MTR framework emphasizes that true productivity comes from allowing space to reset and nurture the workplaces most vital assets of mental health, imagination, and capacity to grow. This integrated approach enables flourishing in our modern world. 2. Shift focus from productivity to cultivation MTR provokes a fundamental shift from traditional, quantitative productivity metrics that focus solely on outputs and speed to one of cultivation. This isnt just semantic wordplayits a complete reframing of how we approach work and success. Cultivation embraces a both/and paradigm: It values both the individual and the collective. It honors both quick growth spurts and slow, steady shifts. It acknowledges both the work output, which is dormant and percolating beneath the surface, and the work outputs we can visibly measure. Angela Val, CEO of Visit Philadelphia, told me, I would rather be a company that does a few things really well than 100 things kind of so-so. That means we have to make room for other new projects, new ideas. The only way to do that is to evaluate both the new ideas that people are suggesting and also evaluate the work that we currently do every so often. This cultivation approach values what is emerging beyond tangible products, encompassing financial, social, experiential, and cultural value. Its about bringing the entirety of human potential to work, where productivity becomes a byproduct of a more expansive state of well-being. Flourishing is a distinctive way to think about what comes from cultivating our work. It means blooming and blossoming in bold, colorful directions, and sometimes retreating into bud form when necessary. Think of it like a garden, where sometimes plants need to go dormant or be pruned in order to emerge stronger in the next season. Ive seen this play out in organizations that have implemented new KPIs for what I call the Imagination Era. Instead of just measuring inventory turnover or cost per lead, theyre also adding indicators like time allocated for strategic thinking, frequency of cross-departmental collaboration, and employee engagement in prototyping and creative problem-solving activities. 3. Embrace play and liminal spaces as catalysts for innovation Play is the original MTR activity, a powerful energy generator that fuels creativity, resilience, and connection. As part of my research, I visited Brendan Boyles class on play at Stanford Universitys d.school. Brendan is a toy designer and consults companies on the business advantages of integrating play. He defines play as engagement that is intrinsically motivated, purposeless, enjoyable, and involves a suspension of self-consciousness. Play is a vital tool for dealing with uncertainty and stimulating innovation. But heres whats fascinating: Play often happens in liminal spaces, meaning those ambiguous, in-between times and environments where creativity thrives. These are undefined, transitional periods, such as daydreaming, micro-retreats, or those moments when youre half-awake in the morning. Observations during my ‘procrastination’ moments often led to the most insightful passages in my book. 2023 research from MIT on Targeted Dream Incubation underscores the power of these liminal states. The study found that participants who received specific task prompts before napping produced more creative stories and performed better on divergent thinking tasks, compared to those who napped without receiving prompts or who stayed awake. I experienced this firsthand during my writing sabbatical in Miami Beach to write this very book. I was observing a young woman giving a Pilates class from her laptop while sitting cross-legged, outside under palm treesa perfect example of how the boundaries between work and life are blurring in creative ways. These observations during my procrastination moments often led to the most insightful passages in my book. Companies are beginning to recognize this. Take Flown, an online community that creates virtual coworking sessions designed to minimize distractions and maximize deep work. Theyve found that by intentionally creating liminal spacesquiet, focused environmentspeople achieve breakthrough thinking that wouldnt happen in traditional office settings. 4. Activate MTR in your life and organization The beauty of MTR is that its scalable. Whether youre an individual contributor, team leader, or running an organization, these principles can be integrated at every level. For individuals, it might be as simple as taking walking meetings, practicing what I call micro-dosing movement throughout your day, or protecting time for 90-second daydream breaks for what appears to be unproductive thinking but actually seeds an innovative idea. For teams, consider regularly implementing creative breaks where groups step away from their immediate tasks to engage in seemingly unrelated activities. Spotify does this through their squad model, where teams regularly rotate members and share learnings across different projects. And Publicis Le Truc, an internal creativity catalyst, has designed its physical space to enable teams to meet in diverse areas, with serendipity in mind, to spark new thinking. For organizations, its about creating systematic support for MTR activities. This might include offering sabbaticals. Tech companies like Meta provide these extended breaks after five years of service. Or implementing what I call apprenticeship models where knowledge flows both up and down the organizational hierarchy. AI can serve as a thinking partner, helping us frame more effective questions and explore ideas from new perspectives. Now heres something crucial: MTR is not anti-technology. Its about developing a more intentional relationship with the tech tools that surround us to enhance our thinking processes. AI can serve as a thinking partner, helping us frame more effective questions and explore ideas from new perspectives. Apps like Freedom or Forest can help minimize distractions during focused work periods. Digital mind-mapping tools can help us organize thoughts more effectively. The key is remembering that the I in AI stands for intelligencebut youre still in charge of your own imagination. We need not only big datathe birds eye viewbut also what I call deep data: the worms eye view insights that come from exploratory observations, interpersonal interactions, and story. 5. Lets look ahead Were at a perfect inflection point in history. We have an unprecedented opportunity to evolve the ways we view work and productivity. Were not just experiencing a technology revolution. Were in the midst of a human revolution. The organizations and individuals who will thrive in this Imagination Era are those who understand that creativity is a must-have for navigating uncertainty, driving innovation, and creating meaningful value. MTR gives us a framework for accessing our unique human capacity for innovation. It helps us build career resilience, prevent burnout, and create space for the strategic thinking that leads to breakthrough solutions. The goal is to unlock your full potential and cultivate a more meaningful work life. When you move, think, and rest, youre not procrastinating. Youre accessing the most human parts of yourself that cant be automated or replicated by technology. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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E-Commerce
When incoming freshman Matt Cooper first set his eyes out for a coveted sousaphone position for the L row at The Ohio State University Marching Band, he prepared for auditions like anyone else would: practicing, playing, asking for help. Except help came not from a coach, but from ChatGPT. For many college students like Cooper, artificial intelligence has become a part of daily life. This widespread everyday adoption marks a stark contrast from even a couple years ago, though: When OpenAI first introduced its chatbot to the public in 2022, the idea of AI in school settings ignited a heated debate on how the technology belonged in the classroom, if at all. Just three years later, its adoption has spread rapidly. A recent nationwide study by Grammarly found that 87% of higher ed students use AI for school, and 90% use it in daily life spending 10 hours on average each week using AI. (Another study by the Digital Education Council had similar insights, finding that 86% of students around the world use AI for their studies.) Yet colleges still have a patch quilt of standards for what constitutes acceptable AI use and what’s verboten. Across majors and universities in the US, Grammarly also discovered that while 78% of students say their schools have an AI policy, 32% say the policy is to not use AI. Nearly 46% of students said they worried about getting in trouble for using AI. For instance, using AI to break down complex topics covered in class might be generally accepted, but using ChatGPT to edit an essay might raise some eyebrows. Meanwhile, as students engage with the real world and consider their career options, they feel like theyre going to be left behind if they dont develop AI expertise, especially as they complete internships, where theyre told as much to their faces. AI literacy has been called the most in-demand skill for workers in 2025. That’s creating mixed emotions among college students, who are caught in between trying to follow two different sets of rules simultaneously. To understand just how much AI has transformed young peoples lives, Fast Company reached out to undergraduates nationwide to find out how they’re navigating these conflicting mandates. What we found is that as the new technology continues to evolve, its carving a spot into the lives of college students whether adults (or the students themselves) like it or not. In this Premium story, youll learn: The creative ways Gen Z students are incorporating AI into their lives to become AI fluent, even if they can’t use it in their studies Why AI’s popularity as a coding assistant is starting to change how colleges think about AI in the classroom How current and recent students are striking a balance between “old school” and “new school” ways of learning An everyday companion As Ohio States Cooper practiced all summer for auditions, he found new ways to include technology into his life. AI has actually helped a fairly decent amount with it, in ways that people wouldn’t normally expect,” he says. From generating music sheets, or helping him memorize major scales and read key signatures, ChatGPT became Coopers trusted virtual coach. In a matter of 20 seconds, it can come up with a full sheet of music to practice on any difficulty, he says. (On top of that, the chatbot does it all for free.) When Caitlin Conway, a senior at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, returned to school after a full-time internship in marketing, she found university life to be a bit of reverse culture shock after being out in the workforce. But shes found easy-to-use chatbots like ChatGPT useful for adding more structure to her days. I found that you have so much time that sometimes you don’t really know what to do with it, Conway says. I use ChatGPT to make a schedule. Like: I want to have this amount of time to do studying, to do my homework, and do a yoga class, and it’ll come up with an easy schedule for me to follow. Maliha Mahmud, a rising senior in business and advertising at the University of Florida, uses AI to streamline daily tasks outside of class. Shell ask ChatGPT to craft a series of recipes with leftover ingredients in her fridge (as opposed to relying on instant ramen like generations of college kids before her). For school, Mahmud relies on AI as a sort of private instructor, willing to answer questions at any time. I’ll tell AI to break a concept down to me as if they’re talking to a middle schooler to understand it more, she says. Many students also mentioned Googles Notebook LM, an AI tool that helps analyze sources you upload, rather than searching the web for answers. Students can upload their notes, required readings, and journals to the platform, and ask Notebook LM to make custom audio summaries with human-like voices. Still, the value of AI was oftentimes taught outside the classroom, in the workforce. Many students saying they were not only allowed, but encouraged to use AI during their internships. At her first internship at a tech PR company, New York University senior Anyka Chakravarty says that she felt that to be a successful person, you need to become AI fluent, so there’s a tension there as well. Mahmud echoes Chakravartys experience. During my internship, it was encouraged to be utilizing AI, she says. At first I thought it was a replacement, or that it was not letting us critically think. [But] it has been such a time saver. Mahmud used Microsofts Copilot to automatically transcribe meetings, take notes, and send them to participants tasks an intern would have done manually in the past. All this is a far cry from how college students have been conditioned to think about AI as potential grounds for expulsion. A checkered past (and present) Todays college generation was raised on plagiarism anxiety. Their pre-GPT world involved rechecking citations and resorting to online plagiarism checkers. I was just like, I don’t want to touch this, because I don’t want to be ever accused of plagiarism. It definitely could be seen as very taboo, says Grant Dutro, a recent economics and communications graduate from Wheaton College in Illinois. Although more than half of students now use AI routinely, it wasnt always welcomed with open arms particularly for students who started college without it. Most students interviewed expressed an initial hesitation towardsAI, because of that all-too-well known fear of getting flagged for plagiarism. For decades, students were told that they could face severe repercussions for turning to the internet to download pre-written essays, copying material from books or blogs, and more. As technology advanced, so did the opportunities to plagiarize, particularly with the rise of services like TurnItIn, which flags copy-pasted and non-cited sources on essays. Although colleges have managed to catch up with setting guidelines in place, the policies are oftentimes prohibitive, unclear, or left to the instructors. For many teachers, the AI policies in their classrooms are not universal, which is confusing for students and may even lead them to inadvertently getting in trouble. For students whose policy falls to an instructor-by-instructor basis, this can sometimes mean that students taking the same course, but with different professors, could have vastly different experiences with AI, at least in the classroom. It’s morally incomprehensible to me that a large institution would not put front and center defining what their policies are, making sure they are consistent within departments, says Jenny Maxwell, Grammarlys head of education. Because of the institution not being clear on their policy, their own students are being harmed because of that lack of communication, Maxwell added. While AI use in school appears to be steadily destigmatized among students, it certainly is in the workplace. Some students who recently completed internships said that not only were they allowed to use AI on the job, but were encouraged to do so (Sure enough, experts recommend recent grads upskill themselves in AI literacy, while one in three managers say theyll refuse to hire candidates with no AI skills.) A new way to learn The conflicting messages of AI gets you in trouble and AI is the future complicates the technologys presence in college students lives, be it in class, on an internship, or in the dorm. But for many, its simply shifting what learning looks like. For instance, the framework to evaluate studentss success might have depended on essays in the past. But today, it might be more suitable to judge both the essay and the process of writing with technology, Grammarlys Maxwell says. Many students say that standards are changing to measure their learning already. Claire Shaw, a former engineering student at the University of Toronto who graduated in 2024, explained that when she began college, she learned the basics of coding at the same time that AI piqued the interest of her instructors. She learned the old school way while being encouraged by some of her teachers to play with new technology. Still, Shaw did not start using AI for school until her fourth year. Now, she believes a balance between old school and new school can exist. You’re allowed to use AI tools, so the standard for those kinds of coding assignments were elevated, Shaw says. It points to a big shift: In academia, where AI was (and in many cases, still does) feel taboo, its also being embraced, even in class. But now that AI is now an expected tool, the difficulty of coding assignments has been elevated, she says, leading to more advanced projects at an earlier stage in a student’s career. And while this might be exciting, and a great prep for the future, Shaw still highlights the need to understand fundamentals skills you learn on your own without AIs help before jumping in head first. There are certain moments where we still need to test the raw skills of somebody by setting up environments that don’t have AI tool access, she explained, referencing in-person examinations with no AI tools available. Think of it as learning to drive stick, while automatic cars exist combining AI with traditional teaching methods may create a more holistic education. Similarly for humanities majors, some instructors are taking notes out of the old school playbook to measure these raw skills, like debating, communication, and critical thinking. We’ve turned to doing a lot more interactive stuff, like doing discussion circles, or handwriting pieces of writing, says NYUs Chakravarty, whos also a mentor in the schools writing center. College students know AI isnt going anywhere. Even though everyone students, teachers, schools, first bosses continues to stumble their way through adoption, there will be some aspects of the college experience that may never go obsolete. My professors brought out blue books again, says Chakravarty. Which I hadn’t had since, like, my first semester.
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